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| GAMEDAY GRADES & POSITIONAL BREAKDOWN | GAME ANALYSIS |
The wintry weather conditions made this a hard game for all players except for the one player use to playing in this weather in Canada. The grades are softened a bit because of the conditions, here are the position by position breakdowns: Quarterback:
Doug Flutie replaced the injured Rob Johnson early in the second quarter. He had a fantastic day under the circumstances. He had 193 yards passing and 50 yards rushing. Grade A: Flutie looked at home in the wintry weather.
Running Backs:Shawn Bryson played most of the second half after Sammy Morris left the game when he aggravated his ankle injury. Bryson had 82 yards rushing and 34 yards receiving. Morris had some success early gaining 43 yards on the ground. Antowain Smith played briefly and promptly fumbled the ball away on the goal line. Grade B+: Running game improving late in the season.
Receivers:Eric Moulds had a big drop in the first half and had only two catches for the third straight game. Peerless Price continues to play better as he had 68 yards receiving on three catches. Jeremy McDaniel also caught three passes including one big catch. Jay Riemersma continues to be a non factor in the offense as he caught only one ball and dropped another. Grade B: Dropped a few balls because of weather conditions but made big catches.
Offensive Line:Gave up four sacks, three of them to Flutie. Helped pave the way for 178 yards on the ground although Flutie gained 50 of them. Allowing a defensive end to come in untouched injured Johnson yet again. Grade C-: They seem to block better for Flutie.
Defensive Line:Marcellus Wiley had one sack giving him 10.5 for the year. He was all over the field as he was in on 12 tackles. Ted Washington and Pat Williams were very active. There were many holes for the running game at certain points in the game. Grade B-: Struggled in spots, but came up big on many occasions.
Linebackers:Jay Foreman had a big sack on a fourth down pass in overtime as he and John Holecek were in on 15 tackles each. Keith Newman also had a big stop and 7 tackles. Left the middle of the field wide open during crunch time for slot passes. Grade B+: Very active and played well despite the conditions.
Secondary:The secondary wasn't very busy until the fourth quarter and then they gave up some big passes. Chris Watson had a tough pass interference call against him on a fourth down incompletion in overtime that setup the winning FG. Grade C: Gave up big plays at inopportune times.
Special Teams:The Patriots won the field position battle partly because of the wind and mostly because of poor coverage and returns by the Bills special teams. Steve Christie was 1 for 3 kicking field goals because of the field conditions. Chris Mohr was awful punting the football but did get every kick away. Grade F: This unit continues to get worse.
Coaching:Questionable calls included running the clock out at the end of the first half. Calling a timeout to give the Patriots a chance to sweep the snow away before a field goal attempt at the end of regulation was mind boggling. Grade D: Questionable game plan and too much confusion.
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