CincyBillsFan

I hear you. It's just so frustrating to see how recent Super Bowl winning QB's like Mahomes & Hurts, spend all day in the pocket just slinging the ball around. I mean I've never seen either of them leave the pocket or have success off schedule.

Yes it did and that great defense almost got them to a 2nd consecutive SB. In both those seasons, 2021 & 2022, the Bengal's D and not their O carried the team. But since those seasons Cincy has allowed their D to go to crap, got rid of their brilliant D coach and double-downed on their offensive weapons. Hell, they still haven't fixed their O line. The Bengal's are conducting an interesting experiment - put all your resources into field the best Offensive skill players to surround your elite QB while simultaneously ignoring your D and O line. Only time will tell whether this will work or not. I'm betting against it as Cincy fails to make the playoffs for a 3rd straight year.

First off, that 4th quarter SB lead, in fact the Bengal's 2021 playoff success, was orchestrated by the brilliant play of their defense. Their offense was at best average during that run. Today several of those defensive players are gone as is the defensive coach that seemed to have Mahomes/Reid's number. They are not close to being the same team. In fact the Bengals are a fundamentally different team then the one that made a trip to the SB 4 years ago. Second, your claim that the Bengal's play the Chief's tougher then anyone else is false. The Bills have also played the Chiefs down to the wire their last 3 games.

That's a fair point and also Burrow and the O were often going against late game prevent defenses. That will do more then anything to prop up your stats. Just look at Mahomes stats in the SB against the Eagles up to the point where the birds led 34 - 0 then look at his stats the rest of the game against a prevent/back-up D.

But my understanding is that they knew about Hoecht.

I agree that it happening now is way better then in November. But if we have just our fair share of injuries on the D combined with the loss of these two guys who were expected to get a lot of playing time then it is really going to hurt.

I don't think those of us deeply disappointed here are part of a "pitchfork crowd". When your Super Bowl window is wide open and the time is NOW to stack the deck and win a championship this kind of mistake can be fatal and frankly is inexcusable.

His track record on defensive free agent signings has been average at best. Rapp, Floyd & Douglas were OK signings but nothing special and Miller was a disaster. Sure the injury was at fault for Miller but given his age it always was a very real possibility.

Calls into question the competence of the Bills front office. Don't see how anyone could see it any other way.

Allen could have demanded that the Bills pay him 70 million per year, ALL of it guaranteed, starting today and what choice would they have had? You mean at a percent of the CAP that makes Allen the 13th highest paid QB in the NFL at signing?

That is an unbelievable discount given to the Bills by Allen. If Allen were actually available and all you had to do was sign him to a contract and he was your QB at least 2/3 of the teams in the NFL would have offered him a 6 year deal at 70 million per year fully guaranteed. And you can throw in every dead beat cousin twice removed.

In other words Allen was clutch in a playoff game on the road where he was facing the best defensive coach in football with a top 5 defense.

Allen's throw in the face of that all out KC blitz in the championship game was the definition of being clutch. Had Kincaid caught that pass, and it was a very catchable ball, all we would have heard was what an amazing and clutch throw Allen made on 4th down to keep that drive alive. And the previous season in the Divisional Playoff game while Jones caused Allen to miss the TD throw that late 4th quarter drive was also the very definition of clutch on Allen's part. Taking up most of the 2nd half of the 4th quarter Allen drove the Bills down to easy FG range to tie the game and possibly force OT with less then 2 minutes left only to see the FG missed. People who claim Allen has not been clutch in the playoffs are not only wrong but IMO are not Bills fans but trolls.

You want consistency from Allen? How about: * 6 straight playoff seasons * 5 straight division titles * Top 5 playoff stats in NFL history * Hasn't missed a game since 2018 * More total TD's in his first 7 seasons then any other QB in NFL history has scored through their first 8 seasons in the league. When folks said Allen needed to cut down on his TO's that was a legitimate area for improvement. Increasing his completion percentage by a few points is a nice to have that is unlikely to have any impact on the number of season & playoff wins.

But in 2 of the drives you describe the Bills missed an "easy" 44 yard FG to tie and their TE dropped a very catchable ball that would have kept a potential game winning drive alive. So sure, you can try to squeeze a bit more out of your offense, though I don't see any need for Allen to play better as IMO that would be an unrealistic expectation, the real problem remains the defense. If I had to assign percents I would say the D has been 90% of the problem, the ST's have been 5% of the problem and the O has been the remaining 5% of the problem. Perfection is never going to happen in the NFL. Saying there are problems on both ides of the ball is just a distraction IMO. If Allen and the O play exactly the same over the next 5 seasons as they have over the last 5 seasons but the D improves significantly the Bills will go to 3 Super Bowl games with 2 Super Bowl wins. But if you make the O even better and don't improve the D then MAYBE the Bills make it to a SB in the next 5 seasons only to be blown out.