TheBrownBear

A UCL tear is not the same as golfer's elbow. You can swing and hit a ball just fine without further damage to the UCL, which is why you saw Shohei Ohtani hitting, but not pitching in 2019 following his UCL injury. Josh will be fine. Source: I am a professional golfer and quarterback. (JK: but i'm a scratch golfer who tosses a baseball around with his kids)

I love Josh and agree that he's "the franchise" and any success we have starts and ends with him, but I think we need to be okay with acknowledging his faults and where he needs to improve. Those stats tell me we have a guy who wasn't reading the field well in 2022, which led to lots of scrambling and happy feet. Josh regressed as the season went along, at least compared to where he was in 2020 and the end of 2021. I think he definitely missed Daboll.

Yeah, probably our best collective offensive line since '88-'92!

Yeah, I'm not ready to bury the draft as a failure. Cook was flashing in the second half of the season and should be our no. 1 RB next year. Benford looked good when healthy and Elam was up and down but showed some promise, same for Shakir. I think all four of those guys are going to be bedrock guys starting next season. As for Bernard, I liked his tape, but he just appears to be too small to play LB in the NFL. Hope I'm wrong.

You pretty much nailed it. I like Devin, but the value just isn't there at this point. You have to let him walk. I'd cut Hines too and let him test the open market. Roll with Cook and find a guy like Perrine in FA. Then draft another late rounder or UDFA. And in a pinch, I'm sure we could find another Duke Johnson type to hang on the PS in the "break glass" role.

We were the best team in the NFL through 6 and 1/2 weeks of the season - better than the current Bengals and Chiefs teams. Josh was the unanimous MVP. Obviously, we suffered some injuries, but something else happened on the way to heaven. I think we were ramping ourselves up emotionally towards that regular season game in KC, and then we took a deep breath and just let up (focus, energy, attention to detail) during the middle of the season thinking we could turn it back on and get it into gear again before the playoffs. But during that time Josh suffers the arm injury, we lose a bunch of other players to injury for various lengths, lose Von for the season (I thought it was a killer then and it turned out to be), are thrown off our routine due to acts of God, and lose our starting safety to a cardiac arrest on MNF for chrissakes. So, for sure, building back that energy, confidence and momentum and getting back to our week 6 level of play was a lot tougher than our guys probably expected, and we clearly weren't ready to match the level of intensity and execution of the Bengals 8 days ago. All that being said, give us a healthy roster and I think we are still right there with the Chiefs and Bengals. We could use a couple upgrades on the o-line, another reliable pass rusher and one more reliable WR. If we can somehow fill 2 of those 3 needs, we should be looking good heading into 2023. As for coaching, if we are stuck with what we have, I definitely need to see growth from Dorsey in the run and short passing game and I'd love to see McDermott force Frazier to get a little more aggressive I guess.

He's the best. No doubt.

What a magician! On one leg no less

Starting to think Burrow is the new Brady. At least he's not in the division.

I agree. Nice job building a team culture and getting the ship turned around, but I have serious doubts about our coordinators moving forward. I have very little excitement about 2023 with Dorsey and Frazier running the show. At least Dorsey is young, so maybe he digs through thousands of hours of film of successful, innovative offenses over the next few months and starts to incorporate that into his system and playcalling. What you see is what you get with Frazier at this point.

Yes, there was an unusual amount of adversity within the larger Buffalo community, but I think 99% of the non-injury stuff had little to no impact on what we saw on Sunday. I do, however, believe that the Damar thing was huge. That was a legitimate trauma inducing event. And isn't easy to bounce back from. I think back to the difficult birth of my youngest son and watching him have to be resuscitated in front of me over many minutes while my wife cried and begged to know why the baby wasn't crying and asked if he was dead. Happy ending as he's fine now, but he was in the ICU for almost two weeks and I would just randomly cry throughout the day for a couple of weeks and really didn't move past it (or stop revisiting it daily) until he had been home for a couple of months. I can see how the players might have been a little emotionally burned out from the whole thing and have it effect them despite their best intentions to move forward and win it for themselves and Damar. It's just human nature. Having said that, it doesn't excuse what we saw in terms of strategy or lack thereof, and the first quarter of the earlier game had already revealed that we had serious issues dealing with the Bengals personnel and approach. The better team won on Sunday. No doubt in my mind regarding that.

They sucked all year, and were easily worse than 2021, so I think you can put that thought to bed. They were horrible and had career worst seasons - no lemonade to be found. Not exactly sure who is to blame, but I think Dorsey probably put them in worse positions than Dabs did. I have to believe a ton of it falls on the offensive scheme.

Brown showed promise as a rookie and graded out as a physical freak, so I understand why they took the chance of rolling with him this year. I wonder how much of a factor his back injury was in his poor play this year. I know Beane discussed a lack of reps for him in the offseason and training camp, and for a young project like Brown, I can see how that could have led to his stifled development (or outright regression). At a minimum, I think we need to let Saffold walk, move Bates back to left guard where he looked more comfortable in 2021, and draft an OG (rounds 2/3), RT (late day 2, early day 3) and developmental C.

I like both players, but I think Singletary is more valuable for what we like to do. Singletary is a fine first and second down back and a surprisingly strong tackle breaker at his size. Hines' ceiling on offense is a gadget guy, since he's not a tackle breaker/pile mover when handed the ball. I think Hines could be a great weapon in a well schemed offense, but that isn't what we are now under Dorsey, so no point in eating up cap space with a return specialist. So, cut Hines, and then I think it comes down to trying to get Singletary to take a team friendly deal or replace him with a 3rd or 4th round rookie RB (or Duke Johnson type FA) to split carries with Cook.

I'm not going to argue that our defense is terrible overall. They're not. They were quite good to sometimes great during the regular season. But they were absolutely horrendous against the Bengals in the first half. They gave up 250 yards. The offense was horrible as well, no doubt, but the crap defense put them in a 14-0 hole and likely changed the game plan (as well as the mindset of a guy like Josh) and made them one dimensional highlighting our struggles in pass protection. Yes, the Bengals offense slowed down after that, but it felt an awful lot like they took their foot of the gas once they realized the Bills were no real threat to get back in the game. As soon as the Bills regained some sort of contact on the scoreboard, the Bengals easily went down the field to restore their 14 point lead.

I was going to say no, but, let's be real, that's just recency bias talking. Bills still have good depth and a top 5 quarterback. If they find a way to improve the oline and the defense can stay relatively healthy, they still look like the clear favorite to me. It won't be as easy as it has been, but I'm taking the Bills as a betting man.

I thought the same. Looked like we were on skates all day. I think it's entirely possible they messed up their choice of footwear. We heard leading up to the game that the snow wasn't supposed to stick on the field.

I'm sure he has friends at the Flying J who will comp him.

He won 2 playoff games in 2020 and one in each of '21 and '22, but you're otherwise correct. I think he can win, but he'll need a few breaks. He's not outcoaching anyone on gameday to get there. Given all the injuries this year, I'm okay with him running it back one last time with the hopes that we can improve the oline in the off-season and that our D stays healthier next year. After that, it's open season on McDermott as far as I'm concerned. But I really would like to see a different OC brought in this offseason.

Yeah. Next year.

Listening now. No changes coming. Get ready to run it back next year

I've defended Oliver and I think he may have been playing hurt on Sunday, but his production just hasn't paid off the investment of where we drafted him. He was supposed to develop into a real disruptor and we just haven't seen that from him over the years, at least not consistently. I think that's the biggest weakness right there. Most of these great pass rush teams have guys in the middle who can really disrupt and wreck things. We are sorely lacking that. Outside of Minnesota, all of the teams who gave us trouble this season had dudes who were really capable of collapsing the middle of the pocket.

We are all grasping at straws at the moment and the OP's thesis is no worse than the others. I think it's pretty clear things would have gone differently if Hyde and Von hadn't been injured. They were both great performers as well as probably the two biggest leaders of our defense. We all pretty much knew we had to be carried by our offense once Von went down, especially considering the hobbled states of guys like Poyer and Tre White.

Did Josh Allen retire?

Yep. It was almost as if the Chiefs game was the Bills' Super Bowl. All of the good vibes, confidence, energy were building towards that moment, and then with Josh leading that late comeback and Von and our secondary sealing the win and confirming we had made all the right moves to get us over the top of the Chiefs' mountain, we were absolutely on cloud 9 as a team and fanbase, getting tons of love and respect from the national media. We'd get our one week break and then it would be a simple 14 game cakewalk towards our coronation as SB champs. But then our focus began to wane, sloppiness creeped in, injuries piled up and what was supposed to be a joyous 14 game gallop towards a Lombardi became a joyless slog of just getting to the finish line of the regular season, by which point we had numerous glaring issues in our coaching, execution and personnel availability.