HappyDays

I'm not in favor of being always aggressive all the time but in that spot against this team it's a no brainer. As I type this KC makes the easy decision and converts a 4th and short. Bowles deserves the upcoming 7 point deficit.

I still can't believe Bowles punted. TB might have the worst defense in the league. This drive getting back to the spot of the punt is the most predictable outcome of all time.

Uhhh did he just blow his achilles?

Yeah I'm watching the Chiefs right now and they do what Miami did - they get big people into the 2nd level and block your small back 7 players out of the screen. We need to come into that game planning to shut down the run first. It sounds insane to say about a Mahomes led offense but that's who they are this year.

Just a dumb blitz on 3rd down there. Todd Bowles has never watched Mahomes play?

Their offensive strategy worked. Their defensive strategy did not. I don't know how anyone can disagree with either of those statements. The Dolphins punted once. One great individual play from Taron Johnson stopped another drive. At all other points in the game, they took our souls over and over again.

When is the last time KC had a phantom penalty go against them? I don't even mean a ticky tack penalty, I mean a penalty that literally did not happen. Can anyone remember?

I don't know, the injury is the most convenient rationale but it doesn't really appear to be affecting him. I think he just hasn't been very good in practice which means he hasn't earned a bigger role... Early OTA/training camp reports were that he wasn't getting involved much. There were only a couple days where I remember his name coming up as a bright spot in training camp. My best guess is that for whatever reason he hasn't been able to grasp the playbook. It doesn't make much sense considering he played in Brady's offense before, but that's usually the reason when an otherwise talented player is treated as barely an afterthought. He was on the field a decent amount yesterday, Josh just never looked at him. The one time he did, Samuel was not in the spot where the ball ended up landing. So I think he just is not in the trust tree right now.

? Josh is throwing to his 1st read less than any QB in the NFL.

I won't lie, I had the same thought. He has a bad habit of jumping unnecessarily on downfield catches. The pass he dropped against Seatle on the honey hole shot was the same thing, he jumped for no reason and it made the catch attempt awkward. I think like anything else it just comes down to reps and developing muscle memory. He needs to learn to just finish his route normally and trust that the ball will be where it's supposed to be... Going from Jordan Travis to Josh Allen has to be a bit of a shock to the system.

The Colts scored a TD on a fumble recovery tonight after strip sacking Darnold. However, the official threw a flag and it was almost certainly going to be a roughing the passer that wiped out the TD, or a facemask. But in slow motion replay you could clearly see the facemask was not actually grabbed and it was a clean sack that just looked bad in real time. The officials then announced that there was no penalty and the TD stood... So that seems like a situation where the enigmatic eye in the sky stepped in and said "pick up the flag, it wasn't a penalty." As I mentioned in the live game thread these sorts of reversals do sometimes happen after apparent intervention from the league office, but seemingly only in primetime games that they know everyone is watching. In a random 1PM matchup there's no accountability. There's no reason that system couldn't be applied to every single game, it would take all of 10 seconds for a neutral observer to call down that Torrence did not hold and Allen's TD should stand. Because it's not just a subjective call, it objectively was not a hold. Period. It's also flat out better for the league that an exciting player gets an exciting TD in his highlight package. Literally everybody involved loses when the officials are allowed to make objectively incorrect calls and no one will reverse it unless it's a primetime game. The whole system is broken but the NFL doesn't care because it isn't costing them any money. They go the extra mile in primetime games because a widely viewed game could create controversy and controversy could lose money. That's all it comes down to.

Flacco doesn't give a **** about your silly "defensive coverage." See Colts jersey, throw ball. It's that simple.

I kind of feel bad for Vikings and. They bought into the Sam Darnold hype and now it's becoming clear that he limits them from being legitimate contenders. As Bills fans we know what that desperate hope feels like.

Allen is never going to beat the media narratives until the team and coaching staff around him is good enough to win a Super Bowl. FWIW nobody in the media cares about his passer rating today. They care that we won the game and he had a miraculous TD pass in the 4th quarter. Nobody is going to remember 4 missed passes because they didn't impact the game at all.

You've let that BS perception influence your own perception of his play 🤷‍♂️

Instead of wishing Allen met an impossible standard, you should ask why he has to meet that standard to win a Super Bowl when his peers don't.

Missing like 4 passes short on 39 attempts is not even worth noting. He was down his #1 WR, our run game was pretty meh, and the pressure was on him all game long to keep up in a shootout. In that context he did not have a "fine day." He was brilliant. I'm probably being overly defensive, I just don't get the standards for QB play around here. Like I said, watch a Chiefs game or a Ravens game with the same critical eye and count how many passes the QBs are off.

Did I watch a different game today? Where is this narrative coming from?

Well, yeah. They drafted him after all.

I felt great when Miami got to midfield in just two plays, but started getting nervous when we started mixing in a few successful plays against them. It sounds insane out loud but that's genuinely how I felt in the moment. Luckily the timing ended up working out perfectly. In the 13 seconds game I remember feeling relived that Tyreek Hill had scored his final TD in one big play, because it meant Allen had just enough time to drive for the game winner with no time remaining. Ugh...

I was rooting for the Dolphins to score a TD as quickly as possible on that last drive and let out a cheer when they did with over 1:30 left on the clock. I had no illusions that we could stop them. McDermott's defense got so badly stomped it actually circled back around to giving us an advantage at the end 😂

You just described how most of our opponents in the playoffs are going to be built. So it's not enough to say "we got caught by one bad matchup." Our coaches need to figure out how to stop this style of offense from picking up chunk play after chunk play, or it will be another early playoff exit. That or our offense needs to start putting up 30+ against every good opponent and just win a bunch of shootouts. I have said one possible solution is playing more man. All those plays where leaking RBs and TEs get wide open in the flats would be defended better if someone was specifically responsible for those players. Watch the Chiefs - they play a lot of man and they're willing to blitz in unpredictable ways.

I'm sure they weren't focusing on the run, but you still expect your 1T to make some plays. DQ was brutal in this game. The LBs were never kept clean. Very possible a Super Bown run would involve beating Baltimore, KC, and Detroit. That ain't happening with the middle of our defense constructed as it currently is. I'll be shocked if Beane doesn't make an addition.

He wasn't exactly at the sideline. It's possible he would have caught it and ran out of bounds with a perfect throw but that's a scary proposition with 10 seconds left on the clock. All in all I was glad it hit the turf. He did not throw "quite a few" at his receivers' feet. When we ended up like 2nd and 30 because of phantom penalties he dirted the next two. Then the one to Kincaid at the very end. His accuracy was not a problem in this game, certainly it did not cost us any points. As usual the standards for QB are absurdly high around here. Every QB misses throws. Watch some full games of the Chiefs some time - Mahomes misses plenty. Allen should have had like 5 TDs today and made enough plays to win what basically became a shootout. And yet we have someone saying they were "bummed" watching him on the game winning drive. I really don't get it. To me this was an MVP performance and the last thing I expected to see was people questioning Allen after this game.

The drive when he dropped a pass in the bucket downfield forcing Poyer to commit a penalty? That's as clutch a throw as you'll ever see in this league. The final pass to Kincaid, I'm glad it fell incomplete. I don't know if Allen threw it low on purpose to protect the ball, but either way if Kincaid had caught that time would have run out.