{"id":953244,"date":"2026-10-31T14:34:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T14:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/953244\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T14:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T14:34:09","slug":"will-the-bills-defense-stop-them-from-winning-a-super-bowl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/953244\/","title":{"rendered":"Will the Bills’ defense stop them from winning a Super Bowl?"},"content":{"rendered":"

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — The Buffalo Bills<\/a> have Super Bowl expectations and an offense good enough to make their goals become reality. But there\u2019s legitimate reason to wonder whether the Bills\u2019 defense could hold the entire operation back.<\/p>\n

The Bills (5-1) come out of their bye week ranked 30th in points allowed per game (28.5), 31st in yards allowed (386.8), 31st in passing yards allowed (285.8), 27th in third down conversion rates (45%) and last in first downs allowed per game (25.7).<\/p>\n

So as they prepare for their Week 8 game against the Baltimore Ravens<\/a> (1 p.m. ET, CBS), the question of whether the Bills can achieve their goals with the defense playing the way it has through the first six games looms large.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur best football has to be ahead of us, whatever that means,\u201d Bills coach Joe Brady said. \u201cYou never want to peak early in the season. If you\u2019re playing your best football in September, there\u2019s a problem. And so how do we continue to improve? How do we continue to learn?<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we\u2019re playing our best football right now, it\u2019s not going to look good as the season goes. So I hope better is ahead, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re chasing.\u201d<\/p>\n

For \u201cbetter\u201d to be ahead, that\u2019ll have to start with better in the secondary. Only the Detroit Lions<\/a> are allowing more passing touchdowns per game than the Bills, and only the Washington Commanders<\/a> and New Orleans Saints<\/a> have allowed a higher success rate on pass attempts. The seven defensive backs who\u2019ve played the most snaps for the Bills combine to allow a passer rating of 107.8, which sits five points better than Bills QB Josh Allen<\/a>\u2019s rating — and he\u2019s the front runner for MVP — this season.<\/p>\n

First-year Bills defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard concedes his defense\u2019s woes are mostly to do with the back end. The Bills are top 10 in quarterback pressure rate and quarterback knockdown rate despite games against QBs with well-known quick releases like Matthew Stafford<\/a>, Kirk Cousins<\/a>, Jared Goff<\/a> and C.J. Stroud<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But while the adjustment to Leonhard\u2019s preferred 3-4 scheme has paid off for the rush mechanism, the same can\u2019t be said for the coverage apparatus, which is taking a longer time to adjust to Leonhard\u2019s favored style of more match coverage and fewer disguises in the back end.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s too many times where we look confused when I don\u2019t think there\u2019s enough options for us to be that confused,\u201d Leonhard said.<\/p>\n

To Leonhard, this is less a personnel issue and more a communication issue. It\u2019s a matter of trust. Each play, depending on coverage calls, has its own \u201clead communicator.\u201d Once that player makes a decision about what he sees, the other defenders in the back end have to respond and react with their own observations. And the chatter can\u2019t end once the ball is snapped.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery person has a different angle of the offense,\u201d fifth-year cornerback Christian Benford<\/a> said. \u201cEveryone should be vocal about what they\u2019re seeing. Everyone should be talking pre-snap alerts, post-snap. It\u2019ll help us all play as one string.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bills don\u2019t have to look far for valid excuses for lacking secondary chemistry. Along with safeties Cole Bishop<\/a> and Damar Hamlin<\/a> and fellow cornerbacks Maxwell Hairston<\/a> and Jordan Hancock<\/a>, Benford\u2019s one of several holdovers from former coach Sean McDermott\u2019s regime having to adjust to a new way of doing things under Leonhard.<\/p>\n

Combine that adjustment with the offseason arrivals of rookie Davison Igbinosun<\/a> and veterans C.J. Gardner-Johnson<\/a> and Dee Alford<\/a>, offseason injuries that limited Hairston\u2019s and Bishop\u2019s reps, in-season injuries that have forced Benford, Alford and Hancock to miss time and Gardner-Johnson\u2019s ejection and looming suspension for spitting, and it\u2019s a wonder any group of five DBs has ever taken more than a couple snaps together.<\/p>\n

But again, this is a team with Super Bowl aspirations and the calendar\u2019s about to give way to November. Coming off a bye week, the expectation has to be for early-season communication issues to correct themselves.<\/p>\n

Maybe that\u2019s where a familiar voice with an outsider\u2019s perspective comes in.<\/p>\n

At the start of the bye week, the Bills signed two-time Pro Bowler Tre\u2019Davious White to the practice squad. White started 16 games for the Bills last season but spent the first few months of this season watching the Bills from his couch. He says he got so invested in the Bills\u2019 \u201cMonday Night Football\u201d win over the Los Angeles Rams<\/a> in Week 5 that he put one of his old helmets on so he could watch the game through his facemask.<\/p>\n

White says his role as communicated to him by coaches and front office is to come in and be an extension of the coaching staff. A sounding board. A truth-teller. Someone who tells teammates what he sees through the eyes of a nine-year veteran.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s he seeing now that he\u2019s back in the fold?<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of guys haven\u2019t played together,\u201d White said. \u201cThat comes with a lot of reps and a lot of doing it over and over, a lot of trial and error. As a defensive back, it\u2019s all about communication and being on the same page. It\u2019s a new defense for everybody. Those are the growing pains of being in a new system.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe guys are open to the coaching. They\u2019re open to getting better. We know we have to get better to go where we want to be. That\u2019s the job.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is, as even Brady will admit, a lot of negativity about a team tied with the best record in the AFC. Brady\u2019s whole coaching philosophy essentially boils down to the idea that good enough isn\u2019t good enough, though.<\/p>\n

Any time he\u2019s asked about the defense\u2019s struggles he finds a way to spin the narrative toward why he thinks the offense hasn\u2019t been good enough either. An offense that, remember, leads the NFL in scoring and yards per play.<\/p>\n

So the question at hand is less a matter of whether Brady and Leonhard think the Bills\u2019 defense needs to be better — they obviously do — and more a matter of whether the buttons they\u2019re pressing to ensure things get better end up working.<\/p>\n

As for what those buttons are, veteran pass rusher Bradley Chubb<\/a> says the message has been \u201cfull steam ahead.\u201d The emphasis is on communication and trust, sure. But it\u2019s less about trust in the sense that players need to believe their teammates know what to do and more about trust in the sense that no one player has to go out of his way to make up for all the deficiencies.<\/p>\n

The unit and the scheme as Leonhard\u2019s designed are, in the coaches\u2019 opinions, strong enough to course correct.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe message was just to put our identity on tape each and every day,\u201d Chubb said. \u201cThat\u2019s on the practice field, that\u2019s in the meeting room. Our identity as a team, as a football team, as a defense is to play hard, play fast, play physical, not letting up, no relenting.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like if we approach it with that mindset on the field, in the meeting room, on the game field, that\u2019s just been a message to go all out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — The Buffalo Bills have Super Bowl expectations and an offense good enough to make…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":953245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[133920,49,48,514,82],"class_list":["post-953244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-buffalo-bills-sports-football-team-team-statscom-324","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=953244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/953245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=953244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=953244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=953244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}