What’s going on with Bills defense and where do they go from here?
The Bills defense has a lot to work on before meeting another opponent with a powerful offense.
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After a full offseason of waiting, the Bills delivered an instant classic-type victory over the Ravens. The 41-40 primetime win yielded a lot of offense, and the national stage for quarterback Josh Allen to re-announce the Bills as contenders in 2025.
Even though the Bills won the game and were facing one of the most talented rosters in the NFL, it also signaled to upcoming opponents that their defense could be a work in progress this season. So, as the Bills prepare for another daunting rushing opponent in the Jets in Week 2, what can we learn from the first game that can influence trends to look for this weekend?
After studying the All-22 from their first game of the season, let’s dig into the defense and where they go from here.
What the heck happened to the defense on Sunday night?
If the Bills didn’t have Allen putting together one outstanding fourth-quarter drive after another, the conversation around the entire game would definitely be far different. It’s not that the defense is getting a pass, but the sometimes intense spotlight the NFL provides isn’t shone directly on them. But inside the building, make no mistake, the Bills are in all-hands-on-deck mode to get themselves situated on defense this week. Head coach Sean McDermott said Monday that he started his weekly film study with special teams and offense so he could spend the rest of his time dicing up what happened on defense. They are fully aware that surrendering points, yardage, and explosive plays can be debilitating for a roster that isn’t commanded by the reigning NFL MVP — and even he had to pull a rabbit out of a hat with long odds just to get the victory.
The Bills knew there would be some growing pains with some of their youth on defense, but what made matters worse were the regrettable plays from some of their most trusted defenders. The safeties took the brunt of some of the social media ire, and for the most part, the criticism was deserved. But in some ways, they are the scapegoats of a much bigger problem. The middle of the defense was a massive weakness throughout the game. You can point to specific problems at all three levels of the middle of the defense to see why the Ravens had no issues moving the ball down the field in whatever way they wanted.
It started with the defensive line, particularly at defensive tackle, with everyone not named Ed Oliver. The film revealed Oliver as a high-impact defender who played a critical role in the victory regardless of the situation. Even on some of the big Ravens plays, Oliver was closing in and would have made a play had there been a bit more resistance in front of the ball carrier. The trio of DaQuan Jones, T.J. Sanders and Deone Walker had some difficulties. Jones was far more of a hold-in-place player than someone who made a play. Sanders struggled against the run in his first game without many pass-rushing chances to show the strength of his game. And Walker played sparingly, though the offensive line walled him off a pair of times, forcing him to lunge at a runner on one occasion.
Because there was such an emphasis to slow down what was happening up the middle on these rushing attempts, all four of the defensive ends — Greg Rousseau, Joey Bosa, A.J. Epenesa and Javon Solomon — got caught cheating toward the middle to stop the run between the tackles, only for Lamar Jackson to pull the ball and run outside with the vacated space.
The linebackers were a pretty big letdown, perhaps the biggest of all the defending levels on Sunday. Terrel Bernard and Matt Milano got caught well away from where the ball was going on several occasions. That problem was exacerbated by an overall failure to get themselves off blocks. Sometimes those blocks would hold in place, but far too often, Bernard and Milano would get pushed around by those block attempts, freeing up more space for the ball carrier to roam — whether it was to the inside or outside of the tackles. The combination of struggles by the defensive tackles and linebackers put pressure far too often on the safeties to bail out the rest of the defense.
That doesn’t excuse the safety play, however. Cole Bishop and Taylor Rapp had far too many issues with securing a tackle and in the angles they took to ball carriers on occasion. Rapp also took the bait a bit too often when in the deep middle, which might be part of a bigger conversation down the line, considering both Rapp and Bishop seem at their most comfortable when they’re closer to the line of scrimmage. Regardless, the safety position is clearly going to be a work in progress this season, so the Bills need the rest of their trusted defense to help that starting duo as much as possible.
It’s one thing just to write what the problems were, but it’s best to show a couple of prime examples about how the middle of the Bills; defense let them down so consistently on Sunday. The first was on the 49-yard run by Derrick Henry in the first half.
As the play starts, the Bills look perfectly set up to contain the oncoming Henry run. Rousseau had the edge contained, Jones peeked toward the outside shoulder of the guard that even forced Henry to look at an inside cutback, which Oliver took away. On top of that, Bernard had the inside track, while both safeties were closing in to hem in Henry from whichever way he chose to go. If you look at this image, the instant thought would be good defense, and a minimal gain for Henry. That’s when it all went up in flames.
Just a few frames later, Henry decides to run Jones’ way because Oliver was ready to bring him down, but Jones could not get off the block — even with the leverage — to slow down Henry. At the same time, Rousseau gets knocked down on the edge, creating more space, Bernard gets decked to the ground by a block and Bishop changes his direction to help outside the numbers, despite having both Milano and Christian Benford in support out there. The seas are about to part.
At this point, both Rousseau and Jones are effectively out of the play. Bernard got up, but his blocker is about to push him further out of the way. Bishop’s move to the outside gave receiver Rashod Bateman the leverage to shield him from the inside, and the free offensive linemen were there to take on the hard-charging Benford. Even still, Rapp, coming from the right side, has a free run to meet Henry, which would effectively be their last chance to keep it hemmed in.
Rapp went after Henry’s ankles and Henry predictably bounced off the attempted tackle without losing any speed whatsoever. By this point, Bernard and Bishop are well out of the play, meaning it’s off to the races for Henry.
Even on a bad rep, it is worth giving some credit. Rookie cornerback Dorian Strong raced over from the other side of the field as the last line of defense. Rather than lunging at Henry’s legs or trying to get immediately physical with the most physical, punishing runner in the league, Strong let his game prep do the talking. Henry is a serial stiff arm enthusiast, so rather than leading with his body, Strong waited for Henry to make a move and then swatted Henry’s arm away.
Now with Henry off balance, Strong closed in and brought the runner down 15 yards shy of the end zone. Despite that positive piece, the Bills were in an initially perfect position to not let that play get to that point, and it all went haywire.
Let’s head to the next example — a long Henry touchdown run later in the game.
The play begins as a normal handoff to Henry, but the Bills were off to a bad start this time. Jones was getting moved toward the left too easily, while Sanders was a quarter of a second slow reacting to the snap, which led him to have no chance to get through the wall of blockers. It effectively left Bernard on an island to beat the blocker to the spot and to force Henry wide toward the sea of four defenders.
Instead, Bernard gets caught and turned by the Ravens’ offensive lineman. That, along with neither defensive tackle in shouting distance, gave Henry a ridiculously large rushing lane by NFL standards. The last hope on the play was Rapp, who quickly shifted his weight and was ready to attack.
At this point of the rep, Rapp thought he had Henry where he wanted him, with the safety coming downhill to initiate physical contact. If Rapp made that contact, it likely results in either a tackle or slowing Henry down enough to allow for help to get there.
Rapp, after initially running downhill, misjudged Henry’s acceleration and overall speed, which turned it into a mad dash. At this point, he was not committed to trying to beat Henry to the spot.
Rapp didn’t beat Henry to the spot. The poor angle, along with the bad rep from Jones, Sanders and Bernard gave Henry an untouched path to the end zone.
Those examples, along with plenty of others, show that there are many things the Bills need to clean up ahead of Week 2.
Ok, so how to fix it for Week 2?
In many ways, the only other time they are going to see a collection of offensive talent, along with the blocking up front, will be later in the season when they play the Eagles, and possibly in the playoffs if they have to take on the Ravens again. That’s the good news. And by then, their inexperienced players will have a double-digit amount of starts, barring injury, which will help in trying to make sure there isn’t another performance like this.
But make no mistake, the Bills are not just chalking up what happened on Sunday night to facing a talented offense and it just being ‘one of those days.’ Some of those schematic and game situation things will have to be ironed out over time with more experience. The emphasis for Bernard and the linebackers will be to trust what they’re seeing rather than overthinking the play — especially against an opponent that challenges the defense up the middle, to the edges and vertically like the Ravens.
McDermott has long stressed fundamentals, and if there was a specific game — maybe a two-game stretch — in which those defensive fundamentals weren’t where they needed to be, he would dedicate a good amount of practice time to reinforcing them. In this instance, the team must be better at block shedding and wrap-up tackling. Block shedding and getting tied up in traffic have been issues for Bernard at different stages of his career, but he was able to improve near the end of last season. The missed tackles are a non-starter. There were too many instances of big plays that could have been prevented had the initial tackle attempt been successful, and at the very least, a more thorough attempt would have helped slow the ball carrier down.
But if there’s one comforting thing for Bills fans after that defensive performance, it’s a regression to the mean. Many of the worst defensive showings on Sunday came from players who have an established baseline of ability, over multiple seasons, that put them somewhere between average-to-good starters. Most notably, that includes Jones, Bernard, Milano and Rapp, who were three of the more common players that struggled against the Ravens. Although Rapp has had games where he has struggled in the past, he progressed in the second half of the 2024 season. On the flip side, with players like Bishop, Sanders, Walker and Solomon, getting experience and evolving will need to be the keys for them to access similar baselines. There may be more growing pains ahead, but the hope is they’re playing their best football by the playoffs.
Players with 15 or fewer snaps:
DT Deone Walker (13), WR Elijah Moore (12), FB Reggie Gilliam (12), RB Ray Davis (10), NCB Cam Lewis (9), IOL Alec Anderson (3), QB Mitchell Trubisky (0), OT Ryan Van Demark (0), IOL Kendrick Green (0), LB Joe Andreessen (0), LB Shaq Thompson (0), CB Ja’Marcus Ingram (0), S Damar Hamlin (0)
Season Grades will be added after Week 3
How the standards work
When the All-22 film becomes available, we’ll go through and watch every player on every play as many times as necessary to assess letter grades. It is a subjective analysis, and it’s important to note we do not know the play calls and full responsibilities. The grades stem from technique, effort and presumed liability.
The study accounts only for players who take a snap on offense or defense. Players with fewer than 15 snaps — unless they significantly impact the game — will not factor into weekly rankings. The grades range from an ‘A’ (a perfect 4.00 GPA) to ‘F’ (0.00 GPA). There is no ‘A+’ in this grading system. Season-long grades will be tallied and documented, with a single game’s grade weighted based on how much the player was on the field in a given week.
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