All_Pro_Bills

Look across the field to the other sideline last night and tell me what level of integrity you see?

There were certainly some head-scratchers with Roman's play calling but I think the core problem is the offensive line is once again a liability combined with a first-time starter QB that is learning on-the-job. To this point I believe he has the smarts and the work ethic to improve but his ability to 'read' the defense and go through his progressions with the receivers but its just good enough yet. The other concern is Taylor's durability. He's taken too many hits while in the pocket or scrambling and needs to protect himself better or the protection needs to be changed to expose him to less potential physical contact. If he's degraded or out next week I have a hard time envisioning the Bills are coming out of Sunday at 6-5 with EJ back there coughing the ball up 2 or 3 times.

LOL. There's absolutely no evidence that play would have been a TD if not for the whistle. Its wild speculation and there's 50 yards to the end zone. What if Darby doesn't pull up when hearing the whistle, jumps the route, and intercepts the ball with a clear path to a pick 6? Let me speculate, not a single media source is going to say the mistake cost the Bills a TD. More Patriot ball washing by the lapdog media..

Why would a receiver 'give himself up' under the circumstances? Down one score, seconds left in the game, no time outs. if in the mind of the official he believed a player would make a conscious decision to give himself up and stay in bounds while the clock expired to lose the game then his competence, judgment, and motives need to be questioned. That excuse is at best lame and at worst a blatant lie to cover up a major screw up.

When the Patriots players ran onto the field from the bench the offense expressed its intent to substitute. Whether the actually did substitute is not relevant. The officials noticing the offense was attempting a substitution should have stopped the clock and the ref should have stood over the ball to prevent the offense from running a play. Once the offense had set its lineup for the play and the defense had an opportunity to respond the ref should have started to clock and allowed the center to position himself to snap the ball to the QB. If handled properly the play should not have resulted in a penalty for either team. But they screwed this up along with maybe a dozen other plays most of which went against the Bills which should be no surprise to anybody here! Like the last play of the game where Watkins was ruled to not have gotten out of bounds. Sure looked like he got out from every angle. My only explanation on that one is the officials thought the rules had reverted to the college level where touching a player down is not necessary. On the whistle BEFORE the receiver caught the ball (clearly shown on replay) I think the refs blew the play dead because Brady was out of the pocket and they were protecting him from what the official thought was going to be a hard, clean, legal hit on the sideline. A mistake which somehow cost the Bills over 25 yards. Just mindboggling incompetence. My apologies to the board for venting a little off topic.

My wife says the Bills are going to win and ordered me not to have any negative thoughts or yell at the TV tonight so I can't post anything bad. The way I look at it the Bills are playing with house money here. Win and or lose they have games aganst Houston, KC, and the Jets. Those are the games they need to win to make it to the playoffs. Throw in 3 NFC East non-conference games. Its possible they go 5-1 in those next 6 and finish 10-6 in a wildcard spot. Nothing to lose tonight, no pressure.

A conspiracy doesn't need to exist to explain bias in officiating. All businesses have formal rules and procedures. If you examine those at your job you'll likely conclude the way work gets done has very little correlation to how closely the procedures in place are followed. At my job for example, I suggested that if we followed the exact intent and instructions of the countless and sometimes senseless procedures in place absolutely nothing would get done. So what does that have to do with officiating NFL games? Its because all organizations have social and political processes that for the most part are informal. This applies to the NFL business. You won't find these documented in any league information or procedure documents. An example might be certain owners are said to have more 'influence' than others at league meetings. How can this be? This extra power isn't documented anywhere and there are no league rules applying to owners that grant one owner more power than another but it is something that exists. These political and social actions govern how things work more than rules. So on the field you don't touch Brady or you get a 15 yard PF but Cam Newton gets told (allegedly) he's too young to get the call in a certain situation. Even though the rules apply to everyone equally and evenly in the book. There's no formal rule or discussions or conspiracy. The NFL doesn't tell officials to protect Brady or Manning, or call holding or PI on specific players or team. Simply, everybody knows how 'it' works. And what we witness every Sunday is just the playing out of these informal systems which result in the questionable and puzzling calls.

I couldn't agree with the original poster more. The game will simply not be called with any consistency. That's guaranteed. But that's also true throughout the league. I know we're Bills' fans and we focus on the bias we witness in our team's games but the fact is if you watch a lot of other games this is happening every week in most every game. Depending on the crew, the teams involved, the quarter of play, the specific players involved, the score at the time, and so on, the ref's just call things differently. The lack of consistency in enforcing and interpreting the rules is mind-blowingly awful. That all said the Bills can do a lot to further their cause by avoiding all those stupid personal foul and unsportsmanlike conduct penalties which seem to multiply every time we play New England. And don't hold or block in the back on every single kick off and punt return. These types of penalties were real factors in the first meeting. Maybe they lose, maybe they win, but don't giftwrap the game by giving up a lot of free penalty yardage by playing undisciplined football. Make them earn every foot on every play.

While most including me agree he's a likeable and good guy, Fitz is an 11 year veteran that has played for 6 different teams during his career. His lifetime QB rating is a little over 80. His rating so far this season is 89.2. If statistics win out then over the course of the season he'll probably revert back to his average which means he'll likely underperform the remainder of the season. Hopefully, starting Thursday night against the Bills. At age 32 he's reached his peak potential and is all he can be. The Jets will soon find out firsthand what the other 5 teams already learned. After the season the Jets will reach the same conclusion and will be looking for a QB assuming they've lost faith in Smith to be the answer.

This is a key insight. Along the lines of 'all battles are won or lost before they begin". Preparation is the key to victory. So a logicial defense might be to "show" Brady something that isn't what it appears to be, essentially utilizing deception and disguise. You need to confuse his pre-snap reads like if the WR goes in motion and nobody follows him you might read zone coverage and moments before the snap the defense needs to adjust to a man-to-man press scheme for example. This goes for the offense too. After you watch a team play every game you see tendencies and I seem to know what the Bills are going to do on most plays. If I can figure it out then certainly the professionals are way ahead of me. Bottom line, be unpredicable because predicability leads to negative outcomes. The Giants had success in 2 SB's by deploying their DE's inside over the Guards to put pressure on the interior of the offensive line that was not geared to defend speed but rather the size and strength of the typical DT. When they brought in the heavy offensive package the defense shifted to the standard set. And certainly playing 10 yards off their receivers is unacceptable. You need to play press coverage and physical every single down. The other unconventional thing I would employ is hiring a security firm to make sure nobody was stealing my signals, or playbooks, bugging my communications or locker room. Maybe its paranoia but why take a chance? The Patriots seem to know what you're going to do on offense and defense almost every single play. Is their coaching that good or is there more to it? I say, eliminate the "more to it" possiblity. I might even go as far as having three different coaches signal in the play to the team and if they are stealing my signals let them try and figure out which one is real and which two are fake on every down. Create confusion and uncertainty. The other problem is New England provides a unique challenge with their personnel. And if you play a team once or twice a year and maybe not at all, are you going to set up you team to beat that one opponent as opposed to setting your lineup and team for the other 14+ games?

Nice too that the Dolphins get the mini-bye prior to facing the Bills which sort of negates any preparation advantage the Bills might have gained. What's that, 4 of 8 games against teams with extra prep time?.

I want to believe they have a chance and mathematicaly they do but realistically where do you get 7 more wins out of the next 9 games? Of course I'm assuming 10 wins gets the wild card but even if its 9 where do you get 6 more wins out of the Bills schedule? Before the season I had them at 5-2 at this point with losses to New England and Cincinnatti. Let's face it, this team is a major disappointment. There's no way I expect them to make the playoffs. Watching a lot of football to this point they don't look the part of a playoff worthy team when compared to the effort and performance of the other teams fighting for those 2 wildcards. And looking at the schedule I can invision a 5-11 finish. Maybe that's worst case, maybe its the most likely outcome given their performance to this point. Maybe they win 6 or 7 but what's the difference. The result is the same. And at the end of it all the head coach can boast how they never quit as we watch other teams in the playoffs one more time. With the offense everybody knew it was a work in progress and given the uncertain situation at QB nobody knew what to expect out of this group. Expectations were low and with the play of Tyrod I believe his performance to date has been a clear positive for now and the future. The fact that he missed the last 2 games, along with other players out of the line up combined with having to play an erratic and inconsistent EJ certainly contributed to the 3-4 record going into the bye. The defense has been a big problem. Everybody expected this unit to be the cornerstone of the team. Playing tough and keeping opponents off the scoreboard with the team getting just enough from a slightly improved offense to win. That's the story we were sold. What we've gotten is something completely different. A defense that played great football last year with more or less the same personnel that this season that looks terrible and statistics back that up. Sats aside my big problem is this defense rarely makes the big stop when the game is on the line. Against the Patriots and Giants when the offense came to life and brought the game back to a one-score deficit the defense folded and gave up a long drive in a handful of plays. And this past Sunday, bad penalty calls aside, after getting the go-ahead score on a pick they couldn't hold the lead. Which leads me to the biggest problem. A head coach that's all talk and no action. I was lukewarm about the Rex Ryan hire from the beginning but was willing to give him a shot. He said all the right things and pushed all the right buttons. But why would you hire a coach from a team that you laid 80+ points on in 2 games last season? While some cite he made it to the AFC Championship game in his first 2 seasons with the Jets the fact is that was Manginni's team along with GM Mike Tannanbaum. After that it was a slow decline into mediocrity. In one off-season he's transformed a tough blue collar ready to give it their best Bills team into a punchless joke, subject to ridicule and laughter from the rest of the league because of a big-mouth coach who has no control over his players who also shoot their mouths off way too much and then don't back it up on the field. Under his leadership the current staff has ruined this defense. They are not Top 10, they are not even Top 20. Talking loud and tough and coming up small and looking stupid. But he snowed Pegula and parlayed his bravado into a 5 year $25M deal. While it's not the first time anybody BS'd their way through an interview and showed up on the job unprepared to do the work the impact is out there for all to see. At this point I'm left wondering why Pegula made this hire in the first place. And I think his ability to evaluate management and coaching talent needs to be questioned. Unless things turn around signifcantly it's only matter of how long Ryan lasts.

Tom Landry characterized the game as 'the worst loss of my career' to a Bills team coached by Hank Bullough who once famously said of one victorious opponent (I do not know which team it was), 'they took the sails out of our wind'.

You're lucky to miss 1967 thru 1971 and 1984 thru 1986. Those we dark days without hope until Saban reappeared and Levy came took over.

The OC is going to have to earn his paycheck this week. With the power outage at WR and Taylor anticipated to be out expect to see some multiple TE formations and a heavy dose of McCoy running and catching. The defense has to dominate. I think the Bills will do enough to win here. They tend to disappoint when expectations get too high and when you start to give up on them they suddenly pull a surprisingly good effort that pulls you back in.

Exactly! If you're better than the other guy you simply do what you do and go with it. While I dispise the Patriots look at their offense. They pretty much do the same thing week in, week out. Yet they consistently come out on top without worrying about running a lot of gimmicks and getting too cute or over-thinking things. Why? Because they have good players. The Bills defense has good players especially the front 4. Get rid of the exotic and overly complex approach and let them play. Forget forcing the players to fit the 'system'. Take the dog off the chain and let them loose this week.

Only watched the first half and it helped that the Giants turned the ball over 4 times, along with the Eagles not committing 5 or 6 personal foul or misconduct penalties, but can it get any more obvious?

The strength of this team was supposed to be the defense and the head coach set expectations sky-high shooting his mouth off through the off season and beyond. They've got over $250 million investing in a defensive line that can't get any pressure or sacks on the QB because the Head Coach is a prisioner of his scheme and refuses to adapt to the talent available. Smart coaches don't do this. And now the players are publicly ripping the play calling on defense. Three pro bowlers, plus another that should have made it last year, used to free up blitzing linebackers and safeties for pressure on the QB? The observable problem is the linebackers and safeties aren't getting to the QB. Anybody watching the game can see that. So do what works not what you want to do. And anytime this defense plays a top 10 QB/offense they roll over dead and get undressed. Ryan is playing this like a guy who gets a Ferrari for free and puts a trailer hitch on the back to tow a boat. It just isn't a good idea and don't like right. This looks as simple as a case of if it ain't broke then don't fix it. My guess is he's either to stubborn or arrogant to accept the facts and adapt his system to the strengths of the players. He'll keep trying the square peg, round hole approach all the way to game 16. Look at the schedule and tell me which 'quality' opponent this team is going to beat playing like this? I won't even get to much into the penalty problems. But for God's sake, enough!

Maybe they shouldn't line up for the XP on the left hash mark? I assume this is by choice. Maybe center the ball or try the right side if those options are legal.

I'm not ready to throw in the towel on Ryan just yet, its only 4 games, but there are a lot of red flags and we all get the look and feel of something familiar. We've been here before. The fundamental problem I see in the two losses is that Belichik and Coughlin did nothing unusual or unexpected on either offense or defense. And yet this Bills team seemed totally unprepared. How is this possible? And what coach tolerates all this undisciplined play? And then more or less praises them in the post game press conference. It's almost like Ryan lives in some alternative reality completely different that what everyone else is experiencing. I see a defense playing completely out of control, undisciplined, stupid football giving up way too many yards and points to be considered 'great' and he sees a lot of heart and determination. On the defensive side of the ball this team is an overhyped mess. A top defense in the mind of their head coach and some of the players. Some of the players know this, some might deny it, others might believe their own BS still. But there's a major problem here. The talent is there, the smarts are lacking and it seems to start with the head coach and trickle down from there. The vets on the field, Kyle and Mario Williams, and maybe Corey Graham need to step up and settle the hot-heads down. Against both New England and New York the offense scored in the 4th to make it a one score game and both times the defense immediately just rolled over on the next drive and gave up an easy score in just a few plays. Great defenses make those stops even against great offenses. Ryan needs to spend less time shooting his mouth off and instead do some critical evaluation of himself and his team then make the necessary changes to get things right. Looking to next week against the Titans you'd expect a 'W' but who knows which team will show up. The one totally prepared to defeat a lesser opponent or the one playing like a bunch of idiots led by a buffoon head coach who can't keep his mouth shut?

I thought they called a terrible game too but you can't call these guys out and chirp in their ear the entire game. It's just human nature they aren't going to give you the benefit of the doubt. Take the flag on the QB slide and hit on Taylor on Sunday. The Ref's talked it over and picked up the flag. You think if it was Jerry Hughes falling on Brady they would have picked it up under the exact same circumstances? 100% no way. Like in any sport, once you get a rep for 'dirty' or borderline play the Ref's watch you and call it different. Hockey, basketball, football, you name it. Clean it up.

This team needs to get its emotions under control. They were so whipped up in a frenzy leading up to the game that the game itself was a letdown. They were emontionally spent and burned out before the kickoff. Which resulted in a lot of dumb penalties that squandering good field position and momentum several times. You can't beat a team as proficient as New England playing stupid. All you end up is looking like a fool and a loud mouth a-hole that can't back it up. IMO, you're well paid professionals so act like it. And as Marv once said 'act like you've been here before'. As for all the trash talk and celebration you need to pick your spots and back it up with action. It makes me laugh when I see some guy celebrating making a tackle of a RB for a 2 yard loss on 2nd down after the opposing offense just moved the ball 70 yards on 10 plays down the field to a 1st and goal. Yeah you're great so what's the story with the last 10 plays that you got pancaked on?

A buddy at work that's a 49ers fan put the Bills loss in this perspective - 'you're not going to beat the Pats making a lot of mistakes but your guys did hang tough until the end though. And they didn't just roll over". Not that it makes me feel any better about the loss but it gives some outside perspective. I remember one of the few and far between times when the Bills beat NE in week one of the season a few years back and post game Brady said something like its only one game and its early in the season and there's a lot of football left to play. And now nobody can acuse the Bills of peaking in September!

My concern with Ryan is that NE did absolutely nothing that he hasn't seen before and their gameplan was consistent with what we've seen since Brady arrived on the scene. So why wasn't this team prepared? On the Gronkowski TD for example this was the exact same play they ran against Pittsburgh last week at the exact same spot on the field and the Bills defenders were looking at each other apparently not knowing what their assignments were which left their most dangerous receiver completely uncovered for an easy TD.. How can this happen? Either the players don't understand the gameplan or the coaches aren't planning for it. Either one is not acceptable. And all the talk about press coverage. What happened with that? Maybe with more experience with the new scheme these things solve themselves? Just put down the microphones and the Twitter accounts and just shut up, show up, and play the game.

Extra time or not I suspect that Roman knows exactly what to expect from Belichick. He'll be wagering that Taylor is not going to beat his defense solely through the air. He'll bring extra support down into the box on early downs to stuff the run and try to get the Bills into 3rd and longs. They'll show a 3 or 4 man passive pass rush trying to keep containment on Taylor, frustrating him and forcing him into throws, and showing him a lot of different looks in the secondary. This should provide some early game 1st down one-on-one opportunities for Clay, Watkins, or Harvin, maybe even McCoy out of the backfield. If I'm Roman I'll dial up some 1st and 2nd down play-action passes to try and burn them early and flush them out of their scheme. Then the Bills might be in the position to dictate the play vs. getting dictated to like Bills coaching staffs have done against the NE staff for years.