Mango

The team is trending towards average on both sides of the ball. Is that an improvement? Should I be happy or sad?

I agree Miami is not a powerhouse. They are a good team, a sneaky team. I think the league wants the Dolphins to be good, but good under Fitz if that makes sense. Just sort of projecting Fitz as the starter, but he is not. Tua did not look good...like at all. If that doesn't right quickly, Fitz is either back in, or they are not a threat to anybody and we will laugh at this in January They do have an easy stretch coming up, so buckle up, they might get hyped a TON more if they string together some wins. I am concerned about Buffalo. Yes, lost to some very good teams, but we have been squeaking by. With all this offensive firepower, we should be averaging more than 19 pts per game over the last 4 weeks. We have not played any great defenses in that stretch.

How quickly we all forget the 2018 Minnesota Vikings who did technically win more games than they lost at 8-7-1.

Oh jeez, and have a bye, then SEA and TB. And then what if the Dolphins and Raiders go 1-1-1 over that stretch, and everybody we play is stuck at .500. We could have the worst NFL super power ever. The midas touch, except everything the Bills touch turns into a team coached by Jeff Fisher. Unrelated, Lindy Ruff would sometimes drive me bonkers (miss him now). The guy could take any 5 goal scorer in the league and turn him into a 20 goal scorer. He could also take a 40 goal scorer and turn him into a 20 goal scorer. It was a gift really.

Right, in order to have a game winning drive, you have to be not winning at some point. I think we all get that. To the point of the stat we are talking about, the Bills being 23-1 when leading at half time, and inversely being 8-26 when tied or worse at the half. That stat line actually carries through regardless of the point you are making about Peterman, Tyrod, WR corp. I am not saying those things don't matter to the success of the team, but we have shuffled that situation around a ton and seeing the same results. 7 or 8 of JA's 11 GWD come after leading at the half. We have not won a single game after being down at half time in 2020. This is probably the best the offense has been in McD's tenure and it is the best that Josh has played so far over 8 games. Our lack of being able to put together a 3rd quarter is biting us in the ass.

Most of Joshs GWD were games where we already had the lead. That includes all 3 this year. Both loses we were losing at the half. Using TT, NP, and a receiving Corp from 2 years ago isn’t playing out that way at the moment.

Just checked quick on my phone, it looks like of our 11 GWD we’ve been leading at the half in 7 or 8 of them. For whatever reason the 3Q is the worst for us.

McD is 32-27 as HC. So we are 8-26 if we are not leading at the half? I am about as surprised at how good we are leading at the half as I am at how bad we are at winning a game without the lead at half time.

I agree with @ngbills. There is a chance Miami backs their way into a playoff spot, flirting with a 9th or 10th win when they come to Buffalo. Fitz was playing well. Their defense has been solid. A lot will depend on Tua. He didn't even look very good against a pretty decent Rams team, and they found a way to win. If Tua can learn some stuff quickly or Fitz goes back in with a hot hand still, they could be talking about wins against NYJ, DEN, NE, CiN, and LAC. If that happens, and the next few weeks go the way a lot of us are predicting for Buffalo, week 17 could be for the division. A lot of "if's" in there though.

I am a little concerned that the Bills have gotten pretty similar production against both decent and bad defenses the last 4 weeks.

Blow outs happen when multiple phases don’t hold their own. So we can lose to Seattle 38-42. That’s not a blow out. If they smoke us 35-17, that’s because the defense couldn’t stop them AND the offense couldn’t keep up.

I actually think the $3-400 price point is way too high for what is basically just access to the 1pm games on Sunday. At $400 bucks I am tempted to just keep using my VPN and ripping the game off. With so many people cutting the chord, the NFL really needs to evolve here and start including all games through the app/streaming. Possibly include a single team package or a per game charge. That said, I am in Saratoga Springs. I tried calling to just get the streaming service. They said no I needed DTV. I have no use for a cable package. So I actually have an old athlete that is in Med School so I threw her a couple bucks to help me out.

This is my issue at the moment. I get that teams are adjusting but we have too much firepower on the offensive side of the ball to be back to putting up last years average weeks in a row.

You seriously don't remember him? Like at all? His name alone is pretty memorable. Not that he was some great player, but he made a few timely splash plays. He played 19 games total with us. 3 INT's and 2 FF. Only 8 starts. I was surprised we didn't keep him as depth behind Poyer and Hyde.

I can’t unsee this. Thank you.

We have had a couple of these repeat threads. Thought I would bump to the original. Mods, feel free to combined. I was hoping the Bills would improve more by now on this stat. They’re -2 now after a 2-2 stretch. With a tough stretch coming up. So far the team seems closer to a 10-6 team than a 13-3/12-4 we thought they might be after the first 4 weeks. If they can’t improve here over the back half they could end up being one and done again in the playoffs.

Since Singletary already wears 26, what jersey Number do you think he’ll be wearing next week?

The thing I learned the most from that is that I want to listen to Ray Lewis break down plays a lot more. Dude just has a certain gravity. Of course he’s part of the GOAT conversation.

SUPER BOWL!

When you talk about starters like Hyde (not necessarily back ups like Murphy) you should also ask: Who is his direct replacement? What does his replacement cost? Money and production? Who do we actually sign/go after with that money? What do we pay them? Because when we cut Hyde we are now missing a safety. So for at least a period of time we have a hole at safety, and a weakness at LB and Edge. IMO if we aren’t positive we upgrade those positions, it’s not worth the $5M difference between keeping him and letting him go.

Thanks for sharing. Most of the internet cap-ologists were pretty shocked by it as well. I think we are both sort of right here. The $7M they paid is the signing bonus on the $15M contract. Which would normally stick with the original team in any trade for any player. The odd part about this one is that Houston agreed to that when brokering the contract/trade. Not that they picked which parts of the contract were tradable and not. To my point a team can’t trade a player in the offseason and say, “if you throw in an extra pick, we will pay his roster bonus after your training camp. Or how about you take base salary and we’ll pay his performance escalators.” In order for the Clowney situation to happen the Pats would need to renegotiate the Gilmore contract and move more money into his signing bonus and reduce his cap hit for the next team. Whether they will do that, I don’t know. But if a team thinks Gilmore will return to form either next year or in a new environment, his $17.M-ish next year isn’t thaaat crazy. It’s basically the AAV for Tre.

I mean, the should extend everybody. But I think pre-season there was some whispers that he might be valued in the $15M range. I think some quick rounded math in my head is $9M-ish. I’d be OK with giving Edmunds $9M for one year to see if he’s worth an extension.

In theory you can trade cash, but you cannot trade cap space in that way. So say you gave a 1st for Gilmore and $10M. You don't get a $10M increase on the salary cap. NO could have and most likely would have traded away picks for the Browns, Bills, Colts, etc.cap space over the last few years. It doesn't work that way.

I'm sorry, what? (I actually like rap and Drake and have no idea what is going on here)

WTF are you talking about? I may be wrong here, but I am fairly certain you can't just break down the contract into line items and sell/buy whatever portions of the contract you don't want to deal with. A team can't just go to NE and say, "hey we'll give you a 2nd for Gilmore, and if you pay an additional X part of his contract we will throw in a 4th too".