HappyDays

Cook has been awesome today. First time I can remember in the Josh Allen era that a RB is consistently creating plays that aren't there to begin with.

What is up with our pass protection today? And really the last three weeks just not good enough.

Gross DT pairing. Our LBs are gonna have to do a lot of dirty work today.

This means literally nothing. Coach extensions aren't like player extensions. I'm guessing the Pats put this out there to give the team some semblance of stability for the remainder of the season in the midst of tough questions from the fans and NFL media, but if Kraft wants to start fresh after the season he and Belichick will "mutually agree to part ways."

Not at all. The Chiefs game is certainly his most famous performance, but he is regularly putting up top QB stats year after year despite having a worse supporting cast than his peers. Davis has quite literally made his reputation off that one game. I believe when he inevitably joins a new team next year everyone will see just how mediocre he is. What other offense does he really fit into?

Mahomes threw a 10 yard crossing route that turned into a 50 yard TD from the best WR in the NFL. Allen gifted a marginal NFL receiver a 4 TD performance that to this day makes Bills fans confused about how mediocre he is. It blows my mind that people still ignore the talent around the QB in these discussions. It wasn't that long ago that people were declaring Brady's career over because he spent a year throwing to marginal NFL talents, until he joined the best roster in the NFL and won another Super Bowl. Who did he win that one against again? It must have been an awful QB given that he had a 52.3 passer rating and only put up 9 points. If after all we are assuming that the final stat line is all that matters.

Burrow has much better weapons and the best we can say about the stats is that it's a "dead heat." So we agree that Allen has been much better, yes? Either that or you somehow have to argue that Burrow's weapons and Allen's weapons are equivalent, which, good luck on that.

Per Adam Schefter the Raiders are telling interested teams Adams is not tradeable.

I don't inherently mind the shotgun runs, but I do hate those calls in short yardage situations. Same with the pitch we had on 2nd and short that ended up like a 5 yard loss against the Jags. In short yardage situations I hate moving the ball further from the LOS to start the play. It doesn't make any sense. I see people say "Allen needs to focus on getting 1st downs first" but his OC isn't exactly discouraging that mindset with his play calls.

Cook. We need to attack the edges in the run game. Get Spencer Brown moving which is his strength with Cook running behind him and Davis blocking at the 2nd level. I think Cook might finally house a long run this week.

Yeah if the expectation is for Allen to play like he did in the 2021 playoffs for 4 consecutive playoff games, that is obviously not anywhere close to realistic. If we're relying on him to do that then we can go ahead and fire everyone right now and start over, because there have to be other solutions to win games.

He is a better QB now than he was in 2020 when he took us to the AFCCG. Unfortunately the talent around him is much worse now than it was then, so the results of that improvement aren't showing up on the record. His #2 and #3 targets are, respectively, a marginal and limited WR, and a TE who struggles with route running and drops 1 out of every 6 targets (keeping in mind that that includes all targets including uncatchable ones, so in reality it's even worse than that). It's almost unbelievable that Allen is performing as well as he has with this group. I would put him and Mahomes on the exact same level this year, and both I would say have an equal supporting cast when you factor in pass catchers, OL, and offensive coaching. Some day I would love to see what Allen looks like with one of the best groups of pass catching weapons around him. I think it could be a top 5 greatest offense in history.

It's a foot/toe strain and doesn't appear to be serious. Per my usual source.

I don't know about that, but what we have seen so far is enough to say that Bills fans way over panicked about losing players at a non-premium position. I saw people here and elsewhere say that the season is over because of Milano's injury, even though he plays the least important position on defense. Obviously I love Milano as a player but LB is an easy position to fill, especially in a base nickel scheme. People forget but we were willing to let Milano walk in free agency until he took a true hometown discount. Some speed and some instincts and good coaching is all it takes to get solid play from the position.

I dont understand the people that want us to trade for a CB, even a great one like Surtain. Offense has been the primary reason for our two losses and almost a 3rd against the Giants who have a terrible defense. If we make a trade it HAS to be a WR. It is the only position where it makes sense to give up premium future assets. It is also the easiest path to immediately improving the team's ceiling.

My concern with McDermott ever winning a Super Bowl, or even getting to one, is that he has a patten of making awful coaching decisions in high leverage moments. 13 seconds has been re-hashed to death but it was a huge coaching failure. This year in our two losses there were critical coaching failures. Against the Jets we had a dumb shotgun run on 2nd and 15 in OT, and then special teams fell apart on the punt. That is coaching malpractice. Maybe Dorsey called the 2nd and 15 run but ultimately those decisions fall on the head coach. Against the Jags, he took Elam out of the game and his replacement Ingram missed a tackle on the game ending Etienne long TD run. What is he thinking taking a superior run stopping CB off the field in favor of a PS player off the bench, in a situation where we know the Jags are trying to run out the clock? His timeout management was also poor in the 2nd half and left us with zero margin for error at the end. Against the Giants, yeah we scraped out a win, but my God the final two minutes was mismanaged to an extreme level. McDermott ran the only series of play calls that could have given the Giants a realistic chance of victory at the end, and if we're being honest his former OC's game plan was better than his own. No reason a game with such a wide talent gap should have come down to basically a coin flip at the end. There are other examples of critical coaching failures in losses and barely scraped out wins that I can think of, but I won't write them all out here. Taking it all together though it paints a picture of a coach that falters in critical moments and those are the moments that win Super Bowls. It's fun when we're beating teams 48-20 but that is not a path to the Super Bowl. We need to beat equally or slightly more talented teams 31-28 and I have yet to see any evidence that McDermott can do this even 50% of the time let alone in consecutive playoff games.

Bills 17 Patriots 7 I'm not convinced our offense is going to get out of its rut this weekend, but we'll see.

Adams accepted the trade to LV because he got to play with his best friend Derek Carr. Now Carr is gone and he knows they have no chance of being a major player in the NFL this year. It's no different than when Diggs forced his way out of Minnesota. We have seen the ups and downs of having that type of player on the team but overall I think every Bills fan would agree it's been 90% positive 10% negative. Diggs/Adams would be arguably the best top 2 WR tandem in the NFL. Two bona fide #1s playing across from each other. You bring him in and renegotiate his deal to lessen the 2024 cap hit which honestly was never going to be paid out anyways. Keep kicking that salary cap can down the road until Josh Allen retires like the Saints did with Brees.

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It's like how a lot of Bills fans thought we made a mistake letting Isaiah Hodgins go last year because he had decent production for the Giants. How's that looking now? Targets and catches have to go somewhere. The #2 passing target in one of the most high volume passing offenses in the league with an elite QB is ALWAYS going to get 800-900 yards. Pointing to Davis's pure volume numbers is a crutch for people who want to avoid talking about his actual capabilities as a player.

As a right handed QB, Allen is never going to throw back across his body while running left. I've only ever seen him do it once, on an incredible TD to Diggs against the Patriots in 2020, and in that case he had to completely stop and readjust his body to make an insane throw whipping his right shoulder around. In those screenshots Cook is not even in his field of vision when he gears up to throw.

With our only island CB out for the year, McDermott has reverted his scheme to "keep everything in front of you, if you give up a catch make sure it doesn't become a big play." It isn't ideal but it's the best we can do with this group of CBs. It's like Elam versus Pickens last year, yeah Pittsburgh moved the ball at will at times but they ended with 3 points. That's going to be our gameplan for the rest of the year. Our front 7 players will have to step up and make those game changing plays.

I think it's time we look at the play again, because I'm seeing a ton of people say it's an easy throw and I saw one poster describe it as a throw that a high school QB would hit. High school QB throw. Lol. I said this in another thread, but we take for granted how hard it is to throw on the run like that because Josh does it all the time. But the precision on that sort of throw is naturally going to be high variance. He has to throw against his own body momentum and make sure he puts it in front of Knox so the trailing defenders can't impact the play. It's ridiculous to expect perfect touch or a pinpoint throw there. An average NFL pass catcher in this situation judges the trajectory of the ball and immediately starts subtly adjusting their body to catch it while falling to the ground. Knox did not have to scoop it off the turf with his fingertips or miraculously contort his body. It is almost identical to the drop he had in OT against the Jets. Knox reminds me of McKenzie, he is too clumsy and unfocused in big moments to ever be a dependable pass catcher. They need to give most of Knox's target share to Kincaid once Kincaid is out of concussion protocol. Whatever that entails with the scheme or the playcalling, it needs to happen.

Allen right now is leading the NFL in completion percentage with 71.7%. Knox is 4th worst of qualifying players in drop percentage with an abysmal 16.0%, and yes that final 3rd down play was officially logged as a drop by Pro Football Reference. When the ball hits both of your hands and it isn't behind you, you have to bring it in. It's the NFL. That is an expected catch every time. If you're expecting Allen to be more accurate than he has been this season, that's almost impossible. Expecting Knox to drop less than 16% of his targets on the other hand is a reasonable ask. Either he has to be better in that area or we have to stop throwing him the ball.