Titans vs Bills: Rex Ryan to solve penalty problem
By Les Bailey
After a bye week last Sunday and loosing a home game they should have won, the Tennessee Titans get back to work this week and will face a 2-2 Buffalo Bills team this Sunday at Nissan Stadium in Music City.
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Rex Ryan and his Bills team are limping into Nashville after loosing at home last Sunday to a resurgent New York Giants team in a week four matchup 24-10 where they also lost a game they could have won had it not been for a flurry of penalties.
The Bills had a chance for a come back to beat the New York Giants last Sunday, but penalties down the stretch cost Ryan’s squad any chance for a win. Seventeen penalties during the game, and two that negated late touchdowns.
After a rant during his post-game presser where Ryan said his team played on the edge and the penalties were a product of that style of play, he went to work this week to solve the problem.
The Bills have been flagged 58 times this season of which, 46 were accepted and 13 called for unnecessary roughness, taunting and unsportsmanlike conduct. No other team has had more than six of this type of penalties.
“Penalties are still gonna happen, but we gotta eliminate them to the best of our abilities, especially the self-inflicted ones.”
The answer to the problem is pushups!
“If a guy gets a penalty during the practices, then we’re gonna make sure that all of us are gonna do 10 pushups or whatever,” Ryan said Wednesday. “The rest of the team will [do pushups] and that person [being penalized] will stand up, just to see how many people he is affecting.
Penalties have always been a problem with Rex Ryan teams. The New York Jets were flagged 20 times in a game during the 2013 season with Ryan at the helm and he instituted the same push-up for flags during practice and still ended the season as the 10th most penalized team.
The Bills have had an up and down season with an opening day win at home against the Indianapolis Colts, a loss to Tom Brady and the New England Patriots in week two followed by a win against the struggling Miami Dolphins.
They are beating the weak teams and struggling against teams with established quarterbacks. We’ll see how he does against a rookie quarterback this week and we should see if his “boot camp” method will result in fewer penalties when he comes to Nashville this Sunday.
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