Hapless Bills Fan

The one that’s most interesting IMO is McDermott

May be in a thread somewhere but I thought they deserved their own Josh Allen and Beasley: https://youtu.be/TnFKrWSF0aU McD: https://youtu.be/sTqY0lb-b0I Dr Poyer and Mr Hyde: https://youtu.be/MSVBc_Sn_Tc

Reading between the lines of McDermott’s postgame presser, I think that’s where he is. He said “I need to do better” as though his mouth hurt. I think Daboll earned the right to be left alone to call plays last season, but I think McDermott is gonna be having a “heartfelt chat” with him

Oh, is that what was going on on that 4th and 8 bomb to Davis, Josh thought it was a free play?

“Paved with explosive intentions” - I like that turn of phrase. I see your point about the deep shots that take time to develop, but I think Daboll’s use of it is more to force the D to show their hand with regard to coverage and have Allen hit those quick 5-15 yd routes OR take off and run himself (which he did with some success today) Of course, it only works out that way if the OL can protect “hat on a hat”, and if they don’t, yes, the QB is harried. Do you know how many plays we ran from the empty backfield? I have the impression it was “a lot”. But I had that impression last year, and it turned out to be 15% or something like that - which was still one of the highest in the league, but not my perception.

We punted on 4th and 3 We went for it on 4th and 8, then 4th and 1 (but atrocious play call)

Tomlin has 2 Super Bowl appearances, a Super Bowl win, another AFCCG appearance, and 9 playoff appearances. He has a 145-78 record as HC. He’s one of the longest tenured coaches in the league. He didn’t get those things by being a poor game day tactician

I appreciate you finding that article and the info that the stats don’t show the whole picture. But the guy does have 307 punts for 44.7 yds/punt, and since he’s not a “boomer” who makes up for shanks with long punts, I guess I’ll hope for the best that it’s not that common of a problem. I’m sure Bill Belichick is licking his chops though

I’m not a fan of the empty backfield. But was it really dink-n-dunk that was the problem? 30 completions for 270 yds is 9 yards per completion. Seems to me the low YPA was a function of the unusually low (compared to last year) % of completions. In his postgame presser, Allen said he was “too aggressive” and needed to take more “easy stuff” to have it work out better. I can’t tell, watching from the network broadcast, but it wouldn’t surprise me if on many of those plays, there was a check down option available and Allen was extending the play looking for the Kill Shot.

I dunno if it was mental let up or physical fatigue. What Collinsworth said about the physical difficulties of the first game, as a former player, made sense to me If it was physical, though, then it has to be said Tomlin had his guys more ready to go.

That seemed straightforward to me - he meant sloppy and typo’d “sloopy” HTH

Thanks, that makes sense. Hopefully they get it fixed, because we simply can’t have that kind of costly mistake on ST

Pro-football-reference says that Matt Haack has had 1 punt blocked in his 4 year career, in 2018 by NE https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/H/HaacMa00.htm I’m not sure what your source is on thinking we blocked a punt on him ever or that the Pats blocked two

I think this is a salient point. IMHO we didn’t play with nearly as much “juice” on D in the 2nd half as in the first. I thought the D softened up coming out after the half with the lead. Chris Collinsworth on Thurs nite was talking about the difficulties of playing 4Q when the starters have been limited in preseason to avoid injury

Don’t think we can mention decision making without mentioning the playcall of the pitch back to Singletary on 4th and 1. Yes, probably that was Daboll’s call, but it was so bizarre I just heard a commentator saying “that play looked good on the board in July, not on the field in September”. I can’t say they’re wrong. Not sure what your intended point is?

Then ***** Analytics True Dat. But if we had more points on the board and made the Steelers drive down a long field, maybe the blocked punt TD is not the difference.

Actually my first post didn’t show up so I thought it got lost and reposted, then deleted when I saw it was a duplicate. Sorry to rain on your conspiracy parade, that’s not why the post was deleted. You’ve made multiple posts now about a player’s illness and hospitalization. Let it go and focus on football. Advice, take it or leave it I don’t care.

What part of “our entire OL got beaten like a drum” is reasonably translated to “Dawkins holding penalties weren’t a problem” in your unique intracranial processing? — you think that’s an attack? OK Bet. We agree the entire OL was terrible today. It looks to me as though you just have drum you want to beat with regard to Dawkins. Go re-read the pinned post and Don’t. Your stuff about our OL usually is just SMH because more often than not, they did a good job keeping Allen clean and staying with the play last season.

If a penalty is declined, it arguably doesn’t influence the play. I repeat, what part of “our entire OL was beaten like a drum” is reasonably translated by you as “I thought Dawkins looked OK”?

I understand, as I used to feel the same way. I’ll try to find it and bring it back, but Cover-1 and I think Jim Kubiak put out some pretty good pieces on how Daboll uses them to help Allen diagnose coverage. IMHO he was struggling with that today. Maybe Pittsburgh really did come up with something we hadn’t seen before.

“Held there own” against the Bills DL. Fine choice of words, Indeed. I think Big Ben knew just where he was going with the ball and got it out fast, which makes it harder for our DL to get there (I also saw some pretty rampant uncalled holding - which i would be ok with except the refs were calling it on us). I think something the Steelers D was doing was puzzling Allen and there were a lack of quick hit options for him, and there were uncharacteristic drops and misfires on those that were there

Right, and I saw at least one play where Hughes had hands in his face and was being wrapped like a boa constrictor So I do feel the holding penalties were not equitably called Now was that the difference in the game, probably not - I’d give the blocked punt followed by the TOD for that. But, I just saw a penalty call in the GB-NO game that absolutely just turned the game.

I don’t think he was called for a hold…I guess that’s a Good Thing

I just scanned through the play by play on NFL.com and counted 4 holding penalties total - 2 on Dawkins, 1 on Morse, 1 on Williams. They were all problems, especially given that the Pitt OL seemed able to hold, hands to the face, whatever, without penalty. What part of “our entire OL got beaten like a drum” is reasonably translated to “Dawkins holding penalties weren’t a problem” in your unique intracranial processing?

Dude, that’s a top DL in the league. It was last year, and it looks like they haven’t lost a step. The whole OL got beaten like a drum.