HappyDays

Bills 37 Eagles 24 I readily admit that I may have egg on my face after this one, predicting a double digit victory over an elite opponent. I think what it comes down to for me is the position these two teams are in. The Eagles are riding an emotional high coming off a victory over the team that beat them in the Super Bowl. They're on a short week. They are 9-1 so this game against an AFC opponent means practically nothing to them. The Bills are desperate. They have to lay everything on the line for the rest of the season. 4th down attempts, trick special teams plays, anything and everything is on the table. They really NEED this game. I don't discount that emotional advantage. Plus, I genuinely believe that the Bills offense turned a corner last week. I don't think it is just a one game Joe Brady novelty bump. I think he has immediately unlocked what this offense can do well and will commit to it. And the Eagles defense is more vulnerable than advertised, certainly worse than the Jets. I think Allen, going against a Super Bowl caliber opponent in a massive game, will be in assassin mode. He's going against a team that doesn't regularly have to game plan against him. The leash is off him for the rest of the season - he won't hesitate to run when it's appropriate. All of this lines up for him to have maybe his best performance of the year. I don't really know what to expect from the defense in this one to be honest, I just trust that the offense will carry the day and never let up. I'm getting late 2021 season vibes from this team and I'm riding that wave until it crashes. When they play their best football I truly believe they can blow out any team in the league. So that's what I'm betting on.

I've seen you mention this term before. What is a Pirate game? A specific type of stunt?

Kurt Warner posted this video yesterday: He has been saying that Dorsey was not the problem and didn't agree with him being fired. So in this video he tries to show how our offense against the Jets was exactly the same which to him is proof that Dorsey was not the problem. But interestingly he kind of accidentally shows that Brady's offense is not the same. Same concepts but dressed up more, like you said. It's almost bizarre how Kurt Warner glosses over some of that stuff in this video. On one play he fails to point out that a Diggs motion against the Jets made Kincaid a lot more wide open than he was in a similar play against the Broncos. He compares a true mesh against the Broncos to a fake mesh against the Jets but to me those concepts created entirely different passing windows to Cook in the example plays he shows. If you get a chance to watch this 10 minute video I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

Cover1's latest video claims that Brady's sequencing of route progressions is more fluid than Dorsey's. As in when Josh goes from progression 1 to 2 to 3, the route he looks at next is flashing into his vision at the exact right time, whereas with Dorsey it was more all over the place which led to timing issues. Do you agree with this having watched the Jets film? 100% agree that motions made all the difference in this one. I think Josh is one of the best QBs in the league at properly identifying leverage in coverage players and choosing his throw accordingly. If he sees your hips turned even an inch in the wrong direction, you've already lost. I felt that motions in this game gave him clear leverage identifiers that he took full advantage of. Good example of what I mean on this play: I may of course just be talking out of my ass here 😁

Sure it is. A practice squad CB off the bench is given a snap in crunch time, presumably to punish Elam for some poor reps, and then that practice squad CB is promptly bowled over for a long TD. That's a coaching decision. To be fair though that game was really more on Dorsey failing to ever get the offense in any kind of rhythm. Again though, coaching. Even with some our talent deficiencies on both sides of the ball, better coaching could have led to a better season.

IMO that is coaching more than talent. End of the Jaguars game, McDermott takes Elam off the field and puts in Ingram off the bench. Etienne proceeds to run right over en route to a backbreaking game ending TD. Coaching issue. End of the Pats game, we have already blitzed like crazy throughout the game and do a dumb blitz on the first play of their last drive which goes for a big gain. Coaching issue. End of the Bengals game, we put Von Miller on the field over Rousseau in an obvious 3rd down rushing situation. The Bengals predictably run right by him, game over. Coaching issue. End of the Broncos game, first play we fail to account for the leaking RB despite that same outlet pass giving us trouble all game long. Coaching issue. We all out blitz on 3rd down immediately after all out blitzing on 2nd down which gives Russell Wilson an easy answer. Coaching issue. And then... well you know what happened next. Coaching issue. Milano and Jones being out is obviously not ideal but that hasn't been the main problem.

Yeah but that's the point. A free agent off the couch was able to give us adequate play at the position... If for example we lost Diggs we would be sunk as a team.

I don't think he's been as good as that score, but it's a good reminder to fans who freaked out when we lost our WLB and 1T for the season that non-premium positions are easy to paper over. The season was not in fact lost in the 1st quarter of the Jaguars game. We just needed more from our coaches and our premium players.

Maybe. But personally I think Dorsey's offense just wasn't built around Allen's strengths. Allen has never been a Tom Brady-esque "get to the line with 10 seconds on the clock, immediately diagnose the defense, and then throw the ball 2 seconds after the snap." I don't think anything about his process as a QB has changed. He has always been at his best when he can get to the line quickly and use motions to diagnose the defense and audible if necessary. Then post snap if things break down he can still create and turn it into a positive play, a lot of times even beyond what the play would have gotten if he had "correctly" run it. So my belief is that you have to let Josh be Josh, and I thought Dorsey on the contrary was trying to turn him into Joe Burrow. Daboll, for all of his bizarre strings of poor play calls, understood this. A good example of Dorsey vs. Brady is their 4th and short play calls the past two weeks. I'm sure you've seen Dan Orlovsky's breakdown of our 4th and 2 against the Broncos. I've seen people criticize Allen for not immediately recognizing Kincaid as the best option, but again that has never been Allen's strength. He's a more than adequate reader of the defense but it is not his elite trait like it is for Burrow. So asking him to do that in a do or die situation is a bad play call by the OC, even if the correct answer is built into the play. This is where Dorsey ultimately failed. He called decent enough plays but they were built for a generic offense, not the one that he was actually running. Play calls never built off of each other either. It was like asking a computer to call plays based on down and distance and game situation, without any of the human element necessary to call plays according to the flow of the game and what your players do well. Compare that 4th and 2 to Brady's 4th and 1 play call against the Jets. A simple naked bootleg that is practically an automatic 1st down with Allen as QB. It's easy - either the RB is open on the leak, or Allen uses his supreme physical gifts to convert with his legs. Easy. Two 4th down play calls, both of which technically had the right answers built in, but one is very clearly superior to the other. I just think Brady understands better than Dorsey did how you maximize Allen as a QB. I saw a stat that we ran more pre-snap motion than we've ran in like 2-3 years. We intentionally got the RBs involved as pass catchers, several times I am pretty sure they were the first read. We made it a point to use Davis and Harty to draw coverage away downfield instead of wasting downs by actually targeting them downfield. These simple changes made the offense look so much smoother on a drive to drive basis, I don't think you can deny that.

I thought his worst play was somewhere in the late 3rd or early 4th, he ran a deep fade route like he was riding the tilt-a-whirl. Clearly lost track of the ball and did a full 360 trying to locate it, as the ball helplessly sailed past him and hit the ground. Probably the 2nd funniest individual performance of the year to be honest, after of course Kadarius Toney's in the season opener.

Eh I don't think they really did anything special in the 2nd half. The Chiefs are now going on 3 consecutive games with zero 2nd half points... It's crazy. Mahomes has been off target more than usual throwing to a new set of weapons, and his pass catchers constantly let him down.

I was expecting some seam routes from him this year. Those are cover 2 and cover 3 beaters which we see all the time and Allen throws one of the prettiest seams I've ever seen. Maybe they will start working those in down the stretch now that he's gotten his feet underneath him.

MVS is Gabe Davis. Justin Watson is Khalil Shakir. Their pass catching weapons are not that far off from ours IMO. When you factor in how much better their OL and offensive coaching is I don't think it's crazy to say Allen and Mahomes have about equivalent supporting casts.

You're thinking of Skyy Moore. They definitely overpaid MVS though. He has an $11M cap hit this year. Brett Veach is an incredible GM but he has badly missed on offensive weapons. CEH, Skyy Moore, MVS, Toney. Just a series of bad misses.

Lol Marquez Valdes-Davis just can't help himself

Everybody's favorite penalty, nothing the passer.

Dude. You'll never guess who Travis is dating.

Their defense is legit. Fast players and unpredictable scheme is a deadly combo. On offense though they just don't have enough difference makers. Kelce appears to have lost a step. Everyone else is a JAG or worse. As a result Mahomes is pressing and not playing his best football.

Scouting for next week - The Eagles defense plays very disciplined. They don't come off their guys when the QB starts scrambling. They don't have stupid late hits. They constantly rip at the ball. We have to match their discipline or the game will get away from us.

This is nuts. They refuse to let Hurts throw the ball forward. This is a high school offense.

The Eagles are serious with that play call?? Do they not realize the kind of defense they are playing against?

That's a deceptively difficult play by the safety there to not take Justin Watson's head off and gift the Chiefs a free 1st down. Make him hear footsteps but don't deliver the blow. Honestly very impressive.

Remember in 2020 when seemingly the entire Bills offense ran through perfect throws like that on crossing routes? I miss those days.