DCOrange

Excellent write-up. A part of me wishes I had no rooting interest in this game and could just enjoy it for what it is because to me, this is the most exciting matchup of the weekend. Obviously our defense will be defending Lamar and the Ravens differently than we do regular offenses and I expect Baltimore to break tendency with how they defend Allen, Diggs, Beasley, etc. as well. Going to be a really interesting chess match to watch unfold.

I was surprised when it sounded like the Jets were going to get their man before anyone else but then again, the Eagles job seems like it might even be worse than the Jets.

I saw a report this morning from ESPN that he might end up taking the year off

I get the idea of having a separate thread for the Jets since they're a division rival, but figured we could maybe just have one thread to discuss the other job openings around the league? Some updates this morning: Chicago Bears announced they're bringing Matt Nagy and Ryan Pace back for another season. Philadelphia Eagles will be interviewing former Patriots LB and current LB Coach Jerod Mayo for their HC opening. So far, the candidates that we know Philly is pursuing are Mayo, Saleh (though it sounds like he's likely headed to the Jets), Todd Bowles, Arthur Smith, and Lincoln Riley. As of last night, there was a "growing sense" that Urban Meyer would accept the Jaguars coaching job, but this morning, it was reported that the Chargers are continuing to look into Meyer for themselves.

Not to mention he simply doesn't take as many hits as most RBs do. It's possible he'll get unlucky with injuries at some point but that same likelihood exists for every other QB.

Not sure about your neck of the woods, but it hasn't really snowed in DC in the past 3 years. We've probably had flurries 3 days in the past 3 winters and the snow only stuck to the ground once. If Lamar hasn't had any away games in snow, I'd be surprised if he's seen snow since entering the NFL.

It's a believable rumor but whoever that person is is not a reputable source.

Pretty clearly Josh IMO. It sounds like Josh might become the highest paid player in the league. I can't imagine Baker would get anywhere near that much unless they wait on an extension and he blows up. I expect Lamar to get a huge extension as well but probably not highest paid player in the league big.

Found my reply in your thread...not too exciting. As I mention in the reply, most of the guys that I felt were sleepers that would have met the "Day 3 pick that you have a Day 1/2 grade on" criteria ended up rising up draft boards by the end of it. Also, not a "sleeper" take, but I mentioned in the post below about how I had Eason ahead of Herbert...I think there's a chance I may have been too low on Herbert lol. Darius Anderson - went undrafted, initially signed with Dallas as an UDFA but ultimately ended up in Indy. Was elevated to the active roster for the game this past weekend but didn't get on the field as far as I know. Michael Pittman - Ended up going #34 in the draft to the Colts and obviously we all got a taste of how good he can be this past weekend as he led the team in receiving. All together, he finished the year with over 500 receiving yards and appears to be a starter. Bryan Edwards - Went to the Raiders in the 3rd round. Was a day 1 starter for them but the injury bug continued to bite him and he was no longer starting by the time he returned from injury. Amik Robertson - Went to the Raiders in the 4th round. Appeared in half their games this year and didn't really do much statistically at least. Looks like he was mostly used on special teams. Jacob Eason - Went to the Colts in the 4th round and made no appearance as Rivers and Brissett stayed healthy all year. Shea Patterson - Not even on a practice squad as far as I know.

Nothing he said is wrong, but that doesn't necessarily mean it'll be the case this week and that's what we're hoping for. Relative to our usual, that was a very bad performance for this team propped up by Allen playing lights out and the Colts pass catchers dropping timely passes. We almost always play better than we did this past week and that'll be required to advance to the AFC Championship.

Just so everyone's aware because I remembered something about this rule but just looked it up to confirm: teams cannot interview coaches on playoff teams after this upcoming weekend's games, so this is the last week for them to interview Daboll/Frazier until we lose.

Ultimately I think the two main keys for this game will be: Are our WRs healthy? Baltimore wants to play man. Our WRs, when healthy, feast on man coverage with a bevy of crossing routes. Beasley looked hampered this past week. We know Diggs is hurt but he looked fine. If Beasley is okay, I think our offense should be good though I do wonder if Baltimore might break their tendencies for this game. Can our defense tackle? The defense has struggled in a lot of areas this year, but tackling has been an issue with this group for multiple years now and Baltimore's offense is a lot more challenging to stop than Indy's, and we had almost zero success stopping Indy this week. If the answer to both of those questions are yes, we win. If the answer to both are no, we lose.

I would say the O-Line as a whole is the most important after the QB. I voted C but I understand LT is almost certainly the more popular and maybe correct answer.

Definitely. Baltimore's offense is a lot more explosive than Indy's by comparison though and Indy had no problem nickel and diming us all the way down the field until their drops ultimately cost them. We'll need to play better than we did this past week to win. Certainly winnable and we should be favored, but Baltimore is a very good team much like we are.

The Bills org would be blacklisted if your reward for making the playoffs is that you aren't allowed to interview for head coaching jobs like every other team allows. Yesterday was an off day anyways; there's no harm in allowing him to interview with other teams while everyone is taking the day off and waiting to see who they'll be playing next week.

Chicago should be moving heaven and earth to try to be the team that gets Watson if Houston actually does trade him (which I don't think they will).

Yes. He's most likely a top 10 QB but at absolute worst he's on the fringe of top 10 and he's only 25 years old.

Yeah, I have a really hard time envisioning Caserio's first move of his career being to trade his team's biggest star, who is also very young, to essentially get their own pick back. The optics of it will pretty much ruin him before he even gets going.

I'll be surprised if Watson gets traded anywhere. No doubt it would be pretty scary if Miami were able to add him to their roster though.

Yeah, they obviously won't say anything about their health because they don't want to tip their hand, but you could pretty easily tell that Beasley was hurting out there. McKenzie obviously wasn't right like you said. Hard to say with Diggs, but this felt like a game where we were simply hoping to survive and advance and hopefully give the WRs another week to heal. And as Wayne Cubed mentioned, it wasn't lost on me that we just kept chipping away with the QB draws and dump offs until they finally brought a safety up and then immediately burned them deep. It was a frustrating gameplan but just further evidence that this offense is capable of adapting to what defenses take away. I wish we were better on the handoffs and it might come back to bite us at some point in this postseason, but I thought it was pretty promising that we were able to still put up points against a top notch defense that wasn't willing to let anyone get behind them, while having poor starting position, our most important non-QB guys hobbled, and a poor run game with the RBs. The Colts also just thoroughly controlled the game with their offense for most of the day as the defense couldn't get a stop without the Colts making simple mistakes on their own.

Are you suggesting he shouldn’t have made a team? I think he may have been snubbed from first team. He’s incredible.

Really a question of if he's one of the top 3, as that's what the voters are voting for.

He still finished 6th in yards and 8th in TDs but you can only vote for 3 guys and Adams and Diggs were locks for 2 of those spots and really, Tyreek Hill should have been a lock for the 3rd as well. At any rate, DK was awesome this year but still not one of the top 3 WRs in the league this year.

So based on the way voting works, this means someone voted for Cole Beasley as one of their top 3 WRs in the league this year. That's pretty wild. The only thing I can think is maybe they tried to treat it like a real team and therefore gave a vote to Beasley as exclusively a slot guy.