hondo in seattle

Reid is 9-6 with an elite QB. Inexcusable. Yeah, I'm being sarcastic. And, yes, the situation with McD isn't exactly equivalent. Reid's earned patience with his trophies. McD doesn't have that cred yet. Still, they're both 9-6 this season despite having great QBs. The Head Coach is important and should be held accountable for the performance of his team. But I like to remember that he's just one piece of a large organization that includes a lot of immature 20-something-year-old kids. I wouldn't judge Rembrandt on one of his brushstrokes. Likewise, I don't judge a coach on one season or one game, let alone 13 seconds of a game. Vince Lombardi, Belichick, Walsh... all the great coaches suffered through disappointing seasons whether it was because of injuries, bad luck, poor player chemistry, a weak roster, or whatever. Having a good QB doesn't automatically mean a team should appear in the SB. If only it were that simple.

Yep. It's easy to critique his game. He holds on to the ball too long... Doesn't throw on schedule... Makes ill-advised throws... Plays hero too often... But someday when we have a QB that puts up 20 TDs per season, we'll sorely miss him.

Feels longer

Some people think football has nothing to do with luck. As Einstein said, God doesn't play dice with the universe. There is no luck. It's all cause and effect. When the game is lost because a pass is tipped into a defender's hands for a pick... Well, the DE should have been better blocked and the QB shouldn't have thrown the pass. The ball is just following the laws of physics. When a key player is hurt... Well, Beane should have signed more durable players. The strength and conditioning staff should have done a better job preparing the players for the rigors of the season. But when opposing kickers go 26 for 27, what do you say? That's not bad special teams play. That's just bad luck. Luck has always been part of football and always will be.

Is Chuang Tzu a man dreaming he's a butterfly? Or a butterfly dreaming he's a man? Why do old man fans think they have a monopoly on reality?

Not sure about Brady today. The Bills with Josh Allen under center threw for fewer yards than the Chargers typically give up. We should have been able to exploit their weak pass defense.

I know it's popular for people to say that coaches and teams must learn how to win close games. But luck is part of the game too... ref calls, bouncing balls, weather, injuries... A three-point difference means the two teams played pretty darn equally. To be 0-6 in those games seems like some bad juju is at work. If they were merely 3-3 in those games, their season would be so much better.

On any NFL weekend, half the coaches lose. I'm ecstatic our coach was in the upper 50%. A good coach wins big sometimes, wins nailbiters other times, and even loses sometimes. The Bills could have played better but I'm thrilled to be on the winning side of things. Calling the head coach names ("McDingus") is silly. The world is effed up enough. We don't have to add to it by being disrespectful to each other. But let me ask, since you said that you don't care what happens the rest of the season. Are you saying that if McDermott's Bills win the Super Bowl, you still won't be sold on him?

I'm not sure about if Warner doesn't completely understand Josh's style of play. It would be hard to convince me that a QB with Warner's background and intelligence doesn't understand something about NFL quarterbacking that we fans understand. I've heard Warner say that Josh can be Josh some of the times. But when the play is designed to go to a certain guy - and he's open - why wait to see if something better opens up when defenders are collapsing the pocket? I don't think Warner is unreasonable when he suggests: Play superman when you need to but otherwise execute the play as designed. As you say, it's about finding balance. I think Warner would agree with that. But his balancing point is different than Josh's (in practice if not in theory). I think it's interesting that Josh has been playing more Warner-like since Brady took over. I thought it was odd that Warner never considered that coaching had something to do with Allen's occasional poor decision-making. Let's see if the less risky/greedy/impatient Allen comes out again in tough games.

The Chargers are average against the run but give up 261 yards/game against the pass (3rd worst in the league). Diggs has been kind of neglected of late. It's his turn.

Well, it's all pro-mafia so it's good.

That was... um... different.

The Fins, Boys, and Ravens are all good teams. So let's say the Dolphins have a 50-50 chance in each game. That gives them just a 25% chance of winning both. They also have a 25% chance of losing both and a 50% chance of winning one and losing the other. So if the Bills win out, we likely win the AFCE.

I can see why. The problem was that it left us unidimensional. The only thing Dorsey had was Josh-to-Diggs. He wasn't able to make anything else work with any consistency. Orlovsky once said that the Bills were the easiest team in the NFL to defend because we were so predictable. When stressed, Dorsey dialed up Allen-to-Diggs. He didn't have faith in anything else. As others have mentioned, Harty and Sherfield were much more productive on other teams than they've been here with a unicorn QB. Maybe the problem hasn't been Harty, Sherfield, and all the other unproductive Bills players. Maybe the problem was the coordinator. Looking at what Cook's done since Dorsey left seems to prove that suggestion. Previously, when Allen was running more, we were harder to defend. And now, with Cook as a proven weapon and Josh back running, defenders have more to think about. With Kincaid emerging, our offense becomes even more multi-faceted. This could get interesting.

The defense suffered injuries to multiple key players. Of course, it struggled. The offense was mostly healthy and flat-out underperformed. There were games when the OL didn't look good. And I watched the Kurt Warner film breakdowns that showed Josh not getting the ball out on schedule to the primary receiver despite him being open. And of course, I wondered why Beane didn't draft/acquire better offensive linemen and pass catchers. You could fault a lot of people for the inconsistencies on offense. But there was no way you couldn't also fault Dorsey.

When I was young, there used to be psychics in the tabloids who would boast about accurately predicting the JKF's assassination, or whatever. They didn't brag about the other 99 predictions they got completely wrong. I guess I could have bragged about the few things I got right. But even a broken clock is right twice a day. For me this has been a surprising, and not always pleasant, season. Some of the losses surprised me. Josh's long funk surprised me. And so on. But on a positive note, the play of Cook, Bernard, and Spencer Brown have all been pleasant surprises. So has Joe Brady.

I've had Thai and Vietnamese wings many times. The quality/taste depends on the restaurant. But at their best, they are very, very good. Korean and Chinese wings can be really good, too. And I once ate at a Brazilian chicken restaurant that specialized in wings. The wings themselves were crispy but somewhat bland. But they gave you an assortment of dipping sauces - some of which were great.

I lived for a little while in Korea many years ago. Once back then, I entered a restaurant and was confused by what I saw and felt. Koreans are very neat and tidy eaters who use chopsticks. Normally. But here I saw people wearing plastic gloves, eating with their hands, and spitting on the floor. It was kind of shocking. As I walked to my table, something crunched beneath my feet. It turned out the house specialty was chicken feet. So that's what I ordered. I donned the gloves, put the wings in my mouth, and spit the bones out onto the floor. When in Rome... The feet tasted remarkably like Buffalo wings.

I've eaten some really good breaded wings. But it's not Buffalonian. When we cook wings at home, they're always naked. I agree with the sentiment that wings can be too big. It throws off the seasoning-to-meat ratio. As a matter of tradition, we nearly always have wings on game day. But it would be boring to eat traditional Frank's-with-butter wings every week. So we mix it up with Filipino, Chinese, Brazilian, Thai, etc. recipes. Sometimes I make a kind of Korean-Latin fusion sauce with Gojuchang, tomatillo, tomato, and spices. Really good! We often bake the wings out of laziness but they're better when we double-fry them. I haven't yet tried the confit/fry-at-low-temp method but will.

Yeah, I thought Sherfield would be a revelation as the #3 guy. With Diggs doubled as often as he is, I expected Josh to go to Sherfield a lot more than he has.

I wasn't a fan of Dorsey's rookie year. It seemed the offense got worse as the year progressed. Dorsey emerging from Daboll's shadow seemed to be a bad thing. But the stat gurus get churning out metrics saying how good our offense was. It's hard to know why McD kept him. Maybe because of the analytics. Maybe because of the Dorsey-Allen relationship. And for a while this year, when we were beating teams by 28+, things looked good. But relying on Josh's heroics - instead of game-planning open receivers and fat running lanes - wasn't sustainable. But Dorsey isn't the only reason this year has been disappointing thus far. There have been defensive lapses too. And those were partly caused by another year of catastrophic injuries to key defensive players. Peter is better than a lot of the national media guy and actually has real inside sources. But this board knows the Bills better than King or virtually anyone else reporting on the entire league.

I know some will disagree but I believe if (1) Fred stayed healthy, and (2) played on a good team, he would have been considered for the Hall of Fame. He wasn't just a high-effort guy. He was a multi-talented back. If I recall correctly, he once led the league in yards after contact. But the OL wasn't good and he often had to fight just for a measly three-yard pick-up for a team that no one watched or cared about. What we saw in the Dallas game was a back with good vision, wiggle, and burst who ran against light boxes through nice lanes created by the OL and good scheming by the offensive coaches. It wasn't all Cook. But it wasn't no Cook either. He maximized his opportunities. Congrats!

I was thinking today about how wrong I was about this season. While I thought our regular season record might be worse than last year's because of the tougher schedule, I was confident we had a better team for a bunch of reasons... Defense * Floyd would make our pass rush better. * Poona would make our run D better. * There was no way we'd suffer as many injuries to key players as we did in 2022. * McD would be a more aggressive play-caller. * We'd miss Edmunds though teamwork and scheme would compensate for his loss. Offense * Sherfield, Harty, and Shakir would provide strong depth behind Gabe and Diggs. * Gabe's ankle was bothering him in '22; maybe he'd be better in '23. * Dorsey was a rookie OC in '22; maybe he'd learn and grow. * The OL would be better and might even transition all the way from bad to merely mediocre. * Harris would be an upgrade over Motor: bigger, stronger, faster. * If Dorsey would use him correctly, Cook could be a good safety valve for Josh. But he would never be an every-down back. * Kincaid could add a wrinkle to the offense. Clearly, I was wrong more than I was right. What do you got?

At one point during the offseason, I thought our RB situation would break down something like this. 1st down: Damien Harris (best overall back on the team). 2nd down: Harris/Cook. 3rd down: Cook (passing situations); Murray (3rd and short). I never envisioned Cook doing what he did yesterday. It's so fun to be wrong sometimes.

The Fins game was our best win this year. At the time, the Fins were the challengers, and we were the champs. They were trying to take our AFCE throne away from them and we denied them dramatically. The Dallas game was the most surprising win. Our battered D shut down their high-flying offense while our James Cook-led offense moved the ball at will.