HappyDays

Lol you're being really weird about this. Great QBs have to take risks. It was a complaint about Rodgers, he wouldn't throw a lot of INTs but then he would get to the playoffs and would play too conservative and the Packers would lose. Great for his stat sheet, not so great for beating elite teams. It's a tricky needle to thread. You don't want to be Jameis Winston but you don't want to be Tyrod Taylor either. As I've said a few times I think Allen has crossed the line between aggressive and reckless a tad too often this year, especially against bad opponents where an ugly win would get it done. I would still rather have 40 TDs with 15 INTs than say 30 TDs with 8 INTs though. Turnover differential is a fun stat but points on the board are actually what win games.

I think the Panthers can beat the Jags with CJ Beathard at QB. If the Jags lose we just need one of the Bengals or Steelers to lose for us to clinch a playoff spot (assuming we beat the Pats).

Not really. Good rookie year for sure but he's been our weak link IMO. Here are the individual PFF grades for each member of the OL: Dawkins 73.7 McGovern 58.9 Morse 64.5 Torrence 56.6 Brown 69.2 Very good on the edges, but slightly below average on the interior. I think two things are helping our ranking here: 1) Continuity. I can't remember the last time the Bills had so many consecutive games with the same starting 5. IIRC McGovern missed the first game, but otherwise the starting 5 has never changed. That is massively important. I doubt more than a couple other teams have this advantage. 2) Relative lack of good OL play across the league. The individual rankings above don't scream "top 5 OL" but most teams have just average OLs right now. I doubt there is a ton of separation between say the 5th best OL and the 20th best OL, at least not enough to make a real difference. There are a couple extremes at both ends and then a lot of average in the middle.

I think the defense and OL have both been good enough. Not elite, but playoff caliber. There was a stretch in the middle there where the defense was literally the worst in the league but they've gotten back to a top 12 level. I do think the weapons mostly suck. I don't think they are really playoff caliber, Allen is just carrying them to produce well above their talent level would suggest. Diggs has not been that good this year. Davis has disappeared in like half of his games. Shakir is a JAG. Harty and Sherfield are less than JAGs. You know I loved Kincaid in the draft but he has really struggled to separare from physical coverage as of late. Too often I see him laying on the turf after his initial release. He is hearing footsteps and failing to catch the ball too frequently. As a result he has been removed from the offensive game plan over the past few games. Cook has flashed superstar abilities at times, but the offense has not consistently been able to run through him and he makes too many mistakes to be totally trustworthy. The other RBs are JAGS. So yeah it is a below average group of weapons being carried by a QB playing better than any other QB in the league. I still don't trust McDermott in playoff scenarios or close games against good opponents, but he has a chance to right that ship this year.

I don't know about you Gunner, but I've personally been thinking that OL play across the league has gotten to be pretty similar. I would describe most OLs as average. There's a couple great ones - Eagles and Lions - and a few awful ones - Giants, Panthers, a couple others - but most are at about the same level I would say. So while I would agree the Bills OL has improved from the ranks of awful to the ranks of good enough, I would not say it has been a true advantage for our team this year.

No, that's you making up the worst possible version of my argument because you sometimes like to play semantics games instead of engaging in the discussion.

It has definitely improved. Replacing Saffold was a default improvement. Dawkins has turned in his best season. Brown has been a little better. Torrence hasn't really been as good as people say, he has struggled quite a bit at times, but steady enough that he hasn't single handedly lost us games the way Saffold would. But the main reason Allen's sack % is so low is that he can make plays like this: He's also gotten a lot better this year at taking his check down or throwing the ball away when all else fails. Our pressure rate this year is 19.0%. Yet Allen's sack rate is 3.8%. I believe I read somewhere that he has the best pressure to sack rate out of all QBs. And I will qualify this by saying I know Allen sometimes invites pressure by holding the ball and hunting for big plays. Still he and Mahomes are pretty clearly the best at avoiding sacks that almost any other QB would take.

Lol Mahomes has built a Hall of Fame career running out of clean pockets. We're really still banging that drum? Guys like Allen and Mahomes and Jackson do not produce in conventional ways. Rolling out of clean pockets is how we sometimes score 50 yard TDs. You gotta take the good with the bad on that. If you like pocket QBs go watch Joe Burrow, he's lost two seasons to injury now. Or maybe watch Derek Carr. A nice safe conservative stay in the pocket QB.

Allen has the 2nd lowest sack % in the entire NFL out of 33 qualifying QBs. You guys gotta actually look at things before posting. Allen has been elite at avoiding sacks this year, and let's be honest his offensive has been improved but it is not stellar.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. You can't run straight backwards for 20 yards from your own 20 and expect things to turn out well. That's the kind of play Allen had to get out of his system after his first couple years. I don't blame the official there at all.

The Ravens defense is ranked 2nd by DVOA. Ours is ranked 12th. Their special teams is ranked 4th. Ours is ranked 18th. It is not debatable that the other two phases of the game have heavily favored Lamar over Allen. The only reason the Bills are even in a playoff spot right now is because Allen had clutch game winning drives against the Giants, Chiefs, and Chargers. He also had clutch game winning drives against the Pats, Broncos, and Eagles, but unfortunately...

No I wouldn't. This is just something you decided to say. If Allen had 16 less TDs on the year we would be like 5-10 right now. That's the point. There is no universe where Allen scores 24 TDs and the Bills are the #1 seed. We'd all be looking ahead at the draft by now and wondering if Allen has completely lost his abilities. So to be clear, your argument is that a QB who "didn't have to do anything" in a lot of his games is the MVP? So if the Bills had had 13 games up to this point like the Cowboys game, Allen would deserve to be MVP simply by virtue of our team's record? You're all over the place. By the way, if you're going to use PFF's rating of our OL as a testament to Allen's supporting cast, you should probably point out that they have the Ravens OL slotted one spot higher, and more importantly that their QB rankings this year have Allen #1 and Lamar #5.

Mahomes has a better MVP case than Lamar does. More total yards and TDs despite clearly having a worse offensive supporting cast (albeit a better defense). But again, the actual MVP award has become a joke.

I would rather have the 40 TDs Allen has given us compared to the 24 TDs Lamar has had. The thing about the Bills is that Allen's TDs can't have been scored by anyone else. He's responsible for 85.1% of our TDs scored versus Lamar who's responsible for 54.5% of theirs. Our weapons may be a little better on the whole, although considering Diggs has not been close to elite for the past 8 weeks or so that is not a gimme. But either way the discrepancy between 40 TDs and 24 TDs is not because of the offensive supporting cast. It's because of the QBs. I find it weird that Lamar's MVP campaign has suddenly risen so high after the 49ers game. Did people actually watch that game? He started the game by running backwards for 20 yards and giving up a dumb safety. The next several drives he missed a bunch of passes including a couple on 3rd down that ended drives. If the 49ers offense had done what they usually do it would have been a blowout at halftime. Instead the Ravens defense dominated the game and gave Lamar more than enough time to settle in. I get that the actual MVP award has become a complete joke driven by narratives more than facts. But I'd like to think that as fans we can be smarter than that.

If Allen's actual turnovers marked his turnover rate, he would have about 8 INTs on the season. 40 TDs (likely more if a few more drives were extended by lack of turnover) and 8 INTs... We all agree that would be an MVP season, yes? So really the only reason he's not the obvious front runner is because of pure luck.

Yeah I pointed out in another thread the Chargers scored 4 FGs on drives that started at or before the 50, and we allowed a TD instead of a FG after Harty's fumble. That is 16 points legitimately given up by the defense against a UDFA QB throwing to his #3 and #4 WRs and down to his 3rd center. Inexcusable performance against that crew IMO. I hope McDermott learned something after the first Patriots debacle. That was probably the worst defensive performance of any team this season. I am begging him not to call a bunch of stupid and predictable blitzes that Zappe simply dumps off for chunk yardage. I want him to call more man than usual - against this group of weapons, I would much rather trust our guys to stick to their man than give Zappe easy holes in zone coverage to exploit. On offense this is one of those weeks where I want Allen to play reserved. No need to push the envelope with cross body deep throws and the like, not with Bailey Zappe on the other side. Smart conservative football and just wear the Pats down slowly. I would lean heavily into throws to the RBs and TEs in this one. I don't expect Diggs and Davis to suddenly become separation machines this week. Take every point available in this one. 4th and goal from the 2, kick the FG. Don't make the same mistake Denver made. Again it is Bailey Zappe on the other side. Any score is a huge positive.

Honestly at this point I'm just hoping he's ready for next season. If he's admitting his knee isn't where he wants it to be, it's probably too late to expect it to suddenly turn around this year.

Do I have to say the facts of the game conditions out loud, or can I assume you actually know the answer and are just having fun with this? You're the one boiling it down to one singular game, the 2021 AFCCG against the Chiefs. All I've said is that expecting Allen to consistently play at his highest level for four consecutive playoff games is not realistic, yet that is seemingly the only thing that many people on here will be satisfied with. Again I have seen multiple people on here say that his performance against the Eagles wasn't good enough because he threw one INT. And even that performance is not a realistic expectation for four consecutive playoff games. Every QB is going to stumble at some point over a 4 game sample size. So when people say they don't know if Allen can be "consistent enough" to win a Super Bowl, I would like to know what kind of consistency they are expecting. If he randomly drops the ball at midfield in a playoff game that we lose, is he the reason we lost?

The defense was not good in the 2020/2021 playoffs. The Colts offense produced more than their season average, Allen is the main reason we stole that game. The Ravens game was not a real game of football, come on now. Then we gave up 38 points in the AFCCG, nobody on the team at that point was ready to compete with the Chiefs. I once again am begging Bills fans to please watch other Super Bowl contending teams and develop proper expectations.

It is extremely rare that a QB is consistently great over several consecutive playoff games and the Super Bowl. The team has to pick up the QB at some point. Just from the last 3 Super Bowl winners: 2020 - Stafford partially just got lucky that a game losing INT was dropped in the NFCCG. He then threw two bad INTs in the Super Bowl. His team still won. 2021 - Brady threw 3 INTs in the NFCCG. And let's be honest he wasn't particularly great in that Super Bowl, his defensive line won them the game. 2022 - Mahomes missed time in the divisional round against the Jaguars. His backup QB led a TD drive and his defense held. Against the Bengals in the AFCCG he missed several relatively easy passes and inexplicably dropped the ball, giving the Bengals the ball for free at midfield. Again his defense held and he got the win. He only had 182 passing yards in the Super Bowl. There is a pervasive belief on here that if Allen doesn't play at his absolute best for four consecutive playoff games, we will never win a Super Bowl. That is not close to realistic. Nor has it ever been the case for other Super Bowl winners. For example I have seen people here blame him for the loss against the Eagles because of his one INT. If the expectation is for Allen to play BETTER than that for four consecutive games, we can go ahead and pack it in for the season and probably just get rid of McDermott now because we will never win a Super Bowl under this regime if that performance isn't good enough.

Bills 23 Patriots 17 I'll be honest, I've been terrible predicting games this year. Even ones where I've gotten the result right I have been very wrong about what that result looked like. So I'm just making a conservative prediction here. Nothing too crazy on either side, just a somewhat clunky defensive struggle where we make a few more plays to pull it out at the end. I don't really trust our passing offense at all right now. I think our defense can mostly shut down the Pats offense but I'm not going to predict total domination. I'm thinking it's 17-10 to start the 4th quarter and we just tack on a couple FGs to put the game out of reach. All that being said I won't be surprised if we totally blow them out. I just can't bring myself to predict it.

So there you go, this was Payton's plan all along. He was just waiting for the right moment.

Keeping in mind that literally every single one of his interceptable passes has been caught by the defender, he still has less value lost to negative plays than any other QB in the NFL. He also has the best EPA per play against top 12 defenses. MVP for sure if the award actually meant what its name implies.

So to be clear, your defense of McDermott is that he can't win a Super Bowl unless he is gifted the best roster in the NFL to go along with an elite QB? Interestingly I share the same opinion as you but take away the opposite conclusion. Either way I'm tabling this discussion until after the season ends. A competitive AFCCG appearance should be the expected floor this year. Poor coaching has already lost us one game against a championship caliber opponent in the past month. If it happens again in the playoffs we will just have to accept that that is who McDermott is.