The Bills open their new stadium Thursday night against a Detroit team that is built to turn this into a track meet, and the scary part for Buffalo is that the Lions already have a blueprint for how to do it.
Dave and Greg broke down that blueprint, what Jim Leonhard has to fix before it gets exploited, and where Buffalo can punish a Detroit secondary that is down to its backups. They also pulled in Jeff Risdon of the Detroit Lions Podcast and Real GM for a scouting report from the other sideline. Here is how the game shapes up. (Watch here)
- How Detroit will try to attack the Bills’ defense
- What Jim Leonhard has to fix, and how long he gets to do it
- How Buffalo cracks a short-handed Detroit secondary
- The offensive line question that swings the whole thing
- The injury dominoes at safety and linebacker
- Predictions, and the one bet that split the room
How Detroit Is Going to Attack the Bills
Let’s start with our out-of-town guest Jeff Risdon of the Detroit Lions Podcast. Detroit wants to get its speed moving horizontally. Jameson Williams and Sam LaPorta running across the field pull the safeties out of the middle, and once the safeties start chasing that motion, the space behind them opens up. That is the setup. The payoff is the shot down the field or the backside throw.
The piece that should worry Bills fans most is the backside tight end out of twelve personnel. Jeff thinks that concept is open against this defense right now, and it ties into how Leonhard’s guys play. Detroit runs guard pulls and misdirection to influence the linebackers and safeties, get them flowing hard one way, and then attacks the area they just vacated.
Jeff even tied it back to Leonhard’s own playing days, the aggressive downhill trigger. If those fast-flow defenders fire early on the fake, they are out of the play, and the backside is wide open.
Then there’s the run game, which Jeff would keep pounding. He thought Houston ran on the Bills more effectively than the box score showed, and Jahmyr Gibbs is a bigger problem than anything Houston had. Give Gibbs a two-way go, and you will not get him. Get him to the second level and let him make the first defender miss, and it is a chunk play. He even dropped his shoulder a couple times in Week 1, which is new, so the Bills cannot just play him for the bounce.
The counterweight is the pass rush, and Jeff respects it. He noticed both of Greg Rousseau’s strip sacks against Houston came on third and long, and he does not think that is luck. So Detroit’s plan is to stay out of obvious passing downs, keep Rousseau and Bradley Chubb from pinning their ears back, and let Jared Goff get the ball out a beat early. When Goff has time, the Bills are in trouble, because Goff extends dead plays as well as anyone Jeff has seen. That is the real fear in the back end. Can this secondary cover for five or six seconds while Goff slides around and finds the throw?
What Leonhard Has to Fix, and How Fast
Greg’s number one key: quick time to pressure. If the front gets home fast, the coverage never gets exposed. If Goff sits clean, Greg doesn’t trust this secondary to hold up, and it’ll be a long night.
The problem, in Dave’s eyes, is that the front is still a work in progress. Rousseau and Chubb should win their reps, but behind them there are guys still finding roles. Michael Hoecht is not all the way back. Landon Jackson is being asked to play inside at around 280 pounds, which Greg thinks is a season-long project, not a Week 2 fix. T.J. Sanders and Javon Solomon are pieces Leonhard is still sorting. So the quick pressure Greg is asking for is not a given, and that is the tension.
If the four can’t get there, the answer cannot be what it was in Week 1. Buffalo was blitzing Damar Hamlin from 20 yards off the ball, and Greg’s point is that never works. You’re not manufacturing pressure that way, you’re just vacating a deep safety.
Leonhard needs to create pressure a different way, using the linebackers to bring heat, and he needs to give his corners help instead of leaving them on islands. He wants man coverage and one-on-one wins, but after what Houston did, the show’s read is that he has to disguise looks and confuse Goff before the snap, at least until the back end settles.
The game within the game there is Christian Benford. Leonhard named him CB1 with the right to travel, but Benford had a rough Week 1. Amon-Ra St. Brown lives in the slot, and Greg isn’t sure you want your best corner following him inside all night. Dave would rather put Dee Alford on St. Brown in the slot, because that is exactly what Buffalo paid Alford to be, the Taron Johnson type in the nickel. Let Maxwell Hairston take Jameson Williams and the speed outside, and keep Benford where he is most useful.
Underneath it all is the patience question, and this is the one Greg actually pressed. How long is the year-one grace period for Jim Leonhard? He is fine giving Leonhard Week 2. He is not fine waiting until December. By Week 5 or 6, if it still looks like Sunday, the job is to put the players you have in spots where they can be most successful, scheme be damned.
For Dave, the trade deadline might tell the story. Will Beane seek help at corner, linebacker, or on the line? Leonhard is the chef who got handed the ingredients. The guys who got paid (Benford, Bernard, Rousseau) are “the guys.” At some point, the results have to show up with them.
How Buffalo Attacks a Short-Handed Detroit Secondary
This is where the Bills have an edge. Detroit’s secondary is banged up in a way that matters. Both of their 2024 starting safeties are out, and that duo was the best in football last year. What is left is a smart veteran in Chuck Clark and a lot of guys still learning to play together. The corners are not fast. DJ Reed was limited and might not go, and the backups do not fix the speed problem.
The bigger tell, from Jeff, is that Detroit is playing more zone than it used to, and the seams between the linebackers and the safeties are soft. When they got aggressive against New Orleans and rolled the safeties up, they got beaten over the top, and Tyler Shough threw for 400 on them. If the Saints did that, a better quarterback with better weapons should do it and then some.
The caveat he added is that it cannot be a copy of the Houston plan, because Detroit’s linebackers are better than Houston’s, so the underneath stuff is tougher. The answer is more deep shots and getting the running backs into space against those linebackers.
That is exactly where Greg wants to go, and his key is James Cook. Cook had only 13 carries on Sunday, but this is a game to feed him, especially in the passing game. The moment those good Detroit linebackers have to squeeze down on Cook, the middle opens for Dalton Kincaid and Khalil Shakir. Cook on slip screens might be the thing that unlocks the downfield throws, because it forces the second level to commit.
Kincaid is the mismatch that decides a lot of this. He is Buffalo’s version of what LaPorta is for Detroit, the movable weapon nobody has a good answer for. Put a corner on him, and he outweighs him by 40 pounds. Put a linebacker on him, and he runs by him. A safety helps a little, but a healthy Kincaid against this banged-up group is a problem all night. Add DJ Moore, a Shakir working underneath, and Josh Palmer, who already made a game-winning deep catch in Week 1, and the Bills have more than enough to test a secondary this thin.
The Offensive Line Is Still the Swing
It matters this week because Detroit’s front is legit. Jeff put Aidan Hutchinson at a Defensive Player of the Year level, said the group is deeper than it has been in years, and noted they are blitzing and scheming more than before.
The same protection that kept Josh Allen clean against Houston has to show up two weeks in a row against a nastier front. Do that, and Buffalo is in business. Fail, and Allen is running for his life again, and the whole plan changes.
The Injury Dominoes
Cole Bishop is the linchpin, and the dominoes run off him in both directions. He was limited and questionable all week. If he can’t go, the safety room is Damar Hamlin, rookie Jalon Kilgore, and Jordan Hancock, who at least practiced full all week.
That’s thin against this passing attack, and the concern isn’t just Bishop potentially being out. What if he goes out mid-game and Buffalo has to shuffle rotational players in a track meet? When your starter goes down and the plan is to rotate second and third stringers to cover gaps, it’s an indication of a roster build problem.
And there’s Terrel Bernard, who’s banged up again. Listed as a calf, and the detail that struck Dave was him grabbing his ankle. For a downhill linebacker on a surgically repaired ankle, that lingers.
The two went back and forth on it, one side leaning toward sitting him to get right for the 10-day gap before the Chargers, the other betting he plays. If he is limited, it’s Dorian Williams and maybe rookie Kaleb Elarms-Orr. That points to a linebacker call-up, and Shaq Thompson is the name, a veteran who knows both the McDermott and Leonhard systems.
Then there is the game-day math, which is a genuine chess problem. If Ty Johnson plays, and he looked good in his workout, Buffalo doesn’t need to call up Frank Gore Jr. That opens an elevation, and the debate is whether to spend it on Greg Dortch to return punts.
Dortch just got cut by Detroit and wants to play, but in a projected shootout with few punts, is a returner worth a spot over a defensive body? Greg leans no. Put Ray Davis back there to just field it cleanly, the way Buffalo deliberately tested him under the lights, or hand the job to Keon Coleman. If Coleman is not drawing targets, use his skill somewhere.
The Coaching Chess Match
Greg spent real time on a fourth-down mind game. Dan Campbell and Joe Brady are both aggressive, and Campbell is a known lunatic on fourth down. The question is whether that turns into peer pressure.
If each coach assumes the other will go for it and go for two, does that push both into calls they would not normally make, and does that swing the game? Jeff’s answer on the Detroit side was simple. Campbell does not care, and he is bulletproof in that job, so he will keep doing it. Brady’s aggression is less proven with two fourth-down gos in Week 1, but is he the type to put a game away by going for two when it forces Detroit to need two possessions?
That ties into the bigger Brady picture. He is a new head coach on a mission, keeping his foot on the gas in a way McDermott’s clock-control, limit-mistakes teams never did. The caution Dave and Greg raised is the shelf life. New offenses get figured out. Somewhere around Weeks 7 through 9, defenses will catch up to the base scheme, the way they did to Chan Gailey and to Daboll’s hot stretch.
The real test is whether Brady can adjust when they do. And with a short week here, they warned fans not to read too much into tonight either way, because two days of practice means we might see a condensed version, not the real Brady and Leonhard tendencies. Those show up in Weeks 3 through 5 with a normal week to install.
Hot Takes and Player Wild Cards to Watch
Dave went with two Dalton Kincaid receiving touchdowns and a C.J. Gardner-Johnson interception. Greg took two Keon Coleman touchdowns, betting Detroit clamps down on Kincaid, forgets about Coleman, and dares him to beat them. Dave watched the all-22 on Coleman specifically and came away encouraged, pointing to a decoy route Coleman ran full speed knowing the ball was going somewhere else. Greg still thinks Keon doesn’t serve much purpose.
The Predictions: Who Wins?
This split the room. Greg went Detroit 41-34, based on the matchup between Buffalo’s banged-up secondary and how Detroit compares to Houston: St. Brown over Nico Collins, Jameson Williams over Xavier Hutchinson, LaPorta over Dalton Schultz, Gibbs over anyone Houston had. Buffalo upgraded the opponent from Week 1 and did not upgrade the back end. If the Bills win, it is a Josh Allen game.
Dave took Buffalo 34-31, a close one he would rather see end on a Tyler Bass field goal than in overtime. They both landed on 34 for Buffalo, and both named Allen player of the game. The interesting part came when Dave said what he really wants is to see the Bills win a different way, not lean on Allen every single week, because a real contender cannot do that forever. Greg’s answer for how you do that was James Cook, the back who can take a game over and take the pressure off the quarterback.
And Jeff Risdon? Well, he took Buffalo by 3. If they played 100 times, he said, Buffalo wins 63.
Wrapping Up
Is this the night the Bills defense finally steals one, or does it come down to Josh Allen outscoring Detroit again?
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