Utah John

Wilson has the rookie wobbles really bad. Sitting him down is the best thing for him. Don't ruin him like many other talented rookie QBs do. Let him learn.

I'm not sure at all that Hamlin has the cover skills needed to play the role that Frazier wants for the team defense concept. But he's not the weakness of the current defense. The 3rd string CBs are what's letting other teams move the ball. We really need White back for the late season and playoffs.

There are four good NFC teams: SF, Minn, Dallas, Philly. Who's the best? I don't know. Could be SF but Philly is still looking excellent, thought the NFCE is a dog fight and could hurt both Philly and Dallas. Let's see who gets key injuries the rest of the way, or a bad luck loss that costs them a seeding position. So McDaniel has done well, yes, but the Dolphins have been piling up very good players for a few years now. Trading Tunsil to the Texans for high draft picks has worked out well. Tua has finally figured things out. And with Waddle and Hill, they can score. Comparing this year to the past couple of years shows that the previous coach wasn't that good, and also shows that Hill is a very dominant player.

This is the main point. He's not consistent, and he's not reliable. The Bills offense needs to stay on the field, and when Davis drops 3rd down passes that would move the chains, and the Bills have to give up the ball, that hurts both the offense and the defense.

I haven't watched any of the Lions games this year. I figured, why bother? They've been bad forever. So they've won three games, which is good, congrats, but do they have any good players? I know their QB is Goff, the guy the Rams tossed aside for having a rag arm. What else do they have?

I think McDermott is coaching mid-season games to challenge his team and get them ready for late-season and postseason games. The Bills hadn't run a 2-pt conversion try all year, and he wanted to put them into a challenging situation so they're prepared for it when they need it. They were playing an inferior opponent, the Bills had a good lead, and McD experimented a little. Good for him. This was the right time and the right place and the right opponent.

I think there's a problem on both sides of the ball, that other teams have figured out what our DC and OC will do in a given situation. Frazier built a superb defensive machine, and when everyone is on the field it's dominant. But it requires A or A+ players at many positions, which wasn't a problem last year but now there are C or C+ players in multiple positions. So Frazier is keeping things simple, and the other teams no longer fear the unknown when they venture downfield. This is no criticism of Frazier, who's not letting the D collapse or be unprepared. It's just that Frazier can't be full-Frazier with the tools he has at hand. We have the opposite problem with a similar result on offense. Ken Dorsey spent the offseason dreaming up new plays and formations, and he shot his wad by the third game of the season. Now he's running the same things over and over, and the other teams have figured out the route combinations, the frequency of which plays get called in various situations, and Josh's personal tendencies. Now they're sitting on routes and our guys are not getting open. Our offense problems are not due very much to injuries (though boy wouldn't Crowder help, running from the slot), they're due to inexperience and lack of creativity on the part of our OC.

Can we please forget about Beasley? The Bills saw his capabilities dropping away last year, so they didn't bring him back (and brought in Crowder to replace him). Beasley got a shot with Tampa Bay earlier this year and lasted about one game. He just hit the wall and had to hang 'em up. Good player, just got to the end of the road. Can't criticize the Bills for the Crowder signing, which looked very promising before he got hurt. What really hurt the Bills front office was McKissic backing out of his contract. That is why the Bills spent a second on James Cook and traded a seventh for Hines. The Cook pick could have been another WR, another OL, or some other position of need. (Good news, Cook looks very good, probably better than McKissic, so in the long run maybe this is in our favor. But this year's team could have been better with McKissic plus another high draft pick.)

If McKissic had stayed with the Bills, we'd have NOT used a draft pick on Cook, and we wouldn't have traded another draft pick for Hines. This isn't what "working out in the long run" looks like to me.

For the benefit of all the Bills fans who don't live in WNY, just how bad is the storm? It sounds like the Southtowns and probably the lake shore down to Fredonia and Dunkirk are the worst hit areas, as usual. Is the stadium getting buried? It's a shame the Bills lose the benefit of a home game. Public safety comes first of course but if the storm was something that could be managed to allow the game to be played in Orchard Park, that will make things worse. I grew up in West Seneca and actually worked at Rich Stadium, selling beer in the stands, when it first opened. So I liked the OP location. But putting it in Tonawanda or someplace between Buffalo and Niagara Falls would have avoided the worst of the heavy snow events. Now the new stadium is going to be right in the middle of the snowbelt, too.

Well, the Bills beat themselves when they were in first place, so...

So there are two main points from the OP. Was the QB sneak the right call? Yes I think it was. It's the safest play there is, and I don't ever remember a fumble happening on the center-QB exchange. The only other option was an intentional safety, but that would have given the Vikings a 2 point deficit and the ball and an opportunity for another Jefferson catch to get into FG range. So no. The other was about Dorsey not keeping the offense working well in the second half, and I think that criticism is spot on. Also, all these red zone interceptions seem to be coming from defenders lurking and waiting to undercut our receiver routes. Wake up, Ken and Josh. The league knows what you like to do.

How exciting that the Bills have played in the Game of the Year the past two years. Exciting isn't the word to describe the fact the Bills lost them both. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is not a good look. Another topic: Does Jefferson run crazy like that against our first teamers? White, Hyde, Poyer, and even Elam would all have made a huge difference. And losing Edmunds for the second half really hurt the ability to control their TE on the short routes. Sure, injuries happen to all teams, but when so many happen to one area of the defense, it just plain hurts the team. Thank heavens Milano is back. That guy is critically important to the overall defense.

FWIW, on that first pass to Diggs, Diggs was well past the DB, but had to wait for the pass to arrive, and he got tackled. If Josh had led him down the field, it's a TD, and Josh never throws that first brutal int.

He was part of the house-clearing done between seasons, to help the Bills not get trampled by strong running attacks. He, Star, and a couple of others were not kept around because they just couldn't get the job done. He's a great guy and I applauded his commitment to get back to playing after his injury. But despite being a great guy he's not a great player.

Irsay might be tanking, but there at least half a dozen teams with worse records than the Colts. Some of them are already so incompetent that they might not win another game, snatching the coveted first overall pick out of the Colts' hands.

Yes, actually. Norm Van Brocklin was an excellent QB who retired in 1960 and immediately became the HC of the expansion Minnesota Vikings. He lasted six years, compiling a record of 29-51-4.

Levy already had extensive experience as a coach and as a HC in the CFL. But at least Saturday has a long participation in football. That makes him a less crazy choice than Herschel Walker or Mehmet Oz or Kari Lake running for the Senate.

1. Ted Lasso is a fictional character 2. Ted Lasso's character WAS a previous coach of college (American) football, so he at least is familiar with the duties of being a HC.

Back in the day, there were jugglers on the Ed Sullivan show (yeah I'm old) who would get plates spinning on the top of sticks -- the sticks were maybe five feet long, standing vertically on the stage, and the plates were regular dinner plates. The plate and stick would stand upright if the plate was kept spinning. The juggler would get six or eight or ten plates spinning all at once, and of course the trick was to keep them all going fast enough not to fall over. Beane is juggling plates. Some of his plates will break earlier than expected, and others will stop spinning for the Bills and move somewhere else for more money. Beane is trying to get new plates ready to spin before too many old ones stop. But it's really hard. He needs to get nearly all his personnel decisions right, to keep enough cash on hand and plenty of draft picks in the bank, guessing which players will need to be replaced and when, and not pissing off the guys who he thinks he's going to have to replace (Poyer and Hyde, I'm afraid, are on that list, and so might be White also if he can't get all the way back from his injured knee.) No team keeps the plates spinning forever. Carolina had a big strong mobile QB with a rocket arm, also, and they had a whole cupboard full of plates fall to the ground at the same time. Beane lived through that and doesn't want to go there again, and except for Von Miller he hasn't changed his process. Get A or A- guys all across the board, not A+ guys except for Allen and Diggs because A+ guys cost too much. Get them believing in each other. Get great coaches. Win a lot and be attractive to FAs who want to get a ring. When a key player is injured or leaves, the team concept absorbs that hit like a sponge and rebounds nearly back into shape. Keeping THAT going is a much better plan than having five or six A+ players and a bunch of B- and C guys, who create weaknesses. And then when one of those A+ guys goes down or goes away, the hole can't be addressed by the team working together, because the other players on the roster aren't nearly as good. Josh's contract is going to cost a lot more in the near future, and it's going to be very hard to retain a dozen or more A players at the same time. Beane is a master juggler but at some point too many plates will stop spinning at the same time. So yes, definitely, there is a window, and we're either in the middle of it or maybe slightly already getting closer to the edge. Last year was the year to win it all, and then this year and maybe next year to become a historically great dynasty. Damned 13 seconds.

Edmunds or Milano, depending on whether they each play after being banged up. I think our D line will terrorize Wilson, and he'll be unable to avoid mistakes in the middle of the field. The LBs will feast.

The ONLY poke in the eye thing I've ever heard Josh say was a couple of years ago when he told the New York City sportswriters covering the two New Jersey teams, that there's only one football team in New York. And it's not either of those two. (BTW with the election coming up, this won't happen, but I'd love it if New York governor Hochul offered a bet on the game to the New Jersey governor. Maybe some time in the future, when she's on her last year in office.) I have NEVER heard Josh say anything negative about any other person, whether a player or someone else. I think it boils down to the fact that he's a genuinely nice guy.

Red helmets, white jerseys, blue pants. America's true team in red white and blue.

WTF, WFT?

It sure seemed like that. But I think the brain trust just wanted to beat a weak Packers team without showing too much to the Jets before next week's game. They ran up a big lead, then held off the Packers and won the game. They won the game, by a comfortable margin, and some people are worried because they didn't thrash the Packers like they did to the Steelers. What the Bills are doing is stacking Ws, not blowouts.