Bill’s offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey spent a lot of time preparing for a Week 17 Test. Now he can refer to those notes.
The Bills meet the Bengals again on Sunday, just about three weeks after the two teams met in Cincinnati. The Week 17 meeting was cut short when Buffalo safety Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest on the field with 5:58 minutes left in the first quarter and his health became the top priority. The game was suspended and later cancelled.
The two teams are now preparing to face off in the AFC divisional round and Dorsey can already count on some preparation.
“Well, of course we’re going to go back and use this (previous game plan) as our kind of outline of what we want to do,” Dorsey said, “because there’s a lot of games that we haven’t played that apply.”
Dorsey and Bills defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier shared similar sentiments on Monday. They don’t have to completely reinvent everything they had planned to face the Bengals.
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“I think you have to be careful not to dig too much and try to uncover this or that,” Frazier said. “Because we spent a lot of time leading up to our last game… (and) it’s only been three weeks. They’ve only played two games since we played them and the same goes for us. So you have to be careful not to think about it too much, analyze it too much and end up giving the players too much and you end up not playing your best football.”
Last season, the Bills faced the Patriots in Week 16 and again in wildcard play, the same margin they now find with the Bengals. However, with that wildcard game rolling around, the Bills had two full games against the Patriots to fall back on as they scheduled an elimination game.
The start of any NFL game can be with both teams getting a better feel for the other. Manager Sean McDermott conceded on Monday that the limited amount of play that was leaked may make it difficult for coaches on either side to close too much.
“Hard to say. I mean, it’s such a small sample overall,” McDermott said Monday. “Usually you average between 60 and 70 playing a game. There was, I don’t know, we were eight or nine on defense and a few less on offense. So overall probably not much. But you’re going back to the drawing board more than anything.”
In the regular season, the Bills transitioned from a Saturday game in Chicago to a Monday night game in Cincinnati. A snowstorm meant the Bills would have to mess things up in Buffalo once, but they still had more time to plan the game for the Bengals. A few weeks later, the focus remains on keeping the Bengals on their toes.
“We just have to make sure it’s things that we haven’t played in the last two games,” Dorsey said.
It helps that the Bills’ last two games against the Patriots and the Dolphins presented different challenges than the Bengals.
The Miami Dolphins lived and died by the Blitz in the AFC wildcard playoff game. But it was a slow death, and the dolphins traded almost enough blows to survive. Miami blitzed Allen 20 times in 49 dropbacks (40.8%), the most blitz rate the Bills QB has seen all season.
“Honestly, there are things that weren’t applicable in those two weeks,” Dorsey said of the game plans. “But at the same time these are two important games for us. So we didn’t want to miss maybe a game that would help us win a football game, be it an important game in the last game of the year or a playoff game to save.
“So we’re going to take a look and make sure anything that we can carry over that we haven’t used, we definitely will carry over. And anything that we think is conceptually good, when we go into the game, we’re going to look at it and see if it’s something we can do and give it a different look.”
Aside from the yet-to-be-revealed game plan, the Bills go into the matchup with the Bengals and try to tweak things at will based on their recent outing. While the game schedules have always looked different for the Dolphins and the Bengals, Dorsey, a first-year offensive coordinator, takes something from every game he calls.
After Miami drew to three points, the Bills got the ball back with 10:53 left. Starting with the first and ten of her own 25, Josh Allen threw deep lefts to wide receiver Gabe Davis twice in a row and failed to connect both times.
“I’m sure Dorse wants that back,” McDermott said Sunday. “I didn’t feel good about it. Only there in terms of overall efficiency. So again, that’s one of the areas we can learn from.”
Dorsey acknowledged a learning moment Monday as he addressed his thorough process on the drive.
“Yeah, I think the first one came down to a call based on the situation where they were playing with the sticks a little bit there,” Dorsey said. “And we thought we had a good opportunity to try and get a part there for us to really help us alleviate our situation and get us going right there. So I thought we had good protection with the first one and were able to create a one on one match right there and take a step. We were just about to throw.”
On the next game, Allen went deep to Davis again. Incomplete again.
“The second I think you learned a little bit,” Dorsey said. “A situation where there’s a – we’re trying to make sure we’re putting ourselves in the best play on the line of scrimmage with a few different options. At the same time, there can definitely be more possession as well, possibly right there.
“You just don’t want to be predictable about some of the things you do. They don’t want to take a shot and then necessarily force the next play, handover or possession pass. You want to keep a defense off balance. At the same time, there is a time and a place.”
The Bills went three and out on that drive and lost three yards on the following third down before handing the ball back to the Dolphins with 9:54 in play and Buffalo’s lead by just three. The Bills were able to hold on, but Dorsey took something from the stalled drive that he hopes to carry over to future games.
“It’s something to look back on and learn from,” Dorsey said. “And I think in the future we might give each other some different answers.”
Buffalo Bills coach Sean McDermott speaks to reporters after the Bills’ 34-31 wildcard win over the Miami Dolphins.
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