mjt328

My thoughts exactly. The last few years, whenever Allen broke the pocket and rolled right, it almost always meant a big passing play downfield. This year, teams are clearly making an effort to keep him from rolling that way. It is making absolutely no difference, and Allen is actually having the best start of his career.

Yes, I believe you are correct. The only thing that could have changed was in the stat column. - Josh Allen would have gotten an INT instead of a TD pass - Gabe Davis would have gotten credit for a fumble recover TD, instead of a TD catch - Minkah Fitzpatrick would have gotten credit for the INT. I don't believe there was enough evidence to show that Fitzpatrick actually possessed the ball at any point though, since Davis had his hand on the ball and eventually was the one who came up with it. Ties also go to the offense.

Barkley looks totally rejuvenated this year. But with the NFC East well within their sights, the Giants aren't likely to trade him away. I haven't watched two seconds of Panthers football this year, so I have no idea how McCaffrey looks. He hasn't popped off the highlights (unlike Barkley), but maybe someone in Carolina can shed some light?

I would like to get some clarification on his contract. This is what Spotrac says: https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/carolina-panthers/christian-mccaffrey-21749/ There are some on Twitter stating that we would only be taking on a $600K cap hit in 2022, and then could cut him with no dead cap in 2023. Based on my understanding of contracts, I don't see where that is coming from. His long-term cap hit is probably a bigger deal to the Bills, even more than giving up a high draft pick.

Think about last season. Despite losing Tre White (an All-Pro corner) for the season, the defense played great down the stretch. They didn't seem to miss him at all. Dane Jackson did a fantastic job filling-in, and most weeks we saw very little drop-off. Until Kansas City. There was a point when talent (Tyreek Hill in particular) finally won-out, and scheme fit wasn't enough to beat the opponent. I absolutely love how our depth is filling in. And most weeks, it may appear they are making our superstars expendable. But at some point, we are going to need White, Jordan Poyer and Tremaine Edmunds back. By the way... This is the main reason I also anticipate the Bills finally getting past the Chiefs this year in the playoffs. Most weeks that offense is still going to look amazing, regardless of what they put around Patrick Mahomes. They will probably win 12-14 games this season, easy. But when everything is on the line in the playoffs, the Chiefs no longer have that game-breaking ability that Hill provided. That's when it will make the difference.

When Doug Whaley was our GM, the attitude was... "just draft good players, and let the coaching staff figure it out." He often picked high-floor prospects from big schools, who were able to hit the ground running as rookies. It was then on Doug Marrone/Rex Ryan to fit those guys into their system. The end result was a somewhat talented roster, but mediocre results on the field. Brandon Beane's strategy is much different. The players he drafts are full of athletic traits that perfectly blend into Sean McDermott's system. High-ceiling guys that usually require a few years of development. Much of what we are seeing this season... Damar Hamlin, Jaquan Johnson, Tyrel Dodson, AJ Epenesa, Boogie Basham, Greg Rousseau... is the result of that strategy. These guys have been learning and developing (some for multiple years), slowly getting better and patiently waiting their turn. That's why the defense has been gutted by injuries over the first 5 weeks, but has managed very little drop-off with backups.

So we count the Miami game with our entire O-Line injured and the Baltimore game in the rain, but we don't count the Rams/Titans games. Got it. My original post was that expectations for Brandon Beane are unrealistic. This is exactly what I'm talking about. The Bills had two great games to start the season, followed by two average games due mostly to injuries and bad weather. This is pretty typical with the normal ups and downs of an NFL season, and they are still in the Top 5 in almost every passing category. But the expectation was them to set records and be amongst the highest scoring in history. Your complaint isn't they are struggling. It's they are struggling against what you are expecting from this team. You can't talk trends with sample size of two games. And my guess is that if they score 40-50 against the Steelers, you will just make an excuse of why that doesn't count either.

At his current pace, Josh Allen would finish the season with just under 6000 total yards (5991) and 51 touchdowns. The yardage record is currently Drew Brees with 5562. The touchdown record is currently Peyton Manning with 56. So he would break the yardage record, and be tied for 4th on the touchdown list. Considering he will probably sit Week 17, I think we can all agree he needs to pickup the pace. 😁

This is exactly where I'm at on the running game. I'm OK with us not being a run-heavy team, or even a somewhat balanced team. I think we can continue to be a successful offense with the current run/pass ratio. My only worry is that our O-Line's lack of consistent push kills us on a short-yardage situation at some point in the future. At some point, we may be lined up in a crucial 4th-1 or 4th-2 (like the Titans last season). I'm not confident we can pick it up. Last year, we struggled to run in all situations... even when teams showed very light boxes and dared us. We've done a slightly better job with that so far this year, and broken off a couple nice plays with Devin Singletary. I was optimistic after the Rams game. But it's gotten more troublesome with each ensuing game, and our inability to get anything going on short-yardage without Josh Allen running the ball.

As I stated. The expectations for Brandon Beane are totally unrealistic. Every early Day 1-2 draft pick must be an immediate star, or he's a "garbage" player. Every free agent signing must be a huge contributor, or he's a waste of money. Every position must be addressed with significant resources every couple years, or it's being ignored. We must be able to sustain injuries down to our 3rd-4th string, or we failed to get enough depth on the roster. Here is the reality. We are only given 7 draft picks each year. There is a salary cap that we must adhere to. Not every pick is going to hit. Some young players are going to take 2-3 years to develop. Not every free agent is going to be a good fit on a new team. Some vets will unexpectedly start regressing after signing a new contract. And there are times where injuries hit a single position all at once, and there is really nothing you can do about it. You don't say a Quarterback sucks because he threw an incomplete pass. Nobody has a completion percentage of 100%. You judge him based on how he compares to his peers. A great QB can throw for around 65-70% in a year. It's the same thing with a General Manager. You don't dog him because of the occasional Cody Ford and Zack Moss picks. You judge him based on how his overall roster building compares to other GMs in the NFL. And the opinion of many (if not most) people who cover the NFL is that Beane has constructed the strongest and/or deepest team in the NFL. In reference to the WR position... He traded a 1st Round pick for Stefon Diggs in 2020. He has used draft picks on Gabe Davis, Isaiah Hodgins, Marquez Stevenson and Khalil Shakir. In free agency, he went after Emmanuel Sanders and Jamison Crowder. Past flashes showed that Isaiah McKenzie deserved a shot. And Jake Kumerow has performed well in spot duty. The team has an All-Pro #1, an up-and-coming star at #2, two solid slot receivers and a rookie they are really excited about. Injuries may force us to make another move. But we can't act like this position was weak entering the season.

Our WR depth might end up surprising everyone. Just like we've seen at the CB, S and DT positions. Give them a chance. The team really likes Isaiah Hodgins on the outside. This may finally be his big opportunity. They could also bring up Tavon Austin to play the slot, and then move Khalil Shakir to the outside. Don't forget. The Bills were without Gabe Davis the entire Titans game, and the passing game never missed a beat. The team had faith in Jake Kumerow as depth, and he came through. Then he got hurt too. There are many reasons why our offense has lacked explosion the last two weeks. Not just that we lack WR depth on the outside. I think you are also underestimating how much the weather affected the Ravens game too. Guys were dropping passes all over the place, and the wind was blowing pretty hard in the second half.

It took some time, but Sean McDermott finally got the D-Line he needed to make this defense elite. The addition of Von Miller and emergence of Greg Rousseau is forcing teams to focus extra blocking attention on passing plays. And Daquon Jones is the 1-Tech DT that we were all hoping Star Lotulelei would be on a more consistent basis. This is allowing both Tremaine Edmunds and Matt Milano to wreck havoc. And it's a beautiful thing.

Exactly how deep is a team supposed to be at WR? Sometimes I think the expectations for Brandon Beane are ridiculously unrealistic. Nobody in the league carries more than 6-7 receivers on the active 53-man roster. We went into the season with 6 guys making the initial roster, 1 guy on IR and 3 guys on the practice squad. No GM in the NFL can have a perfect contingency plan if we suffer injuries to 4 of our top 6 players at a single position. Especially when we are also forced to deal with multiple injuries on the defensive line and in the secondary. Most of the people who follow the NFL believe the Bills have the deepest roster in the entire NFL. But I keep hearing a chunk of our fanbase say that he didn't do enough to address the RB, WR, TE, OL and CB groups. I'm sorry, but we can't have All-Pro talent at every starting spot, along with starting-caliber vets all the way down to our second and third string.

It was a terribly called game on both sides. It started with the missed PI on our first drive, when Isaiah McKenzie was hit before the ball arrived. I can't really complain about this one much, because Jordan Poyer got away with an almost identical play later in the game. So I guess it evened out? As mentioned, the Ravens got away with tons of blatant offensive holds all throughout the game. Several on very key plays of the game, where they ended up converting long passes. But then you had the ticky-tacky offensive PI called on Mark Andrews, AND the awful roughing the QB call on the final drive. There were probably 2-3 plays where both teams had legitimate arguments of the refs screwing them over on important plays.

In 2020, Gabe Davis filled-in regularly for John Brown and did great. In 2021, Gabe Davis filled-in regularly for Emmanuel Sanders and did great. In 2022, Gabe Davis played the first game healthy and did great. The problem is not Davis. Our offense started struggling after the first drive of the Miami game. We stopped throwing downfield, and all of our routes suddenly seem jammed up about 10-15 yards from the line of scrimmage. This is causing problems with our WRs getting open, and Josh Allen is being forced to squeeze the ball into very tight spaces, almost throwing multiple picks in the last two games. It shouldn't be surprising that our issues coincided directly with Jake Kumerow getting injured (on the second drive of the Dolphins game), and then us forcing Davis back into the lineup before he was really ready. My guess is that Davis was only supposed to be an emergency backup in Week 3 until the Kumerow injury. Now he's on the field, but he's not going deep, he's not getting open, and suddenly seems to be having drop issues (which makes sense if he's too mentally focused on the injury). We no longer have a deep outside threat, and it's causing problems. I'm sure the Bills would have loved to sit Davis for a few weeks and let him heal, but with serious injury issues at OL, DT and CB, they just didn't have the bodies to do that. If the injury report looks better this week, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if we call-up Isaiah Hodgins from the practice squad. As mentioned before, the problem with OBJ is that he isn't going to play until Thanksgiving. We need help now.

Bills are not a running offense. Bills are not a balanced offense. They are a pass first, pass second and often pass third offense... only using the running game to keep defenses off balance. When they do run, it's often a read-option where the QB has the ability to pull and take the ball himself. I think defenses tend to cheat towards the RB in these situations, meaning that Josh Allen more often than not ends up the runner. The few times we do see a typical handoff to the RB, the coaching staff likes to have a committee approach. Devin Singletary easily has the best vision of the group. He's also elusive and good at making people miss. The problem is that he's not very fast, not exceptional as a pass-catcher, and not big enough to grind tough out the tough yards. So even though he's by far the most productive guy, he's also got a limited skill-set. The coaches haven't given up on Zack Moss, and really want him to end up the goal line/short-yardage guy. They are also trying to gradually sprinkle James Cook into the mix, because he's got a lot of upside on passing downs.

Well, you don't have to worry about Miami being 4-0 anymore. Our defense is constructed very well for shutting down Lamar Jackson, and did a pretty good job slowing him down in our last two meetings. The biggest concern for the Bills are the injuries, but things do seem to be trending in the right direction. It's possible all the O-Line starters will be back, along with Ed Oliver. The secondary is still pretty banged up. But I think the front 7 and Taron Johnson will be more important in this matchup. Baltimore's defense does not look like one that can slow down our offense.

I don't know why people keep saying the Dolphins "barely had the ball" and that was the only reason for their low stats. They had the ball 8 times. We had the ball 9 times, and two of ours were stopped by the clock expiring. Out of those 8 possessions, the Dolphins had 4 punts and 1 safety. On those five drives, they accumulated a grand total of 63 yards. The first touchdown was a gift. They needed to go exactly 6 yards to score, after the strip-sack. The third touchdown was after a blown coverage, where we had them on a 3rd-22. So in all, the defense gave up one long/sustained drive all day.

The main reason we don't have a successful run game, is because we have the NFL's top offense without it. Even on Sunday (which was easily our worst offensive game of the year), we had 497 yards. Out of the 9 times we had the ball, we drove into scoring position 7 times. Our only punt was on a 30 yard drive that took us to midfield. We only use the run game to keep teams a little off-balance. And for the most part, it's working very well. As a team, we are averaging 4.7 yards per carry. Tied for 9th in the NFL. If you take out Josh Allen's rushing stats, that drops to about 4.2 ypc. Which would be 19th in the NFL, just a shade below the New England Patriots (who are considered one of the league's best teams on the ground). Don't forget the ridiculous injuries to the O-Line too. Spencer Brown missed almost all of training camp and preseason, then went out early in the Dolphins game. Rodger Saffold is new to the team and missed a good chunk of it too. Mitch Morse has been injured for two weeks now. His backup Greg Van Roten replaced him and got hurt too. Ryan Bates got a concussion this week too. Tommy Doyle was forced to play out of position to replace him, but then tore his ACL. It's kind of unfair to criticize the blocking, when this unit has barely gotten a chance to play together yet.

That wasn't my intent. I may have been quoting your post directly, but I really was generalizing all the hot takes blaming Sean McDermott/Leslie Frazier for Sunday's loss. It was a close game. I'm sure they were thinking about the Dolphins possibly getting into field goal range, with an underneath throw. Plus if they played too deep and let up a big chunk, it's not uncommon for teams to go for it on 4th down. Seeing as how the Dolphins have Tyreek Hill, I'm sure they were also thinking about him burning them on an underneath crossing route in the playoffs. There are reasons for them playing the coverage they did.

There has never been a football game, where the losing team looked back and said... "Well, we did everything perfect and still got beat." In every single close loss, you are going to be able to look back at a handful of plays that would have changed the outcome. A blown timeout. A dropped pass. A missed block. A missed tackle. Etc. Etc. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. If there actually WAS a recurring theme in these close losses, maybe we could point to something the Bills could fix. But that's the thing. All of these close losses are due to different issues: The narrative the entire summer was about how clutch Josh Allen was in the AFC Divisional Playoff, and the NFL needed to change overtime rules because of it. He literally won the game twice, only for the defense to fall apart on three consecutive drives to lose in overtime. This game literally disproves Colin Cowherd's ridiculous take that Allen "gets tired and makes mistakes" at the end. This loss was due to bad pass defense the entire game (but mostly the end) and miscommunication on the kickoff, not squibbing it. On Sunday, it was the defense who totally stonewalled the Dolphins at their own goal line. Allen missed the touchdown to Isaiah McKenzie, which would have put us ahead. This is probably the only time in the last two seasons you can point to Allen and say he "made a mistake" that cost us at the end. Regardless, he still helped us drive back to midfield. But McKenzie failed to get out of bounds, costing us the chance to kick a field goal. Before that, we had the overtime loss to Tampa Bay. The offense rallied and scored 17 points in the 4th quarter, but did nothing on the first possession of overtime. Then it was the defense who failed to tackle the receiver on a crossing route. This was really gets shared blame by both sides, but the final play comes down to our coverage and failure to tackle. Then we have the wind bowl against the Patriots. Problem here was not having a rushing offense to counter the bad weather. Defense played strong all game, minus one big run. We drove into the Red Zone at the end, but couldn't get a TD. There wasn't a particular "mistake" that cost us at the end. It was just very tough to throw. Then we have the Jags game, where our offense was pathetic all day. Problem here was everything on offense, but mostly the O-Line. Defense was great all day. We had a chance to drive the field at the end, but another sack killed the final drive. Titans Monday night. Offense drives down to the goal line at the end. Allen scrambles for the first down, but is marked an inch short. O-Line which had been good most of the game, got blown up on one play. We fail on fourth down. Problem most of the game was defense, but on the O-Line if you are only counting the final play. Steelers opening day. The Bills should have lost by more than one score. They were down 10 in the closing minutes, then kicked a field goal and prayed for an onside kick. Problem in this game was the O-Line and a blocked punt.

A coaching staff should be judged on the overall body of work. Not cherry-picking certain plays that succeeded, and others that didn't. All while looking in 20/20 hindsight. Part of play-calling is knowing your own strengths/weaknesses. Part is knowing your opponent's strengths/weaknesses. Part is knowing the game situation. Part is trying to outsmart the guy on the other sideline. It's not an exact science. Sometimes you guess wrong, and the other team makes a play. As a whole, Sean McDermott/Leslie Frazier have fielded a Top 5 defense for 4 straight seasons. During that span, the Bills have had arguably the best past defense in the entire NFL. They have turned UDFA and late round picks into solid CBs, and no-name free agent signings into All-Pros. We are lucky to have them.

That's why it's such a lazy take. People literally use everything as an example of poor coaching. If players make mistakes. They weren't focused, and it's the coaches fault. If players just play bad. They weren't prepared, and it's the coaches fault. Any play call that doesn't work is stupid, and they should have done the opposite thing. Our defense made Tyreek Hill invisible on Sunday and pretty much shut-down the Dolphins offense, with a secondary consisting of rookies Kaiir Elam, Christian Benford and Ja'marcus Ingram at cornerback, along with Jaquan Johnson and Damar Hamlin at safety. Everyone figured they would put up 30+ on us, and they needed a strip-sack to hit 21. It was a very impressive performance. But the only thing I'm reading is the one play where we got burned. Because like I said... Lezlie Frazier should have just done the opposite thing of what he did.

Blaming coaching is the absolute laziest take a sports fan can have. Defensive backs fail to knock the ball down on a Hail Mary? It's the fault of the coaches! Receiver jukes around instead of quickly dropping to the ground with 9 seconds left? It's the fault of the coaches! Challenge a play that probably won't get overturned? It's the fault of the head coach! Don't challenge a play that probably won't get overturned? It's the fault of the head coach! Every time a play call doesn't work... they were being too conservative. Or too aggressive. Or too predictable. Or they should have just stuck with what they usually do best. The last two weeks, everyone was praising us and saying we are totally unstoppable because of #17. This week we are clueless idiots because we rely too much on Josh Allen carrying the offense. If a player commits a penalty or makes a mistake... it's always because the coach didn't have them prepared or focused. Because of course, it's the coach's job to remind the millionaire who has been playing football his entire life not to jump offside or hold on a crucial drive. Now the armchair geniuses are criticizing Leslie Frazier for the 3rd-22. Because he didn't bring enough pressure. Even though the Bills had the highest pressure rate in the entire NFL with hardly any blitzes through two weeks AND had a totally inexperienced secondary. Of course if he blitzed and got burned, we would be hearing how stupid he was to leave our backup DBs alone against the fastest WRs in the league on such a crucial play. I'm even reading some comparisons to 13 seconds, even though this time we got beat over the top... which is exactly the opposite of what happened in the playoffs.

Not against ODB. But he isn't expected to return until at least Thanksgiving, and I would be surprised if he signs with anyone until then.