Buffalo Bills at Miami Dolphins
One of the reasons I backed the Dolphins last week and got the cover was my belief that Tua had more opportunities to get support from his run game. And that hasn’t been possible, going up against the #1 toughest schedule of run defenses on the season.
Miami started the season against the following schedule of run defenses:
#1 Colts
#5 Buccaneers
#6 Bills
#9 Patriots
#10 Raiders
Five top-10 run defenses their first 5 games of the year.
Last week they went up against the Falcons bottom-5 ranked run defense and the Dolphins were able to run. In fact, on 67% of their first half first downs, the Dolphins handed off the ball.
The run game, however, still wasn’t efficient, averaging 3.6 YPC and a 36% success rate on these first down runs.
Thus, the burden once again fell onto Tua Taovailoa’s shoulders.
Despite a couple bad decisions, Tua was quite efficient in executing a very short ball passing attack. He had a completion percentage above expectation of 12%, third best in the NFL, and completed 80% of his passes.
This came one week after throwing for over 350 yards against the Jaguars.
The problem is, after playing two bad defenses in back to back weeks, Tua is about to face the Bills defense, which ranks #1 overall and is top-5 vs both the pass and the run.
Buffalo has put up over 30 points in 5 straight games. Brian Daboll’s offense has absolutely owned this defense of Brian Flores
Without the ability to run the ball, everything is going to come down to Tua, who has 1 TD, 3 picks and 3 sacks vs the Bills in two career games against them.
It’s hard to envision the Bills, off a bye week to think more about their loss to the Titans – a game they led throughout – would not be focused to attack the Dolphins poor defense. Buffalo leads the league in the differential of 20-yard plays on offense versus allowed defensively at 15. Miami is dead last in the same category at -20.
Cincinnati Bengals at NY Jets
The Bengals are now entrusting more and more to Joe Burrow and he’s been delivering.
The first month of the season, as he was returning from his season ending knee surgery, Burrow was passing on only 47% of early downs in the first three quarters.
They ranked 4th most run-heavy in the NFL.
However, over the last 3 weeks, they’re 63% pass, which ranks 4th most pass-heavy in the NFL.
Last week vs the Ravens, Burrow threw 34% of his passes into tight windows, highest in the NFL, yet recorded a completion percentage above expectation of 9%, one of the best of any quarterback in the NFL.
What’s really stood out is how he’s making defenses pay when they blitz him
On early downs in the first three quarters, the average target depth when blitzed is 7.4 yards.
Burrow is 10.7 yards, top-5 in the NFL, and he’s the only one in the top-5 with a positive EPA/att on these passes vs the blitz
He’s completing 11.9 YPA and 8 TDs vs the blitz.
This week, he goes up against the Jets, who have by far the highest blitz rate in the NFL on 3rd downs.
And the Bengals are the 5th most efficient pass offense vs 3rd down blitzes.
The only thing that will slow down the Bengals offense is the Bengals themselves.
Tennessee Titans at Indianapolis Colts
Although the scoreboard looked lopsided in the prior 25-16 Titans win back in Week 3, the stats & context tell a slightly different story.
It’s difficult to overstate the beat up nature of the Colts. Practice squadder Brett Hundley took the majority of quarterback reps in Colts practice that week. Carson Wentz (double ankle sprains following offseason foot surgery) barely was healthy enough to start in the game and was severely limited. He passed for 194 yards (season low but for the monsoon he played in last week), a 51% completion rate (season low), 0 TDs (season low) and 5.24 YPA (season low).
Look at the splits for Wentz in the monsoon last Sunday night in Week 7 vs the Week 3 game vs the Titans:
Week 7: 65% completions, 2 TDs, 5.8 YPA
Week 3: 51% completions, 0 TDs, 5.2 YPA
The fact Wentz was so much worse against the Titans than in the pouring rain should tell you something about his health in that game.
The Colts were also shorthanded along the offensive line and without TY Hilton.
But they did a great job on early downs against Derrick Henry, holding the Titans backs to -0.13 EPA/att, 32% success and 3.8 YPC on 28 rushes. The only thing that worked on the ground for the Titans was Ryan Tannehill scrambles (5 for 56 yards) and a couple key third down runs from Henry.
Through the air, Tannehill was merely OK. Yes, he tossed 3 TDs. But he averaged just 7.3 YPA and tossed 2 interceptions along the way, while recording a terrible -0.20 EPA/att and a 56% success rate.
And that was his BEST game vs the Colts of the last two years.
Last week the Titans offense was good against the NFL’s worst defense of the Chiefs, but where they were great was on third downs. Tennessee converted 8 of 12 third downs (67%) and scored 2 TD of their 3 total TDs on third downs.
But that came against the worst third down defense in the NFL.
The Colts defense ranks #11 on third downs and will be far more of a test for the Titans offense.
This Titans offense has played a laughable schedule of defenses the past month:
#32 Jaguars
#31 Chiefs
#29 Jets
And then they took on the Bills in Week 6 on Monday Night. The Titans put up 34 points in that win, but they were fortunate to win that game.
They had just 5 of their 11 drives travel over 13 yards with 1 drive traveling over 70 yards.
Meanwhile, the Bills had 7 of their 10 drives travel at least 38 yards with 5 drives traveling over 70 yards.
Buffalo’s problem was red zone failures, where they scored TDs on just 2 of 5 trips (as opposed to the Titans scoring TDs on all 3 of their red zone trips).
The Bills run defense ranked top-10, but was entirely untested on the season, and Derrick Henry hit them like a ton of bricks.
This Colts defense knows Derrick Henry well, has already limited him massively in the first meeting, and currently ranks as the NFL’s #1 run defense.
The Colts offense is finally healthy – Wentz is healthy and the offensive line is healthy – something that wasn’t possible to say in their earlier meeting.
This is a “back against the wall” spot for the Colts. If they get swept 2-0 by the Titans and fall to 3-5 on the season through 8 games, with the Titans improving to 6-2, you are hard pressed to envision the Colts coming out of the AFC South.
The Titans secondary is banged up and the Colts may be able to take advantage of it in ways the unorganized and unproductive Chiefs offense failed to do last week.