BillsFanSD

Allen certainly isn't playing with the same edge he used to play with, but then again our defense just gave up 29 points to Matt Jones so it's not as if it's just him. This whole team is playing as if they won the SB against a Miami a few weeks ago. Without being in the building and actually seeing what's going on, it's impossible for any of us to diagnose exactly what the deal is, but the Bills have not been right basically since last year's bye. There were a dysfunctional mess down the stretch last year, which a lot of people blamed on the Miller injury, the Hamlin situation, and a bunch of other things, but they were clearly underperforming and had this weird culture about it where they expected everybody to pretend like everything was fine when it clearly wasn't. After the last three weeks, it's not possible to pretend anymore. At a rock-bottom minimum, I have seen enough of Ken Dorsey to feel confident that he's not the answer. There are people out there who would step over their grandmother for the opportunity to coach this offense. We should move on after this season, and it should be an outside hire, not internal. I'm less certain about this next part, but I am also inclined to say that this experiment with McDermott running the defense is also not working. Part of that is me (over?)reacting to yesterday's game, but a bigger part of it is that when a team is this out of sync, maybe they need a full-time HC and not a guy who's just doing this in his free time. My real concern though is that something has happened that caused McDermott to lose the locker room. No idea what that might of been or why this happened, but the play on the field looks very much like an extremely talented team that is just going through the motions. Probably McDemott is fine and this is a problem that can be solved with some staff in the offseason, but two months ago "We may need a new HC" wasn't even on my radar screen, so that fact that I can see like a 15% chance or so of this happening is getting alarming.

At this point it has to be on the coaches. Dorsey is not working out. We also need a real DC, which creates an issue at HC. Honestly, it feels like this team needs a fresh start, but I know that's rash.

Counterpoint: Many of us watch most games most weekends, we know bad football when we see it, and there's something wrong when your team gets shut out by the New York Giants for three quarters.

So what? The home-away split is completely formula-driven.

After the last two weeks, I'd say Dorsey needs to 100% get this offense turned around without further delay. I would not object if the Bills decided to part ways with him regardless of how the rest of the season goes. We can't afford an OC who throws away games against inferior opponents during our franchise QB's prime.

I don't expect this team to be perfect, but a team with championship expectations should destroy a team like the Giants. It's okay to acknowledge that something is wrong based on what we've seen on the field the last couple of weeks.

I expect we'll win the next few games fairly easily. Unfortunately, our path to the super bowl was going to require that we beat some teams a mite bit better than the Giants, and we can't realistically expect to win three consecutive games against those teams given the injuries that we've had. Having said that, and knowing what the NFL is like, we'll probably go undefeated the rest of the way and cruise to our first championship. But much more likely is a one-and-done. Hopefully we can Kincaid integrated into the offense, see what we've got with some of our younger players who are getting some additional snaps, and hope for better injury luck next year.

I'm still salty about their fan base's amateur-hour reaction to our playoff game a few years back. We were all happy about the drought being snapped. The 2017 Bills did not belong in the playoffs, they lucked their way into a WC berth despite voluntarily trying to make Nathan Peterman into a starting QB, and if there was ever a team and a fan base that was "just happy to be there," it was the 2017 Bills. The Jaguars were the better team on paper, but we arguably outplayed them. IIRC, we got came up short in the red zone a time or two, and we ended up with a 10-3 loss that in no way embarrassed our team or organization considering the circumstances. But for some reason, their fans strutted around like they just blew out 2007 Patriots. I know they have an irrelevant team that struggles to fill their own stadium, which is why they outsource so many games to London, and I get that they have to savor their victories where they can find them, but come on. I would like to drop 50 on them and let their fans see what a real team can do.

Honestly, great! At this point, it honestly doesn't matter all that much if Miami adds another WR, and Claypool is likely to be a net negative for them regardless. They are probably worse off for having acquired him. Good.

Poyer and Hyde are going to go down as two of all my all-time favorite Bills players. Two guys who were each undervalued assets, signed at approximately the same time, at the very beginning of the rebuild, who ended up being plug-and-play cornerstones in the secondary. Plus they both just seem like good dudes. I know their time in the defensive backfield is drawing to a close. Just glad they were able to build careers here.

We're 2-1. We lost our first game because our QB went rogue. We blew out our next two opponents. Why do people think our offense sucks and is in need of fixing?

I have been pleasantly surprised with McDermott's performance so far. I didn't expect him to fall on his face or anything like that, but there has been a clear improvement in the defense IMO, without any obvious corresponding drop-off in other areas. Good for him. Of course, this was against three sad-sack teams. Let's hold off on the ticker-tape parades until we see how this defense holds up against the Dolphins and Chiefs. Also, one of my biggest fears here is not that McDermott will fail as a DC, but that his DC role will cause him to fail as a HC. Specifically I am thinking ahead to a divisional playoff game against the Dolphins (or whoever) where we face 4th and 2 late in the fourth quarter nursing a 1-point lead. Is McDermott going to be willing to put the game and a potential trip to the AFCCG in the hands of Josh Allen and Ken Dorsey -- who he cannot directly control -- or will he punt and put the game in the hands of his own unit? We won't know the answer to that question until we get there.

Last week's game featured a bunch of weird officiating decisions like this. The phantom tripping call on Kincaid, the missed fumble recovery, the call for defensive holding on a play where the RB ran directly into the pile, and so on. Each of those was NBD as an isolated one-off, but it felt like literally every contestable call went Washington's way for the entire freaking game. I can see that White rolled out of the end zone, but the interception obviously occurred in the EZ and White is obviously giving himself up. We all see plays like that all the time, and probably 90% of them are ruled as touchbacks.

The Jets have a very good roster that was a QB away from being a playoff team. They went out and got themselves a QB, but he suffered a season-ending injury in week 1. Now they are screwed. That's really all there is to it. It's not complicated. The Jets will be back in the market for a QB this offseason. They'll be fine if they land one and not fine if they don't. If something happened to Josh Allen, I would give up on this season and I imagine everybody else would too. You can't lose your starting QB in the NFL and expect to carry on like nothing happened, unless your starting QB really sucked. The Bills without Allen are not a playoff team. Neither are the Chiefs without Mahomes, the Bengals without Burrow, the Ravens with Jackson, etc. San Francisco is the only team built to survive mediocre QB play.

I thought the clock management was fine. As others noted, the issue there was more about execution than clock management. And besides, sometimes you just really need to make sure you come away with points, and if it's a FG that's fine. Yesterday was one of those times IMO. I hated all the runs on 2nd-and-long and the pass on fourth-and-one, but given that we won the game I guess I don't mind having that film out there.

I don't expect Tua to have a long NFL career. Some guys are just unlucky with injuries, and some guys are legitimately injury-prone because they're undersized, lack situational awareness, or just lack the athleticism to deflect direct hits. If there's one player in the NFL who I think fits the "injury prone" label, it's Tua. Between the hip and all the concussions, I just don't see him lasting. Nothing against the guy. Just calling it like I see it. Tua does not have Dan Marino's ability to avoid damage.

I'm kind of expecting a 17-13 type game because that's what always seems to happen in these kinds of games when everyone expects a track meet. That said, I do feel like we need to crack 30 to feel good about our chances, and I could absolutely see us losing a 38-34 shootout.

I think the Dolphins are a legitimately good team that can make a very deep playoff run. Two years ago we were saying they were a couple of years away. Last year we were saying that they were still a year off. This year they have arrived and they have about as good a chance of winning the AFCE as we do. That said, they struggled to put away the Chargers and Patriots. Sure, they ran up the score on an awful Denver team, but we already knew they had a good offense. And they're still benefiting from the early-season "Make our opponents die of heat exhaustion while we relax in the shade" HFA, which won't last. They're very good and they might win the SB this year, but I don't think we need to crown them in Week 3 quite yet.

It's not just you -- it's worse this year than it has been in years past IMO. I'm inclined to agree that the rustiness we've seen out of the gate this year is mainly due to teams blowing off the preseason.

Losing four straight SBs aged all us more than we'd like to admit.

But Diggs is a professional football player. His job is beating man coverage and finding soft spots in zones. He's responding to Glab on social media with the same off-the-cuff attitude that most average people would have. Tim Graham is also drawing attention to this issue and refusing to let it die by posting about it. And unlike Diggs, Tim Graham knows exactly what he's doing. It is literally his job to understand the media landscape and choose what's newsworthy and what isn't. By covering this, he's making sure that it stays front and center. This is why people hate journalists.

I'm still trying to figure out what it is about Diggs that makes people so mad. Yeah, he's emotionally volatile. But so what. He's extremely good, he obviously wants to win, he's not a me-first guy in the way that some "diva" type players are, and he's never actually done anything legitimately bad, like slapping his girlfriend around or running over a pedestrian while loaded. At some point, it stops being "Diggs can't get along with other people" are more about our own media not being able to get along with other people. Tim Graham is a toddler who just stirs up ***** in a more conventionally-acceptable way than Diggs does. The difference is that Diggs is good at the job that he's being paid to do, and he takes it seriously.

I would be worried about Bing Crosby vs. RT Spencer Brown. Fortunately that's only one matchup.

Yeah between the Raiders' injuries and the Bills's bruised egos, I honestly expect a bloodletting on Sunday. There's no reason why we can't beat this squad by three touchdowns.

I honestly feel bad for the Jets and their fans. I hate New England and Miami, obviously, but I just don't have the same animosity toward the Jets. They're a snakebitten franchises that can't seem to catch a break, so I guess I feel a little bit of affinity toward them. It helps that the Jets and Bills have never really been relevant at the same time, at least since our SB era. If ever there was a roster that is just one above-average QB away from the SB, it is this year's Jets team. They thought they had their QB and it came up snake-eyes. That really hurts bad when you consider the cap implications.