The Buffalo Bills have allowed 16 total points the past two games, but the unit has certainly faced lesser competition at quarterback.
How much should we take from Buffalo’s recent defensive efforts? Is it all a mirage because they faced one snap of Lamar Jackson, only a few attempts from Tyler Huntley, then Joey Fagnano, Carson Wentz, and Max Brosmer? Or is Buffalo really onto something defensively?
These type of questions are precisely why I created Defensive Impact on Passing (DIP).
I introduced
the new metric a few weeks ago, and if you missed that article, here’s how I can summarize DIP — it measures how well a defense performs against opposing quarterbacks relative to how those same quarterbacks perform against other defenses on their schedule.
Pretty straightforward right?
Baked into DIP is the exclusion of garbage time, and, like all EPA-based defensive stats, a negative figure is better. Also, quarterbacks need at least 30 attempts against other opponents to be counted toward a defense’s DIP.
Here are the full DIP rankings after Week 9:
You can see the Bills defense has moved all the way up to 15th in DIP. Buffalo’s unit made a steady climb after the first month or so of the season. It was 20th after Week 8 and 23rd through Week 6.
And considering Buffalo’s current DIP placement, here’s where I land on what we can take from the club’s defensive efforts in Weeks 8 and 9 — for as much as the Bills defense was likely “helped” by low-level quarterback play these past two weeks it was close to equally as “hurt” by top-level quarterbacks it played in the first month-ish of the season.
The analysis has to go both ways.
And from that chart, you’ll notice that the DIP of the Bills defense is actually now into the negatives. That means, opposing pass games are actually performing slightly worse against the Bills than in their other games right now. That in an of itself is an encouraging development for a defense that was universally panned in the first six contests before the bye week.
This quantitative truth feels incredible too — Buffalo’s defense is fifth in the AFC in DIP right now.
Now, this metric only measures opposing pass games on a per dropback basis. Scrambles are counted. But there’s nothing regarding the opposition’s run game built into this stat whatsoever. In today’s NFL, efficiently passing and stopping the pass remain most vital.
And through DIP we know, with quarterback — and overall pass game — competition being considered, the Bills defense is now playing respectably.
