BarleyNY

It’s certainly a fear. As for the OP’s suggestion of moving Brown to LT, you can’t do that mid season. There’s a leaning curve when flipping sides. And I think Dawkins will be back to form next season. Unfortunately this season he’s only going to be about 75% due to how badly Covid hit him.

I agree on Johnson and I advocated for extending him before that happened. My point on Klein was that he’s expensive but not very good depth. He also limits our ability to put a 3rd LB on the field when teams are loading up an running the ball. I have covered some of the possible depth additions in the past. I’m. It going to do that again. Do your own homework. Just look at free agency signings this past off-season and you can see that good depth was not that expensive.

Okay, but I’d say there’s a difference between being frustrated by multiple mistakes and calling a guy trash and calling for his job. No one expects Beane and McDermott to be perfect. I think most of us are thankful that they’ve turned this team around - and they’ve gotten a lot of love for that already. But they should be accountable for their mistakes too.

Again, my issues aren’t with starters. I’m very happy with them. Better depth players would not have been expensive and should’ve been acquired. Klein is limited and massively overpaid. He is not good in coverage and he’s not good against the run. About the only thing I want to see him do is rush the passer - and we have plenty of those players already. If you don’t believe me, then believe McD. There is a reason that even against offenses trotting out run packages they have been playing nickel and keeping Johnson on the field and Klein on the bench.

It would be terrible for the game of football. Defenders would be dropping like flies. There are so many potential issues if it were ever allowed. Luckily that won’t ever happen.

CB depth is my primary concern. Or rather coverage depth in general. If there was some depth at S or even LB that could help in coverage, it would help. But we have 2 of each that I want to see defending the pass. I think there might be some disagreement on Jackson. I’m not comfortable with him as a starter, which is the likely scenario now. I hope he steps up. There were CBs getting low level contracts that were close to Wallace’s level of play. One of those plus another safety that could start and not be a liability is what I wanted. Neal is not that guy. Add in a LB who is good in coverage and I would’ve been very content. All of that wouldn’t have been expensive. It wasn’t just a lack of depth at CB that was the issue. We have no safety depth and no depth at LB. Heck we don’t even have a decent 3rd LB. It was easy to see how any injury to any one of our top 3 CBs, top 2 LBs or top 2 safeties was going to really hurt this team. A second injury would be very damaging. But hey, we have like a 12 man rotation on the DL.

Have they? I guess we will find out what they’ve got.

Because teams would have free offensive linemen running full speed downfield and laying out DBs and LBs as soon as passes got completed. You could run shallow crosses and have OL plaster defenders coming across as soon as the ball was caught. It would be crazy.

Seriously? The Bills defense held up against Trevor Siemian (NO’s third string QB) and an offense that was on its third string RB and was missing its best WR, starting RT, best TE and even best FB. Yes, we held up against that juggernaut without Tre. I think it might be tougher to do so in the coming weeks though. No one said we needed two Tre Whites. But a fourth CB who isn’t a total liability seems like a pretty reasonable ask. The FO chose to address other areas - including putting a ton of resources toward depth on the DL - but CB depth was largely ignored. It seemed like a poor decision this off-season and it looks like it just caught up with us.

Yes, because people saying that Beane made a mistake (including some of us that s pointed out this exact issue in the off-season) is the same thing as us calling for his firing or saying he’s terrible at his job. Such weak sauce here.

You’re correct, but I feel like maybe we should be hitting that panic button right now. The depth of players who can cover is pretty nonexistent. Coming in we had Milano and Edmunds at LB, Poyer and Hyde at safety and Tre, Wallace and Johnson at CB. I am not a Neal fan. He might be next man up, but I think that will be a problem. The other options are Jackson and then Lewis. Or a signing. Of those I think Jackson might be the best option so that Johnson can stay in the slot. Otherwise it’s Johnson moving outside and Neal as a third safety with one of our three safeties taking the slot WR. Ugh. I don’t love shuffling multiple players around.

Walking after is not a significant sign. In my younger days I fought full contact taekwondo. My roommate and I were both fighting and he walked up to me at a tournament after an early bout and said he was done. He looked fine and was walking fine. I thought he lost his first match (which would’ve been a surprise). He’s just said “no, my knee.” Completely torn ACL. No pain at all afterward, just when it tore. He showed me how loose it was, so it was obvious something was really wrong with it. So while I am hoping for the best for Tre, a complete ACL tear looks like the likely situation. I hope that it’s not worse than that (additional damage). If that is what it is, then best wishes for him to be fully recovered by week 1 next season. Other than Allen, Tre is probably tied with Diggs as the second most important player on this team. This sucks and it’s going to hurt.

Well, I have already heard two former NFL QBs say otherwise. Both Palmer and Simms talked about how poor of a decision it was. Seemed very obvious to me too.

That’s a terrible argument. Especially considering it was 3rd down. No need to get all 18 on that play. I think the crossing pattern would’ve had a chance if hit in stride though - and it was single coverage there. I know Allen is capable of playing much better than he demonstrated on that one play. It was a terrible decision, but it was one play. I don’t expect to see that kind of mistake become a regular thing for him. Simms chalked it up to impatience and he’s probably right.

Yes, Gamepass really sucks this year. That play was at about 4 min left in the first quarter I think. The play had receivers in both flats, one running an intermediate depth cross, one deep left and one deep right (where it was thrown. I think I saw the All-22 in the thread with Chris Simms talking about the play.

That is not what Palmer said about that throw. He said that the decision to make that particular throw was the problem. And it certainly was. Cover 2 with very good coverage by the CB and a S on that side in great position and with no other possible responsibility. Allen literally threw the ball to the receiver who was the most well covered out of 5. It was an awful decision with a predictable result. Note: Allen did get pressure from a spy right before the throw and I think that might have had a lot to do with it.

I would think that removing a player from a given role for repeated, costly mistakes would be looked at as holding that player accountable for his poor play. I am not sure that this situation is quite to that point, but I’d think it would at least be close. Saying that McKenzie is 6th in the NFL is misleading. Of the 19 kickoff returners who qualified with enough returns to be counted, he is sixth. Link But he would drop on that list if you included everyone. Also if you look at team KOR stats, 24.9 yards would rank pretty well, but it is still only 3 yards better than the average team’s KOR. That isn’t worth the turnovers.

The thing is - Star wasn’t playing the run very well this season. He didn’t play it well two years ago either. Or really since he’s been here. And he didn’t take up many double teams in the run game either. But he was good rushing the passer this season. And two seasons ago he did not get much pass pressure but he was double teamed when offenses pass protect a lot. Like a surprisingly high percentage of the time. Still, he’s our best option at 1 tech this season. I have not been a fan of his contract, though the restructure helped some. He’s not going to fix our run defense woes, but he is better than Phillips and he may actually be an asset rushing the passer. I can’t believe I just wrote that last part, but it’s true. Maybe losing some weight was the best thing he could’ve done for himself. Of course I have no idea how he is doing health wise with Covid. If it hits him hard, then he won’t be back to 100% this season. Here’s hoping he gets lucky with that.

He returns a lot so his total return yards is high, but his average of 24.9 yds is nothing special. And as @SMAKCruiser pointed out, his two major mistakes outweigh that anyway.

Yeah, it’s always easy to think that the trend is always up for your team. But in reality it only works that way about half the time. Parity in the NFL makes it so close that random events can have a big impact. The wrong injuries can have outsized impacts, for example. With teams so close, having a flaw get exploited is a big issue. The Bills are dealing with that on both sides of the ball now. They’ve got to adjust or they’re done. It’s certainly possible. I just hope they can pull it off and get back into the hunt.

How overdue is that? He’s been awful. As for Judge, you’re probably correct. The only other good option is to let him pick the new GM. They’d have to be way more sold on him than I am to let him do that. Better to move on from everyone.

Is it the play selection or is it the defenses and execution by the offense? Honestly I think it’s all of the above. Defenses are taking away the intermediate routes and keeping Allen from scrambling. Our pass pro isn’t holding up as well as it did last season and Allen isn’t doing a great job getting the ball out quickly and hitting the smaller windows he is seeing this year. And yes, Daboll needs to expand the current playbook. For example, I would love to see more RO and RPO plays run. The point in the article that talked about the defenses being run against us this year versus last year is pretty important. Quick slants and crossing patterns work a lot differently against man coverage than they do against Cover 2. If 4 rush and the 2 safeties are deep that leaves a shell of 5 players underneath (initially at least). The windows for quick slants and crossing patterns are much tighter. Use of a spy (which is something I said I would employ against Allen last year) is being used a lot too. That player can drop into the shallow passing lanes over the middle before stepping up to shadow or delay blitz. It has been effective against us. Early in his career Allen was a lot better at picking apart zone coverage than he was at passing against man. So I think this is a fixable situation. He’s going to have to be patient and be willing to work the ball down the field methodically though. And he’s probably going to have to run the ball like he did before this season. We don’t have the players on the line or at RB to run like the Colts do. Bring on the RO and RPOs.

I know this stat. It’s been 25 straight seasons where at least one of the four teams who made it to the NFC and AFC championship game did not make the playoffs the following season. That’s a hell of a stat. The extra playoff team in each conference might help end the streak though.

The simple answer is an inability (or unwillingness) to adjust to what you are seeing and/or to effectively execute. Teams have adjusted to our offensive and defensive schemes. We don’t seem to be able to effectively counter as of now. Some injuries have certainly exacerbated that situation. Dawkins is one that gets overlooked a lot. Kudos to him for gutting it out, but he isn’t 100% and he won’t be 100% this season.

We have a good defense, but it is not spectacular by any stretch. Their stats - and our record - have benefited from playing a stretch of abysmal QBs and a fairly easy schedule in general. Believe it or not other teams seemed to have spent some time looking for ways to slow down our one dimensional offense. We took no steps to give that offense another dimension and here we are. Thank goodness that Knox developed because without his early contributions we’d have been in worse trouble.