BillsFanSD

Yes! This was the second week in a row where I was strongly reminded of the drought-era Bills. In the New England game, we had the ball and the lead with 7:30 to go, and the drought teams found a way to lose those games with near 100% regularity to Brady and Belichick. And you're absolutely right that the taunting penalty would have been a very Billsy way to lose, considering just how creative we got with losing games during the drought.

Nobody besides you thinks that Josh Allen is not one of the top QBs in the AFC. Don't get me wrong -- the AFC has a lot of good young QBs. Mahomes, Jackson, Burrow, and Herbert all look like franchise guys. I don't know if Mac Jones, Mayfield, Wilson, Lawrence etc. will develop or not, but those guys obviously have potential too. But come on. If we re-run the 2018 draft tomorrow, 32 out of 32 teams would have Allen as the top-rated guy on their board.

LOL I hope the Bills extend Allen again this offseason just to ruin your day.

I think the Ravens are in pretty good shape. Lamar is fantastic, and I'd be shocked if they weren't willing to commit to him based on his overall body of work. I don't expect Jackson to have a long career in the NFL because he's not a good passer, but they can win with him while he has his athleticism. They've already shown that they're willing to build their offense around his skill set. The Browns have a serious problem on their hands. Mayfield's ceiling is "above average starter" and I'm not sure that he'll even reach that. I'm sure they would love to have a do-over on that draft pick, but that's moot now. They would be torpedoing their franchise to sign Mayfield to Allen/Mahomes/Jackson money but some (*^*&%^$^#team will give him a big contract if the Browns don't and do they really want to start over with a new guy. Glad we're not them.

Also, he had a TD dropped by Diggs, and he ran a couple in that he might have passed for instead. Those foregone passing TDs hurt his passer rating in a misleading way. Obviously Allen had a bad day yesterday, no question. But he was also extremely unlucky to have passes tipped directly to defenders, and at the end of the day we lost the turnover battle 4-1 but still won the game by two TDs so it's not like it's the end of the world or anything.

Yeah, it was ugly at times, but Buffalo was very obviously the better team from start to finish. At no point did I feel like we were in any serious danger of losing.

If anybody on our defense deserves to get paid, it's our safeties. Good for Hyde.

I give the Dolphins full credit for winning 7 straight games. That's hard to do in the NFL, regardless of who you're playing. But let's be real here. Nobody really thinks that Miami is any threat to make noise in the playoffs, right? I mean, really now.

Does covid-19 have any immunity from Josh Allen?

You know who else throws interceptable passes? Every QB in the league in every game every week.

The thing with Hughes should not have been a penalty, but it looked like one in real time and I wouldn't have complained if that flag had stood. Touching the QB out of bounds and triggering a flop will draw a flag more often than not, especially if you're named Jerry Hughes. I was pretty surprised to see that flag get picked up. It makes me happy that New England fans are all bent out of shape over one not-quite-a-penalty that wasn't gifted to then. They're in a for a long, painful lesson in what officiating is like when you don't have the league's chosen golden boy on your team anymore.

That, and he was perfectly happy to throw the ball away when nothing was there. No dumb turnovers, no huge sacks. Just solid, mistake-free football with some ridiculous highlight reel plays sprinkled in.

I think Allen may have passed Thurman for #1 on my list.

Allen McKenzie Hyde Singletary Edmunds had some nice plays today as well.

I'm disappointed in how the season has gone so far, and I'm not optimistic about the team turning it around. But I'm still enjoying it. This team has an extremely bright future, and if "making the playoffs as a wildcard" is what now constitutes a "down year," that's quite an improvement from where we were not that long ago.

Seems pretty on-brand for the 2021 Bills team.

Kelly was the right QB for that team. Allen is the right QB for this team. The gap between those two guys and whoever #3 is is so large that it's misleading even to name a #3.

Harrison Phillips need to get a game ball. Guy was on fire today.

The Bills got a nice, workmanlike win over an overmatched opponent. Nothing to celebrate, but nothing to feel bad about either. Next week's game is huge. No clue why some of you follow this team if you're going to get upset over easy double-digit wins.

Teams with legitimate championship aspirations don't whine about the weather in December and January.

This team should have been set up with first and goal at the one, with four chances to win in regulation. In what universe is that "not good enough to win?"

Yeah, but wins and losses in close games are high-variance affairs. It's not that we're doing anything inherently wrong during close games, just that we're getting unusually unlucky. Yesterday we were all set up with first and goal at the one yard line at the end of regulation. Or at least we would have been, with just normal officiating. That we weren't was totally outside of our control. Last week we played the game in a wind tunnel. Our uber-reliable K missed a chippie earlier in the game, so we absolutely had to have a TD. Shaky execution, poor play calling, and a really dumb penalty committed by Knox snuffed out that final drive, but if we play the last series over again we probably win that game about half the time or so. Just not that time. We had the Tennessee game as good as won. All we had to do was pick up a routine fourth-and-one with our 6'5" 240 lb QB. Oh no our pro blow LT got blown up and our pro bowl QB slipped and now it's game over. If we replayed that last series, how often do we win? 8o% of the time? 90% of the time? Just not that time. I forget how the Pittsburgh game went, and the Jacksonville game doesn't count because there's no excuse for that game being close in the first place. But there are three unlucky games right there that could have easily gone the other way with just undisasterous luck.

Obviously it would be great to win out. And this team is good enough that's it's certainly capable of doing so. We're going to be heavy favorites in three of these games, and I like our chances to get the split with NE (although that's still a tough game of course). That said, I'll be honest that I'm kind of pessimistic. Despite what we saw in the second half yesterday, this team just doesn't seem to have clicked. This season feels like a very slightly better version of one of those innumerable drought seasons where we're "in the hunt" up until about the second to last week of the season only to get bounced due to one too many inexcusable or fluky losses. The obvious difference is that we have a top-shelf QB on the roster so there's good reason for optimism going forward, even if this year feels like a bit of a wasted season.

I've been pretty disappointed in the production we've gotten from Sanders. That's not a crack on the guy -- he's old, and it looks like he may have hung around for one year too long. If we had acquired him a couple of years ago when we first tried, maybe last year's playoff run ends differently. But I agree that it's time to get Davis on the field more. At this particular moment in time, Davis seems like the better player.

Nothing against Trubisky, but this team belongs to Josh Allen. If Allen wants to give it a go on crutches, that's fine with me.