Utah John

My thought was, QBs wear red jerseys in practice so the defenders know not to hit them. It was worth a shot that a Lions defender would hesitate a split second before hitting Allen, just from years of conditioning. Hey, whatever works.

Allen is turning out as expected/hoped for. Lots of talent, some rookie mistakes, unmistakable progress through the year. But there were a lot of doubters about him. Poor completion percentage, weak competition in college, yada yada yada. A lot of people on this board thought we took the wrong Josh. Chubb on the other hand was a definite, 95% probabiity success, and they need to rebuild their D. I think Elway thought Chubb plus Keenum was better than some FA DL player plus Allen, and went with the combination that had a better chance of working out. And Keenum isn't a terrible QB, either. Like every other QB he needs to be in the right situation with good players around him.

No Cordy Glenn. No Eric Wood. No Richie Incognito. Take the three best O linemen away and replace them with a young Dawkins, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, and bad things are gonna happen. When we lost Wood and Incognito, this season immediately became about getting Allen experience, and not expecting to win much. A crappy record this year? Fine. It means we don't have to give up second round picks to elevate in the first round.

So Allen played with below average receivers in college and so far in Buffalo. I don't know what his O line was like in college but this year his O line has been a disaster. I don't know whether he had a good complementary RB in college, but this year Shady can't get it in gear (probably the O line's fault since he can still scoot when he gets a chance). You NEVER hear Allen complain about the shortcomings of his teammates. I think they're impressed with him and want him to succeed. So far this is all good. I don't care if the Bills win many more games this year as long as they keep playing hard, and the guys who won't be good enough next year keep demonstrating that to the coaches so it will be easy to eliminate them. Playoff likelihood for next year? I say 75%. In 2020, 90%.

Part of the problem is that the only guys who make it onto an NFL team were the stars of their college team (well, nearly always) and those stars didn't learn how to play STs in college. They were too valuable to risk injury. So they show up at an NFL camp and they're suddenly at the bottom of the roster, assuming they make the team, and now they're out there trying to figure out how to block legally or tackle people. Players like Lorax are the exception. It used to be common for a team to keep a player or two on the roster because they were great at covering kicks, even if they weren't all that great at their designated position (remember Mark Pike, who used to make more tackles than Steve Tasker when they were both playing). The Bills had a WR who was great on STs but not at receiving until a couple of years ago. I don't see that happening much anymore.

Well, Jerry, he might have called you that, but after getting a fellow ref in hot water, this Sunday you're going to be reminded what payback is. Which is a shame. The refs should not be part of the game. The NFL is drowning in this crap. They finally fixed the stupid rule about not completing a catch if you lose it falling to the ground. They started the year with the impossible rule about not falling on a QB when you sack him, but they seem to have backed off on that. I'd like to see the rule book from about 1980 brought back. Let defenders play. Let all the players play. It's a tough game, not a dance where every move has to be choreographed a certain way, or a penalty gets called.

I think Clay misjudged it because it wasn't a typical Allen rocket. It was fluttering a little and didn't travel as much as Clay would have expected. I'm not excusing Clay. He was uncontested and it was up to him to get in position to make the catch. Anyway I agree, all Clay had to do was keep his feet and charge back for the ball. He might not have scored but there was plenty of time for that, if he'd gotten the first down. I asked that question, who still thinks we drafted the wrong Josh, last week. Got nothing but crickets. This guy is going to be really good.

Anyone still think we took the wrong Josh?

OK, on the off chance this wasn't sarcasm, I'm going to point out that Jack Nicklaus was a great golfer, perhaps the best or second best ever. Jack Nicholson was the actor who was in The Shining. Also -- I was a little sorry to see O'Leary get cut by the Bills. He was a middling talent, hard-working player. I guess he just didn't fit into the Bills long-range plans.

If the first and last halves of the Bills schedule were flipped, they would have started out 6-2 or better, and then had to eke out 4-4 the rest of the way. They might have had a chance, actually. Green Bay is falling apart, and if Allen is playing well and is healthy they don't lose to Houston (no Peterman special pick six at the end of the game). So if they get hot and win most of the rest, it won't be that surprising. The current talent level puts them around the middle of the league, so if they finish 7-9 or 8-8 it will be about right.

As for Mahomes, he's great no doubt but look at the personnel around him. When the Bills could have picked him, they were still trying to decide whether Tyrod was the answer, so it made sense to trade back, get White, and another first this past spring. Picking Mahomes last year while Taylor was still here, and not having the cap space to upgrade the rest of the roster, would have been a disaster. For one thing, we don't make the playoffs last year without White. Second, Mahomes was OK sitting and watching a great but aging QB, and waiting his turn while learning the game. Mahomes sitting behind a mediocre QB still trying to become better would not have gone down well.

Maybe it was thrown by Peterman, aiming at Coleman. Naturally it went straight toward a guy on the other team.

He is just as good a player as he was last year, but tweedle dee and tweedle dum replacing Wood and Incognito are just not opening holes. He's a guy who needs a hole -- he doesn't create them himself. He has just as good quickness and acceleration as before on the rare occasions when he has an opening. Keep him. He's a leader.

Whatever the rule is, it should be clarified. I've been seeing a lot more plays this year when the pile is stopped but a couple of O line road graders push the whole mess forward. In some cases runners who were stopped at the 2 or 3 yard line end up scoring. It can't be fun to be in the middle of that, with both teams pushing from opposite sides.

Let's just hope the rest of his game continues to develop. He's doing OK this year, no question about it, but there's a lot of improvement needed as he goes forward. He could turn into something really special.

It's really true that a lot of Bills fans wanted the team to draft Flutie #1 overall. Absolutely true.

I taped the game but it ran really long, so I didn't tape the last 2 minutes. Looking at the play by play on line, it looks like I missed the most exciting part.

It's now up to the Jags to figure out if he's worth that much going forward. He was effectively getting $99M for having one monster season. Just not worth the money here. Not the biggest bust in Bills history but he's on the short list.

Probably not, not with KC and NE in the mix, but the Steelers are playing very well lately, so you never know.

I guess this would be West Aurora. Maybe someday he'll make it back to East Aurora. BTW Aurora University is in Aurora Illinois, 40 miles from Chicago. I had the impression it was in Nebraska, but the NE reference was due to the fact Beebe went to school there.

All this steak business aside, I have wondered how things would have turned out if the Bills had used their pick to draft Mahomes. They would have put him into our offense, with very few legitimate receivers, and a clueless offensive coordinator. This year he would have been playing behind a terrible O line. Would he have been as good as he's been in KC? Would he have been any good at all?

After cutting two players over the past few days, the Bills had open roster spots they could have used to bring Humber back. They didn't do so. Possibly he'd already made an arrangement with NE (call Mueller and see if he can find evidence of collusion here), or possibly he was pissed and didn't want to return, or just maybe the Bills concluded he wasn't as good as the younger talent they have and wasn't going to be getting any better.

That's reasonable but a lot of rookie QBs do benefit from watching instead of trying to survive. What about the other question -- do Peterman and Anderson get cut, or just Peterman?

So when Allen is healthy, (1) does he play or watch, and (2) do we go with just Allen and Barkley for the rest of the year?

Success in the NFL can be self-sustaining. Players want to win rings so up to a point they will sacrifice money to be on a great team. Players who know they're not on winning teams focus on money. The exception that provides the rule is New England, where Brady could have raped the Patriots but chose only to make a fortune and not a king's ransom. This let the Pats put more quality players around him, and he gets to be regarded as the GOAT. (The actual GOAT is either Montana or Peyton.) The Bills had this going a generation ago. Their great front office brought in real talent and a deep coaching staff had them working together. The Bills had fun, and other teams' players wanted to play with them. Then Ralph, God bless him, lost it. Fired Polian, fired Butler, brought in obscenely terrible front office people, let his Detroit-based beancounter determine whether the Bills could sign particular players, ruined the scouting staff, paid lazy guys tens of millions and let good players walk away. Now they're fighting to get back on the winner side of the hill, and it's a lot easier getting to the loser side as they're finding out. The draft is supposed to tend teams toward parity but that hardly ever works. When it does work, it's great.