HappyDays

I'll admit the stretch of Baltimore, Houston, and NYJ fed into some of my worst fears about McDermott. My biggest lingering concern with him is how he and his staff perform in critical high-leverage moments. Each of those games featured bizarre decisions that directly led to us losing or letting an inferior team back into the game. You have to execute a few of those moments during a deep playoff run and historically those are the moments that have kicked us out of the tournament. Since the Jets game we've done a much better job in those moments so I have some hope that McDermott has finally figured it out, but the lingering concern is still there and won't be fully excised from my mind until I see it happen when it counts.

That's Derrik Klassen who I actually really like, but I don't agree with him at all on Benford. The play he made in 1v1 coverage against Deandre Hopkins to pop the ball out as they went to the ground was not just McDermott's scheme. That was an individual CB flat out winning against a WR that is usually elite in those contested situations. I don't know what else Benford needs to do to get out from underneath Dane Jackson and Levi Wallace's shadow. He's delivered in every big moment this year and opposing offenses are barely even throwing the ball in his direction.

Honestly probably not that much earlier than we took him. Late 2nd if I had to guess. He has been injury prone and is pretty scheme specific IMO.

Much like MVP, coach of the year is ultimately an award about narratives. It is too difficult for a long-time head coach with expected success to win that narrative battle. Let's be honest, Belichick should have been coach of the year for two straight decades but that's not how it works. I think for McDermott to have a shot we would have to go undefeated the rest of the way. Then the narrative would be that everyone predicted a downturn for the Bills but instead they had their best regular season ever under his leadership, and he would beat another candidate in Dan Campbell along the way. If that happens we are the #1 seed, Allen is unanimous MVP, and McDermott probably has good odds of getting coach of the year.

He had practically the exact same play against Miami but the officials took it off the board with a phantom holding call. I was happy to see him add it back to his career highlight reel, in an even bigger moment.

More times than I watched Bass' 61 yarder which is saying something.

I questioned the positional value of the signing, especially with other players like Benford, Bernard, Rousseau, etc. coming up soon. I had zero doubts about Brown's talent. He's grown to be a very good RT and is critical to our run scheme.

Brandon Thorn is very impressed by Spencer Brown this season which is about the highest compliment you can get as an offensive lineman:

Cooper really is the anti-Diggs. Look at him casually making a one handed catch for a massive 3rd down conversion, with the expression of someone waiting in line at the DMV.

This is the coolest thing I've seen in a while. Thank you for posting it.

Sandra Bullock once won an Oscar and a Razzie in the same year. Same thing, basically.

Could be something to that. His runs weren't really going anywhere on 1st down when he was in the game but maybe if we had stuck with it there would have been more efficiency as the game went along. We even tried getting a few passes to RBs on 1st downs but the Chiefs were sniffing those out right away too. I don't know. I can't sit here and say Brady was too run happy or too pass happy or was too aggressive or was too conservative or didn't use enough play action. Everything we tried on 1st down just wasn't working except for four big plays. Feels like that down has been a problem for us all year.

I didn't want us to abandon the run. I am a believer in committing to it even if it fails early on. That was something I really hated about Daboll actually, he would get away from the run even in close games and pass rushers were able to just pin their ears back. I'm not even saying I know the solution, which is why I'm on my couch instead of on an NFL sideline. I just know averaging 8.6 yards to go on 2nd down is a really poor result and Brady owns that result.

The gameplan was definitely aggressive which I liked actually. Really on both sides of the ball. You don't beat the Chiefs sitting on your heels, you have to attack attack attack and live with the result knowing you either took it to them or went down swinging. But regarding your question it's hard to say because we had a ton of 3rd and longs so those reads are naturally going to be downfield. My biggest problem with Brady in this game was the offense had trouble staying on schedule. Our excellent 3rd down efficiency made the operation look a lot better than it really was. I just did the math myself to make sure my eye test was accurate. We had 4 1st down plays that went for 10+ yards. On the other 24 1st downs (excluding our two TD runs) we averaged 1.6 yards per play. I know the 4 big plays count, I'm not discounting those. But that is a really difficult world to live in where you are basically playing in 2nd and 8.5 for the entire game. Ultimately it falls on the OC to do better.