BillsFanSD

Also, didn't Herbert pick up a fumbled snap yesterday and complete a pass? Or am I imagining that? It wasn't an especially dramatic play, but it just further reinforces the point that QBs don't normally just flop on every bad snap. (It's possible that I'm thinking of some other game).

Counterpoint. Allen is a playmaker, and frankly I don't want that to change. I'll live with the occasional negative play if it means getting the highlight reel plays. You're going to have to learn to live with this sort of thing for the next ten years or so.

This is insane. Last year, every first down felt like an accomplishment, scoring 20 points in a single game seemed like a tall order, and people were constantly wringing their hands over "but where's the 300 yard games?" If you see zero improvement compared to last year, that's on you.

The Rams and Seahawks for sure. The Dolphins and Raiders are also borderline playoff teams. (Full disclosure: I don't think Miami is actually that good, and they're at least a couple of wins ahead of their talent level. If you want to cross them off this list, I won't argue with you, but according to the stats they're a solid team.) I mean, last year your point would have had some validity to it. We played a schedule that was softer than Snuggle Bear, and it was reasonable to wonder what would happen if/when we finally played somebody good. It's kind of crazy to make that same argument this year. We lost to two good teams -- one under deeply weird circumstances and one that was at least kind of close -- and we lost another game to a pretty good team on a fluke play at the very end. We've also got wins over 3-4 playoff teams. Obviously it would be nice if we were unbeaten, but it's not like our 8-3 record is some kind of mirage or just the product of beating up on the Jets, Bengals, and Jaguars of the league. We have quite a few good wins tucked away in there.

I wouldn't. That was a very weird game, and I imagine a Bills-Titans playoff game would about 3 point line -- more or less a coin flip. Most fans would have a better handle on the NFL if they thought in terms of probabilities instead of obviously wrong heuristics like "The better team always wins." In the NFL, the gap between teams isn't that large, and there are hardly any games that are truly locks one way or the other.

A year in the life of a football fan: March: Miss football. April: Miss football. May: Miss football. June: Miss football. July: Miss football. August: Look forward to football. September - January: Complain about football with a special emphasis on officiating. February: Miss football.

The Bills organization owes the fans an apology for [checks notes] winning the game yesterday.

Back in June, this was the game that I was most confident would be a loss. How things have changed. Now it feels closer to a "Need to take care of business" game.

The Chiefs are a really outstanding team. Objectively, I can't deny that they're just better than the Bills. No argument on that one. We're certainly capable of beating the TItans, Steelers, and Ravens. Do we beat those teams 100 times out of 100? Of course not, nobody does that against anybody. But we're not much worse than a coin flip against anybody outside of KC. (Edit: My armchair guess is that we probably beat the Chiefs about a third of the time. There's a significant gulf between KC and the rest of the AFC).

By modern NFL standards, this game was never in any serious doubt. The Bills made it interesting because of the turnovers, but at no point did it look like LAC would actually take a lead.

8-3. First place in the division. Coming off a 10 point win. Very bright future long-term. You'd think we were 2-9 with a journeyman QB just hoping the draft would get here already. It's mind boggling.

No. Conservatively, I'd guess that I see a QB pick that up and do something with it probably every other week or so. Trying to pick it up is fine. Were you asleep during the Dallas game last year?

I'll take Two Guys Who Won't Be Employed By The Jets Next Year for $100 please.

I think that was inside of 2:00 so it wasn't up to McD.

Guys, the hail mary thing is just a statistically bizarre pair of back-to-back low-percentage plays. Both were covered well. No reason to worry about it.

Because the 49ers were a really good team back in April, while folks weren't too sure what to make of the Bills?

No. My son and I were just talking about this last night. Neither of us could recall what we traded away to move up to get Allen, and we both agreed that whatever it was, it was a steal. We landed a guy who we would not now trade away for three first round picks. Whatever draft capital it took to land him is trivial.

Josh wouldn't have fallen to #7 in that scenario, so no I'd prefer not to imagine this thank you very much.

Yes, we can lose to Miami and still get the divisional tiebreaker if we beat NE or if Miami drops a game to NE or the Jets. Basically the worst that can happen is we end the season at 4-2 in the division, which is the best that Miami can possibly do.

Not really. We're probably going to be favored in five of our last six games. At the beginning of the season, this last six game stretch looked incredibly daunting -- it's still challenging and I don't expect to actually finish 5-1, but it's not really that bad. Edit: I mean, if you told me right now that we were going to beat Miami in week 17 -- a game that we'll be strongly favored to win -- that one win alone gives us essentially a three game lead in the division (two games plus the tiebreaker) with only five more games to play. It's a lot more accurate to say that all we need to do to win the division at this point is just win the games we're supposed to win. It doesn't matter what we do against the Steelers or 49ers if we take care of business against the Dolphins, Broncos, and Chargers.

Oh sure, now you tell me.

At this point, I'm just gobsmacked that the Bills were lucky/smart enough to grab the best QB out of that 2018 class. So far, Allen's the only guy out of that year's "big four" that actually developed into a legit franchise QB. Jackson has been a nice story, but I'm happy with our guy.

Yep. This sort of thread is just further evidence for the theory that a lot of folks in our little community don't watch much football outside of Bills games. We also benefited from a couple of ticky-tack calls against Arizona, but of course everybody forgets about those.

I agree. Allen has made massive, gigantic strides since entering the league, and I'll be happy to have him quarterbacking our team for the next decade. There's still some room for growth, but we're looking at changes on the margin compared to the development we've seen during his first three years.

We're a game ahead of Miami, we have a bunch of ways to secure the tie-breaker over Miami, and we have another opportunity to beat Miami. Also, the Bills are a significantly better team than Miami. Stranger things have happened of course, but Miami isn't going to catch up to us if we take care of business.