BarleyNY

It’s only if you kick the ball and it makes it past the LOS. If a FG is blocked and doesn’t cross the LOS the kicking team can recover and retain possession of the ball. Obviously If it’s 4th down and the kicking team doesn’t advance the block past the first down marker it’s a turnover on downs. If it’s 1st, 2nd or 3rd down then the kicking team retains possession if it recovers.

Again, I disagree. Looking simply at scoring averages the Bills have been giving up an average of 16.4 ppg. You’d expect more to better offenses and less to worse ones. NE is better than average and has been scoring 26.2 ppg. Average those two numbers and we get 21.3 points. That’s about what I’d expect NE to have scored if both sides played about average. They got 24. So NE got 2.7 points more than expected. NE was also playing at home so I’d expect them to do a little better which could account for at least some of, if not all, of that 2.7 point difference. In any event I don’t see “much worse” by our defense. Let’s keep this in mind too - there will be a lot of excellent offenses in the playoffs. The defense will probably give up more than 16 or 17 points to those offenses too. But it’s because they’re playing good offenses, not because they're playing poorly.

Two of the posts I responded to were just short lists and the other only talked about why other QBs weren’t on his list. Not exactly exhaustive arguments. They got an equivalent response. I’ll leave it at this: There are a lot of good, young (or at least not old) QBs in this league who have outperformed Allen. An unbiased look at the QB options would yield a much longer list than between 0 and 3 names. I hope Allen keeps getting better, but there’s no guarantee that he will and he’s not the only QB who can do that. If we’re looking at performance to date then there are a lot of better options.

Well, then they need to because they aren’t carrying their weight. I don’t think that’s a fair characterization. The defense wasn’t stellar, but they weren’t bad either. Good teams are going to score in the NFL today. And if we’re going to criticize let’s do so based on performance, not just expectation. The offense was a notably worse than the defense yesterday and they’ve been that way all season.

I guess I see what you’re saying, but this is a good team we played. Playoff caliber teams are going to score points on almost any defense. You might get away with a win here or there against those teams on your defense dominating, but that isn’t a winning formula anymore. It was rare before the rule changes and now it’s even more so. Besides our defense doesn’t have the dominating pass rush that’s necessary to neuter top QBs. That was Denver’s formula when they last won it all. I know this isn’t the Bills year. Their window opens (or should open) in 2020. We all have a good idea of what needs fixed. I just don’t think it’s fair to blame the side of the ball that’s playing the best for losses like this.

I read it just fine. It’s a ridiculous, logic defying argument. Sure, our identity has been that our defense has had to carry the team to its wins because it’s been excellent and the offense has been below average. Who in their right mind blames the part of the team that’s doing better than the other for losing? It’s like blaming the fasted leg of a relay team for not being even faster because, well, we all know the other guys are slow.

This is ridiculous. The offense did its job? 17 points is doing their job? Wow. This is the NFL in 2019. Good teams - playoff teams - are going to score. An offense has to be able to put up points and ours hasn’t been able to do enough of that. Simply pretending that the problem is that our defense didn’t live up to the very high bar you set for them and that the offense cleared the very low bar you set for them is absurd. Instead consider that the part of the team that has been underperforming all season might just need to step it up. The reason the Bills best win is against an 8-7 team not that of its top 3 defense.

That’s insane That’s even more insane And yet more insane. The homers are really out in this thread.

Wow. I was really hoping he was going to get asked about it in his interview. Next time Oliver needs to fall right on him.

This is correct. I noticed that Pittsburgh tried to bait the Bills with a similar play. On one punt they brought the player covering the gunner in the same way the Cheatriots did. But right before the snap another player who was positioned off of the LOS and inside a bit bailed to cover the gunner. The Bills didn’t take the bait and got the punt away. I thought it was a good try by Pittsburgh.

Not surprising. Gotta protect the shield. Flutie can’t expect to keep getting a check from networks for doing NFL games and analysis if he’s going to blemish the league.

We might’ve seen different games. In the one I watched the Bills were losing 10-7 in the 4th quarter before winning 17-10 and finished with 261 yards of total offense. Kinda seemed to me like the game was in question for quite some time and that the Steelers defense did pretty darn well. The Steelers finished with 229 yards of total offense with the Duck at QB holding them back. I don’t see how you can rave about the Bills D going up against a team with a 3rd string QB but not give the Steelers D their due. They had a tougher job and did very well.

The Bills aren’t in a big market and they don’t have much in the way of national star power. It’s tough to leverage a CB for much of that - even one as stellar as White. Their QB is from a FCS school and was considered very raw/flawed prospect coming out and in the NFL he doesn’t put up big passing numbers. Their other offensive players at skill positions aren’t big names. They are not a sexy team at this point, but the team is winning and that is changing the national perspective. Expect a lot more hype for this team leading up to 2020. They’ll be a popular team for pundits to pump up - especially with the likely departure of Brady and decline of the Cheatriots. While I do expect a lot more love from the national media to be forthcoming, I think there is some hyperbole in this thread. It wasn’t like they expected the Bills to be trash, they just didn’t expect them to be this good. A lot of that has to do with Allen and his improvement.

Yup.

I was thinking maybe it was made from one of those heavy construction paper presentation boards my kids sometimes use for school reports. Disappointing really. I was hoping for a real table and effort. The solo cups were a nice touch though - even if they were all empty.

Estimated Franchise tag for a DT in 2020 is $15.2M. Transition expected to be around $12.4M. https://overthecap.com/franchise-transition-and-rfa-tenders/

I said it when they gave it to him and I’ll say it now: Star’s contract is a travesty. A front loaded 5 year/$50M contract for a NT that doesn’t even require a double team and quit doing his one job - stopping the run - years ago (before we signed him). If the Bills part ways with him after this season he’ll have been paid $26M for two seasons of poor play. That’s absolutely ridiculous. So, yeah, there’s a lot of players that I’d give that contract to before him. At least a case could be made for Phillips being worth it.

9.5 sacks so far this season. Next best season: 2. The question of what to expect going forward is a huge one. Has he turned the corner or is this season an anomaly (a contract year anomaly no less)? I really don’t know, but I have a strong suspicion that there is a team or two out there that will be willing to pay him like a 10 sack DT. I’d like to retain him, but I don’t think the Bills go there if that’s where his price ends up.

There are 9 teams with a record of 10-4 or better so it seems pretty reasonable.

They got that penalty last time. Obviously it wasn’t hash enough to deter them. The penalty needs to be significantly harsher.

Anyone here notice that we made the playoffs? Old habits die hard I guess. No sense in getting worked up about FAs now anyway. That list is going to change dramatically by March.

You know that’s coming out soon

I’d wager that he misunderstand what TTT is. (It’s time from snap to release for those who don’t know. Sacks and runs are not included.) Lower is usually considered better, but QBs that buy more time with their feet usually are on the higher side. It’s really a meaningless statistic for QBs like Rodgers, Allen and Lamar. It only holds value for QBs in schemes where the ball must come out quickly. Even then that value is limited.

That is totally misleading. Here is the whole chart: http://stats.washingtonpost.com/fb/tmleaders.asp?range=NFL&rank=232&type=Receiving The Bills have had 20 dropped passes. The average (median) number of dropped passes is 15. So the Bills have about 5 more dropped passes than you’d expect. That’s about one additional dropped pass every three games. Change 5 incompletions to completions on this season’s stat sheet and it’s negligible.

I will gladly take that if Allen plays like Flacco did in the 2013 postseason.