Failure to Fix Defense Will Cost Buffalo Bills Dearly in 2016

Two years ago, the Buffalo Bills fielded the NFL's fourth-ranked defense. No team in the league had more sacks in 2014 than the Bills' 54. With the arrival of Rex Ryan as head coach last year, that defense was supposed to progress from very good to great.

That defense was going to propel the Bills to the playoffs for the first time in the 21st century.

Of course, that didn't happen. Instead of getting better, the defense got worse. Far worse. The Bills dropped to 19th in the NFL in total defense, free-fell to 31st in the NFL in sacks and missed the postseason yet again.

The Bills took steps to address this in the offseason. But between bad luck and bad decisions, the Bills find themselves right back where they started on that side of the ball as they kick off their preseason Saturday at home against the Indianapolis Colts.

And that's going to leave the Bills where they've always been of late when the regular season finishes—on the outside looking in.

To say that the Bills were aggressive on the defensive side of the ball in the 2016 NFL draft is an understatement. After cutting bait on Mario Williams after a miserable 2015 campaign, the Bills were in need of a pass-rusher to complement Jerry Hughes. The team thought they had their man when they settled on Clemson's Shaq Lawson with the 19th overall pick.

Bill Wippert/Associated Press/Associated Press

Mike Mayock of NFL Network hailed the pick at the time. "He can play inside or outside and up or down," Mayock said. "He has an explosive lower body and violent hands and is quick off the edge."

The good feelings didn't last long. It was known before the draft that Lawson had a shoulder injury that might require surgery at some point. But as Yahoo's Eric Edholm wrote, Bills team doctors cleared Lawson, stating that surgery wasn't a short-term concern.

Not one month later, the Bills released a statement saying the opposite as Lawson went under the knife:

"

The Buffalo Bills are taking measures to prevent the possibility of Shaq Lawson aggravating a preexisting shoulder condition during the season. While he could continue to play, the Bills medical staff has determined that surgery is the best course of action for the overall health of his shoulder moving forward. He had an occurrence of the condition last week, but that would not preclude him from participating in the offseason program. Shaq is scheduled for surgery tomorrow on his shoulder with a rehabilitation program to follow. A timetable for his return is still being established.

"

The surgery carried with it a 4-6 month recovery timetable, so there was still some hope that Lawson wouldn't miss much regular-season time. However, as ESPN.com's Mike Rodak tweeted, those hopes have since been all but dashed:

If Lawson will indeed be out that long, he's a near lock to open the season on the physically unable to perform list. Once he finally does return, he'll be way behind in his acclimation to the professional game. Add in that Lawson's making the switch from defensive end to outside linebacker (a transition that takes time), and his rookie season is already essentially a wash.

But wait! It gets better!

The Buffalo run defense also took a step backward a year ago, albeit a smaller one. So the Bills bid adieu to underwhelming inside linebacker Nigel Bradham, replacing him with second-round pick Reggie Ragland.

The 247-pound Ragland was widely considered the top inside linebacker prospect of the 2016 draft, especially against the run. It was a pick that once again had Mayock banging the table for the new-look Bills defense. 

"The Bills weren't very good on defense last year," Mayock said. "So, in the first round they got Shaq Lawson, an explosive edge-rusher. They have to get tougher on defense, so the first two picks are front-seven personnel. On game day, Ragland will show up and thump people."

That lasted into the first week of training camp.

While chasing a running back last week during a morning practice session, Ragland went to the ground in a heap. As Bleacher Report's Jason Cole tweeted, an MRI confirmed the team's worst fears:

The Bills added a veteran linebacker in Zach Brown during free agency, and signed two more vets (Brandon Spikes and David Hawthorne) after Ragland got hurt.

But if the team had any faith in Brown, they wouldn't have added both Spikes and Hawthorne. The fact they were both looking for work in August doesn't exactly inspire a ton of confidence in them either.

Just like a bad late-night infomercial, we're still not done with the good news. The Ragland injury can't be pinned on general manager Doug Whaley and the Bills. I'll even give them half a pass on Lawson, despite their previous knowledge of his bum shoulder and waffling on its severity.

However, the biggest problem the Bills face on defense this season is one that was 100 percent self-inflicted. In fact, to hear the Bills tell it, it isn't a problem at all—it's an asset.

The Bills hired Rex's brother, Rob Ryan, as the "assistant head coach/defense" in the offseason, creating a new position on the staff. And while Dennis Thurman remains the defensive coordinator in name, Rex's comments to Jenny Vrentas of The MMQB leave little doubt as to which man's higher up the food chain.

"We are going to see things one way, and we are going to do it our way," Rex said. "That’s what it takes to win. There is a certain style of defense that wins, a certain style of play that wins in this league, and nobody understands that more than we do."

The problem is I don't know which "we" Rex is referring to, because it's been a long time since Rob guided a defense that wasn't—what's the word I'm looking for...

Awful.

Rob was the coordinator for a New Orleans Saints defense that finished 31st in the NFL in 2015. But as he told Vrentas, that wasn't his fault because he wasn't "allowed" to run his scheme:

"

The defenses I have taken over were ranked, like, 31st. Oh, “my numbers aren’t too good.” You take over the 31st group and see how you do. And you’re given about two years to do it. There are two years that don’t have my signature on them, and it’s the last two years in New Orleans. And that’s just the truth.

Everyone wants to run Seattle’s defense. They should have hired a Seattle coach. I did the best job I could. Under the circumstances, trust me, I did the best job I could. I’ll be better anywhere else. I’ll be great anywhere else.

"

See? It's not his fault that the Saints regressed from fourth in the NFL in his first season (2013) to 31st two years in a row. Or that his Dallas defenses regressed from 14th in the NFL in 2011 to 19th in 2012. Or that his Cleveland defenses in 2009 and 2010 didn't crack the top 20—a unit Dick Jauron turned into a top-10 defense the year after Ryan left.

Saints head coach Sean Payton told Michael David Smith of Pro Football Talk that he remembers the past two years in New Orleans a bit differently:

"

The idea that it wasn’t his defense, or he wasn’t in charge of it, is silly. When you’re struggling as bad as we’re struggling for two years, and some of the same problems keep coming up — you know, 10 guys on the field — those are things that just are hard to live with.

"

Simply put, other than his last name, Rob Ryan's resume contains little to indicate he's a defensive mastermind. But he's going to help. Help Rex do things his way. Implement his scheme. As Rex said back in February, per Rodak: "I think we have to be all-in. It's kind of like being half-pregnant. Forget that, we're all in. We're fully pregnant now."

This, despite the fact many pundits ascribed the Bills' early-season defensive woes last year to the team's personnel being ill-suited to Ryan's complicated multiple-front scheme. Or that Ryan himself said Buffalo's late-season improvement was a result of adjusting that scheme around the players:

"

I think [the players] finally realized at the end of the year that when I ask for opinions, when I ask for -- because this isn’t just me, I am not just, 'This is the way, I am ram-roading this system.' I have always had a system that relies on the players. ... But when I ask specifically, 'What do you not like? What are you uncomfortable with?' I finally at the end of the year started getting some answers. Like, 'Oh yeah, hey, some feedback. Yeah this, this, I don’t know what it was.' So, making adjustments on the sideline, I felt a little more trust as the season went on.

"

Now talk of flexibility and communication has given way to Ryan bombast. As Rex told Vrentas: "You are going to get the real deal this year, and we’ll see how it goes."

It's possible that Lawson and Ragland were viewed as pieces that would help Ryan get closer to running "his" defense. The punishing inside linebacker and versatile edge-rusher may have been key pieces to the puzzle.

They are gone now. Third-round pick Adolphus Washington has the potential to be a fearsome edge-setter and pocket disruptor up front, but his deficiencies in run defense will have to be addressed before he's more than a sub-package player. The Bills aren't better defensively from a personnel standpoint as things stand now. If anything, they're worse than a year ago.

And yet after six months of the brothers patting one another on the back, we haven't heard anything to indicate the Bills won't go ahead and try to pound a square peg into a round hole. Because it worked so well last year.

The Bills are a better team than they've been in a long time. They have a promising young quarterback in Tyrod Taylor, a strong offensive line, an electric young receiver in Sammy Watkins and a talented tailback in LeSean McCoy.

Offensive talent aside, though, the Bills are not a team built to win shootouts. Much like Ryan's New York Jets teams, they are built around an identity of running the ball and playing defense.

The former they should accomplish this season. But given recent events and the apparent stubbornness of their (alleged) defensive gurus in the latter regard, it's hard to imagine them being that much better in 2016 than they were in 2015.

And in the same division as the New England Patriots and a 10-win Jets team, that's not going to be good enough to end the NFL's longest playoff drought.

At least they kept Thurman on the payroll.

After all, if the recent past is any indication, Rob Ryan will need someone to blame when things go south.

Gary Davenport is an NFL analyst at Bleacher Report and a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association and Pro Football Writers of America. You can follow Gary on Twitter @IDPSharks.