Through the first four games of the season the Bills vaunted pass rush has been rendered ineffective due mainly to opposing quarterback getting the ball out in less than 2.5 seconds on average. Andrew Luck, Tom Brady, Ryan Tannehill and Eli Manning have all succeeded with a quick pass game to negate any pass pressure generated by Buffalo’s men up front. Defensive coordinator Dennis Thurman has a solution to reverse that trend.
“It’s one of those situations where if the ball is coming out in under two seconds it’s a little hard to get the type of pass rush that you want to generate,” said Thurman. “At the same time everybody has a job to do and quarterbacks have been throwing the ball fairly quickly against us and we know it. So we gotta do a better job of our underneath coverage.”
Coverage on the boundary was very good against the quick game last week. Evidence of that could be seen in the receiving statistics of Odell Beckham Jr. and Rueben Randle. The pair was targeted 18 times in the game and had just six receptions. The middle of the field is what has to be guarded more effectively, especially knowing that Titans TE Delanie Walker is one of Marcus Mariota’s favorite targets.
