2011 Season Preview: Buffalo Bills

AFC East – Bills
 
Summary:

The Bills had a yet another season to forget last year. We projected them to have a 4-12 season and that is exactly what they had. The Bills didn’t improve much offense at all and just like 2009 they finished 2010  with the 28th ranked offense as measured by the PossessionPoints stat. They averaged just 70 Offensive PossessionPoints (PosPts) per game in 2010 which was dead on the 10% positive adjustment we gave them in last year’s issue. That level is still well below the 83 PosPts they averaged in 2008. (For those less familiar with PosPts, in a game we turn a team’s offensive effort “green” when they go over 100 PosPts. At the 100 PosPts level a team wins 75% of the time). While the Bills’ offense moved in the right direction last season it still has a long way to go. 

Sometimes a team’s defense can bail out the offense, that was certainly not the case with the Bills in 2010, their defense like their offense ranked 28th in the league as measured by the PossessionPoints stat. The Bills second year head coach Chan Gailey still has plenty of work to do and the lockout certainly didn’t help the Bills. We expect the experienced Gailey will be able to improve this team so we adjusted the Bills up by 10% on Offense and 20% on Defense. That still left just a 4-12 projection which goes to show just how much work the Bills have to do this season to make an impact in their division.

Room for improvement:

Plenty, we had already adjusted the Bills offense up 10% and defense up 20%, but it is not unusual for one or both units to move by 20 – 25%. But even with a 25% improvement on both sides of the ball, the projection for the Bills only goes to 5-11. It takes the offense and defense to improve by 35% to even get to an 8-8 mark. That kind of improvement from both units is hard to come by. In that scenario, the Bills additional wins would come against the Eagles, Jets, and Dolphins at home and the Bengals on the road. Even with our most optimistic projection, it is hard to see the Bills in the playoffs this year.

How they could falter:

As we mentioned at the start, the Bills did not do very well as measured by the PossessionPoints stat. If we take their performance back to the 2010 level (0%) adjustment, the Bills projected record falls to 0-16. We can thank the Bills killer schedule for the poor record even with the same level of performance as 2010. The Bills have the 2nd toughest schedule by the classic W-L method and the 3rd toughest by the PossessionPoints stat. So, it is no surprise to us that our computer had a hard time projecting anything better than a 0.500 record. 

Biggest Question Marks:

As with many teams, quarterback is the question here. We like Ryan Fitzpatrick but he still has a long way to go before he is in the class with the top quarterbacks in the league.  We had expected more support for Fitzpatrick last season from RB C.J. Spiller but he rushed for just 283 yards and had just 157 receiving yards in 14 games. Perhaps we were expecting too much from a rookie but RB is typically a position where rookies can make immediate impact. If Fred Jackson can have another season like last year then the running back position will be fine but Jackson has hit that magic age of 30 where history has shown it gets harder and harder for running backs to perform at top level.