If Bell ends up missing any game action it forces the Bills to start Chambers and Jonathan Scott next week against an angry Miami defense off to a 0-3 start.
Scott played well in the second half in his Bills debut against Tampa Bay last week but was battered by New Orleans yesterday. He was responsible for two sacks and penalized once for a false start. At the very least, he showed signs exactly why the lowly Detroit Lions gave up on him more than a year ago.
Chambers is even less of a prospect. He was cut by the Bills before the regular season started, only to be brought back after Buffalo grew tired of Langston Walker. Still, he wasn’t even active the first two games and only the injury to Brad Butler landed him in uniform yesterday. He completed the transformation from waiver wire to press box and playing field within a three week span after Butler and Bell both went down.
To make matters worse, if Bell misses time the situation can quickly grow dire. Jamon Meredith, signed off the Green Bay Packers practice squad just a week ago would suddenly be just one snap away from being on the football field. By all accounts I’ve heard, Meredith is not even close to being NFL game-action ready.
I spoke to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Packers beat reporter Greg Bedard last week and he said the Packers were less than ready to plug Meredith into the Packers active roster anytime soon.
“They (Packers) obviously viewed him as a player who could not contribute this year,” said Bedard. “They have a ton of tackle problems right now and that they decided to just let him go speaks volumes.”
At this point, I can’t fathom the Bills not spending the money to make a veteran move at the tackle spot, even if Bell isn’t out for a significant length of time. Scott was uncovered yesterday, Chambers isn’t a NFL starter and Meredith belongs on the practice squad, not the field on Sundays.
And it’s not like Bell’s a lockdown tackle at this point when healthy anyway. He had a nightmare season opener at New England a few weeks ago, although he settled down nicely against Tampa the following week.
Has this offensive line come down to actually depending on Demetrius Bell?
The Bills weren’t overly impressed when they worked out Jon Runyan on September 11. They may want to reevaluate. Even if he showed up limping with ten pounds of tape wrapped around his surgically repaired knee, he has to be a better option than what currently resides at One Bills Drive.
Maybe it’s even time for both sides to swallow a little pride and reach back out to Walker. He’s certainly nothing special and looked brutal at left tackle during the preseason. But if nothing else he’s a serviceable seasoned vet. Walker gave up three sacks at right tackle last season. Scott gave up a pair in a two quarter span Sunday. Are you going to tell me Walker isn’t the better player, especially at this point?
If Ralph Wilson, notorious for cutting roster expense either before or after making a purchase, is worried about money, perhaps it’s time to dump Roscoe Parrish and his overpriced salary. Parrish brings nothing to the table other than the occasional great punt return. Sunday he couldn’t even hold onto the ball. Use his money for Runyan or Walker if the Bills insist on doing things the Wilson way. Surely a veteran tackle has to rank higher than a fancy punt returner, no?
Regardless , it’s time to do something at tackle. New Orleans is a good, but not great defense. With road games against Miami, New York Jets, Carolina and Tennessee coming over the next six games things are going to get imminently harder for this offense.
And you think they looked bad at home against the Saints?
(Photo Credit: Mike Thomas)
8 Comments on Bills Getting What They Paid For at OT
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You place blame on Scott and Bell but all OT’s have problems in the NFL. Jake Long was the first pick of the draft and he has given up three plus sacks and numerous pressures. You have to be patient with OL, they just need play time. Also, look at New Orleans scheme. They protect their OT’s and cover their weaknesses on the OL. Buffalo can do the same.
Go watch the Patriots vs. Jets game and look at the problems that Matt Light, OT Patriots, had against the Jets OLB’s. Green Bay OT Daryn Colledge was a 2nd round pick and still can’t play OT very well three years later.
It really doesn’t matter as long as Jauron is the head coach. You’re only talking degrees of mediocrity. Jauron’s decision to punt on 4th and 1 down 10 midway through the 4th quarter tells you everything you need to know about the man as a coach – he’s an uninspiring coward as a game day coach, no matter how wonderful the players think he might be. The Bills probably only have a few more years left in Buffalo. It is a shame they are wasting them with a loser head coach.
Chambers was dropped only while the Bills were trying to trade Walker. When they didn’t find any takers and finally cut him, Chambers was immediately resigned.
Chambers has real game experience and has filled in admirably before as the #1 backup swing-tackle. He fills a valuable spot in the rotation, and I feel the only reason he wasn’t named starting RT when Butler went down, was so that he could fill in for either LT or RT should Scott or Bell falter. Give him some credit and stop basing opinions of his ability on the fact that he was cut for 3 days.
DC
Can I bash him on the fact he wasn’t active for the first two games instead of being cut for three days, and was only on the field AFTER Butler got injured.
He was clearly behind Scott on the depth chart, as evidenced by his sitting in the press box while Scott took the field.
So between getting released, secret handshake with the organization or not, and being deactivated for the first two weeks despite his “real game” experience, shows me the Bills aren’t very high on his ability.
No offense
Sadly, yes, it has come down to Demetrius Bell. While Jon Scott and Eric Wood were being schooled by the blitzes and twists that the Saints were running at them most of the game, the Bills’ offensive line didn’t collapse completely until Bell left the game. Chambers, who has had some decent starts at RT and filled-in creditably at LT on a couple of occasions, did not seem ready to play at all when he entered the game. With pressure coming from his left in addition to consistently coming from his right, there was little that Edwards could do in the fourth quarter.
When the Bills picked up Meridith instead of signing a veteran OT after Butler went down they were gambling on Bell staying healthy and Chambers being able to be a short-term fill-in for him if he got hurt. Perhaps Bell will recover quickly and Chambers will revert to his previous form of being a decent fill-in at LT next week, but Chambers didn’t get the job done against the Saints and that is disturbing.
While it is easy to savage Jonathan Scott for his play on Sunday, which left a lot to be desired, he wasn’t the only one responsible for the horrible protection provided by the right side of the Bills’ offensive line: Eric Wood had a lot to do with that as well. Charles Grant absolutely dominated Wood when he came inside on the twists that the Saints were running. Scott had a choice of helping Wood with Grant (he should have been able to just hand him off to Wood) or pick up the rusher coming from the inside out. Unable to simply hand the crashing DE off to Wood, Scott got caught up inside and was unable to get to the man he was supposed to pick up on the outside far too often. The Saints rightly exploited this and, by the end of the game, it appeared that Scott and Wood were so confused that neither one knew who to block and ended up missing their blocks entirely.
This can be written off to their inexperience and is something that they should learn to correct as the season progresses, but it is the price that the Bills are going to pay for totally rebuilding their offensive lines with inexperienced players. The coaching staff and media analysts have all stated that there would be times when the Bills would suffer as a result of the inexperience of their young offensive linemen and Sunday against the Saints was one of those times. And, with Miami and the Jets and another game against the Pats on the schedule, there are certain to be other times ahead.
Would signing a veteran offensive lineman to replace Scott help? Possibly. But, having seen Wood’s vulnerablity to twists and blitzes, teams are going to continue to test him and there are still going to be days when his inexperience is going to show. A more experienced RT might be able to help him through those days, regardless of how much experience the Bills’ RT has it isn’t going to help much until Wood learns how to pick up a crashing DE or a blitzing ILB without getting pushed into the backfield or being beaten.
The price of starting inexperienced young offensive linemen is that each one of them is going to have days when his inexperience gets exploited, shows and he gets beaten like a drum. That’s what happens and is the risk that a team takes when it starts an inexperienced young offensive linemen. The Bills are starting four of them and they are going to take their lumps for doing so. But, it is the only way that these young offensive linemen are going to become experienced. Did the Bills have to choose to start all four of them? No, but it’s the choice that these coaches have made and, while it should make the team better in the future, we will all have to live with their bad days until they gain the experience they lack. In the meantime, the Bills had better hope that Bell gets better quickly and that Chambers is better prepared to play to the best of his ability when called on–which he wasn’t on Sunday.
Perhaps more disturbing was the lack of faith that Jauron showed in his team when he chose to punt rather than try to convert the 4th and 1 with 7 minutes and change left in the fourth quarter with the team only 10 points behind. You could literally see the team sag at that point and the fact that the Saints added 10 points to the margin after that was hardly a surprise. Up until now, Jauron has managed to keep the faith of his young players and they have played hard for him. While I know injuries depleted the tired defense by that point, they didn’t seem to play as hard after that decision. It is unlikely that the Bills will win enough this season for Jauron to retain his job, but, if he loses this team with decisions like that, things could get really ugly by season’s end.
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