Edwards is not gun shy
QB shifts his focus to K. C.
After answering eight straight questions related to Monday night’s debacle, Buffalo Bills quarterback Trent Edwards politely made it clear Wednesday he has no interest in beating himself up over his poor performance.
“I would greatly appreciate if we moved on from this subject,” Edwards said. “We’ve been talking about this. I talked about it after the game Monday night. Again, I need to do a good job of moving on from that and continuing to put us in positive positions and positive plays and making better plays.”
If only the Bills could pivot away from their four-game losing streak so deftly.
Edwards says he is not shaken by his three-interception performance in the Bills’ loss to the Browns.
Offensive coordinator Turk Schonert says his starting quarterback will be fine.
Buffalo fans find out Sunday when the Bills take their shaky-wheeled bandwagon to Kansas City to play the Chiefs.
“I’d say I’m still just as confident as I was,” Edwards said after Wednesday’s practice. “Obviously once you make some mistakes, you try to tone it down a little bit. You’re trying not to force as many balls. That’s probably why I didn’t look as confident. We weren’t taking as many shots because of the defenses they were giving us.”
“He’s not scared,” Schonert said. “He’s young. . . . Everyone forgets, because we got off to such a great start, how young he really is. . . . He’s going to make some mistakes. He’s got to learn from them, and he will.”
There’s no denying, however, that after throwing three pickoffs in his first seven passes, Edwards did look shaky in the pocket on numerous plays, double-clutching before releasing throws.
“It’s not every time, but I think he wasn’t going through his progressions,” said ex-Bill Jim Kelly on his WGRF morning radio show. “There were a couple times where if he just went to his second progression, the guy was open. But it looked like he was dropping back, if his first read wasn’t there, he was already looking to the running back to dump it off.”
Schonert did not totally disagree with that assessment.
Asked about the inability to get the ball to Lee Evans, Schonert said: “It wasn’t that we didn’t try. He was open three, four times down the field and Trent went elsewhere with the ball. Believe me, I try to get him the ball. He’s our money guy. One [pass for Evans] got tipped. Trent, like I said, misread a couple and didn’t get it to him.”
But Schonert gave Edwards credit for adjusting as the game wore on, and the dump-off throws to running back Marshawn Lynch worked. Lynch had 10 catches for 58 yards.
“You see Peyton Manning do it all the time,” Schonert said. “They just play Cover 2, Cover 2 and drop eight [in coverage], and he just keeps hitting Joseph Addai or whoever is his running back, and that’s his leading receiver.
“Trent got to that. It took him a little while but he got to that,” Schonert said.
Edwards disputed the suggestion he was afraid to throw downfield. He said that’s what got him into trouble initially.
“If there’s nothing downfield I can’t force it,” he said. “That’s what was happening on those two interceptions. I don’t think that’s fear, I think I made the mistakes by forcing the ball down the field. That’s the same defense they ran the whole game. So I don’t think I need to keep throwing into coverage and keep putting myself in bad positions.”
Edwards said he needs to do a better job of recognizing the defense early in the game.
“The hardest thing that’s happened to me — this happened earlier in the season and it’s happened the past couple games — is that I’m preparing for defenses that we’re not really getting on Sundays or Monday nights,” Edwards said. “They didn’t really bring the defense that the Browns played against the Broncos, and that’s what we’re practicing here on the practice field all week. And then we’re facing an entirely different defense. That’s something I need to grow from and learn from.
“I want to be perfectly honest, I’m not saying this is something I haven’t seen before,” Edwards said. “I don’t want to make any excuses. There’s still plays out there to be made for me. . . . But it’s just tough when they’re running the scout team and we’re not getting the things we’re seeing on tape.”
Said Schonert of the Browns: “They sat in the same coverage the whole time. They were going to make us run the football. That’s what they did. Once we recognized it, we got to the run game and had a good night running.”
Schonert said he did not have to give Edwards a pep talk Wednesday.
“No, he’s ready,” Schonert said. “He’s a pro. He’s got to bounce back and have some resiliency, and he does. I told him you’ve got to go out and you can’t be shy about throwing the ball down the field. Some of the passes that he threw an interception on, we ran them again today. Just so he got back there and made the throw and got it out on time. . . . That’s what he’s got to learn. When we go into the game against Kansas City, don’t hold back.”
