CincyBillsFan

I was at the Cincinnati Bengals game. It was a beautiful day and the place was crawling with Bills fans. The parking lot tailgate was cool as Bills & Bengals fans mixed and had fun. One of my friends from North Buffalo came down to watch the game and while we tailgated he went up to other tailgating Bills fans to ask them where in Buffalo they came from. He was amazed at the answers he got - Cincinnati, Louisville, Indianapolis, Columbus, Dayton, Memphis, Atlanta, Knoxville, etc. It really showed the national following the Bills enjoy since the great diaspora from Western NY in the late 20th century. As for the game what a huge disappointment. After racing out to a 17 - 3 halftime lead just one week after beating NE to go 3 - 0 the Bills blew the game. That was the game where rookie AJ Green was an absolute beast.

No big deal. Didn't Julius Caesar have epilepsy? And he did alright conquering France, invading Britain and then bedding Cleopatra. As long as fields avoids Senators with knives he'll be fine.

Assuming Arizona would have fired their coach and hired Kingsbury (KB) no matter who was their QB in 2018 I believe KB would have seen Allen's mobility as a huge plus in his offense. He also would have loved Allen's arm talent and size. And I suspect he would have felt he could correct any accuracy issues. Murray running the ball is a big part of the KB offense. Allen demonstrated beyond a doubt in 2018 that he was an elite running QB. KB would have been thrilled to have Allen behind center. So if Arizona had Allen, KB would have stuck with him and traded out of the first pick gaining a whole lot of draft capital to upgrade the offensive talent.

Which is exactly what Allen did his rookie year. Allen stepped into an offense every bit as bad and maybe even worse then the offense Rosen stepped into. On top of that Allen's training camp and preseason were not handled well as he took very few first team reps. Yet in spite of this you can fill a 20 minute highlight video of amazing plays Allen made as a rookie. Sure you can match that with a video showing his bone head plays and hero ball. But under the circumstances it was the highlights that mattered and a lot of us knew we had the right guy after that rookie season.

My guess is the ones they didn't show involved fans dropping throw away passes into the stands. As I said earlier, this stat however poorly measured, is likely a sign that Allen is an elite QB. What distinguishes exceptional NFL QB's from great college QB's is putting the ball in very tight places. They look like they could be picked off but they seldom are. And a lot of them are completed resulting in highlight reel plays.

Allen's company here is very good. And I seem to remember on more then one occasion QB evaluators talking about the single biggest difference between great college and pro QB's is the willingness to throw the ball when the WR doesn't look open. College QB's wait to see separation. Elite NFL QB's put the ball in very tight places. Like "almost" interception tight spaces. I suspect that this stat actually demonstrates just how elite Allen really is.

There are bad takes and then there are straight out stupidly insane takes.

The key to these types of discussions isn't the leap from year 2 to 3 it's the leap from year 1 to 2. Going from 10 TD/12 INT to 20 TD/9 INT and 53% completion to 59% completion was amazing. The year 3 jump makes a lot of sense in the context of the year 2 jump. And for the record to much is made of the Championship game. The Bills lost on the road to the defending Super Bowl champions. Allen didn't have the perfect game like he did a couple of times during the season but he still accounted for nearly 400 total yards of offense. The idea that Allen is at any risk to fall back to his 2019 play or the lunatic idea he could regress back to 2018 is just passive/aggressive anti-Allen BS. It's hard to take this stuff seriously.

That's not how a lot of them see it down here. There are questions with Sewell and the sense is that Chase may be the safer pick. The Bengal's have upgraded the O-line and Chase/Burrow already have a connection.

The local sports media down here in Cincinnati has the Bengals staying put and taking Chase. And this has only strengthened over the last week. Given the connection Burrow had with Chase at LSU I think this would be the best pick for the Bengals.

I watched it frame by frame and Zimmer didn't touch the ball. Before it got close to Zimmer's hand the ball wobbles. It looked like it got hit by a gust of wind that knocked it a bit off course. I think we forget how difficult it was throwing the ball in those gale wind conditions that night.

Now I get why you want to ignore deaths and focus on cases! And inadvertently you just told us why tracking cases is not the best approach to judging how the pandemic is playing out. And this is because case numbers can be impacted by non-covid factors like testing frequency; testing sensitivity (it can be adjusted) and who you test. Deaths are a little more permanent and less easily manipulated.

I'm sure this discussion is about to be squelched, probably as it should be on a Bills message board. But: * I've worked in science long enough to recognize when someone doesn't know that the hell they're talking about in science * and DEATH RATE is really the most important parameter, no? After that it's ICU rate, then hospitalization rate and finally cases. Not sure how you can call that moving the goal posts.

I hate the Dolphins as much as the next Bills fan but this isn't accurate. Going by deaths per one million citizens, Florida is in the lower half of US states (#23). That means 27 states have a higher death rate then Florida. And given Florida's age demographics and the constant flow of millions of tourists into the state this is an extraordinarily low covid death rate. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ In fact seems to me that the two states that take the prize for getting hit the hardest by covid are New York & New Jersey: Deaths per million Florida = 1579 New York = 2631 New Jersey = 2790 Wow, it's not even close.

If you have been vaccinated why is this important? Check this site out for a real time read on vaccination numbers! You can see what's happening for the whole country and each individual state. Nice graphs to. At the rate we're going it's possible we'll be at full herd immunity by July 4. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/01/28/960901166/how-is-the-covid-19-vaccination-campaign-going-in-your-state

Quoting % increases from smaller numbers is disingenuous. And starting with the onset of February winter breaks in the north central and north eastern USA to the National Spring Breaks of March/April there has been a massive flow of tourists to Florida. That Florida isn't seeing a bigger jump in cases is actually reassuring. Worst case scenario is full herd immunity by early September best case scenario will have us at herd immunity by July 4. Either way we'll be seeing packed, rocking stadiums for the NFL's opening week. Anything else would b going against the science.

It's ticked up a bit but is still less then a third what it was in December/January.

I would also note that the indecision on the part of the Bills front office did Allen no favors: a brand new OC; a WR as a QB's coach; and a vet QB that DIDN'T want to mentor Allen. The front offices faith in Peterman to be able to hold the fort until Allen was ready was deeply misplaced. As a result Allen didn't take many reps with the 1st team and then is thrown into the starting job in only his second game.

I'm thinking Miami would be a better fit. Florida has totally reopened and the number of cases have plummeted from their high in January.

I found this to be useful and provide reason for optimism. It tracks daily vaccinations not only in the USA but in each state. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/01/28/960901166/how-is-the-covid-19-vaccination-campaign-going-in-your-state They set the herd immunity threshold at between 70% - 85% vaccinated. There is a nice graph that has the dates when we reach these milestones - 70% in early August and 85% is by mid September. For the record this seems like they set the bar to high as they don't include those naturally infected. Bottom line though is that the stadiums should be full and rocking for opening week in 2021.

The best thing for society is to return to normal ASAP. That was the position of Dr. Henderson the former CDC head and the man credited with eradicating small pox. His greatest fear was the collateral damage unleashed by over zealously shutting down society and altering normal human behavior through social distancing & community mask wearing. The fact is that a combination of those naturally infected and those who will have received the vaccine by September 1 is almost certain to lead to effective herd immunity. For this reason we should have full stadiums for the NFL 2021 season.

The purpose of the vaccine is to protect individuals and push a community into herd immunity. What folks forget is that those who have been previously infected with covid achieve a similar outcome to being vaccinated. Herd immunity is a COMBINATION of the vaccinated and naturally infected people. Most virologists believe that 65% to 75% of the population needs to be either vaccinated or naturally infected to reach herd immunity. There have been over 31,000,000 Americans confirmed to have been infected by covid. The CDC believes that you can multiply this number by 3 - 6 times to get the actual number of people infected. Using the smaller number and you have almost 100,000,000 Americans with some level of immunity. Combine the 100 million with how many people will be vaccinated by August and there is no reason not to have full stadiums in the fall.

This is spot on. Every other team in the AFC East has a huge question at QB the Bills have an elite top 5 QB in Allen. The Bills have an elite top 5 play making WR in Diggs. Does any other team in the East have an elite top 5 offensive play maker? The Bills have a proven top 5 GM & Head Coach. Only NE matches the Bills at HC.

Allen's comments on the vaccine were well thought out and reasonable. I'm not sure why this in anyway is controversial. BTW I just got vaccinated so you know where I'm coming from.

I agree. On the Jets board and even here there is a false narrative that Allen had it great when he came to Buffalo and Darnold had it terrible in NY. IMO Allen had it worse in Buffalo his rookie year then Darnold did in NY. I would challenge people to check out both offensive rosters and tell me I'm wrong. While folks like Colin Cowherd continue to peddle the false notion that Bean/McD did a great job with Allen from day one the objective truth is that they screwed up big time his rookie year. It wasn't until mid season when they brought in Barkley & Anderson and cut the dead weight at WR did the Bills brain trust start to the right thing. For sure in Allen's 2nd year Bean & McD hit their stride and they haven't looked back. At that point Allen was given the tools to succeed. But in his rookie year all credit goes to Allen because management & coaching did precious little through the first half of that season.