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.

And I would argue that even in the Cinci playoff loss the defense was more at fault because given the weather and the fact that it was a home playoff game they came out of the locker room and resembled a tub of butter being cut by the Bengal's hot knife of an offense. Remember how the Bengal's had back to back long TD drives to go up 14 - 0 before the Bills O had even started their 2nd possession. Then after the Bills O clawed their way back to make it a one score game, the D immediately allowed Cinci to go on long, time consuming, momentum sucking drives to go back up by two scores.

In both these cases you're assuming that the offense scores leaving no time on the clock for KC to respond. Last season, if Dawkins gets a better block on Jones and Allen hits Shakir for the TD there would have been plenty of time for the Chiefs to go down and score the winning TD. This last playoff game it's likley KC would have had some time to score and win the game. After all if 13 seconds wasn't enough then 45 seconds would feel like eternity.

Nonsense. Are you saying that MVP's make every great play that is possible? It's this completely unhinged and unrealistic expectation around what Allen can and can not do that I find frustrating.

Yes because in the crazy world of Bills fandom Allen is not only supposed to lead the Offense to the game winning TD but also to use up the rest of the clock to protect the Bills terrible playoff Defense. And he must do all this alone, against the eventual Super Bowl champ in a playoff game.

There are 10 guys around Allen on the field and a coaching staff on the sidelines. Football is different then say Basketball where an elite player can single-handedly win a game. BTW, in the KC/Bills game last season in Rich Stadium even if Dawkins had made the block and kept Jones from pushing him into Allen disrupting the likley TD throw to Shakir what's the over/under on KC going the length of the field against the Bills D to score the game winning TD in the remaining minute and a half? Then you people would be crying about how Allen should have used the rest of the time on the clock and scored the game winning TD. And Dawkins getting pushed by Jones into Allen as he released the ball had nothing to do with not making that play?

No one is saying Allen is blameless. What is being said and proven beyond a shadow of doubt is that Allen is the LEAST to blame. As for whether or not Allen had made mistakes - of course he has since NO ONE is perfect. Again, though how many of Allen's "mistakes" have cost us a playoff game.

Correct. GunnerBill had a great insight when he called out that the Bills lack the kind of play makers that can rise to the occasion at critical moments in a game. You saw this perfectly the last two playoff losses with: * Diggs dropping a huge 4th quarter pass and then Bass missing a 44 yard FG * Kincaid dropping the 4th down pass and the coaching decision to not have Cook on the field for that last drive.

"But at the end of the day, given these statistics and this analysis, it’s hard to look at the Bills and think they can “get over the hump” in the playoffs if only Allen would play better."

This is the money quote form the analysis: "But at the end of the day, given these statistics and this analysis, it’s hard to look at the Bills and think they can “get over the hump” in the playoffs if only Allen would play better."

I agree with your first sentence then you have to go and ruin it with your last paragraph. Sure, Allen had the ball in his hands those last two games but in the NFL you shouldn't miss 44 yard FG's and drop passes that hit your hands. Sorry, but poor defense has been the key reason the Bills have lost each of their last 5 playoff games. Not the only reason but the main reason. So while I believe like you that Allen has no intention of forcing his way out anytime soon and that he wants to deliver a SB to Buffalo more then anything else, let's see how things look in three years if the Bills continue to exit the playoffs playing bad defense and no one else making a play at a critical time in the game.