rayonsports.com

The Buffalo Bills fell to 0-5 for the season on Sunday by losing to the Jacksonville Jaguars, 36-26, taking their place along with Carolina and San Francisco as the NFL’s only remaining winless teams. The Bills may not be the worst team in the league, but there’s no doubt that their defense, trying to transition to a new 3-4 scheme, is the worst defense in the NFL. Jacksonville signed Trent Edwards after the Bills released him because their starting quarterback, David Garrard, was playing horribly and when he was benched, backup Cade McCown was injured, so they were desperate for another option. Yet Buffalo’s defense made Garrard look like Peyton Manning on Sunday, as the Jags scored on 8 of their 11 possessions in the game. Their punter never saw the field. The Jaguars actually did most of their damage the way every opponent has – with their running game. But Garrard completed 16 of 20 passes for 3 touchdowns, so he was a positive factor. His favorite target was Marcedes Lewis, as the Bills, once again, got burned by an opponent’s tight end. Jacksonville rushed for over 200 yards, the fourth consecutive Bills’ opponent to accomplish that. The Bills gave up over 30 points for the fourth straight game. The most frustrating part of all this is that every team does the same thing – runs the ball, throws to the tight end – and the Bills still have no clue how to slow their opponents down, let alone stop anything. New coordinator George Edwards has no answers, and again, just like in the cases of Gregg Williams, Jerry Gray, Mike Mularkey, Tom Clements, Perry Fewell, Alex Van Pelt,etc. – Bills fans have to put up with another inexperienced coach getting his on-the-job training here while the team’s fortunes go down the drain for yet another season. In hindsight, the switch to a 3-4 defense looks like a bad idea since the team doesn’t have even a single NFL-calibre linebacker on it’s roster. This is probably beating a dead horse, but when former first round draft picks like John McCargo and Aaron Maybin can’t even play their way into the lineup on a defense this bad, they are now officially busts.

The offense probably played well enough to win this game, if the defense had shown up at all. They weren’t perfect, as they blew a first-and-goal opportunity at the one yard line with a couple of bad penalties, but they scored enough points and sustained drives long enough to give the team a chance. Fred Jackson had a decent game running the ball, and Ryan Fitzpatrick threw 3 TD passes and engineered 5 scoring drives. The special teams were bad this week, giving up long returns and not getting much on any of their own returns. Usually reliable punter Brian Moorman even had a mediocre day. One other positive out of this game is that the Bills won’t lose this week – they have a bye. That gives Chan Gailey 2 weeks to try to figure out how to field some semblance of a defense for the rest of the season. Unfortunately, none of the answers appear to be on the current roster or on the defensive coaching staff. They may be better off assuming the defense is going to give up at least 30 points a game and put their efforts toward trying to gear the offense to outscore opponents the rest of the way. Looking at the remaining schedule, the Lions’ 0-16 record of a couple years ago is definitely within reach for this team.