CincyBillsFan

Was that a LOOOOOOOONG 3rd quarter or what? Outside of being a dick why is Belechick trying to run the score up on the Jets? Darnolds best hope now is that the Pat's score and they go into a prevent defense for the 4th quarter. He can lift his QB rating with some serious garbage time stats.

And while the snap on the safety was high Darnold should have been able to handle it.

No we all realize that Allen had a bad day against the Pats. But Allen did hit on 6 - 6 passes for 69 yards in leading the Bills to a TD that cut the Pat's lead to 13 - 10 early in the 3rd quarter. And while Allen's INT's were bad they were ALL aggressive downfield throws that gave the Pats the ball at around midfield.

Okay I can't help myself but I'm getting another case of schadenfreude! When Allen came out of the locker room he hit on 6 - 6 passes for 69 yards and scored the TD in driving the Bills 75 yards to cut NE's lead to 13 -10. Darnold came out of the locker room and threw a terrible INT. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Exactly right. For a week after the Pats game a small but vocal minority on 2BD hammered away at Allen's terrible INT's against NE. These people used Allen's bad game against the Pats as an excuse to blast him and validate their belief that he's a bust. So yea, what's that German word - shreafeandude - or something like that which expresses our sentiments here. We know that Belichick eats up and spits out young QB's for dinner and we said that in defense of Allen. Well the same thing applies here. We know that this doesn't tell us much about whether Darnold will be a good NFL QB or not. I will be interested in seeing if Darnold can come out of the locker room and take the Jets on a TD drive hitting on all his passes like Allen did.

Memo to Jets: TURN THE DAMN MICROPHONE OFF! Nothing good can come from it.

How about the throw against the Jags last year?

Judas Priest I don't want to hear anyone talk about Allen's INT's against NE. At least they were all aggressive throws downfield. Darnold has had two terrible INT's. One gave the Pats the ball in the Jets Red Zone the other took a FG off the Jets board. This is what Belichick does to young QB's. I suspect that he especially wants to punish young QB's in his division. He's trying to ruin the QB's that could be a threat to the Pats in the future. What an evil freaking genius.

It sure looks like that. Some real ticky tacky calls on the Pats defense.

He's going to need to be ULTRA clutch to get out of this mess.

That's been true. But Jackson has two things going for him: * the new NFL rules against targeting and the ability of QB's to slide to avoid the big hit. * Jackson's sheer speed & athleticism might be enough to keep him healthy for longer then most running QB's. The issue with Allen versus Jackson and staying healthy IMO was always about Allen being so much bigger that he was tempted to run over guys and that's how you get lit up in the NFL. Jackson isn't trying to do that.

I'm not sure about Darnold either. To many unknowns to look 10 years out but if I was forced I would say Allen & Darnold have the best shot at still being around and playing well in 10 years followed closely by Mayfield. Whether Jackson is truly going to change the NFL QB position is still to be decided. Allen's running last year was just as impressive IMO but the Bills seemed to have broken him of that habit. I will say that the ravens with Harbaugh & Roman as coaches will give Jackson the best opportunity to succeed.

And while we're on the topic of Fitzmagic only last year we had: In weeks 1 & 2 playing for Tampa Fitz went 48 - 61 for 819 yards, 8 TD's & no INT's! The next week the magic began to wear off as Fitz threw for 411 yards & 3 TD's but also had 3 INT's and Tampa lost the game. The following week Fitztragic was back as he only threw for 126 yards! I mean no one would believe you if you created Fitz as a fictional character in a novel or movie. I mean Uncle Rico might be more believable!

And I was there the next week when the 3 - 0 Bills lost to the 0 - 3 Bengals and Fitz played poorly. They should have a special place in the HOF for Fitz. I mean has any QB played as well and as poorly as Fitz has for such a long time? It's freakish IMO. But woe to any team that plays against Fitz when he's channeling that magic.

Why not? Last year he threw a very accurate deep ball. I recall a perfectly placed 55 yard pass that went through Fosters hands in the Minnesota game. I remember another perfectly thrown 60 yard pass against NE that Foster "lost" in the sun and went right between his hands. I remember that against LA Allen completed the LONGEST pass play of the 2018 NFL season when just looking at how far it traveled in the air - which was about 64 yards. He completed a deep, perfectly placed 75 yard TD against Jacksonville and a perfectly placed deep 45 yard TD pass against Detroit. In the last game against Miami he had a 29 yard TD pass that was a deep throw because Foster caught it at the goal line. Hell Allen didn't overthrow the deep pass against Miami that Clay froze in place when a couple of steps would have made it an easy long TD catch. I also watched multiple Wyoming games where he threw beautiful deep passes. I have no idea why he's struggling to connect on the deep pass this season but there's NO reason to think he won't get over it and start hitting these deep shots. At least if you go by what he did last year.

To be fair I think the Bills defense is very good but not quite great. And it's not because they had an off game against the Dolphins. Even the most dominating D's have a couple of poor games. But yesterday was the first time this season that the Bill's D forced a TO that gave us the ball in the opponents red zone. In fact prior to that forced fumble yesterday I think the Bill's D had only forced a TO on the opponents side of the 50 one other time against Cincinnati. IMO to be a great D and not just a very good one the Bills need to force more TO's in opponents territory. They also need to create more 3 & outs when they have a team backed up against their own goal line. Forcing a punt that gives the O the ball at the opponents 45 is almost as good as a TO.

IMO Joe is spot on here. This board would be swarming with folks saying that Allen can't be a long term franchise QB completing less then 50% of his passes no matter how many yards rushing he had. Also Bills fans would be pointing out that the Defense scored 14 of those 30 points and that Seattle likely wins if they didn't have two criminally negligent turnovers for TD's. Now I happen to think that Jackson may in fact work out for Baltimore over the long run. He may be the convention busting QB of this generation. I'm being open minded here. But I have no doubt that Allen would have been crucified on 2BD if he had Jackson's passing & rushing numbers from yesterday.

I think the QB rating is the more useful number here. The Bills defense allowed the Dolphins to steal at least 3 and maybe 4 possessions from the Bills offense. In those earlier games you had a Miami offense that was constantly going 3 & out handing the ball back to the opposing offense. The two 75 yard TD drives in the first half which gobbled up 12 minutes and that epic 10 minute 73 yard drive in the 3rd are the reasons Allen didn't hit 300 yards yesterday and the Bill's O didn't get into a rhythm until late in the 3rd quarter. NONE of the other Dolphin games had their offense do that well over such a large part of the game.

Thanks for posting this. The first thing that jumps out to me when you look at the QB Rating is how much improvement you see in the Dolphins pass defense after week 1. Remember, QB rating is independent of how many passes are thrown. In the 1st game the ravens QB's had ratings of 158 & 144! That was the game Jackson was perfect throwing the ball. After that game I suspect that Flores, a former NE defensive coordinator, took a direct hand in changing a few things to improve the pass D. The result was pretty good: Brady had a rating of 124.7 and then Prescot had a rating of 91.4. Rivers got to 132.9 but then the next two guys were both rated below 100 (95.8 & 99.7). Compared to these ratings Allen's rating of 111.4 looks very solid.

And if you had swapped out Brady for Fitz a couple of weeks ago the Pats blow the Bills out. When Fitz is in his Fitzmagic groove he's one of the best QB's in the NFL for a couple of games until he switches over to Fitztragic. He's done this over & over again. Yesterday was another example of how Fitzmagic can boost a bad team.

At minimum a solid B+. When he gets more talent on the offensive side of the ball we can reevaluate. But IMO you're not paying attention if you think Daboll has a lot to work with: * I'm a big Allen supporter and think he will be a top QB in this league. But right now he is inconsistent and Daboll must create game plans that take into account Allen's rawness at this point in his career. * The O-line has been greatly improved but other then Morse at center is there another Bill's offensive lineman that you would rate as being in the top 1/3 of the NFL? * Modern NFL offenses utilize multiple TE's for all sorts of stuff. With Kroft's injury Daboll has only had ONE veteran TE and he's used mostly for blocking. The two TE's that would normally be used in the passing game are raw rookies. In fact one of them only caught FIVE passes his entire college career. This is a HUGE handicap for Daboll. With Krofts return and Knox gaining more experience I expect a lot more production out of this position. * At RB we're as equally limited as we are at TE. Gore is a future HOF war horse but he's not the guy who can take over a game. Yeldon wouldn't make most NFL teams and Singleterry the only RB with a burst of speed is a rookie who has been hurt most of the season. I've said it before show me a weaker overall backfield in the NFL. At best this is a bottom 10 backfield. * At WR the Bills have upgraded the unit from last year and it's no surprise that this is the most productive group of skill players. Brown & Beasley are reliable play makers. The early read on Duke is he may be a decent #3 and McKenzie is a nice Jack of all trades kind of player. But we still don't have a true #1 WR and the drop off from Beasley to the #3 guy has been big. Worse the fastest WR (Foster) has been hampered by injury. While we need to improve overall scoring our offensive production in the Red Zone & in Total Yardage has been top 1/3 of the league. That's good considering our overall offensive talent level. One more point. While our defense has been great this was the FIRST game in which the D forced a TO giving the ball to the O in the opponents red zone. And the O scored a TD off that. Nor have our special teams contributed points outside of FG's. This does impact the scoring stats. Take yesterday where the Ravens offense only scored 1 TD and had 3 FG's for 16 points while their D scored 14 points!

I remember that game but it wasn't at NE it was played at Rich Stadium in 1992! Okay I only vaguely remembered but I have the book Relentless which is a must have for Bills fans as it has a description and stats for EVERY Bills game played from 1960 - 1994! That year the Bills would go to their 3rd straight SB. The Pats would finish at 2 - 14 and were probably the worst team in the NFL. And this was late in the season when we were jockeying for home field advantage. Well at the Half the Pats led the Bills 7 - 0! And the Bills were booed off the field. In the 2nd half the Bills scored 16 points to win 16 - 7. Another interesting observation is that Kelly & the Bills were pissed that they had been booed. And Jim was NOT complimentary about the home fans that day. Interestingly when asked about the booing Josh Allen said something along the lines of they were playing poorly and deserved it.

This is why we fans should NEVER be allowed to judge "game film" we aren't good at it. BTW I saw what you did to. But when I saw it the ball was about 2 feet from being caught by Duke. In the NFL as soon as the QB releases the ball most of the receivers still running their routes get wide open because their cover guys stop covering them and go to the ball. I believe that was the case here. I'm glad Beasley is a bit frustrated. He's a competitor. But my guess is that he's frustrated with himself more then anything. That bobbled ball that went for 5 yards was a perfect throw that had Beasley caught it cleanly he could have made his patented reverse move and added 10 yards of YAC. Did you happen to notice when Allen didn't throw to an open Brown in the first half he got frustrated to and waved his arms? It happens.

I watched the game and the praise was over the top. To be clear I like Jackson and think he might be the guy to turn conventional NFL wisdom on it's head but lets look at the numbers. A couple of folks on 2BD have claimed that playing in Seattle against that defense is a tough assignment. I call BS: Here's how QB's have done throwing the football against Seattle in Seattle: Week 1: Andy Dalton was 35/51 for 418 yards; 2 TD's & 0 INT's. Bengals lost by 1 point. Week 3: Teddy Bridgewater was 19/27 for 177 yards; 2 TD's & 0 INT's. NO won the game. Week 4: G. Goff was 29/49 for 395 yards; 1 TD & 1 INT. LA lost by 1 point. So can we all agree that throwing the football in Seattle isn't the challenge it used to be? Now today Jackson was 9/20 for 143 yards; 0 TD & 0 INT. The difference maker was that Jackson ran the ball 14 times for 116 yards and a TD! BTW, in this game the Raven's offense scored 3 FG's & 1 TD. They had 2 defensive TD's. If Allen had these types of stats and he showed last year that he could match Jackson running the football, much of the football media would be in an uproar.

10/11 = 90.9%. Of course anything under 95% is struggling! Oh and check out the official NFL site which has Allen's fourth quarter QB rating after today's game as 139.6! That's almost perfect and every one of those 4th quarters were in close, contested games.