Bleeding Bills Blue

Knowing that Zac Taylor does a good job with game scripts, i do wonder how much the bye has an effect on them. With Burrow they're 3-0 coming out of the bye week. Last season they didn't lose a game until the afc championship after their week 10 bye. I don't know that they'll have that same level of run missing some of the pieces they had on defense a year ago.

He gets to play opposite Bosa again, they have a bunch of rotational pieces too so i don't think he's going to play as many snaps.

Payne and Allen inside, sweat opposite him. Young should be feasting and he just isn't.

Sweats been a better player, and hasn't had the injury issues.

Well its a late 3rd (possibly our comp pick for edmunds - doesn't seem clear anywhere), for Douglas and a 5th (also not clear if this is their early 5th, or their comp pick in the 5th).

Love a pick coming back in this too

Looks like 9M next year actually. 6 and change is base salary that can either be deferred (if you only want to keep him for 2024), or can be extended to lower the cap burden in 2024.

Possibly, or that allen doesn't trust his eyes.. could be a play calling issue there too.

My assumption is zone - try and show some blitz looks on 3rd downs. Thought allen had a nice game with the blitz playing more spread out as we did against TB. Cincy has some beef up front that we've had trouble with in the past so getting the ball out quick and getting in rhythm will be key. With knox out again i suspect we'll see more of the same spread looks. Buffalo needs to figure out how to run the ball better in this one. I expect we'll try to get more to the boundaries with cook and WR RPOs outside, as they're stout up the middle.

After 2 air yard pass to boyd that goes for 5 yards... Here's a guy that just gets it. Perfect throw, perfect pass. First ballot HOF stuff.

When they run the ball well it all clicks for them. Bottling up mixon and the run game is usually pretty key to putting them behind the sticks. Burrow getting healthy adds the threat of a scramble that was missing to start the year on those 3rd and mediums. He's still going to throw it underneath if its there - need to rally to the ball and tackle well. They also have been generating takeaways. Need to win the turnover battle first - but this game will come down to 3rd downs and red zone too.

Clements was a great player - great ball skills. Winfield didn't have the ball skills but he tackled like a bull. McGee had a long bills career. Only one of the ones listed ever got DPOY votes, and has the most pro bowls - and thats tre white. Looks like his bills career might be getting cut a bit short due to injuries unfortunately. The rest were mostly before my time.

So they should just stop trying? They play a ball control style of offense, have a QB who is very accurate, and they are a tough out. Is that enough to get the 4 straight wins to win a super bowl? Probably not - but the ravens did it with flacco catching fire. The Broncos won with the ghost of Manning. The 49ers almost won with Jimmy G. All it takes is a unit (offense or defense) to catch fire at the right time, and for the other side of the ball to do enough. Bengals went to the super bowl and won 2 road games by a combined 6 points. Haven't scored more than 27 in the playoffs over the last 2 seasons - with their offensive HC and all those offensive weapons. The reason they win in the playoffs is that their not particularly notable regular season defense has 13 takeaway's in those 7 games. They also had some pretty serious luck when you factor in that the winning TD against Baltimore in 2022 was a fumble recovery, and in 2021 KC botched a first half situation from the 1 yard line. Punch a ticket to the playoffs, and anything can happen. The likelihood of good things happening goes up when you have a top QB like Allen.

Good to know! At least we didn't waste picks, just a ton of money on that dude.

Was Merriman a mid-season trade?

Having 2 thirds gives us a shot at trades, but i'm reluctant to part with a 2nd when we are likely to have holes at S (Poyer final year, Hyde UFA), WR (Davis UFA), DE (floyd/AJE UFAs), potentially CB (White coming off another major injury), DT (DQ UFA). Too many needs moving forward just to tread water let alone improve without a lot of picks.

Games like this usually come down to a few plays. Can we create a couple turnovers? Can we not turn the ball over? Can we punch it in in the RZ? Can we prevent them from doing so? Who's kicker makes all their kicks, and who's kicker misses?

They let the jets spot the ball!! Insanity

We can't accommodate his base salary this year so the point is moot. If we acquired him there would be no dead money as the 8m dead money is tied to already paid signing bonus, so Indianapolis would be on the hook for that. He does have a 6.5m injury guarantee for 2024. If we traded for him we would have to redo his contract to lower his 2023 cap hit. Either removing the rest and adding void years, or converting to bonus and redoing extension years.

https://youtu.be/J34UzHo4G5w?si=PvlWGAGAr8HpDcSa

We currently have 11 draft picks, including an extra 3, an extra 5, and 2 extra 6s. I don't see much of a point cutting elam. No one on the PS is better, there are like no cap savings cutting or trading him, plus you then lose money replacing him.

Yeah - he'd probably be alright playing... actual safety. But when they bring him in for the dime packages i'm holding my breath. I'd rather see Neal tbh.

Zach Wilson was a highly touted #2 overall pick. Now I'm of the opinion that the player makes the biggest difference, not the coaching. But you can't act like a player succeeds with a bad coach. He's the only HC Wilson's ever had. So talent evaluation was wrong - he was not deserving of the #2 pick. HOWEVER - Saleh shouldn't get a pass either. He's a worse player than he was at the start, and that to me comes down to coaching at some level.

He IS saddled with one of the worst QB rooms in the league.

I was more looking at this from the perspective of the person who said there were only a handful of coaches that he would take over mcdermott. So the maybe's don't really represent my opinion? Just... i could see how you could make an argument for that. I agree with a lot of that - i hate the stefanski and arthur smith style since it basically only works if you're in a close game or winning. At least they both realized that to play that style you also need a defense. LaFleur is fast falling into these habits too. I think Taylor is overrated. Belichick the coach isn't bad, he is not a good talent evaluator though.