LovinBlue's Impressions of the Colts-Bills Game

I agree with a lot of your impressions. The O-line is definitely a mess right now; I can’t wait for CJ and Saturday to come back, especially No. 63. Devin Moore definitely caught my eye on a few of his returns. If he turns out to be a consistent force in the return game, our special teams will have improved significantly. More than anything else though, I was just glad to see Sanders back in action. No one else lays the lumber like The Eraser does!

I don’t like watching the Colts lose either, but it’s just the preseason. I’m just glad our backups got some experience and we didn’t suffer any needless injuries (I’m looking at you, Tim Tebow).

That’s what I get for turning to Futurama in the second half. On the other hand, we got to see Zoidberg’s and the Professor’s bodies in the sack together. Maybe I shoulda stuck with the game instead ; same sloppiness, less ew.

I watched the 2nd-4th quarters on my DVR late last night in pieces during study breaks. I thought the D did great in the first quarter, aside from the Spiller TD, and thought the run game looked far improved. And I was drooling over those Devin Moore returns.

HOWEVER……….after watching the rest of the game when the first team played, I can’t help but say I was pretty disgusted with the performance, preseason or not. This was the Bills. THE F***ING BILLS!!!!! Our defense looked abysmal, gave up WAY too many easy catches, and I have NO f***ing clue what happened on that Edwards to Evans TD. That was pathetic. Peyton made a couple of bad passes that he rarely makes that could have been picked, but made several great plays as well (duh). The pick was on Gonzo, and no one else, and if he wants to see more field, then CATCH. THE. DAMN. BALL. The pass rush of freeney and mathis, albeit they were double teamed a lot, didn’t put as much pressure on edwards as I would like. I chalk some of that up to quality blocking on the Bills, though. I’m not gonna whine about SPiller much, because I do think he is that good if he gets space.

I know it’s only preseason and we still had some starters out, and all I have to say is, THANK GOD IT’S NOT FOR REAL YET. This team will still be great, but will have to play better than that. This was the freakin’ Bills. And I hate making New England comments this early in the season, but I watched a little bit of their game, against a better team, and they looked much MUCH more insync than we do right now. I think that will be moot come regular season, but I hate it when they look good and we don’t.

reaction time on defense, and timing on offense. regardless of who’s in the game the offense only ran about 1/16th of it’s playbook. strech right, stretch left, slot slant, z hitch, 24 dive, 25 dive, y arc. thats about it. every team in the league looks at the colts as the standard. so polian never gives anything away. thats why we never win preseason games. we have the same team from the sb plus a better return game. so stop suckin the sack(sorry been watchin transformers 2) we are a better team.

My big takeaway was that if there was ever a game that illustrated that even the greatest QB in the league can’t do it on his own, it was this one.

How can you say that, when Tom Brady didn’t even play?

I kid, I kid. 11/21 circled on the calendar, as always…

A couple of points though.
1. The Bills looked horrendous on special teams. If we see Moore do that again I’ll start believing. Until then I’m not going to judge the return game.
2. As bad as Ugoh looked, Linkenbach looked worse. I’m pretty sure he actually caused at least 1 and maybe 2 of the false starts. He acts like he has no idea what the play is and is caught looking in the back field when the ball is snapped.
3. I thought Richard held up ok actually.
4. Addai is a really good player.
5. Freeney looked terrible on run plays. They ran right through him several times. This is usually not the case, so I don’t know what is going on.
6. Loved Angerer’s play. Think we may have a gamer there.
7. Gijon’s days are numbered.
8. Where was Hughes? I skipped the 4th qtr, but I don’t think I saw him once with the 1s and 2s.

he will NEVER catch them.

I’m an irregular poster on Buffalo Rumblings so I thought you might want to see what the game looked like to those of us in WNY.

1) Gods, the Bills kick coverage was beyond dreadful. Bruce deHaven was once considered to be a special teams guru. Now his unit looks confused and disjointed. Admittedly he’s starting from scratch but the unit under Bobby April that he took over for was pretty good. What was one of the Bills few strengths over recent years has suddenly become a glaring weakness.
2) I think Brian Brohm just made Ryan Fitzpatrick completely expendable. Expect the Bills three QBs to be Edwards, Brohm and Troy rookie Levi Brown. Fitz will end up somewhere but it won’t be here. Too expensive for the level of talent.
3) Spiller looked like a rookie. An exceptionally talented rookie who can very likely become one of the league’s elite backs but he made some rookie mistakes. Coaching and experience will solve those. I’d like to see what he can do as a receiver as well and what he can do in a two RB backfield with either Action Jackson or Beast Mode.
4) The Bills secondary, with the prominent exception of Drayton Florence who was god-awful, really seemed to have Colts QBs confused all game long. This is to be expected from one of the best pass defense units in the game, even with who is arguably their best DB (Jairus Byrd) out with a groin injury. Manning is still Manning and he can still make plays against the best units but he really didn’t look as sharp as we’re used to seeing him.
5) Joique Bell is going to make the roster. Absolutely. Phenomenal performance last night by #35. Now the Bills will have two stud running backs who never played in Division I (Fred Jackson went to Division III Coe College, the alma mater of Marv Levy).
6) The Bills run defense is still a “work in progress.” Loosely translated that means they still suck but might get better as opposed to last year when they just broke down constantly.
7) The offensive line, which was so battered and broken last year due to massive injuries throughout the year performed reasonably well. Levitre and Demetrius Bell played exceptionally well against Freeney.

While the Colts starters played, for the most part, as expected, the reserves were dreadful and the parts that weren’t were largely due to the ineptitude of the Bills run defense. If you guys have the same luck with offensive line injuries that the Bills had last year, it is going to be a very long season at the Luke and not the sort of long that ends up in the Super Bowl. Your reserve offensive linemen got hammered.

As we sat around, beers in hand, doing a post mortem on the game, my buddies and I all started out with the same thought. What the hell are we going to do when PM hangs up his cleats. Or, God forbid,,,goes down with an injury. We have lots of talent, but the intangible that #18 brings to the field is absolute confidence and leadership.

Who’s gonna fill those shoes? There are many inspirational players on the roster, like #58, but no one who absolutely owns that field every time he steps out.

I agree with Lovin’Blue…we probably wouldn’t have won a game w/ the Bills straight up in the regular season, given the disjointed effort we had. We’ll always have injuries and make shift lines at times…it’s part of the game. A great team finds a way to overcome that and play together.

but still…the Colts have only won 4 games in the preseason in the last 5 years, apparently. (Don’t quote me on that one, of course.)

What does that make it? 4 wins and 22-23 losses? I saw bits of the first half and watching CJ Spiller make a TD run and having our D whiff on it. He blew by Sanders and Bethea…that was disheartening. And our O-line play was also disheartening, but it’s still only preseason and the Colts mostly just evaluating players and see where they fit.

That’s usually what I say to remind myself that it’s only preseason.

Preseason or no preseason, the Colts D looks much better when using any blitz technique, or even just a show blitz and drop into coverage technique. Of course, playing corners off and bringing an extra pass rusher only means 90% chance of the other team getting a quick first down to the sideline….I wish the DBs played more press coverage.

But Powers was out so that could be part of it. Lacey is still learning and Hayden is very inconsistent at times.

I’d gladly take Ugoh adopting Tarik’s “At least one penalty a game” policy if he learned how to defend against a bull rush.

Otherwise, nothing really of note here. Not sure why the Colts are so determined not to draft anyone capable of blocking.