Bills again turned upside down by 3-4 defense
Starting offense manages just 50 net yards
The specter of the big, bad New England Patriots looms over One Bills Drive today like a lake-effect storm cloud.
The Bills have 21 days to get ready for their season opener against the dreaded Patriots, and it looks like they will need every one of them in the wake of their 31-21 loss to the Green Bay Packers on Saturday night.
The Bills' offense, in particular, has a lot to worry about after getting dominated in its first exposure this summer to the 3-4 defensive scheme.
Green Bay is new to the 3-4, but the Pack forced the Bills into three turnovers in the first 16 minutes of the preseason game at Lambeau Field. Buffalo's starting offense produced just 50 net yards in five drives.
New England's 3-4 defense, of course, has dominated the Bills this decade. The Pats have won 11 straight games and 16 of the last 17 against the Bills.
The Bills went 6-1 against the 4-3 scheme last season but 1-8 versus the 3-4 defense. Buffalo averaged 30 points per game against 4-3 teams and 14 versus 3-4 teams.
"We haven't faced a 3-4, a full-speed, live-contact 3-4 defense since last year against the Patriots," Bills quarterback Trent Edwards said. "That's something we need. We need to do that before the regular season starts. I thought we got a lot of good work against that. We're going to see the tape and learn from it. You just gotta kind of move on."
Edwards said the fact the Bills had not game-planned for the Packers' tactics made the going tough.
"The whole night, they were disguising a lot of their coverages," Edwards said. "They were bringing a lot of pressure. For a preseason game, we weren't expecting too much of that. They did a lot more than we were expecting.
"We've got to be able to handle that. That's going to happen throughout the season. We've got to be able to make in-game adjustments, and that's something we'll learn from. I was very, very impressed with their defense."
The challenge of the 3-4 defense is determining which four or five men are rushing the quarterback, since there are only three down linemen.
Green Bay used a variety of blitzes. Edwards was sacked twice, and backup Ryan Fitzpatrick was sacked twice.
Bills coach Dick Jauron thought his team did a decent job of blitz pickups.
"I would say protection-wise I didn't feel bad about it," Jauron said. "I was very concerned with that because of the youth of our guys. They got beat. They got beat at times [on the offensive line].
"But for the most part they were where they were supposed to be, and I thought for the most part Trent and Ryan had time to throw it. That was a plus. But the results weren't what we need, obviously."
The Bills' turnovers weren't necessarily caused by poor blocking.
Edwards had time to deliver the ball on his interception on the first drive. He acknowledged he had some time on the second turnover, a sack and fumble that Green Bay recovered at the Bills' 5-yard line.
"I didn't like the way I reacted," Edwards said. "I felt like I was kind of in that gray area between tucking it and running or trying to throw the ball away. I was trying to get outside the pocket to throw the ball away because we had lost Marshawn [Lynch] in protection [as a blocker], and Roscoe [Parrish] wasn't open over the middle, and Lee [Evans] was covered over the top.
"So it's just kind of that gray area where you've got to be able to know when to throw the ball away and know when to take the sack. Obviously, that's on the quarterback. I've got to handle the ball well."
Bills center Geoff Hangartner said he wasn't sure if the 3-4 was necessarily a problem versus Green Bay.
"I don't know if I would go that far," he said. "On a lot of the stuff, we kind of dictated to them offensively that they were not in the 3-4 as much as they might have been normally. They were in some nickel personnel [because the Bills used multiple wide receivers]. So I don't know if it was specifically the 3-4 that gave us problems. We definitely need to protect it up better.
"Any time you're turning it over on offense, we as an offensive line take that personally that we need to do our jobs better."
In one respect, the loss underscored Buffalo's need to have a healthy Terrell Owens in the lineup. Owens has been out the past two weeks with a sprained toe.
Green Bay has one of the best cornerback tandems in the NFL in Charles Woodson and Al Harris. Owens' size and speed on the outside is especially vital for the Bills against an opponent as strong as the Pack in the secondary.
The Bills' offense gets another chance to tune up for the Patriots game Saturday when Buffalo visits Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh, which also runs a blitz-oriented 3-4 defense.
"Schematically Pittsburgh will do a lot of the same things that we saw [Saturday], a lot of fire zones," Hangartner said, referring to blitzes in which defensive linemen drop into coverage.
"It's good for us," Edwards said. "But the hard part now is I don't know how much scout team we're going to be running [in practice]. We didn't face a scout team 3-4 defense [last week], we faced our 4-3 defense.
"It is the preseason. We do kind of need to just learn things on the fly and be able to make in-game adjustments. But I don't know how much scout team we'll get, how many looks we'll get of [the] Steelers' defense.
"I was very surprised how many different looks [Green Bay's] defense did give us. They brought corner blitzes, safety blitzes, a couple linebackers here and there, and that's not something you see a ton of in the preseason. But give them credit, they dialed them up and they beat us."
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