TigerJ

If it works, great. What I'm saying is, it's possible one of these Sundays, Buffalo could run into a brick wall with respect to trying to run the ball. Houston is a possible location for that to happen. If the Bills can't run the ball effectively, they need to have a plan B. I'm also in favor of involving McCoy in the passing game. All three or Buffalo's tight ends are pretty athletic, and potentially good receivers. Actually, the only receiver I'm disappointed in is Kelvin Benjamin, who seems more than a touch lazy. Zay Jones has made some plays when he's been targeted, and doesn't have an inordinate number of drops.

John Fox and Jeff Fisher were fossils among NFL coaches. They were both very conservative in their approach, and even though their pedigree was defense, they insisted the offense their coordinators called reflected their antiquated philosophies. Daboll ran a pretty safe offense last week, but I think that was because they thought they could and it would protect Josh Allen. I don't think it is necessarily in his (or McDermott's) DNA to be conservative and play it safe all the time. If it is, the OP is probably right, and it's only a matter of time before the fans and the Pegulas get tired of it.

I'm easy to please. A win would do it for me. Now, after I feel good for a while, I'll start worrying about the next game if Buffalo doesn't show some improvement in their passing offense, including Josh Allen's accuracy and decision making, the offensive line's blocking and the receivers holding on to catchable balls.

It's all about money. I suspect the product on the field will be compromised. I think players will be more unsettled if they have two homes. To put it another way, a team that has two home fields really has none. I don't know that Kahn cares as long as his revenue goes up.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a fair amount of max protect (double TE and the like). As another poster suggested, there could also be a lot of rollouts. I think the Bills might be able to use the screen pass successfully too,

This is an interesting topic to me because It seems to be weakness against weakness and strength versus strength. The Texans have a beat up secondary but are sixth in the league in run defense. Buffalo has had an ineffective passing offense thus far and have been relying on their running game to a large degree. While the Texans have a decimated secondary, they do have a frightening pass rush led by twin athletic freaks JJ Watt and Jadeveon Clowney. How would you attack it? I fear if the Bills approach it like they did last week, relying extensively on the run game, they will in essence be trying to run into a brick wall. The Texans' injury situation is in essence an ivitation to pass the ball. The problem is, the Bills will need to create some sort of blocking scheme that will give Josh Allen a little bit of time with a clear pocket, while Josh is going to have to find it in himself to be at least a little accurate sometimes, and he's going to have to be more aware of his hot reads than he's been and get rid of the ball faster. I know that runs counter to what the Bills have done the last couple weeks, but I think it has to be done if they are going to beat the Texans. What does everybody else think?

I am at an age, where with my health issues, I really don't know how many years I have left. I really, really hope I get to see one Super Bowl win for my Bills. No, I won't use that line in my obituary when it happens. It's cute though.

GO KC!

Hmm! Interesting. I do think the Bills owe it to Shady to give him some say in this. I'm not giving up Shady without a fairly high pick. I don't know that a first is realistic given his age, but I'm thinking a second round pick. I'm probably using that pick to get the best running back I can in the draft. Unfortunately, Bryce Love will be long gone by the time the second round rolls around. He would be a real nice replacement for Shady.

Isn't that the smallest spread so far this season? We're gaining ground!

Whadayaknow! That was similar to my thought in a thread yesterday when I said Daboll seemed to lack confidence in Josh Allen. I thought there times they could have opened up a bit more. There will be times this season when last Sunday's offensive game plan just won't succeed. If they don't open up a little more when they have the opportunity to do so, there's no way for Josh Allen to develop confidence and skill to run a passing offense.

Yeah, he's a solid role player. I would guess he could play a couple more years too.

It doesn't look to me as if Daboll has much confidence in Allen. Yes Allen is raw, but I thing there were times Daboll could have loosened up a little bit. There are games where the ultra conservative approach won't cut it.

With Khari Lee, Buffalo had 4 tight ends on the roster. Three are so called playmakers. Even though Clay is on the shelf this week, I think Buffalo figured their need at safety was a littlel more accute.

I can't say as I've been embarrassed to THAT degree, but I appreciate what you're saying. I know that White has made sure that financially his mom is set, but I guess she has not fully escaped the social context in which she found herself prior to her son's success. The charge is aggravated battery and domestic violence. That makes it sound as if another family member was the victim.

Composed thoughts from Bills fans? You must be joking. Well, I can give it a shot. First, I think McBeane were really hoping after McCarron failed to impress during the preseason that Peterman, who looked really good in the preseason, would come out and play well in the regular season, thus relieving them of having to start Josh Allen. Obviously, that didn't happen. That meant the Bills were going to be subjected to the growing pains of a raw rookie. That doesn't mean they aren't high on him as an eventual franchise QB, but it does mean any projected win total made by the team's brain trust is probably being scaled back. Secondly, when the team got blindsided back in the early part of the year with Eric Wood's health issue and Ritchie Incognito's questionable sanity, I think Bean and McDermott made the decision to go ahead and work on strengthening the areas of the team that had been targeted prior to the loss of Wood and Incognito. They signed band aids to try and get through the season. That left the team having to scramble during preseason to put together a combination on the line that might work. That deprived the line of any ability to develop cohesiveness during the preseason. That, combined with the fact that it's one of the least talented offensive lines in the league means it's going to struggle against good defensive front sevens. Without elaborating, Buffalo clearly doesn't have a well established group of wide receivers, and the team is also a bit thin at CB and linebacker. Our running backs are much older than the league average. Now for the good news: I don't think Josh Allen's struggles versus Green Bay means he's not our franchise QB of the future. He looked like a raw rookie behind an inept offensive line. Surprise, surprise! I got flamed a bit when I suggested he was going to have growing pains when future defensive coordinators, armed with regular season film on Allen would game plan to expose his weaknesses. Whadayaknow! I think he has the mental makeup to learn from his early struggles and become a better QB as a result. I think the offensive line is going to gain some cohesion, and will improve as a result. That's not going to keep them from being one of the lesser talented groups in the league, but they can still improve from their Green Bay showing. After the halftime defection of Vontae Davis, the Bills found a silver lining in the play of Ryan Lewis, a much younger, cheaper and healthier option than Davis. Taron Johnson also appears to have the right stuff. Lafayette Pitts and Phillip Gaines look to me as if they are reasonably competent depth. All this works together to suggest that the CBs might be OK, and even have acceptable depth. The receivers aren't a great bunch. Overall, they've had too many drops and KB in particular looks like he's collecting a paycheck on his way out of the league, but the Bills can probably get by with this group. Lastly, with (possibly) a franchise QB in place, (on a 5 year rookie deal to boot) with a ton of cap room and a good amount of draft capital, the Bills are in a position to make significant talent upgrades at multiple positions in the offseason. If I were Beane, I would still go easy on splash free agent signings, and I would try to get a little younger too. The newcomers who have had more of an impact so far this season are the younger guys, not even thinking about draft picks (Ryan Lewis, Corry Bojorquez, Jason Croom) versus Vontae Davis and Marshall Newhouse.

If I were a student at the University of Manchester, I suspect I just wouldn't go to events sponsored by the Student Union.

An interesting acquisition. OK, he's not been a great teammate in Miami. I'd like to know a little more about why. He was drafted in the second round, but even then, he was described as a first round talent. He didn't like being in Miami. I don't know if there is anything McDermott can do to unlock the potential of Phillips, but the potential is there to make a team want to try. The Bills are not depending on Phillips to be a starter. He's a rotational guy. Given limited role they will be asking of him and the limited cost it's probably worth taking a chance on him. The Bills have a pretty good lockerroom right now. If Phillips is not a cancer, he could be well worth it.

I think the problems on the offensive line for the Bills are less about inferior players and more about inferior cohesiveness as a unit. They played pretty well versus the Vikings, but their lack of experience and cohesiveness as a unit made them vulnerable to the complexities of Mike Pettine's defense, which is based on deception. I think the line has the potential to be considerably better than they were last Sunday eventually, but in the near term I don't think the woes of the offensive line are over. It's a copy cat league, and until they solve it, other defensive coordinators are going to emulate Mike Pettine's approach.

Belichick found that Coleman didn't know enough of Buffalo's offense to be of any use.

Buffalo's defense was able to cover Minnesota's wide receivers early in the play. That forced Kirk Cousins to hold on to the ball longer than he wanted. That allowed the defensive line to get lots of pressure on Cousins. The same formula should work versus the Packers with their banged up offensive line and gimpy legged Aaron Rodgers. When Green Bay is on defense they are somewhat handicapped by a new defensive coordinator. Mike Pettine is good. He comes from the Wrecks Ryan coaching tree, but without the sloppy personal discipline that infected the players. His defense is quite complicated and is predicated on deception, making the offense think they are going to do something, yet doing something else when the play starts. The problem for Green Bay is the complexity of the scheme makes it difficult to master. In just the fourth game of the season Green Bay's players will still be working to figure it all out. Clay Matthews is still a difference maker, but I don't think he has all that much support.

I think Ryan Lewis had a good game Sunday. He could be the answer across from White. Poyer and Hyde have a few years left. If White, Johnson and Lewis all perform well going forward, the back end ofo the defense could enjoy several years of stability to go with top performance. This regime seems to have a good handle on identifying young DBs who can play at a high level.

I never object to kicking the tires on a player, but I would be surprised if anything were to be worked out with Dez Bryant. I don't think he would be good for the locker room. His salary demands will likely exceed what the Bills will think he's worth, and difficult to manage given Buffalo's current cap constraints, and I doubt his potential production will match his cost.

Before I saw the sign, I was going to say I hope you didn't see him with a new girlfriend. He's not real good at picking them.

This is a really tough ranking to try and do because you have to use different criteria for different QBs. Trubisky and Watson both have the better part of a season while Rosen has less than a full regular season game on which to make an evaluation. This makes it even more subjective than the usual top ten list. I would put Allen below last year's Watson, but he probably played better last Sunday than Watson has played this season. Darnold's first game was outstanding. After that, not so much. Allen's sample size is still pretty small and Rosen's even smaller.