Chan Coaches Like Dick

Dick Jauron should be proud.


Yesterday in Houston, the Buffalo Bills turned back the clock with a performance reminiscent of the best-forgotten Jauron Era.

Despite being solidly outplayed for nearly three quarters in every facet of the game, the Bills, having avoided the sort of meltdowns that marked their four previous losses, still had a shot at pulling out a contest they had little business winning. All they needed was their deservedly maligned defense to stop what everyone in the stadium knew was coming and the offense to finally find its way into the Texans' end zone.

Neither came close to happening.

The defense did half its job, bottling up Houston's Arian Foster on what proved to be the decisive drive, which started with 2:55 left in the third quarter and the Texans ahead 14-9. Foster carried five times during the possession, but gained just three yards.

Foster's efforts were still productive, though, as they seemed to make defensive coordinator Dave Wannstedt forget that the Texans were also allowed to throw the ball.

As he had on Houston's previous scoring drives, Matt Schaub parlayed Buffalo's concern with Foster into both more-than-adequate time in the pocket and wide-opoen receivers.Schaub completed all six of his throws, covering 65 yards. The last, to backup tight end Garrett Graham, gave the Texans a 12-point lead and, given Buffalo's offensive issues, the game.

The Bills had long since abandoned any attempt to throw the ball downfield. Two slow-developing screen passes gained as many yards. When Ryan Fitzpatrick finally aimed past the first-down marker, delivering a well-thrown ball to Scott Chandler, the usually reliable tight end, of course, dropped it.

Buffalo's run defense finally wore down, getting pushed backward for more than six minutes, with Foster tearing off increasingly large chunks of turf as the Texans kept the ball until it was too late for the Bills to do anything meaningful with it.

Taken on its own, the 21-9 loss was not Buffalo's worst of the season. The run defense didn't get gashed for the long highlight-reel sprints that typified the losses to New England, San Francisco and Tennessee.

Fitzpatrick didn't embarrass himself, completing 25 of 38 passes for 239 yards and not turning the ball over until fumbling on a desperation scramble after the game had been effectively decided, anyway. The numbers were far more impressive than his performance, however. He would not, or could not, try the sort of throws that might loosen up the Texans defense. Or result in touchdowns.

And, as was usually the case under Jauron (who presently has Cleveland's defense playing just well enough to lose close games to better teams), you can't say the Bills didn't play hard. They made Foster earn his 111 yards and, with Mario Williams turning in his second-best performance since coming to Buffalo, occasionally generated a pass rush while stuffing Foster and backup Justin Forsett six times behind the line for a total of 13 yards in losses.

The offense, though, also seemed like a Jauron creation -- a steady spray of short passes, mixed with a very occasional run. Fred Jackson and C.J. Spiller, easily Buffalo's top playmakers, each carried the ball six times.

“They were playing seven big guys in the box against our three wide sets and you’re trying to run them out of that," said Jauron's eventual successor, Chan Gailey. "You’re trying to throw the football to run them out of it and we weren’t able to do it. We had some passes that were dropped at times. We had some missed time penalties and it cost us offensively. We weren’t able to move it consistently and get in the end zone.”

In other words, if the other defense makes the going tough, quit and try something easier.

Gailey also seemed to forget that throwing the ball further than 15 yards down field is perfectly legal, sticking almost exclusively to screens, slants and other quick patterns almost guaranteed to gain less yardage than needed.

“Yeah, we would like to and we got to try to do that on a more consistent basis," Gailey said when asked about the failure to throw deeper. "Some weeks are better than others and sometimes they take things away from you that you don’t think they’re going to do but they did. They surprised us with a defense we hadn’t seen very much and we had to alter."

Such caution was at least partially due to the presence of Williams' replacement, J.J. Watt, who sacked Fitzpatrick once and drilled him as he threw at least another five times.

The biggest problem, though, is the inability of either Gailey or Wannstedt to "alter" when "surprised." Or when their counterparts have the audacity to adjust their plan once the game is underway.

Under Jauron, Buffalo's philosophy appeared to be to not screw up too bad, stay close and get a break at the end.

Gailey was supposed to bring a different approach, using his acclaimed offensive creativity in an effort to win games, rather than waiting for the other team to lose them.

The Bills last showed that sort of aggressive mentality during the hot streak that had them 5-2 heading into November 2011. Since then, Gailey and Fitzpatrick have been content with the take-what-they-give-us approach. Which sounds good, except that NFL defenses, especially ones as good as Houston's, don't give you much.

If Buffalo's fifth loss in eight games was not as humiliating as the rest, it was every bit as dispiriting. The Bills avoided the glaring physical mistakes and mental breakdowns of September and October. They did not disintegrate after falling behind. Williams and Fitzpatrick -- previously the two easiest, and most deserving, scapegoats -- each played well enough to finish the day on the winning side.

Still, the Bills lost. And lost decisively. In the process, they looked less like a team that had any confidence that victory was possible than one concerned with avoiding further embarrassment. Even in the final minute, needing several miracles to overcome a 12-point gap, Fitzpatrick was aiming small, running out the clock with meaningless short tosses.

Gailey said about what you would expect him to say about the loss, "we can build off this."

Midway through his third season as head coach, hearing Gailey talk about building might be the most demoralizing thing of all.

WWM MVP: Spiller provided what little danger the Bills' offense presented. It's not his fault he didn't get the ball more.

CAR COMMERCIAL OF THE WEEK: Growing up outside Buffalo, I always thought of Rush as something of a regional act -- big in Canada, the border region and probably throughout the Rust Belt. It was not until seeing the Volkswagen commercial with the guy air-drumming to "Fly By Night" that I realized the power trio to which all others aspire made enough of a national impact to warrant placement in a nostalgia-reliant advertisement 25 or 30 years after their popular peak.

Good for them. Can Triumph be far behind?

BROADCAST BLATHERING OF THE WEEK: It is mighty tempting to kick around Terry Bradshaw and his "bucket of chicken" line, but I didn't actually see or hear it as it happened, and it sounds more like an insipid inside joke with the FOX studio team than a case of racial stupidity. There is more than enough manufactured outrage out there, anyway.

So I'll go with CBS analyst Dan Fouts, with an assist to his production crew. First, a graphic incorrectly suggested Mario Williams was Houston's first-round draft pick in 2002, the Texans' first year of existence.

An honest enough mistake. So Fouts repeated it, later calling Williams "the first Texan ever drafted."

Um, no. That would have been David Carr. Four years before. I've never been one to pounce on every little mistake or mispronunciation announcers make -- talking into a microphone flawlessly for more than three hours is a lot to ask of mortals not named Vin Scully.

Doing some basic homework, though, is not too much to ask, Dan.