HappyDays

Oh that was a dumb penalty. Can they do anything meaningful with it?

I mean he just ran headfirst into two defensive linemen.

KC's coaching is too good. Their players on both sides of the ball know exactly what to do in every critical moment. They are not a team of superstars anymore, especially on defense, but they can cycle guys in at random and make them perform above their normal capabilities.

I just don't understand how you pick the flag up. If you don't call it in the first place okay fine it is a judgment call based on a few inches. But what could possibly prompt you to pick it up after calling it on the field?

Lol to the rules analyst explaining why it's a good call as the officials announce there is no penalty

Oh that is embarrassing CB play. Just totally lost the ball in the air

I don't know, it seems to work really well. No two plays look alike and it's just tough for the defense to keep pace. KC has a very unconventional set of WRs and they're using them the best way they can.

Nice work from #2 drawing the punch and having the restraint not to throw one back

Lawrence does some really dumb stuff for a guy that's been starting a few years.

This will be the logline on Beane's pink slip if that day ever comes.

Fair enough, he says his source is TruMedia. I usually use TeamRankings.com. On there they show Rousseau with 2 passes defensed on the year and no other Bills player with any (hasn't been updated to include Epenesa's from yesterday). Off the top of my head I can't think of any legit pass breakups from the secondary. Certainly not 11. So I'd like to know how that stat is being charted by different sources.

Shakir is a role player. He isn't a traditional slot player that you can feed normal targets to. He's not a great route runner and his size gives him natural limitations against physical coverage. He's somewhat emblematic of the WR room as a whole in the sense that he can do his one thing really well, but he can't be relied upon on a down to down basis. That being said I'd like it if Brady could find a way to scheme him more plays. There are more ways to get the ball into his hands than just quick screens.

For some reason Coleman gets all the criticism (and by and large most of it is warranted) but Palmer gets away with his Invisible Man performances. We paid him $10M AAV to be our true outside separator and a legit top 3 option. Instead he's only been on the field for 48% of snaps which means he isn't earning a larger share. He's on pace for 41 catches, 592 yards, and 0 TDs. What happened to all those advanced analytics that told us he was an elite separator and route runner? If he doesn't turn it around soon he'll go down as another disappointing FA signing by Beane, at a position that we just refuse to throw more than the bare minimum amount of resources at.

Part of the problem with our offensive roster is it's hard to say who the best pass catchers are. Most teams you can look at them and say he's your #1, he's your #2, he's your #3. Ours changes on a week to week basis. The Bills have promoted this as a good thing, "everybody eats" etc., but the problem is every now and then you need A guy that can just make it happen. The last two seasons when the Bills have been in do or die time and needed to pass downfield to score a game winning TD, they haven't had a lot of success. The Ravens final drive was awesome but that is proving to be more the exception than the rule and it turns out the Ravens have a crap defense in any case. So either Allen puts on his Superman cape or else we just don't have a consistent ability to win in those moments through creative play calling or through top tier talent. And do we think it's likely we make it through an entire playoff and Super Bowl run without needing to win in at least a couple of those moments? I certainly don't.

Just watched Joe Marino's all-22 review. He said we caught the Pats defense in their base personnel on 14 plays but only passed on 2 of them. Those 2 passes were both completions to Kincaid for over 20 yards each. We definitely did not make it a point to take advantage of their weak coverage LBs like we should have. We instead weirdly tried to target their CBs which is the strength of their defense. Like on the 2nd and 10 on our final series the first read is Coleman running vertical against Gonzalez, and that's just not gonna get it done in crunch time. I think Brady has mostly done a very good job of leaning into our strengths but he overthought this week's gameplan. Should have kept peppering Kincaid with targets and needed to establish the run more with Cook in the 2nd half.

In this video Erik says the Bills have just TWO pass breakups over the entire season, which unsurprisingly is the worst in the league. One of those was an Epenesa tipped pass from last night so really just one legit pass breakup from the secondary all year. I don't know what happened to Benford, he has massively regressed. Meanwhile Tre obviously just can't physically play the position anymore. They will need to get Hairston on the field as soon as he is physically capable and hope for the best.

I don't think his route break was sharp enough to cleanly separate. I'm not gonna get on Shakir too much for it, that's not the strength of his game. But yeah that is the problem when you don't have any legit separators in your WR room, these sorts of throws in man coverage are always going to be crazy tight windows and the QB will need to be perfect.

Wanted to come back to this real quick. Yes we should discuss Allen's mistakes, post-game analysis and diagnosing why a play went wrong is part of what makes this board great. But that doesn't mean we should invent mistakes or create narratives that never happened. "Diggs got in Allen's head." "Allen reverted to hero ball." These are not proper descriptors of his game from last night. It's ironic that people are saying Allen was forcing too many throws and playing hero ball, in a thread where the primary subject is "Allen should have played hero ball by forcing this throw." And I get it, everyone is mad so we're looking for reasons to be angry, but the reasons some people are finding are not consistent and/or don't match up with the tape. My live reaction watching the game was that Allen was playing masterfully in the pocket and was hitting perfect throw after perfect throw when they were available to be made. The INT was a gut punch because until then I thought he had been just about flawless. I was actually wrong about the INT live, I thought Allen hadn't seen the undercutting defender. In his post game presser he said the cause of the INT was that he left the ball too far inside. This surprised me but the all-22 reveals he was correct: His throw here was identical to a throw he made to Shakir on the 1st drive of the Broncos wildcard game. That time he stuck it right on Shakir's hands outside, this time it was a tick too far inside which let the CB undercut it. He didn't miss any better options, everybody else is blanketed too, but if you're going to make this throw it has to be perfect and it wasn't. So my reaction to the game was that Allen played mostly great but had that one really bad play. Imagine my surprise when I come to the board and the conversation is about how Allen played too much hero ball and missed open targets. I just don't think the tape is supporting that narrative at all. The more all-22 I watch from last night the more I think we either need a better OC or we need better receiving talent. Brady is perfectly fine but his concepts are simple and he isn't enough of a schematic genius to make up for a lack of talent. He keeps trying to add new wrinkles beyond the 5 things that we do well and he just hasn't been capable of it. Since Brady isn't going anywhere we're going to need to add a legit WR that can just get open all on his own without any assistance from the scheme because right now we don't have that guy. So when we inevitably get into these spots in a game where we absolutely have to throw the ball downfield, like in the 4th quarter of the AFCCG, we just aren't consistently capable of it.

Pats played with tremendous discipline on the scramble drills. Vrabel had them ready. They made sure Allen had no lane to run forward and they got in throwing windows or plastered themselves to guys. It doesn't help that Coleman and Shakir are the only two pass catchers we have that know how to work open on scramble drills. The rest of them look clueless when Allen leaves the pocket. Diggs was always elite in those moments and we saw last night a perfect dichotomy of what it looks like when you have that guy versus when you don't. Maye was able to scramble right and find immediate completions while Allen was forced to hold the ball forever.

I mean on 2nd down he literally had no options once Cook was taken away by the LB. Scramble drill was the only possible decision there. Looks to me like he is pointing to Kincaid telling him to go left where there is a bunch of open space but Kincaid doesn't pick up on it. 3rd down I can hear the argument that he should have stood there and hit a crossing route for maybe a 5 yard gain. That's at least a legitimate option that was available compared to some of the other suggestions in this thread that are based on nothing. But does that mean you want to erase every Allen scramble right in his career? Because you can't just pick and choose which ones you erase. He doesn't know in advance if it's going to work. So you either let him do it or you remove it from his game entirely. Considering the proper result of this play should have been a 1st down yes I am happy to say that even with the benefit of hindsight telling me the actual result, I would still rather he scramble right to try and create a 1st down instead of bringing up maybe 4th and 5 and seeing what happens.

1st play was a quick screen to Shakir that was dropped. 3rd play has already been discussed in this thread and was definitely not a hero ball play. On the contrary Allen did not throw the dangerous pass that Gonzalez was trying to bait him into. Here's the 2nd down play: Everybody is running deep and is completely blanketed. Cook as the checkdown option is double covered. You can see him start his throwing motion to Cook but pulls it back, because the right most LB is in great position to drive on Cook and the ball and best case scenario is Cook gets crushed after 3 yard gain.

I've said before that my least favorite aspect of the McBeane regime is they are ruining Josh's legacy. You can see it in this thread, people saying he had a bad game or comparing the performance to the Houston game last year. When in fact he actually played really well outside of one terrible mistake. The run game wasn't there, his skill players had two costly fumbles, his pass catchers weren't separating, and the offense kept going backwards because of dumb penalties. This was not an A+ game from Allen but a bad game?Bills fans have lost sight of what normal QB play actually looks like for the rest of the NFL. It's sobering that an A- game leads to us losing to a middle class opponent at home.

Yeah and I'm not one to complain about 50/50 flags. Like plays where the WR and CB are hand fighting all the way down the field, I'm fine with the officials letting those play out. But this was textbook interference. He is slamming into Shakir's back before the ball gets there which was obvious even on the live broadcast.

Allen did bail a clean pocket, I don't dispute that. But we need to be realistic about how quick these decisions are made and how fast defensive positioning can change. Allen feels pressure from his left and has to decide in an instant if he trusts Dawkins to sustain that block. I don't blame him at all for bailing right and trying to create since there is no contain player on that side. And in fact the decision works out exactly as it should, with Allen buying time until his WR works open. The only problem is that Gonzalez is allowed to commit a penalty that erases the throw. Tip your cap to the officials and move on, I guess.

Dude I don't know what else to tell you. Watch Allen's eyes from the snap. He is reading #0. As soon as #0 declares he is gaining depth Allen moves on. QBs aren't playing Madden scanning the field at random, they're reading defenders that the play call is supposed to put into conflict.