Hapless Bills Fan

I think that McDermott just gets outcoached by some guys. Then, like he did as a HS wrestler, he studies and works and studies and works and goes at it and goes at it until he masters it. He did that with the Chiefs last year. We got beat. Then he changed stuff up and we got beat again. Then he changed stuff up and we whupped them. He's on that track with the Titans. We got our butts whupped. Then he changed stuff up and we still lost, but barely. He'll keep at it and we'll whup them. The issue here is that if he's still on a trajectory of being outcoached and whupped by some coaches, especially defensively, SB is not likely.

A turnover is generally considered (among the football knowledgeable) to have disproportionate impact on the outcome of a game, which dismissing it as "one play" appears to minimize. And that was a bad interception. This is especially true of turnovers which give the opponent great field position. Allen's INT (not his fault as his arm was hit as he threw) gave the Titans TD points that may have been the difference in the game. There was a receiver if it's the play I saw, though he was well covered. Lamar just didn't perceive the DB in position to jump the route. Josh made several INTs of this sort in his second season, notable the 1st NE game, until Daboll and Dorsey beat it out of him (or another view, until Josh recognized the serious, game losing impact of INTs and committed to minimizing them) One could equally say because of the Chargers weak offensive performance? But we are drifting far afield from the thread topic here.

Well, first off I'd like to note that Buffalo scored 31 points on Monday night yet Allen was horrible, according to some here. Ditto on games where the Bills plan is obviously to run down a team's throat. So points are apparently not a great metric of QB quality and neither are rush yards (sarcasm) or overall yards. Some sarcasm here, in case it's not obvious. Second, I'd like to note that Lamar did throw two picks in that Chargers game, and that watching that in any game, one can make a legit point that the QB didn't "Do His Job".

The surgery for Knox should enable faster healing, but healing a bone break still takes weeks. IMHO 3 weeks is probably on the low end. Athletes with surgical repair of bones do return to sport with a brace in as little as 2 weeks, but those are usually lower-contact sports or positions where there isn't as much use of the hands and need for precision and dexterity. The real benefit of the surgery should be that he can start PT and rehab in 2 or 3 weeks so he won't lose as much. That may be a long winded way to say "More Haste, Less Speed" and I hope they err on the side of giving it time to heal more at first vs. risking a setback. I can't think of a position that requires more of the hands than a blocking and pass catching TE. It may take care of itself, but Beane doesn't strike me as a guy who likes to leave things to chance

One problem is they gotta have a plan to keep Stevenson on the roster when Knox returns.

I hope you're right, but I'm thinking that sounds hella optimistic. He might come out of the cast in ~3 weeks but then is gonna need some PT and strengthening. But if Knox gets to play with that bionic brace Gronk used to use to club people with, that'd be kinda cool. I'm just worried that one Josh Allen "heater" would rip right through the callus (3-4 week stage of bone healing) PS thanks a bunch for looping back I've always liked Sweeney and thought he had a rough deal last season. Hate to see Knox miss time but if Sweeney can play this is his chance.

Yea, Like I said, I grant that McD can only answer the questions he's asked. But that does raise the question why the reporters didn't have more questions about what Cover1 referred to as "the leaky defense"

Thought he was going to Denver

I'm not doubting what you heard, but can you provide any guidance as to when/where you heard that? I listened to McD's postgame presser and to McD's presser today, and I did not hear that.

This link works better for me Is it just me, or did anyone else watching feel there was a huge amount of talk about the offense? The offense scored 31 points. We're supposed to have a good defense, that ought to be enough points. Please anyone else, correct me if you feel I was missing something I will grant that McDermott can only answer the questions he's asked so there's that

I don’t think there was any guessing involved. Josh has tendencies on the (overwhelmingly successful) QB sneak plays. Barkley knows what they are and now so does Tennessee

I hope it goes well for him! Yikes. Please let us know any updates. Do you happen to know how this jibes with @Nextmanup saying "they" said Knox might not even miss any time? Because I can't imagine not missing time after surgery on a hand. FWIW I remember you last fall bringing some info about Knox so I know you didn't just swim up from nowhere with the Knox connection.

That's about where I am. Overall I believe the win probabilities are higher if you go for it. But given how our OL and their DL were playing, a different playcall may have been better.

Just wondering where you heard that since McDermott didn't seem to know anything except "he broke his hand, we'll monitor it" Where did you here this and who is "they"? Because again, McDermott in his presser said "Don't know much more at this point, other than we'll just monitor it," "We'll see where it goes here." And someone else in the thread said he had surgery this am

No, not half the board, but there were some very vocal people arguing that POV last night.

I understand what you're saying, I think, but it seems to me as though to make that argument, you're essentially re-defining "run game" to limit the definition to what you see as "real run game" and define plays that don't meet it out of existence. One could make the same argument that a "run first team" has "a lot of pass yards gifted to us by defenses overplaying the run" and "has no real pass game". 🤔 As far as "it feels like a lot of our TDs this year have been from 20+ yards out. Once we get inside the 10 yard line our offensive identity doesn't work" you can find statistics and splits here. Factually we have 22 TD overall at this point, 7 rush 15 pass. 6 rush TDs were inside the red zone. 10 pass TDs were inside the red zone. Overall, we gained 3.0 yds per run play inside the redzone and 2.7 yds per pass play inside the red zone. We have 14 rush 1st downs and 13 pass 1st downs inside the red zone. So statistics do not appear to support your feels that a lot of our TDs have been from 20+ yds out (73% overall and 85% of rush TDs were from the red zone) OR that a rush play in the red zone is a waste of a down. I think the fundamental problem is that our OL can't block well enough against good fronts. We actually blocked better and ran better in this game than the Titans game last season but it's still not good enough. It affects both run and pass plays.

I'm not questioning what you saw, but I'd like to understand it. Could you find the tweet again, or do you remember who tweeted it? That''s not an unfair take, but of course "eyes on the game" or perception, can be biased by a number of things. Ever have it happen that your friend bought a Blue Miata, and all of a sudden you're seeing Miatas everywhere you drive? The number of Miatas on the road didn't change. So it's a way of saying "quantitate what you see happening in this instance, and recompute your probababilities based upon what you see"

LOL I used that exact quip in another thread on the Henry point

Again, this goes to my point - if you don't like the Baysian probability thing, call it macro-probability (overall success against any team we've played) vs micro-probability (probability of success given in-game observations against this specific opponent in this game). IMHO the overall analytics need to be modified to account for new in-game information of how the OL is performing against this team on this day.

Great writeup as usual, Virgil. I have no fundamental disagreements, but several points: Agree, completely. To get nerdy for a minute, you're describing the difference between classic probability, and Baysian probability. The heart of Baysian probability is to calculate a prior probability distribution; when new information becomes available, you then calculate a new probability distribution. To me, the Bills previous lack of success in "and 1" situations in the game indicated that Allen's overall success in converting "and 1"s or "4th and 1s" should be modified by the observed lack of success in that game. The Titans were absolutely prepared, not only for the QB sneak but for the QB sneak to that particular gap (knowing Allen's tendencies). Therefore the highest probability call was likely to go for it, but use a different play. (hold this thought) Absolutely. Our OL absolutely did not bring their "A" game. It's quite disturbing. (As far as Moss being relatively ineffective all game - hold this thought too) Let me put it out there: if our OL can not adjust to give Allen adequate time against pressure from 4 or 5 DLmen, we will not win anything. Evidently the coaches believed the Pittsburgh Problem was Ford-Williams and that Dawkins-Feliciano would improve and be decent. Um. And as for our lack of defensive pressure, I can only say 🤮. I will say I notice from our D that after a game when they play out of their minds (as they did vs KC) they seem to often have a letdown. Whether this is due to sheer need for more physical recovery, the "party hat" phenomenon (a little too much time "feeling" recent success vs laser focus on the next step), or coaching letdown (where the coaches go above and beyond one week and take off a bit mentally next week), can't say. I think they don't trust AJ to hold up against the run yet, especially against a big fast running back like Henry. And they wanted Phillps against the run. Not sure they got what they wanted. What's a bit frustrating to me, unless he had some "ding" that didn't make it to injury report, was Klein getting only 6% of the snaps after how well he played last week. If the line was getting gassed, why not substitute him in? He's not as fast as Milano, but he partly makes up for it with his football IQ and he may be faster than a gassed Milano. We are going to be getting the "Best Game" from a lot of teams this year. That's why it's so tough to repeat a positive result in the NFL. Wasn't that the 3rd week? Oh, I guess Mongo was out for WFT. Brown is a rookie, and he's gonna get beat sometime while he's doing the OJT, but no excuse for Morse and Mongo or for Dawkins. This goes back to my first point about Baysian vs classic probability. I agree with you.

Defense: Wow, Klein only 6%, Taron Johnson 94% - I would have thought they would try base D a bit more against Henry. Milano 100%, again, would have thought they'd give him breathers with the hammy Phillips and Lotulelei looks like platooning, i wonder if they got what they wanted from Phillips? Looks like Ditto for Zimmer and Oliver with probably a sprinkle of Obada. Can't tell from the snaps what they did at end, but it almost looks like Addison-Rousseau and Hughes-Obada If so, I kind of feel like they outsmarted themselves vs. the "good thing" they had going on last week. Offense Gonna guess the predominant set here was (1,1)

Which young developmental player on our PS do you want to bounce for an aging return specialist?

Unfortunately bones tend to heal at the rate they heal. And hand injuries can cause persistent pain that's hard to overcome (reflexes) But there are breaks and breaks, for example Beasley's. Hopefully this is a minor break or a break to a bone with good blood supply, and will heal more quickly We do have Quinton Morris and Kahale Warring on our practice squad. We'll see if they put Knox on IR and elevate one of them. A "gotcha" is that it's a 3 game IR rule, not a 3 week IR rule. So if they do put Knox on IR, he would miss 4 weeks (3 games) I see, you're thinking it may only be a couple weeks so the upcoming Bye week makes this the "best possible news" regarding the injury, vs "best possible news" that his hand is broken

No, that was Tommy Sweeney Now that's hard-core. He threw a 2 pt conversion with a busted throwing hand? How on earth do you get that? Isn't that last the kind of "stinkin' thinkin'" that led us to last night's Butt Whuppin?