starrymessenger

Sunday's game is by far the Bills biggest challenge so far. As others have mentioned it will also be the Pats toughest game so far and the place will be rockin. I don't expect the Bills to win. But I do think a victory is possible. I feel pretty strongly that Allen will play better, and maybe a lot better, than he did yesterday. I don't have a fix on how good the Pats have been so far pressuring the QB but if Allen is given or is able to buy time, and if DS and Gore can take some of the heat off, he could take some of the shine off their outstanding secondary. They have O-line issues. Steelers were able to shut down Michel. If Edelman and Gordon are limited I can foresee a close game. Win or lose this contest should be an important building block for the rest of the year and beyond. Bills have more room to get better than do the Pats and they are headed in the right direction IMO. Could be a primer for the match ups later.

Haven't seen enuf yet to assess his hands and route running. Not surprising that he should be a little behind the curve since he was not used as a receiving TE at Ole Miss. But if those parts of his game develop he will be as good as Hoch and a holy terror, calling it now. Great job here by Beane and the scouts.

Bengals DL got away with a lot of holding yesterday (not just on Jerry, the two Philips as well) and it was pretty blatant. When next playing the Pats I would not support dirty play but I would err on the side of aggression.

Frank Gore is ridiculous. He knows how to run the ball and at 36 he can still get it done. Then there is the veteran leadership. I think that some fail to realize that without his busting out productive runs when the air had gone out of the Bills offence we probably lose today. Momentum is often a big factor in determining the result. Gore and Knox breathed life into an almost dead effort in the 4th quarter.

I think Jameis and Mike Evans are gonna choke out that kicker.

Josh is streaky. If we get the good Josh, if DS is good to go, if Edelman/Gordon are not 100% then we definitely have a puncher's chance against NE. That maybe sounds like a lot of ifs, but each "if" is a reasonable possibility.

I remember the Giant's fan reactions on draft night when they picked him. I guess sometimes fans get it right and sometimes they are flat out wrong. The kid can play and has a lot of poise.

I had him at C. Gave points and momentum to the opposition, left points on the field, missing on several good opportunities. Stared down his receivers in the 2nd half a lot. Made a couple of bad decisions, the kind they are trying to coach out of his game. Ball security was poor. He's capable of busting out with a big play at anytime, and he had a couple today but what you want to see is a steady hand. Didn't see it today. Gore and Knox get the game balls IMO.

Maybe he has been keeping a low profile as you suggest. But then the question remains "does he get paid?" A league suspension would void the guarantee, but if none is forthcoming then I think he gets paid. I guess we will just have to wait and see.

I think that after a few days the Pats probably realized just how crazy Brown really is. You can't have a guy who is flat out certifiable on your team. I do think Brown has a good case for getting paid though. He may have done or said (and written) things that brought him into disrepute in the eyes of many but I don't see how it reflected on the team. Also, as has been mentioned, the behaviour that voids the guarantee has to be prospective, meaning post signing. I don't think the Pats could reasonably argue that they thought they were employing a choir boy with no skeletons in his closet. That Brown came with substantial baggage should have been well understood.

I can see how managing this WR corps presents the Bills with difficult decisions and I wouldn't be surprised if they opt to stay the course for the time being. Zay has underperformed relative to expectations but as others have noted he may be a serviceable # 3 with ST utility albeit probably with limited upside. Guys like that have a place on an NFL roster. Foster blows hot and stone cold. Duke brings some impressive attributes to the table but nobody yet knows how well (or not) they translate against starting calibre LBs and DBs. They are all pretty much of equivalent value for now. So I think the Bills probably stay the course at this time (assuming Kroft isn't going to miss significant time).

The majority of Jets fans know that they have been turned into toads living upon the vapour of a dungeon and, understandably, they don't like it. In the best of cases their rebuild is about a year behind the Bills IMO. Thing is there is a real chance that a clueless organization continues to shoot itself in the foot in which case all bets are off, which is sort of a shame (if you are a Jets fan) because they really do have some nice pieces. This Gase guy, idk.

There are three likely first ballot HofF QBs currently active. Two have gone down with injury but not Tom. Some kind of strange voodoo going on there IMO.

Knox missed time in preseason. He hasn't yet adjusted to the zip on some of Allen's passes. Something he's probably not seen before.

Meh...I'd say check back later.

Sure. If you build it they will come. Bills are already getting a fair amount of early interest. Everybody wants to be first to the party.

Incredibly Gase, a supposed genius on offence, apparently didn't even want him. No better proof that he's totally clueless. Ok so they know where to find him. All is well.

Whats Sanchez up to these days?

Daboll's scheming and play calling. And the players readiness to execute his offence. So much of success in this league boils down to coaching.

Football gods are busting a gut laughing at Rosen right now. I can't remember a young QB more in need of correction attitude wise than Rosen, if one believes what was being said about him (at least some of which was definitely true). I also can't remember a young QB being more humiliated than Rosen, especially given his self importance. And the football gods are probably not through with him yet, if reports that the Fins are out to draft another QB in the first round are true. Maybe if it doesn't kill him it will make him stronger (and better).

Greggo completely bamboozled Mayfield last night. Maybe just a case of an experienced DC getting the better of a young QB. Or maybe Baker has issues making (or attempting to make) adjustments based on post snap reads. If so, the question becomes whether with experience he can develop this skill. If he can't he will certainly be limited. I was surprised to see how inaccurate some of his passes were last night even when he was going where he should with it. If he doesn't clean this up soon he's looking at a lot of turnovers coming up.

No one, not his most ardent pre-draft critics, have ever doubted Josh Allen's ability to throw the long ball. He and Mahomes probably have the strongest arms in the NFL. And Allen's long ball was also always credited with reasonable to above average accuracy. It was the perceived inaccuracy of his short passing game that was flagged as a potential career ending liability (along with occasional poor decision making). Given a pocket to work from dude has the wherewithal to be one of the better long ball artist in the game without question. I'm pretty sure eventually we will see more of it, just a question of when Daboll decides to deploy it. Agree that we have an NFL passing attack. IMO a credible long ball threat very much helps to preserve it, especially against the better, more complete Ds we will in due course be facing. Like NE for example.

Yes he is pushing the ball downfield and unquestionably the short/intermediate range passes are going to continue to be the staple of the team's passing attack, as it is of just about every teams that has a good passing game. Nobody lives/dies predominately with the long ball. And of course there is nothing wrong with weekly 250 yard passing performances. What I'm saying is that something that would help our O, to help put it over the top, would be to better establish the long ball as a credible threat. Against weaker teams 350 yards of passing O would be nice to see once in a while. I think we have the passer and the receivers to do (more) of that. If you don't think that is true, I don't know what to tell you, except that we disagree. By the way, the Jets had a couple of really bad corners playing in that first game. It's largely because we picked on them that we won. Y'know, John Brown. Just saying I'd like to see a bit more of that. Oh, so maybe you don't think Allen is capable of that. Well then again we disagree.

Yes the Bills O has been fairly well balanced and diversified overall. It certainly hasn't been conservative. The short passing game has been and will obviously continue to be central and it's been great to see Allen execute it as well as he has so far. The short passing game has been a question with him and he appears to be answering it. But I'm thinking ahead to what more we need to do when we play a really solid defence, like in a couple of weeks. To leave open the short passing game as a viable option I think we need to establish the long ball as a credible threat along the lines of when Allen overthrew Brown versus the Giants. Had they been able to connect on that it could very well have broken the G-Men and opened the door to the type of dominance that some, including me, have yet to see. That would enable us to consistently blow out weaker teams, and make us more competitive with better ones. Allen has the arm and with Brown, Foster and Zay their WRs are good enuf to support this approach IMO.

Not really up on the Bengals so there is that. I see that they are having O-line issues and that they favour a pass heavy O. If they stick with it that favours the Bills. Subject to exactly what their run blocking ability is right now, I would have thought their gameplan would be to at least try to establish the run. I like both Mixon and GB. If they can do that their passing game would benefit and John Ross is the type of receiver that can create problems for our secondary if they can get him in single coverage on the outside. What I'd like to see is for the Bills to put in a convincing performance on both sides of the ball, but especially on offence. JA's progress has been very encouraging but sooner or later Daboll will have to open things up. I want to see how Allen handles that.