Hard to sack.
It would sure be nice if the Bucs could get after Josh Allen today with an edge rush. And no, Joe isn’t talking about pressures. Pppfffttt!
It would also be nice if Joe won the Powerball last night. The odds are similar.
Believe it or not, Allen, the Bills’ star signal-caller, is one of the most sacked quarterbacks in the league — 10th-most this year with 20.
But hoping the Bucs can get Allen on the ground from an edge rush seems wishful. Last week, Drake Maye of New England came to town. He entered the game sacked 35 times, second-most in the league.
Only Elijah Roberts, a Bucs rookie tackle, got Maye on the ground. #Sad.
So Joe last week spoke with YaYa Diaby. Joe likes YaYa and Joe believes if he played for a coach who valued edge rushers, YaYa would be a stud. So Joe asked him if there was any trick to getting Allen on the ground.
“There’s really not,” YaYa said. “No trick, really.”
Allen is one of the toughest quarterbacks to sack because he is so big. And YaYa told Joe you have to be careful not to try to do too much physically with Allen because the zebras are so protective of star quarterbacks.
So, YaYa said, you have to play within yourself.
And Todd Bowles mentioned last week, Allen is the kind of quarterback that when you think you’ve got him, he can still get off a pass.
“He’s so hard to bring down that you could be all over him and he’d still get away, find a way to get a pass off,” YaYa said. “I’ve got to give it to him, give him his respect.
“Man, he’s a really, really great guy and really good player, that’s gonna be a really hard task for us.”
YaYa said he agreed with Bowles, who told his defenders this week that they have to worry about themselves and their jobs first and not be obsessed about Allen. If the Bucs aren’t doing their jobs, they cannot beat Buffalo.
“We have to focus on us,” YaYa said. “We have to focus on the game.”
Unfortunately, the game will very likely go through Allen’s hands in some way or other.
