Archives for December 2, 2013

‘The Bills were moving down the field on their first possession of overtime, but tight end Scott Chandler was stripped of the ball by Falcons safety William Moore, and the ball was recovered by Atlanta cornerback Robert Alford and advanced to the Bills 47.’

‘QB EJ Manuel continues to progress. He was calm and collected during crunch time, making excellent passes to Stevie Johnson and Scott Chandler. Had those two completions not resulted in fumbles, Manuel probably would have had another victory on his resume.’

‘The Bills got the ball to start the overtime but on the first possession Tight End Scott Chandler fumbled and the Falcons recovered. A completion to Harry Douglas set Atlanta up at the Bills 29 and Matt Bryant knocked home a 36 yard field goal to win it.’

‘The Bills had the game in the bag on three separate occasions, but for whatever reason allowed the Atlanta Falcons to not only get back into the game, but to capture the victory outright.’

‘By the way, lost in those fumbles is the fact that Manuel had moved the team in position to win. On the drive that ended with the Johnson fumble, the Bills had gone 46 yards on six plays in a little over a minute. Manuel connected with Chandler on a huge third and 10 conversion for a 23 yard gain.’

‘The thing I want to talk about is Stevie Johnson. I am done with this guy. For years I was his biggest supporter. When he was a 7th round pick it was obvious he was better than many receivers they had.’

“We had it in our grasp,” said veteran running back Fred Jackson, “and we let it slip away.”‘

‘I refuse to acknowledge Stevie Johnson as a top-flight wide receiver until he contributes a game without 2-3 “pointing-at-the-quarterback-to-tell-him-I-know-that-was-my-fault” moments. The most-glaring error on Sunday was a 3rd down play on the drive after Atlanta took their first lead when a lofted pass down the left side fell between his hands. It wasn’t an easy catch, but elite players do that for you. Can’t get there with him.’

‘This is as crushing a loss as you can imagine. They had several chances to put the game away and several chances to win it once they blew the lead not once but twice. The bottom line is this team is just not ready to be a consistent winnning team. They are still a losing team and a losing franchise and just can’t get over that huge hump that is the size of Mt. Everest. There just doesn’t seem to be a light at the end of a very long, dark tunnel.’

‘QB: Grade B-: Not his fault that they lost. He went 18 of 32 for 210 yards and a touchdown run and pass with no picks.’

‘Buffalo went 59 minutes and 40 seconds of Sunday’s game without a turnover, and then coughed the ball up on consecutive possessions in a 31-31 game at the end of regulation and in overtime and it cost them a win against the Falcons.’

‘”Our offensive line did a great job blocking and Stevie (Johnson) did a great job blocking and I just didn’t finish the play,” said Spiller. “It should’ve been a touchdown. It’s probably the first time I’ve been caught like that. Those guys did a great job up front and I got up in there and saw daylight and just tried to hit it. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to finish it.”‘

‘think those guys did a nice job, they knocked it out. At the end of the day, you don’t like it to come down to those plays. There’s other things that go on during the game and that’s what we have to do a better job all around so that things like that, the game doesn’t come down to that at the end. We want to be better than that.’

‘Yeah, I mean it’s a crazy game. Football is a game of making plays, honestly. We had the opportunity to make them and we just didn’t today. That’s the disappointing part of the game but nonetheless you still have games left to play and have to look forward to that.’

‘We had a great day running the ball. That was our goal coming into the game, we wanted to run it. Like I said, during the bye week we were going to fix the running game and today was a great example of that. The guys did a great job upfront blocking and we just tried to find holes and take advantage of them.’