Following a Week 1 win against the Houston Texans, Buffalo Bills defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard fielded questions about the team’s defensive performance in Reliant Stadium. It’s at times easy to forget that Leonhard is a first-time NFL DC, and that up until Sunday he’d never called a defensive scheme at the professional level. Sure, he brings collegiate experience, but this is all still very new for Leonhard.
Though not genuinely unique in the grand scheme, so, too, can be said of the defensive system’s newness, that the Bills fielded against a very talented Texans’ offense. Leonhard is a fun listen at the podium, poised and seemingly wise beyond his years as someone able to meaningfully articulate thoughts to an audience. Leonhard makes you want to suit up for him, lay a few hits, and then hit the sideline ready to cheer on the rest of the team.
It’s easy to see why new head coach Joe Brady sought Leonhard when forming the nucleus of his coaching tree. When asked to give his first impressions of the defense following the win, Leonhard was tactful and pragmatic, of course recognizing the accomplishment but also refusing to gloss over the bigger picture.
“I think it was awesome to get a win, find a way to close it out. Right? I love the way we started, obviously creating a turnover and then finishing it out with a big turnover. There was a lot of ugly in-between there, right? I mean, excited for the play style. Right? The energy was there, the effort was there. The detail has got to get better. Not up to the standards, right? It’s always great to get the win, but in a lot of ways it did feel like Week 1 where when things started to unravel a little bit at times — or just feel a little bit off — I thought guys looked around like they weren’t sure what the answer should be.”
The positive news is that Leonhard believes all things are possible in time, saying “I think it’s very correctable. I left watching the tape going ‘alright, we’re closer. We’re closer than it looked.’ And, I’m excited for where we’re going. Right? There’s gonna be some bumps in the road, and, again, to go into a place like that and find a way to close it out and get a win? Take that for what it’s worth. We have to improve, right? The standards are higher for what we want this defense to be. And it’s our job to get there. There’s a lot of things I want back myself, as I’m sure some players want some snaps back. And that’s the fun part of this game, man. We get a chance to go do it again on Thursday.”
Following that, Leonhard was asked if anything surprised him, to which he said:
> “No, not necessarily. You know, the thing early in a year here when you get some unscouted looks, right, you always want to see how guys respond. And that’s the thing, you can go back to last year and you study teams knowing that, like, they’re also trying to fix their flaws, they’re changing their tendencies and personnel. And we have to be quicker to adjust and adapt, and I thought that was the one thing that the first half, both from myself and from a player standpoint just an awareness like ‘we gotta get there faster.’ And I thought we made some adjustments in the second half, and were a little bit more aggressive and stopped the run better, which led us to some 2nd & Longs, some 3rd & Longs that helped us get off the field.”
Leonhard also discussed linebacker Terrel Bernard’s new role as an inside linebacker in the 3-4 alignment — which saw him tally a team-leading 12 tackles — stating that he “thought he handled it really well.” He noted that there were “very few situations that were just big-time communication errors, and there’s some things we gotta clean up,” but took ownership for a lot of that happening:
> “I didn’t like the two minute. I did not like the way I called the two-minute in the end of the half and kind of put us in some panicky situations. So, that’s the number-one thing that I’m like, ‘alright, that’s on me and I’ll fix that.’ And outside of that, I mean, the situations… if we keep them out of 3rd & 1 and 3rd & 2s, obviously we’re gonna have a little bit more success on third down. And then red zone is obviously an area that we have to correct in a huge way going forward.”
That was all shared in only the first few minutes of Leonhard’s presser on Monday. It’s clear he owns his role as defensive coordinator, understanding that the players’ work is a direct reflection of his coaching. We may not see the full intent of Leonhard’s defensive scheme in year one simply due to the fact that certain players may still need to be added. Yet, Leonhard seems confident that the right people are in-house to get the job done even when the chips are down.
Leonhard had much more to say during Monday’s media availability, which you can dive into in full below via the embedded video:
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