Buffalo Bills: Sean McDermott should own blame for Week 1 performance
The Buffalo Bills’ season got off to a rough start, with a blowout loss to the Baltimore Ravens in Week 1.
There have been many rough moments for the Buffalo Bills in recent memory, but their 47-3 loss to the Baltimore Ravens stands above the rest.
It was tough to expect the Bills to beat the Ravens on the road, but nobody could have predicted the game playing out like that. Now the question is where should the blame lie? Simply put, it’s on head coach Sean McDermott.
From the beginning, the Bills were outmatched and outcoached which McDermott did admit, but how does that happen in the first game of the season when your team has more time to prepare than any other week?
The simple answer is that the team was mismatched from the beginning and it starts at the quarterback position, with Nathan Peterman finishing 5-for-18 for 24 yards, two interceptions and being sacked twice.
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No team can win with a quarterback performance like that even if the defense can find a way to get turnovers/score, because the opposing team didn’t have to break a sweat. It doesn’t help that the offensive line couldn’t give LeSean McCoy a chance to establish the running game, but credit the Ravens for taking that option away.
The game plan for the Ravens was clear, take away the only weapon the Bills had in McCoy and force Peterman to beat you through the air. This is where preseason performances can be misleading because Peterman outperformed A.J. McCarron, who was signed in the offseason and then traded to the Oakland Raiders.
Now the only option the team has going forward is either believe that Peterman can turn it around or end that experiment and go with Josh Allen. There is no reason why Peterman should get back on that field unless there’s an injury, considering his QB rating increased from 1.7 to 4.9 after an incomplete pass.
If you want a breakdown of how poor Peterman’s performance was, Neil Greenberg of the Washington Post wrote a good statistical breakdown and where it ranks from a historical standpoint.
McDermott didn’t want to throw his QB under the bus for the performance, which is smart since he wants to keep the heat off of him.
"“There were a lot of different people involved. There were times when I thought we could have been better up front. There were times where we needed to catch the football. There were times where we hurt ourselves with penalties. So, it wasn’t just one guy. It was a full, total team effort there,” McDermott said to the media."
As bad as the offensive line has been, they actually weren’t the issue in the passing game and while the receivers aren’t world-class talent, they didn’t have much to work with either.
Now the pressure is on McDermott to sort out the QB debacle that continues to haunt the team. Somehow this team made the playoffs last season but don’t expect that to be the case again, since the flaws of this team are proving to be too tough to overcome.
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What are your thoughts on the Buffalo Bills’ loss to the Ravens? Who’s to blame for the loss and what can they do to fix it? Let us know in the comments below.