SirAndrew

Yeah, there’s no team left in the playoffs that seem unbeatable. Many Super Bowl teams are those that seem unstoppable. The Ravens were supposed to be that team this season, and now they are sitting at home. None of those remaining seem very fearsome.

Wow. Andy Reid suddenly has an easier path to blowing it.

He probably won’t, but I think he’ll still be productive. I’m just not expecting Jackson to fade completely as some others believe will happen.

Tough loss for Baltimore. I think Lamar will be back in top form next year. I also really like Josh Allen, but unlike some others, I don’t find the need to trash Jackson to validate insecurities about my love for Allen.

Great point. We played bend don’t break defense with very few big plays.

I told people to relax about the lack of turnovers/big plays during the season, but now I’ve come around to seeing it as an issue. Henry is a phenomenal back, and a big part of the Titans playoff run, but the D has been just as important. Big plays on D have been critical to their success.

That’s another difference between us and a team like Tennessee right now. We could use oline help, and another WR, but our D doesn’t make the type of impact plays the Titans have tonight.

Seems like Jackson panicked and lost composure the minute his team got behind.

This is going to turn out real well.

Do you think he would have had other NFL teams interested in him as a head coach this season? The Giants seem like a big step up from Miss St. Tough for me to trust the Giants on this one. I didn’t like the Barkley or Jones pick, and Pats assistants have little track record of success.

Absolutely, officiating was bad this weekend, but the Buffalo Bills also played terrible fundamentally unsound football. Sadly, people seem unwilling to except that. We had a good season, and I look forward to next year. Hopefully we can improve as a team. I’ll look forward to that, as opposed to worrying about officiating.

The refs were terrible, but we still lost the game due to our own mistakes. I go into every game assuming poor officiating will need to be overcome to win. We allowed an opponent to convert a 3rd and 23 in OT. Something about makes it difficult for me to obsess over the officiating as the leading cause of this loss.

I’m making an overall statement that NFL fans and teams don’t benefit from the substandard officiating that occurs every week. That’s what I mean when I say “no one benefits”. Different teams (except maybe the Pats) are getting a bad deal each week. Officiating should be better across the board. College football has superior officiating to what we see in the NFL every week. As far as our game, we had some bad calls go against us, but we can either whine about bad calls, or simply realize that our team didn’t show up, therefore they didn’t deserve to win. Our team stunk on Saturday. The refs were awful, but that game wasn’t all their fault. If we need to win on a fluke kickoff return, we weren’t going far anyway. Blaming that loss on the refs is ridiculous, and I can’t believe how many people on this board are doing it. Here’s the list of reasons we lost: McD could coach with some guts, Allen could play smarter, our guys could block defenders, our defense could play a soft zone and tackle the ball carrier short of the sticks on a third and forever. Those are just some of the reasons we lost in addition to a few unlucky calls.

Right, when the officials make one horrific call that alters the game like “Fail Mary” or the “just give it to ‘em” game, I get it. However, it’s not as if a terrible call determined the final play of that game. We do this every time we lose. It gets especially bad considering our Buffalo complex where we think the refs are out to get us. I’m good with placing blame where it’s due. The officials were terrible in this game, but our players earned the blame for that loss. Literally no one on the team stepped up Saturday, with the exception of Hauschka. It was a complete team loss.

Fair enough, but I’m sure we committed penalties they missed. I’m just saying NFL officiating is generally bad. You never who’s going to get the short end of the stick from one week to the next. We still had plenty of opportunities to win that game.

Exactly, NFL officiating is a travesty, but often times the game can be won regardless. The Vikings had at least a field goal anyway. Who knows if Bress would have scored, they weren’t looking very unstoppable to me.

You could on for days with all the missed calls in an NFL game. Officiating is terrible across the board, and no one benefits from it.

16-0 can be a two score game, and you stated that elite D’s don’t give up a shutout. I kind of assumed that you were talking about pitching a shutout. I get your point, I just don’t trust defense to carry a team every week in the NFL. Both sides of the ball need to step up at various times. We had an offense that was rarely capable of stepping up this season.

That stands out to me far more than the missed tackles on Watson. That first down should never happen, Watson plays happen.

DeShaun Watson has made a lot of guys look bad. Of course, Milano needs to make a play, but sometimes that happens with a guy like Watson.

Same here. Call me crazy, I’d rather face the Pats twice next season with Brady than without him.

I hear ya, but have one issue with this. Was our D really that much better than the Pats D? The Pats had a D that was just as good or better than ours, and Brady still couldn’t win it all this season. I don’t think being here would be any different. Yep, he’s very average at this point.

Sure, Duke dropped the pass, but I like my odds of three passes into the end zone more than one. We could have done that, but instead ran Gore, and spiked the ball on second down. McD did this all season in that situation, and it’s a bad way to coach in 2019. I attended the Redskins game this season, and the clock management before the half was quite similar. We didn’t even attempt to score before the end of half in that game. The Redskins were a bad team, and it didn’t matter in that game, but I hated it because I knew that philosophy will haunt us against good teams. Winner and losers aren’t separated by much in the playoffs. You must maximize every opportunity.

We are ahead of schedule. I hope you’re correct in your assessment. I just worry that McD is a defense first coach who doesn’t have a clue about the other side of the ball. Nothing explains that end of the first half series imo. McD is a good coach, I just worry we are stuck with the second coming of Marty Schottenheimer.

This is the problem with everyone’s elite D dream around here though. It’s 2019, how many teams pitch shutouts these days? The offense needs to make plays at some point. Elite D’s in the sense you’re talking about don’t exist these days. Teams have too many playmakers on offense nowadays. The 85 Bears played a QB named Tony Eason in the Super Bowl, lets just say that Deshaun Watson is a bit more dynamic. The Vikings D just held the Saints to 20 points. By today’s standards that was a spectacular performance against the Saints. We would have lost with our measly 19 points.