Utah John

The Bucs beat the Pats in early October, before NE started playing well. And that was by 2 points. The Bucs beat the Colts in a really good, tough, competitive game that was fun to watch, and that could have gone either way. But, the Colts are the unBills. Where we can't run, they can't pass very well. Their offensive strength was countered by Tampa's defensive strength. Tampa is NOT as good on pass defense as they are on run defense. The Bills are still extremely talented. If Josh gets time to pass, the Bills should win.

Washington is playing pretty well, finally, but they're not great. So, how did they beat Tampa, and why can't we follow their method? There's no part of Washington's team that's better than the equivalent part on the Bills. There is no reason at all the Bills can't win.

That turned into quite a game. I guess the orange slices Roethlisberger's mom brought to the game really kicked in after halftime. The Vikings were playing like the drought-era Bills, searching hard for a way to lose. They almost found one, after holding a 29 point lead in the third quarter. If we could draft a guy like that in the third round, he'd be ours. That seems to be McBeane's limit on RBs.

McBeane built this year's team to beat KC, and wasn't looking in the rearview to see what other teams were doing to beat us. Other teams saw our strength was getting ahead quickly and forcing other teams to try to beat us in the passing game, which they're not going to do. They saw our front office struggle to find and keep the right linemen on both sides, and figured their best chance to win was to out-muscle our lines. Considering how badly our O line has played, and how much Josh still has accomplished, I think this might be the best year of his career so far. Statistically, no, but he's been running for his life so many times and still making plays.

How many times did the Bills's D stop the runner for no gain? How many for losses? I wasn't counting but I think there must have been 8-10 plays for no gain and 5-6 for a loss. OTOH there were probably 8-10 plays where the Pat RB assisted by the O line just pushed the Bills D backwards for 10 yards. The moral of the story is that the Bills CAN stop some runs all of the time, and all runs some of the time, but they can't stop all the runs all the time. But who CAN stop an NFL attack all the time? No one. The Bills D is not the problem. Our lightweight O line is the problem. Once the Bills figured out that Milano could run through the gap left by the pulling guard, resulting in two big negative plays, the Pats' running attack lost its spark. It's a shame that no one figured out what to do on those plays until so late in the game.

This game went almost exactly as many Bills fans expected. The weather was a huge factor (and could have been worse if the forecasted snow had appeared), and it disrupted the passing game more than it did the running game. And it's no surprise that the Bills aren't built to run well, and big powerful O lines give the Bills a tough time. All that said, we were very close to winning. Two fourth quarter red zone trips, and no points. Bass just barely missed his FG attempt and of course if he'd made it the Bills would have been going for another FG instead of needing a TD to win. This is a tough loss but we were one play from celebrating. The Bills still have a very strong team and just like almost all teams they have a couple of weaknesses. They're still definitely in the playoff hunt and will do well in domed stadiums and warm-weather locations. The dream of a SB trip this year is NOT dead. The Bills definitely need a strong, brawling, tough OG. Which is exactly what they thought they were getting when they moved up in the draft to grab Cody Ford in the second round. Every team misses on high picks occasionally. This year it looks like they found a good RT in the draft so maybe they're getting the hang of evaluating O line players.

Rats, I read the schedule too quickly, sorry, and thanks for pointing that out. Their other game is against the Titans, not the Bucs. The Dolphins could have the defense to stop the deHenry'd Titans so the same logic applies. They could make it to 10-7, and once again be just outside the playoffs.

One move I'd like to see is McBeane poach J.C. Jackson from the Pats (serves them right for poaching Stefon Gilmore from us). Jackson will be an unrestricted FA after this year. Jackson paired with White, while Poyer and Hyde are still playing so well, would be great, plus of course that weakens the Pats.

The Dolphins have two cupcakes and then the Bucs and Pats. They always play the Pats tough, and it's possible they'll catch the Bucs when the Bucs have the one seed locked up. So, yeah, who knows. I thought the Dolphins would be much better this year than they started out being, and I don't know why they sucked so badly early in the season. i don't think even finishing 10-7 is a lock for a WC slot this year, not with all the pretty good teams in the AFC all aiming for 11 wins or better. But if they do make it, they'll be a tough out.

If you watch the glory years Bills games, you'll see that for the no-huddle to work you need a RB like Thurman Thomas running behind a strong O line, plus an excellent QB and receivers. We have the latter two components but not the former two. Also I think the way plays are called is really different. Daboll is cooking up route combinations and blocking schemes as the game is underway, and giving that info to Allen. Kelly often called his own plays, which he could do well at that time but it's a lot more complicated now. So, no. I don't think it's a good idea.

Pat Paulsen. Presidential candidate in the 60s, from the Stag Party. OK, it was just on Laugh-In but he was terrific. Belichick is a great coach but not a great GM. He has always struggled to get good WRs. Occasionally it works out (Randy Moss), and he usually has good slot receivers (Amendola, Edelman), but generally this is the weakest part of the team. If they get lucky and draft or sign someone really good next year, the real challenge for Jones will be to keep that guy happy by hitting long passes with velocity. So far I haven't seen anything to suggest that Jones has particularly good arm. What he does have is accuracy, and a very good awareness of where his guys are and where the other team's guys are. By the way, comparing Jones to Brady is silly. The things Jones does well, Brady does better. and Brady still has a much better arm while drawing Social Security than Jones does as a young guy.

These overall stats don't tell the story. The Bills racked up insane stats against weak teams, and they've struggled against good teams or (Jags) teams with strong D lines. The most (ONLY) important stat is: four losses so far. Last year there was a long stretch where the Bills offense was just unstoppable. D coordinators get paid to deal with challenges like the ones the Bills presented, and they have done so. A strong D line and a competent defensive backfield will stop the Bills. This combination was installed to stop the Chiefs, and it worked, and then people tried it against us, and it worked still. Now it's up to our great O coordinator to step up and figure a way to counter the counter -- how to keep the offense running well against the types of defenses being thrown up at us. I've said before that the problem is the Bills were built to beat the Chiefs, and while we had our focus there we didn't see what other teams were doing to beat us. Other teams looked hard at our athletic but small O line and our athletic but small D line, and figured there was something there to exploit. So they did. And now to some extent we're trying to play last year's game on this year's field. Kansas City figured out how to counter the counter, and they've turned their season around. We need to do the same. Come on Daboll, let's see how good you REALLY are.

It's supposed to be John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave Now if he was a DB and was perpetually getting toasted, then maybe smoldering would be right. This. Brown's effectiveness would be diminished even more by teams playing two deep safeties most of the time.

The Bills aren't getting sacks but (a) they're getting pressures and (b) their pass defense is outstanding. It's been #1 in the NFL and might still be. So I'm not so worried about opponents passing. Jones is a very precocious rookie, playing like a guy with experience, but Frazier is second only to Belichick in thinking up ways to confuse rookie QBs. The run defense is the problem. The Pats don't have great backs but they have a great O line, and that's our kryptonite. I think the overall problem is that the Bills were built to beat the Chiefs, and they accomplished that, but while they had their eye on that goal, several other teams figured beating the Chiefs was so 2020, and they all bulked up into incredible hulks on their lines, and learned how to play two deep safeties and be patient. The game has changed in a year and the Bills aren't built to play bully-ball with the big guys. The only good way for the Bills to win is to jump out to a lead and force the other team to pass. But, getting out to a hot start has been eluding the Bills lately. Fix that against the Pats and I think the Bills should win easily.

The Titans are a shell of the team that beat the Bills. They're 8-4 (same as NE). The Bills are better than either of the teams I saw today, and there's no reason they can't beat NE twice. If Baltimore can lose a couple of games, the One Seed is available.

https://twitter.com/SandoNFL/status/1464072647277363202 You have to cut and paste the entire link into your browser. I can't get the entire thing to work so you can just click on it.

Well duh...you live in friggin' Buffalo. So it snows there and it's cold here. Life is good.

I bounced around at UB through various college majors before taking an intro to meteorology course offered by the physics department. I was hooked, and I never looked back. Had to transfer to SUNY Albany to pursue the major. It was a great career, taking me to places all over the country. I hope whatever you settled on has worked out as well for you as meteorology did for me.

Global warming itself is not going to make a lot of difference with respect to avoiding cold winters. But global warming is causing climate change, and THAT is going to play havoc with weather everywhere. Synoptic snow? You are revealing yourself as a person with actual meteorological knowledge, my friend. As a professional meteorologist, I find your post to be extremely informative and accurate. When I was growing up in West Seneca, we had relatives in Newfane NY, north of us and not very far from Lake Ontario. They hardly ever got hammered with deep snow. They said they thought they were living in God's country.

I thought Buffalo was cold when I lived there but having lived in Laramie Wyoming (before Josh was even born), Omaha Nebraska, and now Alaska I can tell you there are far colder places. Lots of snow in Buffalo of course, and of course the accumulation depends on where you live as others have said. Strictly from a PR perspective, it would be better if the new stadium was inside Buffalo to avoid most of the big lake effect storms, but if the wind is from the southwest instead of the south, downtown can get nailed too. But so what. Yes it snows there. It's SERIOUSLY cold here (Fairbanks Alaska) where we fortunately warmed up to -1F a couple of days ago and will be close to -30F again on Saturday night. And it's dark, with only a few hours of daylight. We had snow this year in September, while it was still summer. And it chills your heart to know that winter isn't here yet. And the winters are LONG -- we'll have deep snow on the ground until early May. There are a lot of celebrities who act as if the only two places in the country where a person could live are downstate New York and southern California. Other people think the only places where a person could live are NFL cities, and so comparisons like this article are important for some reason. It is what it is. You live where you live for a variety of reasons, and which reasons are most important depends on your personal preferences.

Quite right. The problem during the drought was we always needed our draft picks to produce at a high level right away, because the core of the team was usually not good. We didn't have time to watch them develop. The McBeane miracle has been we now have that core of the team playing very well, so if guys like Edmunds and Knox and Oliver weren't all that impressive to start, we could still win while they figured it all out.

A big reason Knox is so much better this year is the offseason work he put in. (Any similarity to Josh Allen in this regard is purely intentional.) He worked with Kelce and other top TEs to improve his route recognition and running, and apparently did some kind of training routines to work on his hands. He still drops the occasional pass but no more than any receiver does. There's been a lot of Beane criticism lately for making a lot of moves but not making much improvement on the O line. And if Tre White is out for a while, the dropoff in CB talent is going to be another area of criticism. But for doggedly sticking with Knox while Knox figured things out, McBeane deserve a lot of credit. Other teams have spent high draft picks on TEs, and some TE FAs have been getting paid a lot, but McBeane played the cards they had and it's turned out well. And all three have come close to being called busts by Bills fans. It looks likely that sometimes it just takes a couple of years for a young player to figure out the game.

Knox is just a different guy than Kelce. Kelce is the Chiefs' version of Beasley, the guy who gets open to convert third downs into firsts. Kelce also is a threat downfield but a lot of his catches are the shorter variety where he gets open through superior knowledge and quickness rather than the speed and downfield threat that Knox has. I'm not criticizing either guy. Kelce is the best TE in football. What Knox brings is a different set of tools. I don't think Knox will have Kelce-like numbers as long as we have Beasley getting all the quick shots, and I think Beasley is the best man on the team for those short routes.

I just realized the Bills already have four first-round picks on the DL. Star Lotuleilei was picked by the Panthers in the first round.

That's not a tough bet considering all our guys are just backups who are pretending to be starters.