CincyBillsFan

Allen had an excellent day with one bad throw against a very good defense. And let's not forget the 2 dropped passes by the TE's each of which would have been for a 1st down and kept a drive alive.

Hell, I need a bye week. Watching the Bills this year has been exhausting! Four of the five games have gone down to the wire.

There's no value in hiding whether Landry can play or not. The prep is similar. In fact if I was the corner assigned to cover him I'm going to be more nervous knowing he is playing!

Hell, even when he's healthy as a horse I hold my breath every time he runs!

As others have noted it's pretty straight forward: * if Allen is cleared he plays. It gives the best chance to win the game AND it helps us in the LONG RUN as every game Allen plays in makes him a better QB going forward. * If Allen isn't cleared we go with Barkley who is more then capable of leading us to victory against TN. As an aside I have the same sense that others have noted that there is a small group of Bills fans who want Allen to sit so Barkley can shine and be the guy going forward. This is NUTS IMO. If Barkley plays and throws 5 TD passes it doesn't change a thing. Allen starts against Miami. If you want another 5 years of 7 - 9 to 9 - 7 seasons collapsing to 4 - 12 when the D runs out of gas hope that Barkley is better then Allen. If Allen isn't the guy, and I think he is, we're back to square one at QB. Barkley isn't the guy no matter how well he plays Sunday if called upon.

Both teams. I don't hate either of them and it's fun watching Goff & Wilson play QB!

I agree but that's also a problem because with Foster sidelined the Bills have at most (and I think it's stretching it a bit) one "explosive" receiver in Brown. I think we'd all agree that a fast, big bodied WR would be a perfect compliment for Beasley & Brown.

Fair point. I guess they figured with signing Beasley, Duke & Brown they were covered. The also signed Easley & Sills a FA's. But yea you think maybe they would have grabbed a guy in rounds 4 - 6? As an aside I don't think the Bills are happy with the WR situation. Depending on Allen's status the latest moves might indicate that Duke is going to be activated and Easley is getting another look.

There is truth to this. I get the need to build up the lines and that is where the focus had to be on offense but the organizations track record with skill players has been spotty. We've had a couple but we don't keep them. Now that may be changing with the drafting of Singleterry & Knox.

That was a mistake. His comment on WR's though makes sense to me and i think we do need an upgrade at the 3rd WR spot.

Wow that throw & catch was a carbon copy of Allen to Knox!

To be fair it typically takes a lot longer for a rookie O-lineman to make an impression compared to a WR. Especially if that WR has Russel Wilson throwing to him. Let's revisit this at the end of next season.

Did everybody catch what Aikman just said about Cooper Kupp? "A receiving core is only as good as it's 3rd receiver". Hmmmmmmmmmmm

I think Wilson was throwing it away - he was under great pressure. That catch was simply incredible.

Damn! And here I was just about to post how Allen reminds me of Jack Kemp!

Sure none of these are perfect apples to apples comparisons but: * Buffalo was a playoff team in name only in 2017. Backing in on a miracle win by Cincy and then laying an offensive egg the size of the rock of Gibraltar the next week at Jacksonville was hardly an endorsement of that teams skill. * In fact I suspect that the offensive talent around Allen last year was every bit as bad as the offensive talent around Manning in his 1st year. We were not a 1 - 15 team because of our defense. So would I. But the 4th quarter comebacks tell you something good about a young QB like Allen. But it's fair to say that Chandler was way better then Clay was last year.

I'm starting to get there to OrediggerPoke. It's like they're just waiting for Allen to screw up so they can say "I told you so". Do these people not realize that if Allen is in fact a bust the Bills are set back by 3 - 5 years? To be clear I'm not saying people should view everything Allen does through rose colored glasses. Criticism is clearly warranted on some parts of his game. But folks have to maintain perspective when talking about a young QB who has about one season worth of games under his belt. I do know this if the Bills give up on Allen to soon, and IMO that means less then 3 seasons, we're looking at a San Diego/Brees situation. Luckily for us I think the Bills brain-trust is way to smart for this.

On the broadcast Fouts showed replays of a couple of those plays and our receivers looked to be blanketed. Where Allen missed "open" receivers appeared to be on the quick throws where he opted for the deeper passes. On the plays where he moved around NO ONE seemed to get open - which is its own problem.

Would I be cheating if I asked the Football Satans, you know the devils that Belichick & NE worship, to let him play Sunday?

I'm not saying Dabold doesn't know what he's doing I'm saying we haven't run many traditional RB screen plays in spite of being blitzed a whole lot in the first 4 games. As to the reason: * maybe our O-line can't get out there to block or it doesn't block well in space. * maybe our RB's aren't very good at disguising the play, making the catch or they don't have the elusiveness/acceleration to break a screen open. * And sorry the games outcome was way more complicated then "Allen sucked". A punt blocked for a TD when you lose a game 16 - 10 might have something to do with it. So might squandering TWO TO's early in the 2nd half on dumb challenges. Or maybe missing a 49 yard FG and having a 22 yard punt contributed to the final score. Or how about the decision with ELEVEN MINUTES left to play to go for it on 4th & goal from the 3 rather then kick the FB. Or all the penalties at critical points of the game. For sure Allen contributed to the loss but you're kidding yourself if you think he was the main reason we lost. Sometimes winning games 16 - 6 or 12 - 10 is just as good as winning a game 42 - 28. Just ask the Bears & Saints after the weekend.

Fair enough and in the end it should average out over 16 games. My sense is that Jackson is benefiting big time from that after 4 games. As an aside, QB's on good teams may not see as much garbage time yardage/TD's to pad their stats as QB's on teams that get blown out. But I can't see an easy way to incorporate this data without adding a potential bias.

We tried ONE screen. That's not exactly an aggressive way to counter all that blitzing. Against NE and given the amount of blitzing that went on we should have thrown 5 - 6 screen passes at minimum. Through the first 4 games how many screen passes have we even attempted? Less then 5 from my memory. Is it that we don't have an O-line that can get out and block for a screen? As for WR screens we don't have the size or speed at the WR position to be particularly good at this play. Are Beasley or Zay really going to effectively block for a quick screen to Brown? And when we spread Gore & DeMarco out on the same side of the field you kind of lose that side to screen to. Also how many times have we kept a RB in the backfield and had him slide out for a dump off pass? I remember a couple of flair passes to the RB's but not a whole of dump offs. And before we blame Allen here I don't remember the RB's being available for the dump off. Last night that was a play used by Pittsburgh multiple times for big gains.

Just like Favre in his 3rd year (19 TD's & 24 INT's)!

It's not good to play QB for the Miami Dolphins. Also with a small sample size it hurts to have played the NE Pats. Serious question - do you factor in junk yardage? Jackson is very high on the list but the last two weeks he's thrown a couple of TD's and gained a lot of yardage AFTER the game was decided. Do you take that into consideration or is it just to subjective a parameter to assess? As an aside I like your system.

Maybe I'm full of it but the solution is pretty simple - throw screen passes. Why we haven't is a mystery to me. And it's also not a good idea with a young QB facing a lot of blitzing to constantly empty out the backfield. Extra pass protection never hurt and when it all breaks down the RB drifts away and the QB dumps it to him. See the Carolina Panthers & McCaffrey or NO Saints & Kamera. The loss of Singleterry may be a much bigger issue then we thought. I know I sound like a broken record here but did we counter the blitz with screen passes in those games? I don't think we did. And we kept running the spread which removes pass protection. Sure Allen owns some of this by not getting the ball out fast to the hot receiver but when we don't call screen passes and we can't line-up with 2 TE's and pound the football on the ground the problem goes way beyond Allen.