BillsFanSD

"Rigged" is too much, but everybody knows that certain teams (Dallas, Pittsburgh, New England) and certain players (Brady) get the benefit of every close call. Yesterday was a good example. The Bills were certainly good enough to beat Tampa. But when the officials intervened to force overtime and then gave them a little more help with the PI on Wallace, it was a little too much. It's hard to beat any good team three times in the same game.

Obviously the Bills still have a very good chance at the playoffs. And that's good I guess because anything can happen once we get to the postseason. But really, so what? Sneaking into the playoffs as a wild card team is so far under any reasonable expectations for this season that I'm not going to celebrate a random playoff appearance. One-and-done was great in 2017 but the bar is rightly set much higher now.

Under normal circumstances, giving up 222 yards of total offense would be great. These weren't normal circumstances. This game was played in a wind tunnel. Our opponents left their regular playbook back in Foxborough and ran a high school offense that Belichick probably designed on the flight to Buffalo. They made absolutely no effort whatsoever to pass the ball, which in the modern NFL is like playing with both hands tied behind your back. The Bills knew they were going to run on every play. They still gave up 222 yards on the ground. Despite knowing exactly what was coming. Yeah, that sucks. Edit: If you want to start a thread about how our offense let the team down, I'm happy to chime on on that one too. It's not like this was all on the defense or anything, but it was definitely partly on them.

I can point to 222 reasons for why this is mistaken.

I agree. Last year, this offense was a totally one-dimensional pass-on-every-down show. And it worked! Because we have an all-pro QB who can paper over some problems with pass protection, and he's throwing to a collection of really good receivers. Why hand the ball off to some guy who's going to get hit at the line of scrimmage and maybe fall forward for a yard or two when you can throw to 14 and 11? This year we're handing it off on second and long and pissing away red zone plays just to check an imaginary "did we run the ball enough?" box. And last year this team was mentally dialed in pretty much every week. We lost some games here and there, but you never felt like they just showed up and expected their opponents to roll over for them. That's been the story every single week this year except (not coincidentally) the KC game. Even stupid errors like all the pre-snap penalties ultimately come back to coaching. Maybe a season like this was inevitable. Maybe this team just needed to learn a hard lesson about what success in the NFL requires. It's not like this would be the first roster to take a step backwards after a really good year only to get back on track the following season. But yeah fundamentally this is still a SB-caliber roster. This staff just didn't get the most out of them.

I think it's fair to be disappointed in this year's team. It's not an overreaction to any one game in particular. They pissed away Week 1 to an inferior team, lost a tight one to Tennessee (no complaints there), lost to a relegation side against Jacksonville, got blown out by an inferior Colts team, and now lost to a team that practically didn't even dress a QB. They beat KC, but otherwise their wins have all come against a parade of chumps and backups. Could they get hot and make a run in the playoffs? Sure. There are no scary teams in the AFC and anything's possible. Much more likely is a quick one-and-done. I have no idea how anybody would watch this team for 12 games and feel good about them beating another playoff team, let alone three or four in a row.

I'm legitimately baffled at how people don't understand this. The announcers went on and on about how the safety came off Beasley to come back into the passing lane for Davis. It's not like anybody had to carefully break down the all-22 to see this -- it was obvious in real time and called out by the broadcasters.

Josh Allen is the only reason why we had a good opportunity to win this game. Literally nobody else on the team stepped up at any point. Except maybe Diggs who had one really nice sideline catch to make up for the perfectly-thrown TD pass that he dropped. This. Not a fan of Jerry Sullivan, but the defense deserves to be called out on their inability to stop the run. Not that Poyer or Hyde are the main culprits here, but still.

I've been impressed by Mac Jones's play. He's going to be a good one IMO. Wouldn't trade Allen for him, and it's not a close decision.

This. I do not want to see the Colts again. I do not want to see the Titans with Derrick Henry back, even if he's limited. I do not want to see Cleveland even though they look like a dumpster fire right now. But really the entire AFC playoff bracket will be filled by pretty good teams who are perfectly capable of beating us if we don't bring our A-game.

This game, man.

Heck of a drive there by Indy.

Honestly, this is about right. Tre is awesome and can't be replaced, but our D is still above average. If Allen and the O can get it going with our real o-line, we'll be fine. If not, it probably wasn't happening anyway.

Fun trip. Spent most of the day yesterday at the WW2 museum, which was way better than I had expected. Today we had a nice breakfast and took in the parade for the southern classic. The the voodoo museum, the death museum, some bar hopping, and then we'll head out for supper in a bit. Fun city to visit for a weekend, especially considering the W. Edit: Oh yeah and we took in Rent last night. I'm really not the target audience for that one lol.

CB was an area of need even before this injury. Now, I think it's practically essential to invest in the position since Tre's recovery is going to have some uncertainty associated with it. Don't care whether that happens in the draft or free agency.

I know that injuries are random and can happen to anybody -- hell just ask any Saints fan. But man, we knew CB depth was a problem for years and just didn't address it. I love Beane, but this seems like a roster management error.

This is a big game. Next week is a huge game. Perspective.

Yeah I haven't been in a bar that packed since college (I'm 49). Not a mask to be seen. Enjoying my triple-dose of Moderna.

Great time so far. We made it down to the parade at Ryan's pretty much immediately after checking in and dumping our luggage. I figured this was just going to be a bunch of fans milling around, but marching through the French Quarter with a band and police escort was really cool. They needed like four times the bar staff, but it was the middle of the afternoon on a Wednesday so let's cut everybody some slack I guess. Now we just need to kill a few hours before going out for Thanksgiving, and do our 1/11th to get this nonsense sorted out.

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I don't think guys in 3rd and later can really ever be considered "busts." The fact is that you're going to miss on most of those picks. A guy like Moss is certainly disappointing, but "bust" is way too strong a term. The only person who really qualifies in my opinion is Cody Ford. Although we're getting close to being able to make a call on Epenesa too.

Allen isn't the problem -- he's the reason why we still have a winning record and still have a good shot at the division title. Put a replacement-level QB under center and we're probably sitting at 3-7 or something. As others have noted, our problems boil down to a complete inability to run the football (almost entirely an o-line problem) and a general inability to defend against teams that feature a power running game. I don't feel that bad about the latter. Lots of teams don't defend the run well these days because so few teams are built that way. It makes more sense to build our defense around beating the KCs and NEs of the world, so I can live with some struggles against teams like IND and TEN. But the offense's struggles are just unacceptable IMO.

Has it actually been confirmed that Brown is out today? I thought he could potentially be available if vaccinated with a couple of negative tests.

Does Josh Allen have standing to sue someone for malpractice? Or gross negligence or something?

It's absolutely ridiculous that a rookie third rounder is so important to our offense.