During the bye I decided to compare all of the Josh Allen era seasons of the Buffalo Bills on both offenseand defense. I determined that this year’s team has both the best offense we’ve ever seen with Allen, it’s being paired with the worst defense he’s ever had in the NFL.
In order to make that determination, I needed to pull some data which led to a semi-valid but completely fun rating system. I figured it would be a fun sendoff to this exercise to use it to compare the Buffalo Bills and Baltimore
Ravens.
Baltimore offense vs. Buffalo Defense
If you’re seeing this methodology for the first time, you can click on either of the links above to get a more full picture, or read this very short description. I took seven mostly distinct metrics and put those into the table along with the respective league ranking in each measure. Then I add up the rankings to get a complete score, with lower being better. Got it? Here’s the chart.
I started with the side of the conversation that I think most people have an idea of what to expect. The Ravens’ offense against the Bills’ defense. I know Bills fans (myself included) are quite down on the defense and remember, there’s good reason! It’s the worst one we’ve seen in a long time.
Numerically with the completed score on the right, I think the numbers suggest what we’re all feeling; this is a poor matchup. There’s 98 points of separation between the two teams. What does that number mean? It means there’s a big gap; the metric is mostly for fun after all and isn’t meant to be a precise measure of anything really.
Disclaimer alert! Lamar Jackson was out for three weeks with an injury so these numbers might be skewed down a bit. With that aside, so far the Ravens’ offense has been average almost entirely. Their lone bright spot is avoiding turnovers, and their sole sore spot is that they allow a lot of sacks. If you’re interested in the splits; Lamar Jackson has been taken down seven times, while Tyler Huntley is at ten. They both have one interception on the season.
I don’t know if there’s any surprises here, and if we’re being objective I think we all know Lamar Jackson can play. I’m not counting on this Bills defense making too many stops unless their bye week prep was near miraculous.
The question this year seems to be this; can the Bills offense dominate opponents and outscore them? Let’s see if the gap between the Bills’ offense and Ravens defense is larger or smaller than “98.”
Ravens defense vs. Bills offense
If you trust my scoring system, then it should predict a Baltimore win. There’s 55 points between the two which you might have picked up is smaller than 98. That said, these matchups are fantastic for Buffalo and this also shows why I don’t think the scoring total is strictly accurate.
No one score more often or more total points per drive than Buffalo. While the Bills are turnover prone and Josh Allen has taken his fair share of sacks; the Bills are overcoming these flaws and scoring at an incredible pace. It’s also possible the Ravens hold true to form and basically avoid getting a turnover off of Buffalo which would be nice.
My final verdict is that despite the numbers of the total score, it comes down to my tiers. The Bills’ defense is terrible but flirting with merely “bad.“ That’s going against an average offense. On the flip side you have a mediocre defense taking on an elite offense. Yes, you could flip this statement around and make it about anchors/deadweight/etc; but there’s only one team with an elite side at the moment and it’s the Bills. Until that changes, I like their odds.
