2014 Record: 9-7

Current +/- wins per Bovada: 8.5

Overall: 2014 was an interesting season for Buffalo. The defense, led by three players with at least 10 sacks, spearheaded a charge to the first winning season in 10 years. They were tough to play against and finally reemerged as a viable playoff contender…

…except they didn’t make it. The offense sputtered under a rotating cast of underwhelming, inadequate quarterbacks. Mental mistakes and turnovers plagued the team, often at the most inopportune times. The near-miss on the playoffs was too much for Head Coach Doug Marrone, who quit.

Now Rex Ryan takes over after years of decent success with the rival Jets. There is a new quarterback in Tyrod Taylor and a new RB combination as both Fred Jackson and C.J. Spiller are gone. A strong receiving corps., headlined by 2014 first-rounder Sammy Watkins, offers real potential if Taylor can prove he’s more effective than Kyle Orton was last year.

The defense remains loaded up front, and the cornerbacks look up to the challenge of playing islands, notably Stephon Gilmore. The aggressive bent of Ryan’s teams will make this Buffalo team a very difficult opponent to play and recover from playing, which could help them in what looks like a tight AFC East and AFC Wild Card race. The expectations are there for this group to finally quench the playoff thirst.

Five Questions

1. Tyrod Taylor at quarterback?

Buffalo’s quarterback situation has been (insert negative adjective here) for years. I’ll go with “unsettled”. The instability pervaded all summer, even after trading for Matt Cassel to be the presumptive starter ahead of 2013 first-round pick E.J. Manuel.

Tyrod Taylor was an afterthought, a seldom-used Ravens backup who has thrown one pass in the last two years. Undersized at 6’1” and known in his Ravens days to be too quick to leave the pocket and take advantage of his lithe athleticism. Yet Taylor impressively outplayed his competition throughout camp and preseason, and he prevailed in the meritocracy to earn the starting gig.

This presents prognosticators with a challenge. There is scant film to judge Taylor other than competition against preseason opponents, a situation which has made the likes of Thad Lewis and Case Keenum look like potential franchise QBs. I had to dig a bit for my scouting notes on Taylor coming out of Virginia Tech back in the 2011 draft, a QB-heavy one. He was in my 4th tier and I noted his “strong downfield arm and the ability to uncork strikes on the dead run”, but I worried about “a decided lack of patience in the pocket” and “bouts with inaccuracy coupled with tunnel vision”. That was a long time ago, however.

His agility will present challenges for opposing defenses. Taylor is a long-striding runner with excellent acceleration and surprising toughness. That can only help on third down, where the Bills have ranked 26th and 29th over the last two seasons. Given the impressive receiving options, if Taylor can manage to avoid the egregious mistakes which plagued Ryan Fitzpatrick, Manuel and Kyle Orton in recent years, he’ll keep the playmakers happy and move the chains more efficiently. Improving the third down percentage and avoiding 3-and-outs (Buffalo ranked 26th last year) are the primary foci.

2. What will the newcomers offer on offense?

Taylor will get the most attention, but Buffalo also imported a couple of high-profile weapons. LeSean McCoy comes from Philadelphia to spearhead the rushing attack, while Percy Harvin followed Rex Ryan from the Jets to be a versatile outside playmaker.

McCoy has rushed for over 2,900 yards in the last two seasons, averaging 4.7 yards per carry for the Eagles. He also caught 80 passes in that span. He’s clearly a productive, versatile back. Yet Philadelphia coach Chip Kelly found him expendable, and that begs the question “why”?

The biggest risk with McCoy is his workload and durability. He has 626 carries to go with those 80 receptions. That’s a lot of touches after being used more judiciously in his first four seasons, and McCoy is a physical runner who doesn’t shy from contact. He did miss some time in 2012, and he’s going to be questionable to start the season with a hamstring issue. Shady is a bit of a wild card as a personality, too. He fired parting shots at Philadelphia and then threw himself a private party at a strip club, and sideline riffs with linemen who miss blocks are commonplace.

If McCoy is a wild card, Harvin is just plain wild. The Bills are his fourth team in as many seasons. He’s fought with teammates. He’s verbally dressed down coaches on the sideline, even assaulting one while at Florida. He’s taken himself out of games when he felt he wasn’t being used enough. He’s been suspended for substance abuse. He’s missed scores of practices with various maladies, including recurring migraine headaches.

Teams keep giving Harvin chances because he’s a special athletic talent. Few can match his playing speed, and his prickly personality translates as intensely competitive and dynamic on the field. Coach Ryan believes he can manage Harvin. If he can, the receiving corps here is arguably the scariest in the league. With Sammy Watkins, Robert Woods, Chris Hogan and even sprinter Marquise Goodwin, Buffalo is already deep. Harvin’s playmaking ability down the field and on screens and gadget runs takes it to a new level…potentially.

As if those two weren’t enough for Ryan and his staff to manage, Richie Incognito is the starting left guard. Yeah, that Richie Incognito. He was regarded as the dirtiest player in the league and that was before the Jonathan Martin bullying scandal in Miami. McCoy will enjoy running behind the veteran guard, as he’s good at creating openings. Taylor might not appreciate Incognito as much, as he surrendered 6 sacks in seven games when he last played back in 2013 while showing lousy lateral agility.

Another former Dolphin, Charles Clay, will get extensive run as the hybrid TE/H-Back/FB. He’s blossomed as a receiver since transitioning to more of a fulltime TE role in 2013, catching 69 and 58 passes at over 10 yards a clip. Clay is very good at getting open quickly underneath and transitioning from receiver to runner. Clay is an athletic upgrade over departed Scott Chandler, who caught 49 passes last year before signing with New England. No division cannibalizes itself like the AFC East!

The newcomers do add appreciable talent and oomph to the offense, but this is also now a motley crew that will keep the coaching staff dancing on glass. 

3. Can the defensive front dominate?

Last year the Bills posted a formidable front. Buffalo led the league in sack percentage, a year after finishing third. They finished 4th in scoring defense, up from 21st. No team was better on third down than Buffalo’s 33.1% allowed conversion rate.

That was fantastic. It also came in a different, albeit similar, defensive system. How the established talent fits into Ryan’s unique 3-4 defense will be one of the biggest developments to watch in Buffalo this year.

Previous Defensive Coordinator Jim Schwartz deployed a 4-3 front, often using his ends aligned in the Wide-9 or using gimmicks like twists and stunts with the front four. He rarely blitzed, instead relying on the considerable talent in the front four to generate all the pressure. It worked wonderfully, as three of the four starters hit double figures in sacks. The linebackers and defensive backs totaled 7.5, one of the lowest figures in the league for non-DL. 

Ryan, of course, likes to bring more than four. While he’s not his carelessly cavalier twin brother Rob, Rex isn’t afraid to send an overload blitz or bring both inside backers on a crossing double A-gap blitz, with the weakside end dropping to run with the TE and leaving a wideout uncovered. That’s a fairly radical change for a system that wasn’t broken.

Mario Williams will have no problem playing more out of a two-point stance. He’s done it successfully, even though he sure looked more natural being closer to the blockers and with a hand in the dirt last year. Jerry Hughes, the other stand-up edge rusher, is the bigger worry. He relies heavily on getting depth around the tackle with his first couple of steps. But putting more distance between him and the tackle (or tight end) gives the blocker more time to get depth and to adjust. Obviously Ryan will have him aligned tight often, but keep in mind Hughes was a flop in Indy’s 3-4 early in his career. Then again, Ryan frequently plays his defense as a 5-2 and he’s great at maximizing his players’ potential.

The interior guys up front are special. Kyle Williams and Marcel Dareus are a fantastic duo, and they can align all over the front to keep blocking schemes off balance. Dareus will miss the opener on suspension, but he’s one of the best interior talents in the league. He’s far and away the best run stuffer up front, and the 2011 first-rounder is great at being the second guy in on the pass rush and finishing the play.

The linebackers who will be asked to be more aggressive need to be up to the task. I’m bullish on Preston Brown, who flashed as a rookie and proved quite capable in short-range coverage at Louisville. Brown’s new role should help the run defense, the one relative weak point in Buffalo’s defense last year. The Bills were 14th in yards per carry, a figure which progressively worsened as 2014 advanced. Fellow LB Nigel Bradham is not a typical Ryan backer, as he’s more of a peripheral nibbler and a lightweight blitzing threat.

One thing to keep in mind is that the Bills deployed a Ryan-esque defense in 2013 under Mike Pettine, now Cleveland’s Head Coach. Pettine’s D was lousy against the run and struggled in the red zone, but they still brought a lot of pressure and disruptiveness to the passing game with similar coverages and blitz schemes. It’s not an unfamiliar defense to most of the veterans. 

4. Where is the depth?

I’m writing this as the Bills just completed their roster cutdown to the final 53 players. And the depth chart is…peculiar.

There is no depth, quite literally, on the offensive line. Third-round rookie John Miller will start at RG, flanking solid center Eric Wood opposite Incognito. I liked Miller as a prospect and his ability to fire out to the second level should help the run game, but there is no safety net. The only interior reserve is underwhelming Kraig Urbik, who has lost starting jobs quickly in both Pittsburgh and Buffalo. Right tackle Seatnrel Henderson had his moments but otherwise looked like a 7th-round rookie last year. Left tackle Cordy Glenn is a perfectly average starter. But their only backup as of press time in Cyrus Kouandjio, an absolute waste of a 2014 second-round pick with the knees of a 72-year-old carpet layer. Oof.

The Bills are fine at running back and wide receiver depth, though I’m less of a Bryce Brown fan than most. Rookie Karlos Williams intrigues as a backup RB. And Manuel remains as a young backup QB with similar stylistic skills to Taylor, which means Offensive Coordinator Greg Roman won’t have to tinker much if Manuel is pressed into action. Sure, C.J. Spiller is now in New Orleans and they’ll miss his dual-threat skills out of the backfield, but the backfield depth should be fine. Then again, they also cut Bills fan favorite Fred Jackson. They’re trusting unproven commodities quite a bit here.

Defensively, the Bills lost some key depth. Safety Da’Norris Searcy is now in Tennessee. Reserve CB Ross Cockrell is now down I-79 in Pittsburgh. Duke Williams should be fine as the third safety, an in-the-box thumper with upside. Much is riding on second-round pick Ronald Darby proving both capable and durable as one of the starting corners. He was great--at times--in preseason, though the propensity for penalties is something which troubled him going back to his Florida State days. Darby’s backup is Mario Butler, who washed off practice squads in Dallas and Denver and has never played in a regular-season game.

Should Williams or Hughes go down, it will be catastrophic. Manny Lawson has never met expectations as a pass rusher, though he’s functional as an outside backer off the ball. He is the depth at outside linebacker, period. There is no other player on the depth chart at all. Sixth-round pick Tony Steward was dogged at Clemson with two knee blowouts and chronic hamstring issues. He’s the next man up, and he had 3.5 sacks in four years of college.

Ryan has found success at plugging “his guys” into his system in the past, but there just aren’t that many out there. It was telling that IK Enempkali, quickly signed after breaking Geno Smith’s jaw, didn’t make the final cut under his old Jets coach.

5. How quickly does Rex Ryan stamp his team?

This is a difficult question, because the defense has fingerprints from a Ryan disciple in Mike Pettine from 2013. Pettine was Ryan’s consigliere with the Jets defense for three years, so the holdovers from that era have some familiarity with both the scheme and the gruff, blunt coaching style.

Few coaches in any sport have the strong identity of Rex Ryan. He’s a cultural demigod over his teams, and I don’t mean that in any negative way. Ryan fosters a very real and strong identity to his teams. They will be conservative offensively to the point of making fans’ pull their hair out in clumps. They’ll be intensely physical on both sides of the ball, playing through and often past the whistle. The defense will be creative, aggressive and fun to watch, though occasionally toasted for big plays. Division games will be wars, magnified now that he’s going to face his old Jets twice a year.

Like Bill Parcells, Ryan has his very specific types of players he relies on at certain positions. The thing is, there aren’t a lot of those “Ryan guys” here. Several guys fit the profile, but how they react to Ryan is a variable until proven otherwise. How his marriage with Greg Roman as Offensive Coordinator works will be interesting. Roman visibly struggled working under a majordomo coach in Jim Harbaugh in San Francisco last year. Ryan and Roman were on the same staff in Baltimore for a year, so at least there is some familiarity.

One other area to watch is special teams. Buffalo’s coordinator is Danny Crossman, who was abysmal at the job in Detroit and had some foibles last year in his inaugural Buffalo campaign. Ryan has been very hands-on with his special teams units (notably coverage) in the past.

I greatly admire Ryan as a coach, something I covered in my Jets preview (see the fifth question). There figures to be a transition period for Ryan to fashion these Bills in his own image, and transition periods often mean painful losses. Hopefully Ryan has learned from the issues which consistently dogged him in New York, and that can help mitigate the growing pains. But beware the odd loss and sideline/locker room friction as Ryan establishes his way. 

Forecast: The Rex Ryan/Tyrod Taylor era will be tried by fire early. The schedule is brutal to start, hosting Indianapolis and New England, the two combatants in the AFC Championship game last year. Then comes a trip to Miami that figures to be brutally humid. Both the Patriots and Dolphins feature excellent defenses and a keen familiarity with Ryan’s tactics, making them even tougher matchups.

There is a patch of winnable games before a brutal stretch where the Bills play five road games in six weeks, including trips to playoff contenders New England, Kansas City and Philadelphia. The final two games very well might be must-win affairs, home dates with Dallas and Ryan’s old Jets. Those teams very well might be in the same must-win desperation.

I like this team on paper, at least the starters. But I have reservations with an inexperienced quarterback and a paper-thin depth chart at too many spots. The coaching overhaul could produce an immediate bump, but I’m more apt to believe it will produce more bumps in the road. As long as they keep the turnover margin positive and the special teams don’t lose games, it’s hard to see these Bills finishing with less than 8 wins. But cracking the 10-win barrier and getting back to the playoffs? I just don’t see it. Not this year. Buffalo falls back to 7-9 in 2015.