The most famous instance of a game in which the top two teams in overall DVOA met was Week 11 of the 2018 season. It was against the Kansas City Chiefs (No. 1 in DVOA) and the Los Angeles Rams (No. 2 in DVOA), and the resulting 54-51 score made this one of the most thrilling games in NFL history.
Given that the Miami Dolphins were coming off a 70-20 shellacking of the Denver Broncos that vaulted them to the top spot in this year’s metrics, and the Buffalo Bills ranked second through the first three weeks of the season, and given that both of these teams have offenses that can throw multiple touchdowns at you at a dizzying rate, you’d be forgiven for expecting a similar result in this crucial Week 4 matchup.
At first, it looked that way. The two heavyweights traded touchdowns to a 14-14 stalemate early in the second quarter, and then — somewhat improbably — the Bills kept scoring, and the Dolphins didn’t. Tua Tagovailoa completed 14 of 18 passes for 155 yards in the first half, but Josh Allen matched and exceeded him, completing 14 of 17 passes for 201 yards and three touchdowns. The difference between Allen’s three first-half touchdowns and Tagovailoa’s no first half touchdowns explains a lot about the 31-14 halftime score in Buffalo’s favor.
Buffalo’s eventual 48-20 win saw Tagovailoa complete 25 of 35 passes for 282 yards, one touchdown, one interception, four sacks, and a passer rating of 92.8. Not a horrible game, but not what was required against Allen, who became the second player in NFL history with at least 300 passing yards, four touchdown passes, one rushing touchdown and a 158.3 passer rating – the highest attainable mark – in a game, joining Aaron Rodgers, who did it in 2019.
So, the Dolphins were in a unusual position — they were playing catchup against an offense that was outdoing them, and they were doing it against a defense that had all the answers to the test. No matter how dynamic an offense is, there are ways to at least limit it, and the Bills did all the right things on that side of the ball.
Bills head coach/defensive shot-caller Sean McDermott and his staff called a brilliant game, which his players executed to perfection, over and over. They got pressure with four. They expanded Miami’s vertical concepts with stretchy, expansive coverage. They combined pressure and match concepts as well as any defense you’ll see. And they gave Tagovailoa muddy picture after muddy picture against an offense that is designed to create and exploit easy openings against most defenses.
“First off, I think the Buffalo Bills proved why they are the team that our whole division is trying to beat,” Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel said after the game. “They’ve won it for how many years in a row now. They made some adjustments, and we didn’t, so to speak. I think it was kind of compounding. It was something that – I’ll start by making sure I’m doing right by the players, and us as a coaching staff, putting people in the right positions for success. After the first couple drives, it was a struggle for us for a lot of the game. That’s something that can’t happen against a really good team.”
Bills safety Taylor Rapp, who replaced the injured Jordan Poyer for this game, explained it thusly:
“At the end of the day, I think in the week, preparation is all about us. Going back to our fundamentals, going back to our preparation, executing our game and keeping it to who we are. And we saw that come to life today.
“Sean and his whole defense is just trying to get a feel of how they’re attacking us, how they’re coming out, all their different motions… out motion, jet motion, moving around. So just getting a feel and settling in, we got into a good groove.”
Indeed they did, and here’s how they did it.
Replacement pressures had Tagovailoa's head swimming.
The Bills didn’t blitz Tagovailoa a lot — it’s not in their defensive DNA, and they don’t need to with their front four — but when they did, it was generally effective because they kept giving Tagovailoa different looks in fronts and coverages.
This incompletion to running back De’Von Achane with 12:38 left in the third quarter typified how the Bills used smart blitz pressure to eliminate Tagovailoa’s vertical reads as the game went along. It’s Cover-3, and usually, that’s death for a defense when the Dolphins start getting vertical. But because Bernard and cornerback Taron Johnson dropped to the middle to muddy that part of the field, and Tre’Davious White came in free on a front-side blitz, Tagovailoa couldn’t even get his hot route together — not that it would have mattered, because Milano had moved to defend the flat and blow anything up over there.
Tagovailoa saw 14 blitzes in this game, and while he’s generally eaten the blitz alive this season, he couldn’t do that here for the most part because Buffalo didn’t just sell out when they brought extra guys. Tagovailoa probably thought there were 13 or 14 defenders on the field at times, because the holes you usually see in coverage with blitzes weren’t there nearly as much as he likely expected.
On Greg Rousseau’s sack of Tagovailoa with 11:56 left in the game, the Bills ran staple Cover-0 in the red zone, because the Dolphins were at Buffalo’s six-yard line. But this was not your dad’s Cover-0, where everybody is selling out and playing straight man across. It looked pre-snap that Bernard was blitzing while Milano would drop into coverage. But it was the opposite post-snap, and the combination of Matt Milano’s and Rouseau’s pressure and man coverage to Tagovailoa’s front side took away his frontside stuff. Tagovailoa had Hill and tight end Durham Smythe open to the other side, but it didn’t matter, because the Bills adjusted the clock in Tagovailoa’s head, and ended things before they could start.
The stunts worked as well as the blitzes.
When the Bills didn’t blitz, they used line stunts with their front four to further complicate the picture for both Tagovailoa and his offensive line. Ed Oliver’s sack with 44 seconds left in the third quarter was a great example. The Bills were up 41-20 here, so everybody knew that the game plan was pass-heavy, and now, it was about expanding their coverage vertically to match whatever Miami wanted to do. Which you can get away with if you’re getting pressure with four.
It looked like Tagovailoa has Jaylen Waddle and Cedrick Wilson Jr. coming open on vertical routes over the middle, but once again, the Bills muddied things by dropping Bernard and Johnson to those areas. Now, Tagovailoa had to think for a millisecond longer before turning it loose, and Oliver’s long stunt worked because Miami’s line didn’t have a plan for that.
That positive defensive equation where you’re getting pressure with four, and you can then use seven defenders to match and carry? That worked a lot in this game.
Sometimes, the best defense is a killer offense.
As the game progressed, and the Bills kept scoring, McDermott and his staff realized that the Dolphins would not be in positive run situations, so they could run more two-high coverage without worrying about getting bled by the run game. This was crucial, as Miami ran 43 times for 350 yards and five touchdowns in that 70-20 game because the game got out of hand with a quickness.
Then, the Dolphins could run the table. Here, they were down 31-14 at the half and were playing with one hand. The Bills ran two-deep coverage just four times in the first quarter. They upped that to 10 times in the second quarter, and 18 times in the second half. Most teams will not be able to do this, which is good news for the Dolphins. What is bad news for the Bills’ opponents is how well they did it in this game.
Tagovailoa’s interception to Micah Hyde with 5:15 left in the third quarter came when the Dolphins were down, 34-20. Second-and-10 from the Miami 25, and the Bills had four-man pressure with Cover-2 on the back end. Hyde and Johnson dropped to match the frontside vertical routes run by De’Von Achane and Robbie Chosen, and then, Bernard replaced Johnson to take Chosen up to Hyde, with Johnson taking fullback Alec Ingold underneath.
Tagovailoa’s first read was to his backside, but Milano had Hill just enough to take that away, and Tagovailoa wasn’t going to try Durham Smythe outside. So, he turned his focus to the other side, and by then, the Bills had it dialed up and figured out.
