HappyDays

Weirdly enough I can excuse him more for the first one even though it looked worse. That is a play we run all the time and Allen is used to the safety getting drawn inside by the fake so he didn't expect Whitehead to be there. By Allen's own admission he couldn't see White behind the pass rusher in his face so he thought Knox was all alone over there. He was probably a little too lazy about checking to make sure a DB hadn't leaked into that area, but it was somewhat of a flukey play. The 2nd one was inexcusable. Even if Davis cut the wrong way like some have posited it looks like Gardner was going to be there for the interception either way. Cook is right there in the flat with his man playing far off him. You can see Allen look at him before forcing the throw downfield. In an ugly game you just take the yards there.

Allen's bad games always feature multiple turnovers. That is what he needs to work on. Every QB has some off games where they're not throwing the ball as well or are out of sync with their receivers or are getting bamboozled by the defense. That's okay, we can win games where Allen is off a bit. But when he compounds those issues with multiple turnovers it is almost impossible to win. It was the same story against Jacksonville last year. Basically Allen needs to learn how to win an ugly game. His current mindset in these games is get all the mistakes back on a single throw, and more often than not that mindset is hurting the team. The 2nd interception is a perfect example. Our defense just forced a huge turnover and they need a breather. Cook is open in the flats and Allen sees him before forcing the ball downfield. That's a play where you just take the easy yards and live to see another down. If you falter on 3rd down and have to punt, that's okay. Field position matters in ugly games. The only thing you can't do there is erase the defense's momentum swing. Allen lost us the game and he knows it. At the middle of every season he has to be reminded to take what's there and stop pressing. It needs to be a constant coaching point with him because the old habit is always there waiting to pop out.

If Keenum starts and we beat the Vikings I'll go ahead and start the "Should Keenum be the starting QB??" thread just to get it out of the way. You're welcome.

It's starting to feel like all the negative hype created by Cover 1 and a couple WGR people was just because they heard Josh was getting testing done on the UCL. If that's all they heard and they used it to create cryptic pessimistic BS online I will never post them on this site again. If they want to be more than a Mickey Mouse operation they need to have better standards than that. The upside is usually if I heard Allen was going to miss one game or more I would be freaking out, but now that my mind had drifted towards season-ending injury territory anything less than that will feel like good news.

There are worse QBs with worse rosters that have won games this year. We don't have to overreact. We are not an 0-17 team without Josh Allen.

Assume we go 2-4. That puts us at 8-6 and hopefully the whole team including Allen healthy with 3 games to go. Given how weak the AFC is that is a very manageable scenario.

Eh I think we can sneak in as a wildcard even if he misses 6 weeks.

I remember us having this exact conversation in 2018. People were freaking out about Allen needing Tommy John surgery and saying we needed to draft a 1st round QB in 2019. The most likely outcome of a UCL sprain is he misses anywhere from 1-6 games. QBs don't get Tommy John surgery.

Eh I don't care as much about the #1 seed as most on here. Obviously I would prefer to have it. But every year all I really care about is that we make it into the playoffs fully healthy. Once we're in anything can happen. If Allen misses 4 games and we sneak into the playoffs as a wildcard I wouldn't feel much worse about our chances than if we had gotten in as the #1 seed. I know people bandy around that statistic of our home versus away playoff record under McDermott but that's such a small sample size it doesn't mean anything to me.

We won't run the same offense with Keenum. It will force Dorsey to lean on running the ball, screens, quick passes to every weapon we have. Thinking long term he might even learn something about how to scheme up easy throws with Allen in the game, similar to what happened with the Cowboys when Dak came back after Cooper Rush led them to a winning record. Gamblers historically love betting on backup QBs. The whole team tends to rise to the occasion because they know that they have to. Not saying Allen's injury is a good thing by any means but there may be positives to take out of his absence as long as we get him back in the next month or so.

Not like this. We could be down our #1 CB, WLB, SS, FS, EDGE, and RT (admittedly his backup is not much of a drop off). That's literally half our starting defense. If we're missing that many people and Allen there is no chance we are winning this game. Against the Texans, maybe. Against even a .400 team no way.

Somebody has to clean the room during those high level business meetings.

It is actually possible that the tear happened on that throw, if he hurt his UCL on the hit and then put his full effort into the throw it could have been a breaking point.

The cryptic BS annoys me. But now that the pieces have come together it seems like what happened is they heard he had a potential season ending UCL injury that he was and still is getting tests on. We're not out of the woods on this yet.

As I said earlier I have no reason to think Erik Turner is making things up. At this point we just have to wait and see how severe it is. I'm thinking the Bills put something out to Rappaport to quell some of the rumors floating around... but they don't really know anything for sure yet.

I'm guessing this is what the Cover1 people were hearing which prompted the rumors.

Whelp if the Cover1 people turned out to be posting click bait garbage I will never post them on this site again.

If I suddenly heard the news that Allen is going to miss a few weeks I would be sick to my stomach too. But now in the context of him otherwise needing to get season-ending UCL surgery I will breathe a sigh of relief if that's the news. Seems like a few reporters/analysts around the Bills have gotten word that he has some kind of UCL sprain. Now it's just a matter of waiting to see how severe and how long he'll be out. If he doesn't get surgery and rehabs it he'll be back in a few weeks albeit with a lot of pain in that area. Knowing how competitive Allen is I am certain he would take that route over season-ending surgery given the choice.

Erik Turner just posted in the slack channel "Lots of info being floated around, but unable to confirm anything." I'm off the ledge a bit. I'm still expecting Allen to miss time though, too much smoke around it.

Tim Graham just retweeted this article: At the very least I am preparing for Allen to miss the Vikings game. I am just crossing my fingers the season isn't lost. Screw the #1 seed. Just give us Allen playing in December and deep into January. I can stomach that.

Erik Turner has personal relationships with many of the players. It's how they end up getting so many players to do film breakdowns on their channel.

Trust me, they do. There are times this year when I have known the status of injured players before it was officially announced. I don't usually post it here because I don't like posting injury speculation. I'm just doing it this time because it's obviously more important than usual.

So they are frustrating me with how cryptic they're being about it. They keep saying they won't say what they're hinting at until it's been confirmed. Maybe they just found out he'll miss a few weeks. Based on how ominous they're being I would accept that outcome.

My concern with these injuries is always Tommy John surgery. My understanding is that it takes possibly 18 months to recover. I don't want to put my mind there yet but I can't help but worry. If Allen is out for let's say 4-6 weeks that ends any conversation of the #1 seed but at least we could probably sneak into the playoffs and see what happens from there. Based on some of the cryptic things being put out there by people I follow and trust I would honestly take that outcome at this point if I could.