Utah John

If the Bills win, enjoy the win and figure your money and karma helped. Your wife won't care but The Force will be with you. And no you can't sleep on my sofa. If the Bills get crushed, you get $5K which buys a lot of solace. But if the Bills lose by less than 17, there is no bright lining to that cloud.

Vikings -- 49 Bills -- 17 35-0 at halftime. All the Bills points come in the second half against their second teamers. One of the Vikings second half TDs is a pick-6.

What I find most upsetting here is that the Bills thought they were upgrading from E.J. Gaines, who's now with the Browns. Gaines was part of a very good defensive backfield, which is now struggling without him. So for Sammy Watkins and a sixth we got one year from E.J. and a second. Considering we wouldn't have Sammy now anyway, that's not a disaster, but I'd be happier with E.J. for several years to make that really work.

It's no surprise Allen is at the point he's at. This is what most people expected, a raw rookie, and he's doing relatively OK. Obviously he needs better O line and WR help. It's the other first rounder, Tremaine Edmunds, who has me a little concerned. Great natural talent but not really catching on. The Bills gave up a lot to move up to draft him, and so far it's not looking so good.

The biggest mystery to me is why the Bills traded McCarron. He was mediocre but competent, and he would have let Allen sit and watch. Peterman is not ever going to work out.

The past few years, the NFL couldn't figure out what a completed pass looked like. Now it's how a QB gets sacked. They're just making things so complicated. The completed pass problem came about because the refs blew a call, I think it was with a Cowboys receiver, and then kept telling the same (wrong) story, digging themselves a deeper and deeper hole. The same thing will happen here. Things will likely improve once the aged and brittle Brady retires.

As the O line goes, so goes McCoy. That's more to the point. He was never a guy who could create his own hole. He doesn't need much but he needs SOMETHING to run through. He's a Porsche, not a Mack truck.

We can't get killed on ESPN. To paraphrase someone in the Game of Thrones, that which is dead cannot die. I love the Bills, and have been fan since I can remember, probably 1963. But this year's team is a disaster. No O line, no #1 or #3 WR, inexperienced D line and no pass rush, and a rookie QB. Next year we get out of salary cap prison, we'll have the draft picks to fill gaps, and both of this year's first rounders will be established and experienced players. I just hope Shady can be Shady for this year and next.

It will be tough for any player identified primarily as a Bill to get in. Two reasons. First, the Bills who have gotten in did so largely because Larry Felser advocated for them and Felser had the respect of the other football writers. Well, that and the fact that they were all great players who deserved selection. But without a repected advocate the chances of getting in drop. The second reason is that the Bills have been so bad for so long, that a lot of younger people don't remember how good they used to be. If Felser were still around, Kent Hull would have a chance. Probably not now, even though he deserves it. Felser got Billy Shaw selected, a well deserved honor but also a minor miracle. And Tasker should have been in the HOF 10 years ago. It's a disgrace he isn't already.

All this just makes the Bills getting to a fourth Super Bowl after losing three, and having a very good chance to win that one at least until halftime, even more remarkable. The Bickering Bills became a tight, cohesive unit that held together. Kelly lasted a couple more years, and it wasn't until a few years later that they let Thurman, Andre, and Bruce all go on the same day.

This. I think the worst aspect of the Wrecks fiasco was saying goodbye to Schwartz. The Bills had a killer defense, remember? Under Wrecks it turned into toilet paper. As for Darby, I think he's a good player and whether we got the good or bad end of the trade won't pan out until we see what Harrison turns into. I am concerned that last year gave the front office the idea they could scoop up street free agents, plug them into our D backfield, and coach them up. We struck gold last year but so far it looks like that mine is played out.

I see what you did there.

Given the state of our O-line, no Bills QB is going to succeed this year. So they'll stick Peterman in as starter so their prize rookie doesn't get blown up. Peterman is not that bad or wouldn't be if given half a chance, but when the O-line has him running for his life, we'll be yelling for someone else. There will even be talk about how we were better off with Fitz. Fitz gives teams enough to win 6-8 games a year, in other words the Swamp of Mediocrity where the Bills lived for a generation. He is not enough to win 11-12 games and get a first round bye. We should wish him well as a good guy, a smart guy, a great family man, and a guy who played pretty well for a not-good Bills team, but the whole league should know that signing Fitz means your starting QB is going to get hurt and you aren't making the playoffs.

If Riley or any these other guys can play an O-line position, that would help. Without improvements there it won't matter who plays WR, or QB for tht matter.

If NO wasn't a good place for Bridgewater, I'd say he got screwed -- signed with the Jets and ended up traded. But, given the situation in NO and considering Darnold is looking good, this is actually a great outcome for Bridgewater too. As for the Jets nailing the deal, this does get them a third rounder, but in their case that's yet another chance to screw up a high draft pick. Consider the Jets' track record before anointing them geniuses.

It isn't the OC's fault the talent on the O line is so bad. Whaley and Beane both tried to upgrade the O line through the draft. A lot of their picks haven't worked out, but at least they tried. And they did get Dawkins. They tried some FAs too but if Ducasse is the best you can show, you're doing something wrong. (OK, they did bring in Richie but that was out of desperation. And even though Richie was playing at a high level, the Bills clearly pushed him out the door by giving him a pay cut after he made the Pro Bowl. They must have seen the crazies coming on.) It's also not on Whaley and Beane that Wood developed his neck issues and retired. The only hope the Bills had was to develop the talent they did have, which requires a great O line coach. They had a very good O line coach (the guy who had the altercation with the kids on the beach) but they let him go. The current coach just doesn't seem up to the job. As I said on one of these threads a week ago, if they don't fix the O line, it doesn't matter a bit who plays QB. There won't be a running game, the QB will get killed, and we'll have to hope the defense wins us a lot of 9-7 games. It's going to be a long year.

There are still 11 men on the field from each team at any one time. Every player is at least pretty good or they wouldn't be in the NFL. The game is in Baltimore and it's the first of the year so the Ravens and their fans will be fired up. If the Bills don't fix their O-line, it won't matter a bit who the Baltimore TE is.

I'm not convinced analytics will work as well in football as it does for some aspects of baseball. A hitter and a pitcher, mostly one on one. Sure the defense is working together and the catcher has a lot to do with the outcome, and also the hitter might not be swinging freely but instead could have men on base and needs to hit accordingly. But it's largely one on one, so the influence of other team members (such as the O line in football, or the skill and speed of the receivers, or the offensive scheme) is less in baseball. Also a hitter gets hundreds of times at the plate in a season, so there's a big statistical sample compared to a QB's number of passes attempted. So for football, I think analytics might be an indicator of capability but not always a good one. As for statistics in general, people are terrible at understanding what they mean. If there's a 10% chance of rain, most people assume it won't rain, period. What that 10% means is that on one day out of ten with those weather conditions, it will rain. So you shouldn't be surprised or angry if today's the one day out of ten.

Marrone is a very conservative coach. Always has been. Leopards can't change their spots.

If the O line doesn't get better, any QB we put in will have a tough time.

When a team loses but a competitor for the playoffs also loses, and the competitor is eliminated while your team advances, that's backing in. Winning your last game and having a competitor lose a game on the same day is NOT backing in. That's what happened.

It's always been clear that Incognito has a screw loose, but that didn't stop him from being an outstanding player for the Bills. I think this commotion all started with the Bills telling him he needed to take a big pay cut, immediately after another Pro Bowl season. I never understood the Bills' thinking on this, unless they were just trying to get him to quit, but why you'd do that with a great player is beyond me. Richie has serious issues, no doubt, but he's being treated pretty shabbily in my opinion, instead of getting support and help.

It's hard to evaluate TT accurately because he played on such great offensive teams. They were great in part because of him, but they had everything particularly a great O line. I saw a feature online recently showing all of his TDs in a particular year. In most of them he had to be elusive but not insanely so -- he'd put a little head bob or a half step sideways or delay a beat, and he'd get the opening he needed. This is not a criticism in fact it's high praise for a guy who had such a great feel for the game. But, without that great O line and the passing game at the same time, it's easy to see how a defense could have taken him out of the game. OJ, on the other hand, excelled even though everyone knew the Bills were going to run -- of course he had a great O line too. I've always thought OJ was the best Bill of all time, and was the best runner of a long list of great RBs. With Cookie #2, TT #3, Shady #4, and a bunch of other guys who were all really good making up the rest of the top 10.

The criteria sports writers use to evaluate a player's career are silly. A great player might never play on a great team. That's not his fault. His accomplishments should be be given MORE weight if his team doesn't make the playoffs consistently, because it indicates he's not riding on someone else's abilities to get things done.

At this point, a good draft is one that makes sense. The Bills selected players to fill needs. They failed to find a stud WR, someone who can beat the coverage and catch an Allen pass 65 yards downfield. Other than that, the draft made sense. Contrast this year's picks with, oh, how about drafting CJ Spiller when we already had Fred Jackson. Or, of course, giving up so much to draft Sammy Watkins when we didn't have a QB to throw it to him. I'm not saying the results are judged on the performance of the players, because all teams pick guys that don't work out for whatever reason. I'm saying those picks simply didn't make sense from a structural, strategic perspective. This year's picks do make sense.