Shaw66

I like Knox, but he is not a playmaker with the ball in hands.

Same horrible thought I had.

I know you're not attacking me. We're just talking. Suppose KC's best corner back had a concussion on Saturday, just like Benford on Sunday. You don't think that extra day couldn't be a big deal? I do. Every KC player who got dinged on Saturday has an extra day to recover. That's real. Again, my real point only is that the cumulative benefit of the number 1 seed is too much and should be adjusted.

Well, I'm not going to try to figure out the schedule. My point is that the current system creates multiple benefits to the team with the bye, and I think it's too much. By the time you get to one versus two, the only benefit should be home field.

Has anyone commented about the Bills and the NFC East? If the Bills beat the Chiefs, it will mean that for fifth time, the Bills will be playing an AFC East team in the Super Bowl.

That's all great. I appreciate it. I was just reporting on what I saw, because it looked odd. As for the bye schedule, they'd have to adjust the first week, too. It just shouldn't be the case that the #1 seed gets an extra day's rest against the #2.

I haven't watched the replay of the onside kick, but I don't think it happened on that play. It happened sometime earlier, around the Bills 40 yard-line, near the Ravens' bench. I don't recall the hit, but I saw him getting up after a play and he didn't look right at all. He seemed to be unsure himself, stood up, and made sure he had his balance before he started walking back to the huddle. Breaking the huddle, he was hesitant, as though he wasn't sure where he was supposed to go. I was surprised that when he got up some official didn't send him off the field, or someone watching it in the booth. I didn't go back to watching him after that. It's one of the benefits of the bye. The bye is a huge benefit. First, you get a week off. Then, you're likely to get one of the weakest teams in the bracket, the #4 seed or lower, while the #2 seed has to play #3. Then, you get an extra day's rest. There shouldn't be that much benefit to getting the bye. This past weekend, the AFC should have played two games on the same day, and the NFL played two on the other day.

And it's not even big chunk yardage. It's just enough so that the ball is moving downfield and often your getting the first down with one or two plays, not having to constantly convert third downs. The Ravens obviously knew the Bills would run a fair amount, and they were ready. And they knew the Bills like those short passes that really are extensions of the run. The Ravens were ready. And the Ravens were ready to tackle Shakir quickly after a catch. They get credit for all of that. The Bills just had to punish them for focusing on those portions of the Bills offense. And Allen threw poorly. Just off the top of my head, he missed Cooper badly on one play, and he had someone - Kincaid? - going deep and overthrew him. Allen threw one of his line drives instead of getting air under it. The bold part is most important. McDermott's teams are almost always well prepared, and they have reasons for what they did. Listening to him in his presser, he didn't sound like he thought the Bills got lucky. He said the Bills did a lot of what they thought they could do and the Ravens did a lot of what they thought the Ravens could do. Most telling was what he said about turnovers. He didn't want to put the Ravens down, but in so many words he said "my team is good at the fundamentals, and if your team isn't, well we just saw happens." I haven't wanted to jinx him, but Cook isn't fumbling any more. Josh isn't making dumb plays with the ball any more. Receivers don't fumble. Players don't take dumb penalties. The Bills won because they play football better than the Ravens, and they do it by doing the most important things right, over and over.

Well, I don't recall that there are "this team feels different" threads every year - I can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday, but if there are, they aren't necessarily threads started by the same person. It may feel different to me one season and different to someone else the next season. And I'm not sure why we have to be careful about people expressing their feelings. I actually do think this team feels different. I think that several things happened this season to cause this team to be the first team that approaches the game completely within McDermott's vision. It's a true team, and it's realizing the benefits of team play, the synergies. 11 players doesn't give you 1+1 plus plus =11. In McDermott's vision, 1+1 plus =12 or 13. In order to play McDermott's way, every player has to give up a bit of himself and let himself become integrated into the team. It's happening this season, and that's why the team feels different. I thought the first half was remarkable. They did give up the opening drive, but then the Bills were about perfect. How would you like a perfect half to end? By having a lead already, running out the clock, scoring a touchdown, the opponent takes a knee, and they receive the second half kickoff. Perfect. And there were no stars in that performance - just a team making plays.

Whether it was Josh or Brady, I don't know. I just know I was sitting there saying over and over "throw the ball downfield a bit." Not bombs away, not 25-yard strikes, just get some 8- and 12-yard gains to get the defense back on its heels. It seemed all night the Bills were attacking with runs and passes at the line of scrimmage.

Highmark

Well, maybe you need more sleep. The fact is that the Bills won 13 games playing in a way that seems to tire you out, and would have won a 14th if the Pats game had meant anything. McDermott is 8th among active coaches in playoff wins. Three of those ahead of him are already out of the playoffs - Payton, Shanahan, and Tomlin, and a fourth didn't make the playoffs and got fired - McCarthy. McVay has two more wins and has been a head coach for the same number of years as McDermott. The other two with more wins are Reid and Harbaugh, but they've been head coaches three times and twice as long McDermott, respectively. So, I'm sorry your tired, but you need to get used to it. McDermott is a big-time success as a head coach, and his style of play has made him a success.

I agree with this. I've always said it. Several years ago, a US nuclear submarine surfaced off Hawaii and accidentally sank or at least incapacitated a Japanese ship carrying students on a summer scientific excursion. Several kids died. I heard the captain of that sub speaking several months later, and the interviewer tried to get the captain to say that it was the seaman's fault who failed to see the ship on radar. before they surfaced. Over and over, the captain refused. Essentially he said that if mistakes were made, it meant that people weren't trained well enough, and if they weren't trained well enough, then the blame lay with him, the captain. He's responsible to see that everyone does his job. In that sense, 13 seconds absolutely was on McDermott. It wasn't a dropped pass; no one fumbled. It was a team not performing as well as it could and should have, and when the team doesn't perform, it's on the coach. (Which is why I wonder how Daboll still has his job.) However, I've also said repeatedly that the growth mindset and continuous improvement that is the core of how McDermott runs the team applies to him as much as anyone else, and he's been clear about that from the start. Any rookie head coach has to learn how to do the job, has to grow into it, has to mature and develop judgment that can come only from doing the job. And McDermott clearly has grown. We've seen it in his sideline decision making, and we've read about in multiple interviews and columns talking about how his approach to the job has changed over his years in charge. McDermott's team still might blow it at the end of a tight game, because each situation is new and it's difficult to make all the decisions correctly, but I'm sure he's better now than he was back then. Evidence of his development can be seen in the most important place - the team. We're seeing a team with a deeper understanding of what they're doing, a confidence that allows them to respond to adversity. We talked last week about how the Bills responded after the Broncos gashed them for a first-possession touchdown. For the Bills, it was business as usual. They didn't expect to post a shut out, so the fact that Denver had scored was no reason to despair. They just went to work and soon it was clear that they knew how to beat the Broncos. As I watched the Chiefs dismantle the Texans last night, I stopped to appreciate how magnificent that team has been. To put together the string of AFC championship game appearances they have is truly remarkable, and their late-game success, game after game, this season has been superb. Much of it is, I'm sure, due to Reid. He has a multiple decades of the kinds of experiences that McDermott has seen for only a half-dozen years. He's built his knowledge of in-game events, and he's built a culture where his team can approach those events with calmness and understanding. Yes, Reid has the QB he needs, but Mahomes too is a product of Reid's mentorship. We can see the same thing happening to McDermott, and I believe that we see it in Allen, too. McDermott said recently that he doesn't need to talk teach much to Allen any more, because Allen understands completely where McDermott wants to go. McDermott, for his part, has gotten an offensive coordinator who has put together an offense that suits Allen nearly perfectly,. And now that they've gotten to where they are, it will be easier for that success to continue even if Brady leaves, because McDermott now knows what he needs in a coordinator and how to develop that guy. In fact, Allen will help McDermott teach Brady's successor. The point is that building a high-functioning team is hard to do, but Reid and Belichick have shown that once you've built it, maintaining and growing it is an easier task. McDermott is now emerging into the same space. He has shown that his team can better year after year, even in a year when most of the fans, and most of us here, thought that overall talent had declined. (We all thought and hoped that the Chiefs would get worse when Hill left, but Reid and Mahomes showed us the error of our ways.) 13 seconds truly is disappearing in the rearview mirror.

There was a report after the game that Farwell huddled up the kickoff team and called the squib kick, but that Bass wasn't in the huddle - he was taking practice kicks into the net. Farwell's job is to be certain that everyone knows the playcall; either someone needed to go tell Bass, or Bass should have been trained to be in the huddle.

Actually, they're the NFC team that scares me the most. But yeah - GO Rams!!! And GO Bills!!!