HappyDays

Chiefs have a much better defense than we do, as did the Pats in their dynasty years. Small ball, ball control offense works when your defense can shut the opponent down. Baltimore on the contrary was moving the ball at will in the 2nd half yesterday. I felt pretty confident they were going to score another TD until Bernard made a great play... I was surprised and disappointed in how little urgency we showed to try and close the game out on offense. My thoughts are we should use the run to establish the game, but use Allen to close it out. And I don't mean just increasing our pass attempt numbers, I mean actually giving him free reign to go make some plays.

Ravens were passing downfield just fine. So I don't really buy weather as the reason.

Yes the first play of the 2nd half set the tone. Baltimore was obviously going to adjust to shut down the run. We had an opportunity there to take them by surprise on that first play and ultimately establish an insurmountable lead. Instead we fed into their adjustments and turned an easy win into a nailbiter. I really don't mind the run heavy approach. When it works it really works. But when the defense is about to adjust we have to be one chess move ahead of them and start attacking through the air right when they've sold out to stop the run.

For me it's not about the number of attempts, it's about the quality of attempts. Brady called our passing offense like our backup was in. It was kind of bizarre. I don't need Allen to be Superman on every snap but we should put the ball in his hands and take the leash off to let him close out games.

My concern is that we're going to turn it into that kind of game because we're being way too conservative with a small lead. I know this offense is capable of explosive production like we saw just a few weeks ago against the Lions and Rams. I don't understand what's changed and it started with the home Patriots game. Everyone chalked up that lethargic passing performance to a let down game, but that's been the passing offense ever since then.

This is crazy

Yeah I've been critical of Bishop but no bad plays jumped out to me yesterday. One play I remember he made a good tackle after a catch was made in his area. We got pushed around up front in the 2nd half, that's the reason their offense started finding so much success.

So, much more frequently that I expected. They made it a point to shut down the run and trusted that Lamar would make a couple mistakes if the game was put on his shoulders. That's the gameplan most of us wanted and it worked.

Here's an interesting question - if yesterday had been the Super Bowl, who on the Bills would have been Super Bowl MVP? No one single player stands out in my mind. I wonder if Allen would get it just by default.

Epenesa with a sneaky good game:

My confession is that on his last kick I opened the ESPN gamecast, which is always like 30 seconds ahead of the broadcast, so I could see the result before watching it.

How did this end up working out

I'm always going to call it as I see it - this was a great win for Coach McDermott. Good clock management, timeout management, 4th down decision making. There were no goofy sequences that led to a 3 point swing or something like that. The players were ready and played sound fundamental football. The defense was fine, better than I expected really. I said before the game hold them below 30 and I'll be satisfied. So, I am satisfied. Reflecting on the game there are no specific defensive play calls or sequences I can point to where I felt like coaching let the team down. We don't have the talent to totally shut down Baltimore's offense so I kept my standard reasonable and we met that standard. The only thing I want McDermott to do differently this week is lock Joe Brady in a room with a TV on every wall playing nonstop Josh Allen highlights. Maybe prop his eyes open like A Clockwork Orange. Just to subtly remind the man what makes our offense tick.

Ironically Baltimore laid the exact same blueprint back in week 4. That's why we traded for Cooper, and as soon as we got him the offense started dominating on a weekly basis. I'd like to know what happened over the past month because suddenly Cooper isn't getting involved at all and the passing offense has regressed.

In general this game was not the MVP showdown it was advertised as. Lamar made two massive unforced errors, and Joe Brady inexplicably decided to take the game out of Josh's hands for the most part. So really the game ultimately came down to mistakes. They made a bunch, we made none. The pregame narrative meant nothing.

1st half offensive play calling was excellent, no argument there. But our 2nd half adjustments were terrible. Baltimore coaches won the 2nd half big time and almost stole the win but our players made clutch plays while their players made mistakes, and that was that. As for McDermott - I blame him for the 2nd half offense because he is the head coach but I thought his game management was excellent. Babich/McDermott as defensive coaches I give a solid B. I said before the game holding them to under 30 is the goal. I'm not unreasonable. I thought we did a good job making it a point to shut down the run and mixed in some pressure looks that created negative plays.

What worries me is that the offense we saw tonight is the offense we've seen since after the Rams game. Plodding, conservative, heavily reliant on 3rd down conversions, almost zero outside passing offense. It's tough sledding.

We won the turnover battle 3-0 and stopped two 2PT conversions and still only won by 2. Clearly something caused what should have been a lopsided result to become a nailbiter win. I place the blame on Brady. He was awful in the 2nd half while the Ravens coaching staff found answers on both sides of the ball.

I'm extremely happy about the win. Two more like it and we can all die happy. I just don't think the offense we saw tonight is sustainable to make it that far. Mistake free is good but it can't be your only goal. We have to push the envelope a bit and put the ball in the hands of the MVP in crunch time.

I'm not sure if their team was but their coaching certainly was better than ours. Luckily their players made big mistakes and ours didn't. The players won this game. Clutch plays from Allen, Cook, Bernard, Bass, and finally Douglas at the very end are what won this game. Lamar and Andrews made too many mistakes to overcome.

You're obviously 100% correct. The 3rd down screen to Knox gave up all the momentum. Failing to sneak it twice from the 2 almost lost us the game. My one saving grace is that Brady hasn't been that bad all year. I don't know what dead high school coach possessed him in the 2nd half but hopefully he'll exorcize him by next week.

Good thing we aren't building a dome, seriously. Opponents come to our cold home field and get butter fingers. We're ready to play in the elements, they're not. Massive underrated advantage and I'm glad we didn't give it up.