Utah John

This game turned out differently than expected. One thing that stood out was the lousy play of Tremaine Edmunds. Shades of Jairus Byrd, a Bills safety who had a big year with the Bills in 2014, then signed a huge FA contract with the Saints, where he completely underperformed. Edmunds did what he was supposed to do with the Bills, occupying space in the middle of the defense, and then he signed a huge FA contract with the Bears. I watched him last night, avoiding collisions until he could clean up a tackle a teammate made. He had an egregious missed tackle on a Commanders' receiver, and just whiffed and did nothing to try to catch up with the guy he missed. After watching the Bills defense hustling at all times this year, it was a shocking difference. Whether or not he was a contributor to the Bills defensive success remains a question we can debate, but Edmunds and his massive contract are now contributing to the Bears defensive struggles. Looks like he got paid and now he's happy to be a passenger instead of a driver on the new team's defense.

Often the seats in the back row don't recline, so if you're not lucky enough to have empty seats in your row, you're really screwed. Who knows what the league would do since this will be the very first time an NFL team, or any sports team for that matter, gets on a plane and flies somewhere.

My brother keeps reminding me that what we do or say or think has no bearing on how the Bills play. Hmm. I don't believe him, of course. So I promise to be as pessimistic as possible until Sunday, to help counter nuiwek's good/bad vibes.

Oh, come on. Make them try the hot ones. As for Miami, it's true, it was a conspiracy. All the ranch dressing in Buffalo was poisoned because only ignorant people from Miami would eat that with wings. I wasn't on the team. And it wasn't actual hockey, just hockey on the roads where the buses picked up students to go to the Main Street campus, which is where most classes were held back then.

Not bothering Hah! I lived in Wilkeson for one year (75-76) before I transferred away from UB. A bunch of guys put together a street hockey team and called themselves the Wilkeson Swords. You're dating yourself if you get the reference.

https:////www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/dirt-bike-riding-goon-who-stomped-on-mother-s-car-arrested/ss-AA1hJiYv?ocid=msedgntp&pc=W099&cvid=384239701b584d559cb04ed827fc4957&ei=15

Zach Wilson is inconsistent, but when he's on he's pretty good. Good arm, makes the tough throws. But then he gets stupid and careless for a few series and that's the ball game. Who knows whether he'll get his issues fixed. Josh Allen did. I'm not saying that Wilson will ever be in Allen's tier, but the point is a young QB with a good arm can become better. If Wilson gets Jordan Palmer's phone number, who knows how good he can get. Forget about Denver. Their offense is about average, but their defense is incredibly bad. They give up 10 touchdowns to the Dolphins and looked even worse doing it than you'd think. Then they make Fields look like a great young QB, when he's generally pretty mediocre. If the Bills played the Broncos this year, the league would make Josh Allen wear a blindfold to keep the score in double digits.

About the jet lag issue: It's a five hour difference between Buffalo and London. It's a three hour difference between San Francisco and Buffalo. For West Coast teams playing on the East Coast, the time difference is real but manageable. So what's the big deal There's no reason why a team in the eastern US should feel totally discombobulated when playing in London. The reason most Americans feel lousy at first when traveling to the UK or elsewhere in Europe is the airlines' preference for traveling overnight. You end up not getting much sleep on the flight, arriving in the UK in the morning (their time), stumbling through the first day trying not to sleep, and eventually catching up over a few days. This is not that much different from taking a red-eye flight from California to the East Coast, which I've done many times to my regret. It's a bad choice. If you're flying eastward over several time zones, it's better to leave in the morning (departure location) and arrive in the evening (arrival location). Then you have some trouble getting to sleep that first night, but after a partial night's sleep you're pretty much OK the next day and are fine the day after that, assuming you're able to get a full night's sleep the second night you're there. I don't know when the Bills are planning to travel, but they should do it soon, and they should try to travel during a day and not overnight. By the end of the game, Jones looked like Sam Howell did near the end of the Bills' whooping of the Commanders. Both of them looked completely shellshocked, and were trying to protect themselves when they went back to pass instead of looking hard for the play downfield. Jones and Howell were both fortunate not to have had a serious injury, although both were probably sore for days afterward. What's the verdict on Daboll as Giants' HC? It's becoming clear that the Patriots' success was down to Brady and not Belichick. Could be that Daboll's success in Buffalo was due to Josh Allen and not Daboll's own abilities. Even with the Bills mediocre O line the years Daboll was with the Bills, he managed to craft an effective offense. This year, boy it's bad.

Having two good guards for the first time while Josh has been in Buffalo means a whole lot of things have gotten better quickly. Cook is the same guy who struggled most of last year, and now he's ripping off 8 or 10 yards at a go. That added balance makes everything else harder to defend.

Putting the Bills over the Chiefs does make sense. The Chiefs tried hard to let the Jets beat them, but the refs insisted on the Chiefs getting the win. Under fair conditions, the Chiefs would be 2-2 and have lost to the same team the Bills lost to, and another loss besides, while the Bills have put up three crushing wins, including one over the Dolphins. Aside from all that, the Chiefs offense is not as good this year. Their WRs disappear, and only Kelce remains as a reliable target. While the Bills offense is much better this year.

The refs screwed both teams on SNF. On the safety, the Chiefs player clearly grabbed the facemask of the Jet on the 1 yard line, and the penalty should have been called at that point. The song and dance about him pulling the facemask harder after they got into the end zone is just embarrassing CYA for the league. Two free points for the Jets, and the ball back. But far worse was the critical play where Gardner was called for defensive holding. There were three really outrageous mistakes. First, there wasn't any holding. Second, the official didn't throw the flag for that penalty until AFTER he saw the interception made. And third, one of the Chiefs O linemen was holding a Jet for at least five seconds, right in front of the official. On every bet, someone wins and someone loses. Mahomes made a very smart play. He was thinking about getting the W, not covering the spread. Good job. Wilson threw accurate passes against the Bills after Rodgers' injury, and in the second half last night he was playing at a solid B+ level, at least up to the critical fumble. I think the Jets D certainly can do to the Dolphins what the Bills did to the Dolphins. Strong Jets D line against the Dolphins weak and injured O line will be the big difference.

Yeah, could be at least 7 openings, but there's no shortage of retreads, college coaches, and flash in the pan coordinators available to move up for the big bucks.

It was McDermott who outclassed McDaniel yesterday, not Dorsey. McDermott is the one who figured out how to slow and then stop the Dolphins' juggernaut. He did it by attacking the weakness on Miami's offense. They have a great set of players at the skill positions but Bills fans know all too well that without a solid O line the skill positions are wasted. McD attacked the Miami O line, which wasn't great to begin with and which had lost two starters including its best player. The difference was that our O line is FINALLY playing well, and the Miami D line is as bad as the Miami O line -- actually the Miami D overall is bad. I can't recall the announcers calling the name of ANY of the Miami defenders except Kohou whom Stefon Diggs embarrassed repeatedly. When the Dolphins killed the Broncos, the Broncos offense actually had quite good stats. It was the Broncos D that was the problem. So the Dolphins put up 70 against the Broncos horrible D and the Bills put up 48 on the Dolphins weak D. Don't get me wrong about Dorsey. I'm not criticizing him at all, it's just that I'm not sending his sainthood nomination to the Vatican quite yet. Let's see what he does against the 49ers.

The last time the Bills played the Jags, they played horribly in Jacksonville and lost even though at that time the Bills had much the better team. Who knows why that is. The Bills generally have the Dolphins' number but the Jags have had the Bill's number for decades, going back to the Jags eliminating the Bills from the playoffs in Kelly's last year. The time change is really going to work against the Bills, what with the Jags staying over after their game yesterday. I think the Bills ought to be traveling to England tomorrow or Wednesday at the latest.

This was possibly the worst-officiated game I've ever seen. The most blatant mistake of course was letting the extra play go on after the third quarter expired. That could have led to a Packers TD and put the game into question. There were two calls against the Lions where even the TV referee consultant said were wrong, and they led to a Packers TD. It's a good thing the Lions were so much better than the Packers, that a complete travesty didn't take place. My Lifelong Obsession With the Worst Team in the NFL - The Atlantic (Tim Alberta author) https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/detroit-lions-nfl-football-fan-defeat/675220/ Worth a read. So much of his experience mirrors mine as a Bills fan. The Bills just got good a few years before the Lions managed it, otherwise the similarities would be uncanny. Here's the beginning: Even now i can still see him, the man in gold and white, streaking down the sideline all alone. And then the ball was in the air. It hung up there for what felt like my entire childhood, spiraling in slow motion, traveling 50 yards in total. I remember gasping. Just a few minutes earlier, my favorite team—my first true love—the Detroit Lions, had taken a three-point lead over the hated Green Bay Packers. It was the first round of the 1993 NFC playoffs, and it was my first time at a Lions game. The sound of the 80,000 souls crammed into the Pontiac Silverdome—a glorified warehouse in the blue-collar suburbs of Detroit—was deafening, a roar of humanity unlike anything I’d ever heard, the decibel level shaking the cement beneath our bleacher seats. But now, with less than one minute remaining, as the football dropped into the hands of Sterling Sharpe, the man in gold and white, there was silence. The Packers’ unproven young quarterback, Brett Favre, had just made the most spectacular touchdown throw of his career and eliminated the Lions from the playoffs. I was inconsolable. The Lions had been the better team; even a kid could see that. We’d outgained the Packers, out-converted them, outplayed them. But we’d lost anyway—in dramatic, dream-shattering fashion. It was too much for my 7-year-old emotions to process. So, I wept. First in the stands as time expired, then in the swarming, beer-soaked concourse as my family searched for the exit, and for the entire hour-long car ride home. Finally, as we pulled into our driveway, my dad spun the radio knob leftward, turning down the postmortem show. “It’s just a game,” he said, smiling gently. “We’ll win the next one.” It was the only lie my dad ever told me.

Also working against the Dolphins is the fact that they won't have the opposing team sitting in the baking sun while they're in the shade. The same thing that happened to the Bills last year caught the Broncos last Sunday. If the Dolphins expect the Bills to be too wiped out to play well, they could be a little too overconfident. What's the over/under on sacks of Tua? (It would be bad form to ask for the o/u on Tua concussions, wouldn't it?)

The worst part of Thursday night football is the damage it does to the players and coaches. They have a regular schedule for game planning, healing injuries and bruises, coaching up the plays for the game, etc during the week for Sunday games. Monday night screws it up to an extent, but Thursday is just too far out of the healing/coaching schedule. I don't think ANY of the players prefer Thursday night games to a steady dose of Sunday at 1 pm local time.

We lived in California for years, and I agree about the nice early start times. Later we moved to Alaska, another hour west, so the early games started at 9 am our time. That was almost too early. That said, if "the biggest benefit to the west coast is that MNF/TNF are done by 8:30pm" that's not really saying much about the west coast.

Even better, stick with Nathan Peterman and use the Josh Allen pick on a defensive lineman no one's ever heard of.

Not mentioned in the NFL.com quote was how many yards Cook has. I looked it up. It's 267. That averages to 89 per game, which would put him over 1500 for the season. And he got his 267 yards on 44 carries, which is 6.07 yards per carry. All this without any really long runs. He's getting close to ripping one for 75 yards, which will make his stats look even better.

Let Josh be Josh.

I think it's Poyer's turn, or Rousseau's. So far we've had highlight games from Milano and Bernard, Floyd and Oliver and Jones got sacks, and Hyde and White got picks last game (and White had the kind of game we remember him having all the time). This defense is loaded with players, and it's hard to tell which ones will pop up with special plays in any given week. But for a safety playing against Miami's receivers, or a pass rusher against Tua, I'm expecting either Poyer or Rousseau to be the star this week.

Peter King has indeed been a Bills supporter over the years. I think what's going on is that the sports media have decided not to feature the Bills after the great but disappointing season last year. (The NFL itself has a little more integrity -- Josh Allen OPOW last week, and Bernard DPOW this week). Matt Milano had an incredible interception against the Raiders, and it didn't show up on any of the highlight chatterboxes for week 2. I think Bills and Raiders fans were the only ones aware of that play. Giving the benefit of the doubt, maybe the media are just trying to find new stories and new angles. The only story about the Bills over the offseason was Stefon Diggs' supposed unhappiness. So now the Browns have finally shown signs of life, and it's time for Peter King and others to give them some attention. Maybe that's all it is.

More to the point, our O line gave up zero sacks to the vaunted Commanders' D line with four 1st round draft picks. Allen often had all day to pass and had very few pressures. Our O line, all across the board, is shaping up to be, well, not really a strength, but not a liability any more. Brown is part of that. (Two much better guards are the biggest reason.)

Interesting perspective. My impression of Daboll was that he was actually good at making adjustments during the game. Probably it was more a case of him having a lot of plays ready to go, and he just went to the ones that were working.