Our eyes were in the wrong place.
Following the AFC divisional round loss to the Chiefs last season, the discourse around the Buffalo Bills was that they needed a receiver. Even before they traded for Stefon Diggs, most thought receiver was their main priority during the offseason to combat Patrick Mahomes, myself included.
While the Bills spent their first pick in the draft on a receiver, albeit in the second round, they produced the second-best scoring offense in the NFL with a ragtag group of receivers. Meanwhile, the Eagles proved that the key to stopping Mahomes is rooted in hitting him, not out-gunning him.
As the Bills were going through receiver-palooza, the Eagles ended 2023 by failing to score 20 points in four of their last six games and did so with one of the top receiver tandems in the league. Instead of sweeping changes to the offense, the Eagles signed the best running back on the planet, Saquon Barkley, and rededicated themselves to a run-first style.
And instead of adding more pieces to the offense in the draft, the Eagles spent their first two picks on defense, as they always do.
Since 2021, the Eagles have allocated nine of their 13 picks in the first three rounds to defensive players, including three consecutive first-round picks. In the playoffs those picks produced 16 tackles for a loss, 14 sacks, three forced fumbles and three interceptions.
In the Super Bowl, they hit and harassed Mahomes. He was hurried 19 times on 32 attempts, sacked six times and hit another four in a 40-22 loss.
“To win the line of scrimmage, you can control the game,” Bills coach Sean McDermott said. “And I believe that moving forward, in order to move forward just as a team in games where I’ve been in the Super Bowl, it’s your front is what gets you there. You have to have a good quarterback. But the O-line, the D-line, those are the guys that are getting you there and they impact the game more than any position and I believe in that.”
The Bills have certainly allocated a significant chunk of money to the defensive line. But it hasn’t produced results in the playoffs, particularly in losses.
In 17 career playoff wins, Mahomes was pressured on 21% of dropbacks and sacked on 5% despite being blitzed 23.1% of the time. The Bills numbers don’t even meet the average in four playoff losses to Kansas City since 2020, as Mahomes has posted 13 more passing yards per game, while being pressured 14.7% of dropbacks, sacked on 4% and blitzed on 16.2%.
Numbers change dramatically in Mahomes’ four playoff losses. His pressure rate jumps to 36.3% and sack rate is 10.1%, all while opponents have blitzed just 12.5% of the time.
Philadelphia defensive coordinator Vic Fangio didn’t have a scheme all that different from Buffalo’s. He wanted to rush four and play zone coverage, just like the Bills prefer.
Both teams only blitzed 19.1% of the time during the regular season, among the lowest rates in the league, while the Bills blitzed Mahomes just six times in the AFC championship and the Eagles didn’t send more than four at all in the Super Bowl.
The difference is that the Bills produced a pressure rate of 25% and the Eagles pressured Mahomes on 42.1% of his dropbacks. And while the Bills usually had at least one safety 15 yards off the ball to prevent big plays, the Eagles safeties were usually 11 or 12 yards off the ball.
The Eagles also matched their rush and coverage. The coverage was sticky enough to allow the rush to get to Mahomes, while the pass rush aggressively attacked upfield, but kept disciplined rush lanes.
Philadelphia’s defensive tackles prevented Mahomes from stepping up or out of the pocket, while the defensive ends didn’t let him escape out of the back. The Bills struggled to do either in the AFC championship.
Mahomes scrambled for 135 yards in four postseason wins over the Bills and when he gets out of the pocket, that’s when he’s a nightmare to defend. Not only can Mahomes pick up yards with his legs, but running is still a last resort when he gets out of the pocket.
Coverages break down quicker when a quarterback moves out of the pocket because everything becomes helter skelter. And if a defense wants to put a spy on him, it takes another player out of coverage.
“He’s so good you know you’re going to have to adjust. We just adjusted with coverages,” Fangio said. “We didn’t pressure (blitz) much. He’s so good against pressure that I was hoping we could play the game without having to pressure much, and that happened.”
And so as draft season is set to kick into high gear with the NFL scouting combine two weeks away, don’t get caught looking in the wrong places again. This year’s popular opinion is that the Bills should trade for a high-profile edge rusher like Cleveland’s Myles Garrett or Las Vegas’ Maxx Crosby.
Both would certainly pack a punch to Buffalo’s pass rush. But the best teams in the league are built from the inside.
Carter, Kansas City’s Chris Jones, Baltimore’s Nnamdi Madubuike and Detroit’s Alim McNeill anchored superb defensive lines that didn’t have a star outside rusher. The last 10 Super Bowl champions have produced a total of four players with double-digit sacks and three of them came from a defensive tackle.
The Eagles drafted eight of the nine defensive linemen they dressed in the Super Bowl. In their 2017 Super Bowl championship, five of the Eagles’ seven defensive linemen were homegrown.
Three of their defensive tackles were taken in the first three rounds over the last three drafts, while the Bills have drafted three defensive tackles in the first three rounds in general manager Brandon Beane’s seven drafts with the franchise. The Bills drafted four of Buffalo’s nine active defensive linemen in the AFC championship.
Ed Oliver was the only defensive tackle drafted by the Bills active in the final game against the Chiefs, while the other four averaged over 31 years old. Four of Philadelphia’s defensive tackles were homegrown and they were an average of 24.2 years old.
The Bills need to stop being so reliant on their scheme to win defensively and focus more on the players. Bill Belichick’s Patriots teams shifted between 3-4 and 4-3 schemes constantly.
Jim Schwartz’s 2017 Eagles defense was much different than Fangio’s this season. But both had good, deep defensive lines built from within.
And Eagles GM Howie Roseman started rebuilding the Eagles roster two years ago after losing to the Chiefs 38-35 in the Super Bowl. They didn’t sack Mahomes once and his first two picks in the first round of the ensuing draft were Carter and Georgia teammate and edge rusher Nolan Smith.
“I used to, before everything got automated, have the final four teams in my office,” Roseman said before the Super Bowl. “And I used to, some days, look and I’d go, ‘How do we compare there?’ Now I think it’s like in my head, the Chiefs are in my head. But I think you have to think about how to beat the best.”