hondo in seattle

Belichick was aware, of course, of how Bill Walsh moved on from Montana before Montana was completely done. A lot of 49er fans were upset at the time. But Walsh ended up winning Lombardi's with two different QBs: Montana and Young. In Walsh's case, moving on from an aging HOFer worked out well.

My gut is telling me: Be Afraid. We're facing Reid, Mahomes, Kelce, and a good KC offense with a defense that's a bloodied mess. The matchup on the other side of the ball - our O versus their D - is far more even. I fear losing by two or more scores. But I also hope. I hope that McD (as DC) and Josh have great games that turn the result in our favor despite the long parade of walking wounded.

Our D is so banged up that it's hard not to see KC scoring a bunch of points. That means Josh will want to play Superman. Hopefully, it doesn't lead to what the media likes to call, "The Full Josh Allen Experience" - including some turnovers. I'm hoping for a couple of things from these two key guys: McDermott. He's been able to manufacture good performances despite all the guys in bandages. I hope he does so again. I hope he schemes and calls the best defensive game of his life. Josh. I hope he avoids TOs but still makes big plays. I hope he remains patient, takes what's given, spreads the ball around, uses his legs effectively, makes good decisions, and is preternaturally accurate with the ball. If both McD and Josh have good days, we'll win. If they don't, we could lose by double digits.

I do think analytics has a place in player evaluations. And I believe it'll get better with time. But the bolded remark is a great observation.

I've enjoyed the way McD's defense remains credible despite many of the best players hanging out in hospital wards. The unit plays hard with lots of communication, teamwork, and perseverance. If we bring in a DC, I don't think any of that changes. It'll still be McD's defense. Having someone to help him run practices would be a good thing so he has time for his HC thing.

Listening to Jerry talk after the playoff loss, this is a big surprise.

So, wait... You're saying your smarter than us PFF critics because we don't understand "the intrinsic nature of player evaluation" but you do? I'm not sure why you're taking low shots at the intelligence of fellow mafioso, but I disagree. Most of us don't like the notion that you can reduce a player to a set of numbers. Let me give another example. Maybe Diggs is playing with broken ribs. The injury will lower his grade. But it won't lower the way a coach evaluates him as a player. PFF lacks context. Their graders don't know what the position coaches have been telling the player, the playcall, the assignment, the assignment of the guy next to the graded player which may effect his decision-making, his injury status, and so on. Additionally, how PFF grades each play and how they weigh (or don't weigh) different things is ultimately subjective. Let's talk about weighting for a moment. Let's say the Bills call a run to the right. Shakir is lined up on the left and completely muffs his block. So PFF gives him a -2 grade, even though it didn't impact the run. The next play Shakir makes a tremendous one-handed grab and dances through the defense for a dazzling 63-yard TD that wins the game with just seconds left. PFF grades him a +2, their highest grade. Shakir's PFF average for those two plays is ZERO. But a coach would call him the hero of the game. Weighting matters. The idea that you can entirely remove subjectivity from football evaluation is absurd. Maybe PFF knows this, maybe not. I don't care. What I know is that their attempt to reduce players to a metric is flawed. And while many of their grades seem accurate, some clearly are not. I don't hate PFF for trying. In fact, when the Bills acquire a FA, one of the first things I do is look at his PFF grade for a ballpark estimate of his value. But if I wanted a better evaluation, I'd talk to a coach.

Weirdly, I've only been to 4 or 5 live games in my life, and we've won all of them. The very first Monday night game in Buffalo. The playoff game in Miami. A couple of meaningless games in San Francisco. The 38-20 victory of the KC at Arrowhead a couple of years ago. Maybe you guys should sponsor me to the SB when we go.

The play a couple of weeks ago when Josh threw to Gabe in the endzone and was picked... How do you grade that? Did Josh just make a bonehead play under duress? Or did Gabe go to the wrong spot based on the defense? How does the PFF grader know? Even if the grader is a former All-Pro, he can't know. He can only guess. You see this with linemen, too. Sometimes, for example, you'll see an OL fail to pick up a blitzer. I imagine PFF gives him a bad grade. But we don't know what the lineman was asked to do. Maybe the back was supposed to pick up the blitzing LB but went out to the flat instead. Assignments matter. Some egregious blunders I see during the game make a lot more sense when I hear the explanations in the post-game interviews. The explanations change my perspective. But not PFF's.

Sure, coaches are wrong sometimes. Talent evaluation is an inexact science. But comparing dedicated professionals to the amateurs at PFF is a stretch. Coaches have expertise in football. PFF's analysts have expertise in statistics. PFF's graders are young guys with no credentials and boring lives who sit at home watching out All-22 handing out subjective, uninformed grades. Coaches, on the other hand, consider the assignment, the situation, and what the player was coached to do when giving out a grade. Yes, coaches sometimes evaluate guys poorly. But let's remember what an analytics guru once famously said, "If Josh Allen succeeds, the Bills will have outsmarted basically all regular humans and the entirety of math itself." I'm not saying there's no place for analytic sites like PFF. I trust they do the math right. But I'll trust the football professionals to evaluate football. If the coaches' grades don't line up with PFF, my hunch is PFF needs to get better.

One of the more unsurprising Bills signings ever.

Worth a watch. Thanks. Enjoyed the talk about the Dunne article as well as the conversation about Josh sliding and McD encouraging the team to play free.

You're right when you say they're not the players they used to be but don't underestimate them. They're still (2023) interchangeable and use that to disguise coverages. They make physical errors sometimes, but they rarely make mental mistakes. And other players have said their communication helps the CBs and LBs in front of them. Maybe we move on next year, but they still add value this season.

I was in Arrowhead when we beat them 38-20 in the regular season. I thought that was the changing of the guard. It wasn't. I do think maybe this year we have a somewhat better overall team - if Milano, White, Von, et al. were all healthy. But, frustratingly, this Sunday they'll line up the better roster. But that doesn't necessarily mean they'll win. I'm hoping Josh is hot and Mahomes is not, and the ball bounces our way. Another 38-20 victory - at home and in the playoffs - would be very sweet. I'll worry about next week, and next year, later.

I remember when our punter was the loneliest, least active guy in the NFL. I'm hoping for that kind of game from our offense.

Agreed. With our defense in the hospital, our offense is going to have to be productive. Their DBs are very good. We need to have patient, stick-moving drives with heavy use of the TEs, Cook (both as a receiver and runner), and Josh's legs.

Maybe I'm wrong but I doubt if many NFL fans label Araiza a "pervert." He went to a college party and had sex with a girl whose age he didn't know. That doesn't sound perverted. It sounds normal. The sex drive is the reason our species exists. I guess that many NFL fans, when they were college-aged, had sex with 17-year-olds. In most states, it's perfectly legal. In most cultures, it's perfectly acceptable. Think of famous love stories. Marc Antony was a Roman cavalry officer serving in Egypt when he first fell in love with 14-year-old Cleopatra. Juliet was 13 when she mixed it up with Romeo. Heloise was between 13 and 15 when she had her romance with her much older teacher, Abelard. Far from perverts, she went on to become a famous abbess and he became Europe's leading theologian. None of these people are remembered by history as perverts. I'm not advocating for underage sex. I just don't see Matt as a pedophile or pervert. And I think most NFL fans would agree with me.

Never charged. Never arrested. Never tried. Never convicted.

Lenny's made it clear he was unhappy with his role (or lack of one). But he wasn't impressive when he played. I know Lenny has always been slow but watching him run, I thought my TV switched to slow motion. Not to knock our OL, which has been much better this year, but when they do open holes, the holes often close quickly. Cook hits those holes with burst and vision. Lenny slowly rumbles into them... eventually.

I do worry about wimpifying football. But under the current rules, I thought it was clearly a penalty.

Understood. And it could work out. But I'd be more comfortable in the playoffs with a punter who's played in the NFL before (both as a punter and a holder) and has done so recently. But Araiza does know how to hold and can kick the snot out of a ball.

The similarity to 2022 is what has me worried, Doc. I feel like we're limping into the Chiefs game the way we limped into last year's playoff game with the Bengals. Too battered and bruised to compete with a good team. By the end of the game yesterday, we were missing our 4 best CBs (White, Douglas, Benford, Johnson) and our 4 best LBs (Milano, Bernard, Dodson, Spector). Meanwhile, KC will line up two All-Pro quality DBs against us. And they have 2 extra days for recuperation and preparation. Fingers crossed, we'll get some good news when the injury report gets updated. But with the defense in bandages, I think we may need Josh to don his Superman cape and put a lot of points on the board.

Agreed. As much as I think Araiza deserves another chance, now is not the time.

I'd be a lot more jacked if we were healthier.

Klein is the definition of a fringe player. The Bills cut him in August of last year. Then re-signed him a month later. Then cut him again on December 9th. Then re-signed him on January 11. He was on the street a week ago. And this week he was playing in front of 70,000 screaming fans in a playoff game. Pretty cool.