Bills should have never thrown, except that one time or so

By Anthony Bialy  |   Thursday, January 01, 2009  |  Comments( 38 )

Buffalo Bills
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The Buffalo Bills weren’t about to throw much, so why didn’t they let perennial benchwarmer Gibran Hamdan play against the New England Patriots in last Sunday's season finale? It’s easy to say now, but doing so would have allowed starter Trent Edwards to begin his offseason rest one week earlier in addition to providing Hamdan with a live audition for 2009’s backup job. Most importantly, it would have set the proper tone for the game, one where the team may have been better off making a pass attempt, singular. Regardless, the coaches naturally mangled the balance, wasting Edwards’ ability at opportune times while making him pass at inopportune ones.

Not really, but wideouts might honorably decline their game checks this week, as they weren’t too busy during most of the action: 18 of Edwards’ 25 attempts came in one long desperate attempt to perpetrate a score of some kind during the final quarter, with only 11 of those 18 aimed at wide receivers. Even then, they should have relaxed and let Fred Jackson continue to drive forward barbarian-style, as the team never got past New England’s 33 in the fourth despite the panicky shift to throwing.

For one, the Bills would have been unlikely to call a throw on fourth down in the fourth quarter with under seven minutes left if Hamdan was behind center. Why pass there? With a yard to go, Edwards missed Josh Reed; in truth, he almost missed the ground, as the wind teamed with his hobbled groin to ruin a throw that was clearly unreasonable even as it was happening.

Conversely, one of the rare moments where a pass would have made sense passed by with about 11:45 left in the second quarter. Facing a second-and-10 at New England’s 31, the Bills inexplicably ran twice, gaining only 3 yards to set up a 47-yard field goal attempt that sailed predictably wide. The wind was their friend in that time period, and yet the fact the significant breeze was at Edwards’ back didn’t prompt the coaches to let him air it out in the hopes of moving the chains or at least moving the ball forward for Rian Lindell’s benefit.

That’s the way events went during that limited window, as Edwards only passed five times in the second stanza when the wind was headed in the same direction as the offense. Granted, the team only gained 24 yards on those completions, but that was the one spell where more non-Jackson action might have helped divert the defense’s attention.

More importantly, it was a brief time where conditions were in the still-ailing Edwards’ favor. They paid for his arm, and they may as well have let him use it during the moments where gusts would have eased his mechanical burden; otherwise, they should have let him be sore on the sideline in an insignificant season finale along with the inactive, pain-ridden Marshawn Lynch.

But decisions that seemed wrong at the time and proved wrong after the fact emerged as the Bills’ signature this past year. Even during that final quarter, the offense shouldn’t have thrown as much as it did, and meanwhile should have thrown on at least one obvious occasion where it stuck with running.

If coach-for-2009 Dick Jauron can’t figure out the balance, he needs to find an underling who can, as the ignorance of something as simple as the appropriate occasions upon which to throw or pass stands as his regime’s most basic weakness. The calls reeked of offensive coordinator Turk Schonert and, while Jauron may not have been responsible for the calls, he is responsible for what goes on under his watch, meaning he has to find a lieutenant who’s sharp enough to know when the wind is or isn’t the passer’s friend. Either Schonert gets better, or the franchise gets someone else.

Hindsight naturally makes judgments easy, and Buffalo even baffled observers who possessed decent foresight, whether regarding this past Sunday’s play balance or general decisions over the season.
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