HappyDays

Nice play! Mirror spy to prevent Mahomes from escaping and good safety coverage.

That's embarrassing man. KC always runs those quick screens with blockers on 3rd and long. You have to be ready for it.

QBs are much better athletes than they used to be and offenses get the ball out quicker than ever

Offense is just stacked. Elite pass protection, elite RB duo, elite pass catchers, elite scheme. Goff is the only not elite factor and he's still really damn good in his own right.

What is with this new trend of commercials that feature Lovecraftian horrors

That was nice pass protection. Goff held that ball for like 6 seconds it felt like

Uh that was just a schemed pick play, Detroit's only hope was if the CBs switched their coverage. Should be a coaching point for any defense playing KC. They need to be ready for those picks inside the 10.

KC runs those goalline rub routes better than anyone. Detroit needs to score TDs on every drive. Their secondary is too banged up to cover these guys.

That was dicey but it works

Not this year. Their defense has been a problem in almost every game. Chris Jones isn't the same, the rest of the DL is just okay, and the secondary outside of McDuffie has struggled.

Hmm you know until now I had gone with the common sentiment that Allen made the wrong read here. Now I'm not so sure. I can't remember seeing us run a read option where the RB is in motion like this. And before the snap Allen makes an alert call. An alert call into a read option? Can't say I've ever seen us do that before. Also from the endzone view you never see Allen glance at Landry, on read option he'd be reading the DE but his helmet never even twitches in that direction he is staring straight ahead. It might have been a fake handoff QB keeper all the way. The only thing that gives me pause is that Landry is totally unaccounted for and read option is the only play call that could have possibly accounted for him. So I don't know.

It is for sure a philosophical decision more than anything. They've decided to lean into letting Maye do what he does best. So that philosophy combined with McDaniels who is of course one of the premier offensive minds in the league has helped them build a very good downfield passing offense despite middling WRs. It is something you have to commit to as an organization. Boutte is a legit talent. He was once considered a 1st round prospect before injuries and questions about his attitude caused him to slide to the 6th round. They might have something there. Not that he is a superstar but he may be more than a JAG. Douglas and Hollins, yeah those are classic JAGs. Just to clarify my point without re-opening the Bills discussion (I am guilty of driving this thread off the rails) - It isn't about just the WR room, it's about an entire organizational philosophy that has moved us away from what makes Josh Allen special. WR investment to me is definitely the biggest symptom of the problem but the problem is more fundamental than that. @GoBills808 said it more succinctly above.

Interestingly they took supposedly a 1st round talent in Mike Green in the 2nd, but he has been an utter disappointment to this point. Nothing like what the scouting reports said. One thing a lot of people were guilty of, myself included, was assuming that because Baltimore drafted a 1st round safety and a 1st round DL in the 2nd round, and then added Jaire Alexander, that their defense was guaranteed to be elite. It turns out that's why you let them play the games first. Even before accounting for the injuries Starks looks like a rookie, Green hasn't contributed, and Alexander looks like he is just washed. Then you add in the injuries and they have become flat out a bad unit.

Metcalf or Pickens should have been the target this year. I gave them some grace last year because they moved on from Diggs and Davis and there weren't any big ticket options available so I get that they had to use 2024 as kind of a reload year. What sucks is that this is supposed to be the season where we see the results of the 2nd rebuild and after spending a fortune on defense it looks the same while the downfield passing offense remains neutered. In a year where the entire NFL looks more vulnerable than ever it feels like we have wasted an opportunity to really pull ahead by leaning into the one person in the organization that makes us special. The #1 seed is the goal and instead I'm not even 100% confident we will win the division. So yeah watching a division rival's QB do what Josh Allen used to do on the regular is pretty deflating. I never understood why people pretended Palmer was a legit downfield threat. It's emblematic of this regime's priorities that in a season where Metcalf and Pickens were available, our "big investment" was the Chargers #3 WR. The defense of course we spent a fortune on. Can't have anything less than two full starting lines worth of defensive line talent, while Josh Allen is throwing real NFL passes to Tyrell Shavers. Anyways I'm getting sick of my own negative talk at this point so I'll leave it at that.

But that element is what our QB is best at. And they have totally stripped it away. It would be more forgivable if they had just scouted poorly, but the real failure is that they have not even really tried to build up that part of the offense. They've had a bunch of options in the draft or FA/trade market to add downfield weapons and have passed up on all of them. They've neutered maybe the most special arm in NFL history, and for what? I know I am a broken record. But if you look at the best offenses in the NFL right now they can all pass the ball downfield. Maye looks special not because he's playing high efficiency game manager but because he's ripping off chunk passes at will. I suspect next offseason the Pats will lean into that and will go all out to get another real WR in the building. I agree it matters but it should matter as the complementary piece, not the focal point. We broke records in 2020 and 2021 when we could barely run the ball. After Cook broke out we could have made it a point to have an extremely multifaceted offense with an ability to do whatever we wanted to any given opponent and I just think we blew that opportunity. By the way I would still bet on the Bills to win the division this year just because we are a more experienced team and can probably handle the ups and downs of a season better than a young team like the Pats, but it's gonna be close. They have a defense built to stop downfield passes and an offense built to create downfield passes. That's the fundamental recipe of a Super Bowl team. They need to add a difference maker on both sides of the ball, ideally a pass rusher and a pass catcher, before they're a real contender though.

Yeah that isn't what's happening. What's happening is we're watching the Pats build a team the right way and it's pretty deflating. I don't want them to get better, but that's the reality. They have a middling group of pass catchers and no run game to keep defenses honest, but they've still managed to build a WR room and design a scheme that can complete passes downfield at a high clip. They're leaning into that part of the offense and it's winning them games. The Bills have gone the opposite direction. Having Josh Allen at QB and having no downfield passing game is among the very worst failures of team building in NFL history. How do you expect fans to react?

Even when they hand him the ball it doesn't go anywhere. He looks a bit tentative to my eyes but the run blocking is bad too.

Pats have zero run game but they can really pass the ball downfield.

So far today with time still remaining: DK Metcalf - 95 yards 1 TD George Pickens - 168 yards 1 TD It's not too late for Beane to rectify his offseason mistake. But failing to trade for a legit WR very clearly WAS a mistake. It's getting to be undeniable at this point.

Mack Hollins just let his QB down big time. Maye threw a 40 yard dime on 3rd and forever and Hollins did his usual "can't find the ball in the air" routine.

Yeah Drake Maye is for real. What I've seen from him the past 2 weeks reminds me of when Allen figured it all out in 2020. He has been great on schedule and then makes the athletic plays out of structure when he needs to.

They've leaned into letting Maye throw the ball downfield the last few weeks. They don't have a great WR corps by any means but the ones they do have have a downfield skill set and McDaniels of course is excellent at scheming them open. When all else fails Maye is creating out of structure and his pass catchers are doing a great job working open for him on those plays.

I think Olave caught that and then fumbled. Hopefully it gets overturned on replay overview. Not sure what happens if it was a fumble because they blew it dead before anyone recovered it.

They have their QB and they have their coaching staff. No sense trying to deny it anymore. The division is not automatic this year and I think it will come down to our game in New England.

This would be a huge mistake IMO. Rattler looks like he could be a good backup for years. Many regimes have written their own pink slips trying to make it work with a QB like that for too long.