BillsFanSD

Seeing as how our backup center can't even snap the ball competently on a consistent basis, yeah I'd say Morse is pretty important.

Easy. The Bills are just a better team than Baltimore. Our offense is better than their offense. Our defense is better than their defense. Admittedly, I don't know how the STs stack up. I swear, it's like people on this board think that every other team in the league has a stacked roster from top to bottom with no discernable weaknesses. Yes, we're banged up right now and our secondary in particular is looking pretty sketchy. Take a look at what the Ravens are putting out there on defense these days. It's not the Ray Lewis / Ed Reed era. (That's not to say that we're a mortal lock to win this week. If we played the Ravens over and over again, I'd expect to win maybe 65% or so of the time. So we should be favored but not by a massive amount.)

Yeah, but New England fans enjoyed their win last year too, and honestly it was almost worth losing that game just to rip their beating hearts from their chest over the next two games. Let's see how the rematch goes.

How can we forget 13 seconds when you guys are reminding us about last year's finale on a weekly basis?

Once again, everybody needs to look at the schedule and see how easily a 3-3 start (say) can turn into a 13-4 season. Obviously I have no objection to signing a DB or two off somebody's PS or off the street. That makes sense. But mainly we just need to sit tight, get through the next stretch of games -- nobody we sign today is going to help us against Baltimore -- and steamroll the league when we get out of the bye with our nicked-up guys back to full HP.

Speaking as a fan who doesn't get to see inside the locker room, it seems to me like Allen is about as much a team leader as anybody could possibly ask for. Can you name a QB who's more clearly the undisputed leader of his team? I can't. That's not to knock anybody else's leadership, just to point out that Allen's coaches and teammates seem to have nothing but respect for him, and he's been instrumental in recruiting FAs to Buffalo. Also, I don't think you get Team Leader Josh Allen without regular appearances by Superman Josh Allen. Tyrod Taylor and Kyle Orton may have been the coolest, most team-oriented guys you'll ever meet (no idea) but their NFL leadership ability is limited by their ability to play high-level football. It's just random luck. There's nothing to rectify or figure out. Every single season we see teams that win an improbably large number of close games and teams that lose an improbably large number of close games. Last year, we were in that second camp. It doesn't mean anything.

You need to watch more non-Bills football. Allen had a very good game yesterday by any semi-objective standard.

Seems unlikely. I'd be rather disappointed if Morse, Oliver, Poyer, etc. weren't back next week.

One thing you learn from reading this forum is that a lot of fans don't realize how short an NFL season is. 17 games (plus playoffs) is a really small sample size, especially when you consider that some events, like defending third and super-long or playing a tight one-score game, only happen a handful of times per year. When sample sizes are that small, it's a near certainty that you'll be able to find weird numbers that look worrisome but are really just statistical noise. It's weird that we've lost such a large number of close games, but that's just luck. Bass misses a short FG, Allen misses a gimmie TD, McKenzie can't quite get out of bounds. None of those have the slightest thing to do with coaching and we probably only needed one to go the other way to get the win. Tells us nothing about how similar games would play out in the future.

Totally agree. Having just watched the game, I'm still sitting here wondering how we managed to lose. Things will be fine.

Weird, freak game, much like last year's wind game against NE. Not worried.

KC is universally considered a serious SB contender. Take a look at their defense. Now take a look at ours. Take a deep breath. We're okay.

The upside here is that Miami is going to be left staring into a bottomless void of hopelessness when we beat them anyway.

My most fervent hope is that by 4:00 ET a bunch of people are kicking themselves for forgetting that Buffalo has an offense too, and that Miami doesn't have any answers for it even when (relatively) healthy.

Except for Hyde, none of these banged-up guys seems to be seriously injured. They'll all be back in a week or two. Losing to Miami will suck because it breaks up the possibility of an undefeated season, but that's all. I'm not worried about losing the division to Miami -- that would take quite a bit more than just a few injuries in week 3. On the plus side, image how much fun it will be to crush Miami's hopes by curb stomping them with a bunch of backups in their home stadium.

And we should be. All of these injuries make the Miami O / Buffalo D matchup interesting. But the Buffalo O / Miami D matchup is still a laughable mismatch.

I expect Miami to score more points than the Rams or Titans did, but IMO people are over-reacting to our injuries. If you told me that Miami was going to score, say, 24 points on Sunday, I'd feel really good about getting the W if that's the only piece of information I had to go on. They still can't keep up with us in a track meet.

My son and I were at that game. We were rethinking our decision to attend this one since by all accounts it looked like a total mismatch on paper, but the Bills are only in MSP once every eight years so why not. Obviously the game worked out well and we got to be there for The Hurdle. It was fun talking to other fans after game because literally nobody expected this one to even be competitive, let alone a rout in our favor.

Seriously? Our defense is still pretty good even with all these guys injured, and Tua is still just a somewhat-above-average QB. The Patriots and Ravens had no problem controlling this offense for 7 out of 8 quarters of play. We don't have to hold Miami scoreless. We just need to hold them to under 35 or so. I think we can do that pretty easily.

IMO, no. We have too many other guys at premium positions who either need to be extended/re-signed or who already have been. If I had to pick a position where we just "get by" with draft picks and mid-tier FAs indefinitely, it would be a) RB and b) safety. This is an unpleasant part of the business side of the league, but I think the right long-run move is to be ready to move on from Poyer and Hyde. Obviously these are two great guys who came along at just the right time for this franchise. I wish both of them well regardless of how things play out.

I know others are quibbling with this post, but I just want to say that I'm looking forward to talking about how we were missing (sort of) our entire starting secondary after beating them by 2+ scores.

The Bills are much better than either the Jets or Patriots. We should go 4-0 against those two teams, and we should cheer every time they upset some other AFC contender. It's fun to watch NE lose games, but it's more important than they hand out a few Ls to our rivals.

Sure, it would have been nice for Chubb to give himself up at the 1, but the Browns are still going to win 99%+ of the time whether he scores or not. And it's completely unrealistic to expect an NFL player to intentionally not score unless he's told to do so by a coach. Chubb's failure to make a smart play isn't a boneheaded play. His coaching staff should have been more situationally aware.

I'm really going to miss this guy until next summer when some other unknown player blows up in the preseason.