HappyDays

He's been the 2nd best player on the team IMO. Already has a claim as the best run blocking OT in the game. If/when Penei Sewell moves to LT, Brown will be the best RT in the league.

Also there have been a lot of plays over the years in critical moments where the defense has failed to make the play they needed to make to pull out a win. Last year in particular it was a huge problem. Fans don't remember every single 3rd down, they remember the big moments. More often than not this defense fails in those moments which contributes to a general feeling of anti-clutchness amongst the fanbase, regardless of what the stats look like on a year to year basis.

Shakir doesn't make those catches. It generally turns out bad when we try to throw him the ball downfield. I guess I'm fine that we gave him a couple shots just to prove those shouldn't be part of the playbook any longer. Use him where he belongs - in the short and occasionally intermediate areas with room to run after the catch.

Here's the play: Not much to say, the play was dead on arrival and like Dan Orlovsky says Allen just threw one out there because there's nothing to lose. Coleman does beat his man which is good to see but Allen is moved off his spot by pressure before the routes develop.

Having watched the all-22 back he really wasn't bad at all. Just less Superman plays than we've seen in recent weeks which to me seemed intentional. Whenever the Pats got into man our guys were completely locked down. There were only a couple plays at most where I thought he just flat out missed a read or a throw. Honestly Coleman may have been the best separator of all of them in man coverage but Allen didn't look his way too often.

Smoot wasn't very good yesterday either. Gave up his gap on a 3rd down and Maye scrambled right through it for a 1st down, also got too wide on Stevenson's TD run and gave him an easy lane.

He's never been a very good downfield WR. Both of his drops were downfield. We have to accept who he is and use him accordingly. The margin for error on downfield throws is just way too low for his body type and skill set.

That and also the game revealed what the offense looks like when Allen is intentionally not running around with the Superman cape. I know in the playoffs he will turn it on again so I'm confident we can get back to the 30+ PPG offense we've been since adding Cooper. But they need to continue investing in the WR room and get to a place next season where Allen doesn't need the Superman cape all the time to score 30+ points. We have no on-schedule vertical passing ability with the current personnel, which makes those midfield shot plays a complete waste of time.

So "interesting" that it makes me wonder how... real the offensive gameplan was, if that makes sense. Felt like we were trying things or putting things on tape that haven't been typical of our offense. The 13 straight passes is a good example. Throwing downfield to Shakir several times when we have barely gotten him involved downfield. Allen was barely running. I come away from this game mostly unconcerned about the offense. I don't think this game uncovered any fundamental problems. A little bit of sloppy play, a little bit of sleepwalking in a somewhat meaningless game, a little bit of an intentionally atypical game plan. The path back to dominance is pretty easy to see. The defense on the other hand I come away concerned about because the issues in this game were more fundamental issues that have shown up over and over again in recent weeks, and I don't see any path to substantial improvement unless the coaching staff completely changes their philosophies overnight.

Yeah the Chiefs had that advantage last year, they knew they were locked into the 3 seed so they rested all their starters in week 18. The Bills conversely had to go all out to win the division in that final week and entered the playoffs extremely worn out after a brutal run of must-win nailbiters. We can take the next couple weeks to rest everyone that needs it, hopefully avoid any more big hits on Allen, and keep a lot of the playbook in the bag. Short of having a chance at the #1 seed it's the best case scenario entering week 17.

It feels like the blitzes have no cohesive plan attached to them. I'll use a successful KC blitz as a counterexample: The video is more about Stroud failing to adjust the protection, but the blitz itself is very well planned and everything on the front and back end is designed to make sure it's successful. The blitzing CB is right at the line so no need to work through a bunch of trash and give the QB time to adjust post-snap. There's a simultaneous simulated pressure on the other side to draw Stroud's attention. Meanwhile the safety is capping the blitzing CB's man and immediately getting in position to come down and cover him. So it is not just Spagnuolo throwing random blitzers from random depths and crossing his fingers they get home. Every aspect of the rush plan and the coverage works in tandem. And this isn't a one-off, Spagnuolo is famous for these diabolical blitzes especially on critical downs in critical moments of the game. I just don't see that sort of thing frequently enough from Babich. Quite the opposite. I see a lot of predictable blitzes where the QBs have easy answers and plenty of time to find them. Any decent OL is easily able to diagnose and pick them up without trouble. So many times I see a blitz where the filling coverage player is playing soft/off which means there is 100% going to be a wide open pass catcher in that gap... You have to accept if you are blitzing there is a chance you will give up a big play, that is the trade off. You can't blitz and also protect against the big play because then you are just gifting the offense a free 7-8 yards with YAC potential. Don't just dip your toes in, do a cannonball. Like the double CB blitz we ran against Detroit. There was potential for that play to go horribly wrong for us, but we took the big risk and got the big payoff. I would much rather go that do or die direction than the wishy washy version that reveals a lack of confidence in your own play calling.

Unfortunately that's not how it works in the NFL. Players with major fundamental problems don't get chance after chance in real games to work through them. He's had three full years of training camps, practices, and some spot starts, and he hasn't shown even a bit of progress in any of the areas he needed to improve. He still commits too many penalties, he still is late reading his responsibilities, he still loses the ball in the air. I don't know that there is anything there to build on at this point.

That's fair. I guess I'm just looking at it in the context of his game as a whole. I've been guilty of this too where we just keep lowering the standards for him. So now a play where he gives up a TD is seen as good tight coverage and he just got unlucky to be beat by a depth caliber WR. I'm over the mitigating factors at this point. He is what he is which is a player that gives up a lot of chunk plays. It really frustrates me because I can't even pinpoint what is going wrong. Like I said the flashes have been there. He is just beat too often. And it isn't just in zone, even in man which is supposed to be his strength he is regularly getting out leveraged and then either giving up a catch or committing a penalty to try and make up ground.

If we're lowering the standard to backup CB then I agree, I can't be mad about a backup getting beat on that play. A legit starting CB can't get beat by a 400 yard WR on that play, especially stacking it with all the other mistakes he made throughout the game. But yeah I agree with the second part, Douglas is unquestionably still the CB2. I hate to say it but I trust him to get back to his previous standard of play more than I trust Elam to suddenly develop. Every time he's gotten a chance he's shown flashes but can never find any level of consistency.

Not even close to OPI. Just normal hand fighting on both sides.