Simple works best for Bills’ defense

By Anthony Bialy  |   Wednesday, June 27, 2007  |  Comments( 17 )

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I figured out how to run the Bills' defense. My qualifications for being able to do so are limited to A) having used approximately one million hours of my life to watch football and B) wasting most of my irreplaceable time at an expensive college playing embryonic versions of Madden Football, but I still did it. From what I ascertained in 2006, you tell the linemen to rush forward, cornerbacks to bump and cover the guy they're facing, safeties to watch whatever half of the field they're on, and the linebackers to hang back and guard the general vicinity where they're standing. There you go.

I will concede it may be slightly trickier than what I have presented here. Actually, I concede nothing. The Bills have a basic front, and its appeal is its utter simplicity. The need for better execution is obvious in some aspects of the game, but any desire to alter the philosophy is needless panic.

The hope is that Buffalo's defense will be able to spend less time thinking about what its unnatural responsibilities will be on a certain play and more time just actually reacting and playing. The much-discussed lameness opposing the run was the most glaring deficiency last season, but that doesn't automatically lead to doubting the soundness of the strategy: Getting the smaller, quicker tackles to get to the backfield in their small and quick way might require that the current guys get coached up, but it doesn't mean the approach is fundamentally flawed.

Bills defenders don't have to digest anything complicated such as zone blitzes. This means, say, tackle Larry Tripplett can focus more on turning around his game by focusing on his innate abilities as a straight-ahead tackle and less on whether he's able to run step-for-step with a receiver over the course of a pass route. Plus, the young linebacking corps will be able to play to their natural strengths as opposed to spending time immersed in activities such as absorbing blitz packages.

Instead of loading down players with trickery aimed at causing confusion, defensive coordinator Perry Fewell is operating under the premise that cute gimmicks are mostly going to confuse his own players. It's not a slight at them but rather a realization that players, as with most jobs involving competently talented people, are at their best when they are given a simple task and then left to their own devices to accomplish said task.

And that's the good news about the 2007 edition of the Bills' defense: There's nothing new to learn, not that there was a tremendous amount to learn to begin with. Buffalo's Tampa 2 scheme focuses on players' innate talents instead of cramming guys into excessively complex schemes. Defenders go into each play knowing that they are supposed to either rush, cover or wait for the play to mature.

The plan, as last year, is to keep everyone on the offense in front of them, allowing short gains without surrendering mammoth plays; let's call it the West Coast defense, and Bills fans should hope that Fewell's unwillingness to complicate his tactics means that his guys go on the field knowing what they have to do.

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About Anthony Bialy

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CommentsComments: 17  |  Sign Up  View all comments
No.1
j_baw34		08:25 AM
06/27/2007
If it is so simple and easy to learn why did last year go so bad? Now in 2007 we have the same front 4 returning to this simple...
No.2
Nate		09:06 AM
06/27/2007
Brilliant article Anthony. Quite brave of you to debunk the myth that football is rocket science. All of those workaholic coaches...
No.3
jim		12:11 PM
06/27/2007
Football is really a simple game..the difficult part is maintaining discipline. Each individual has a certain responsibility on...
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