Happy

Or the league demolishing Belichick's tapes of opponent's practices.

Probably because it is one thing after another with the Pats over multiple years. What has Baltimore done, other than this incident? I must have missed a whole bunch of stuff. This isn't New England. No one will get away with demolishing devices other than the Patriots...or league helping out NE.

I miss these commercials...Holiday wishes expressed well.

If you want a mediocre LT, you have one now. Dawkins isn't a top 5, or even top 10 LT; at least not yet. $10M for Jordan Phillips may be a bargain. You know they're paying Star that right now, and for much less production; Phillips, I recently saw, is the #2 rated DT in QB sacks behind Aaron Donald. Also get rid of Hughes and Trent Murphy; draft and/or get DE's in FA, which is money better spent.

DT overrated? Not in this defense. We need true one tech DTs to stop the run with our MLB being a big strong safety. Jordan Phillips will want closer to $10M/yr, and that might be understating things. LT overrated? Not if you want a healthy QB. Me thinks your logic is a bit off.

There is a benefit to moving Edmunds outside, but McD won't do that; it is not how his defensive scheme is meant to function. Edmunds seems to cover the middle of the field in pass defense as well as assist in run defense, though he is not the primary rush defender. The DT's are primarily responsible for run defense, and Star has done a very poor job of this all year; a few positive flashes here and there, but overall not worth what he is being paid. The Bills need to keep Phillips, Liuget, Taylor, and add another big 1-tech. Oliver needs to bulk up as he is too small for the role that the DT needs to play. If we had a traditional Ray Lewis type MLB, then you can get away with smaller DTs, but when the MLB is essentially a bigger strong safety, your defensive line needs to compensate for that. You have to account for both the run and pass. It seemed that earlier in the season (Philly game) they were too lax in stopping the run; Philly saw this in the previous week's Miami game.

I can see the Steelers losing to the Ravens backups. Steelers need to seriously consider firing Mike Tomlin; they're at a point where they need a young QB, and Tomlin isn't the guy to make that decision. He can't decide between Duck and Rudolph.

Didn't Al Davis trot the team through the Bills' warmups before the game? I think Marv Levy was giving lunatic Al the middle finger.

Well said. I agree that I don't want them to be embarrassed with a poor effort, long flight home, and done for the next 8 months. It is better to risk an injury than having to shake off rust for three quarters again. This team isn't in a position to rest players on any phase of the game.

I agree with not resting most of the starters. They came out flat after the bye week earlier this season and didn't exactly play real well against Miami, especially in the first three quarters. Can't have that vs Texans or they could be one and done.

Benching Lorax isn't the answer, he's still a good pass rusher and run defender. Just don't let him cover a TE, WR, RB, the eligible tackle, etc. I'm not sure why the defensive brain truss hasn't figured that out after the previous two years.

It would have been good to gain more momentum going into the playoffs, but McD probably didn't see it this way. Thinking about it some more, he probably didn't consider this an important game for a couple of reasons such as injuries, factors outside of Buffalo's control to win the AFCE (Miami beating NE this week), and game planning for the playoffs. You pointed out that McD wasn't going to divulge anything he might possibly do in the playoffs, you're probably right about that. With the vanilla game plan, in general, I think McD is stressing fundamentals to the team (though they fell short in executing). They'll do something similar vs NYJ this Sunday, which I think will be better executed due to practicing fundamentals this week. Well reasoned post, though lengthy. There is a thread started by one of the mods, Simon, discussing the coach's intent for the Pats game; you might want to check that out.

Probably misses Ben. He's not going to admit that he's a WR2 and needs a WR1 to shine.

I wouldn't say "deep game" or "3d chess." I suspect McD doesn't care about beating NE and tipping his hand for the playoffs in a relatively meaningless game where things outside of Buffalo's control would need to happen for the Bills to win the division. If the situation was that the Bills win and the AFCE is theirs, we would have seen a different game.

Sad thing is that this is not too far off.

Wouldn't surprise me if Pig Ben is done. JuJu is a WR2, we need a WR1 and so does JuJu to stand out. He's not the same player he was when AB was there.

I would suspect the Bills would have liked a win, but with fundamentals rather than a lot of game planning. McD made remarks that they didn't do a good job of executing fundamentals, though nothing about coaching could have been better. The defense was very vanilla, almost to the point of a pre season game and the offense was more uninspiring than usual...even for Daboll. I think the OP has it correct; McD is keeping it close to the vest for the playoffs when the games matter again. Saturday didn't matter a whole lot to the Bills and Sunday vs Jets doesn't matter, either.

While we're poaching, or I mean swapping, players with the 49ers, can we swap Pat DiMarco for Kyle Juszczyk. I'd gladly give up any potential special teams play that DiMarco may provide for Kyle's offensive production.

Right on. Plus Josh needs to get rid of the ball within three seconds on pass plays. He stands there and holds the ball for far too long; the o-line blocking won't hold up longer than three seconds, if that.

I don't think the Titans beat the Chiefs. KC will go to Foxboro and hopefully Andy Reid doesn't choke and can beat BB up in Cheatland.

Do you know they didn't for sure? No you don't. It didn't appear that the coaches schemed for the Pats at all, and it may have been by design thinking about it, at least on defense. Very vanilla defense and McD made a comment about fundamental issues.

Great, another dumb s**t newbie. Just what we need around here. Piss off.

You can be conservative and win if you have close to 11 guys on each phase, though especially on offense and defense, who are superstars and buy into the team culture. But most teams don't have this, so the coach has to take some chances and outthink the opposing coach to win. McD is still learning how to be a HC; hopefully the light will come on and he'll see that sitting on 17 points with 3 to 7 point lead won't cut it against good teams. He hasn't figured this out, yet.

Goff is sooo overpaid.