HappyDays

One good thing about this inevitable Chiefs win is the Broncos have no reason to hang on to Jeudy. Season is over for them if that wasn't already obvious.

Yeah there's a weird phenomenon here will someone will excuse our defense by saying one of the TDs they gave up came after a turnover or a punt return that gave the offense good field position. As if that means the defense had no chance.

Jeudy is open constantly, Russ just misses the pass. He would look much better with a real QB throwing him the ball.

And then how do you not dive for the 1st there? He just doesn't care anymore.

God, Russ really sucks. How do you underthrow that so bad?

Sugar high Pat

What would you call that play with Dawkins moving to block to the right?

They can't overturn that Jeudy TD. Looks like the left foot keeps dragging after the bobble.

Mahomes throws the ball late and high which allows the defender to put a big hit and force the fumble on MVS.

I hope Atlanta comes back so that Tennessee goes into fire sale mode. Hopkins is still a great WR and would fit in perfectly here.

Yes but with the clock run way down at that point. When up by 2 scores in the 4th quarter you use the clock as another defender.

One thing I appreciate about both Shakir and Kincaid is their understanding of body control and leverage at the catch point. That ability to catch the ball and immediately start moving to the cleanest window to maximize YAC is impressive, and something that has been sorely lacking from our offense.

We aren't aspiring for the norm. We're trying to be a Super Bowl contender. Teams like Miami and Philly are our competition for that goal... So when you use those teams as examples, you're proving the point. We have to beat those teams to achieve our final goal. Hard to do that when they're starting off with such a huge advantage over us in that one key area.

Weird report from Schefter. The Titans told Henry they don't "intend" to trade him, but he then implies that if they lose against the Falcons it is still possible he'll be traded.

Yeah the result of the game actually justified his decision making on the punts. The Bucs needed two 4th down penalties AND a couple crazy deflections AND a weird bounce on a muffed punt AND Siran Neal just missing a punt recover at the 1, just to get the team in position to try a low percentage hail mary. The only way you give the Bucs life is gifting them the ball at midfield.

A few nuggets from a Dianna Russini article at The Athletic: https://theathletic.com/5007267/2023/10/28/nfl-week-8-news-trade-deadline?source=user-shared-article

I just don't see any good trade options to improve our defense all that much. None of the DT ideas I've seen excite me at all. A true #1 caliber CB is unlikely to be traded. WLB is a non-premium position and can be papered over just fine. On defense the realistic path to substantial improvement is Rousseau, Miller, and Oliver recovering from their nagging injuries and becoming the best versions of themselves. On offense on the other hand there is no realistic path to substantial improvement with the current personnel. Nobody is playing injured, we're kind of just stuck with the limitations we have on that side of the ball. Adding Hopkins or Henry creates an immediate and clear path to substantial improvement.

No. The Bucs are a poorly coached team playing on a short week and seemed totally unprepared. They had crazy off coverage alignments and never adjusted, which allowed us to funnel the ball to Davis in a way that we normally can't. To his credit he was able to make a couple plays after the catch, but we have seen him have these sudden high production games in the past before falling back into 2 catches on 5 targets for 27 yards the following week. Don't be a prisoner of the moment. A WR that can play outside is still a big need. To me, of the realistic available targets, Hopkins makes way more sense than anyone else. Right now in obvious man situations we are always throwing the ball to Diggs. That's obviously the right read 100% of the time given our current personnel, but Diggs is not a contested catch specialist and is not all that great at dealing with physical coverage, so if he doesn't outright win the route the ball likely falls to the turf. One of our drives against the Bucs in the 2nd half stalled out for exactly that reason, and it was at a time when we desperately needed to get out of our offensive rut. So now add Hopkins into the mix. Suddenly defenses have to be very concerned about those jump balls/contested catches and Allen can just kind of chuck it up to him, instead of always relying on Diggs to win his route. That hopefully will pull defenses out of man coverage more frequently which gets us into favorable zone looks that we can beat with our preferred spread formations. Hopkins also gives us an actual downfield explosive presence that we currently don't have at all. I'm at least intrigued by the idea of Derrick Henry because Murray has not been good the past couple weeks and we currently have no goal-to-go run offense. Henry/Cook would be a great 1-2 punch, arguably the best in the league. But I would prefer to lean into our strength which is obviously passing the ball downfield.

You could make an argument that the only difference between last week and this week is that when we punted the ball in a TD to win situation, we did it with 30 seconds on the clock instead of 2 minutes on the clock. Because I have zero faith our defense would have stopped the Bucs on that drive if they had more time to go down the field. Honestly the game script was pretty similar to last week, just inverted. Our offense still stalled out for multiple drives in a row. Allen magic was the primary reason for our TD drives. The defense choked repeatedly at the end. In this game the clock saved us more than anything. If only Knox had been put on IR one week sooner. Kincaid would have made that 4th down catch and we likely would have won. So far as actual offensive improvements that is a big one, and I will also throw in Shakir's strong performance with the caveat that I'd like to see it more than once before declaring it a real trend.

The offense we ran last night is probably our best shot at winning games given the current personnel, but it is still way too reliant on perfect execution on long drives and at least a couple Superman plays from Allen. We have completely lost our deep passing offense. Diggs and Davis are not YAC specialists so quick passes to them is good for getting into manageable down distances, but as we saw last night any little miscue or failure in execution leads to a stalled drive. Then again other than Miami and maybe Philadelphia every offense is struggling with deep passing right now, so this might just be the new world in the NFL. And if that's the case they have to make getting a true elite YAC specialist a priority. A lot of those RPO quick passes to Davis could have gone to the house if thrown to an explosive player.

Yeah this is a case of people not understanding the play. We played the whole thing exactly right and the Bucs were nowhere close to coming down with it. To be fair Al Michaels is totally clueless and his replay analysis of that play is really what's driving this entire discussion. How do you announce football games for as long as he has and still not understand the player responsibilities on hail marys?

McDermott has always been bad at closing out games. 13 seconds, the Hail Murray, this year alone all 3 of our losses came at least partially because of poor coaching decisions near the end. It's a huge concern for trying to win a championship, we can't keep faltering in those critical moments in high leverage situations.

Some of the narratives on here about Josh have been absolutely insane. Never seen anything like it from any other fanbase.

That's ultimately on the coaches though. Morse snapped the ball so clearly the plan was to snap it if a defensive player jumped Offside. Allen and Morse didn't go rogue, that was the call. The problem with that plan is that you're asking players on the field to identify an Offside, and if they're wrong you get a really stupid looking outcome. Honestly a smart coach would tell his defense to intentionally fake jump Offside in obvious situations like that. On 2nd and 1 there's just no need for that trickery. Get to the 4th quarter and run James Cook on the next play.