Mikie2times

Phase three is also known as the Peterman stage. Players can look good during Peterman but eventually throw more INT’s than completions.

We blew the Houston game and KC game. We almost blew the Indy game and Dolphins game. We have maybe one legit playoff win against a serious contender? A pick six vs the Ravens and a few games that went our way compared to a few that didn't are not enough to make up for the complete eggs we have laid in bad weather home games with this offense. It doesn't matter and is not worth risking Von when even if we went at it hard for it, with our schedule, the odds are very low we get it.

I never thought I would argue against home field being important for a Buffalo team, but Allen/Bills have a career 24-14 road record vs 28-11 at home. Allen has a passer rating that is 4 points better in road games. We are an excellent road team. We would benefit a great deal from a bye week, but I don't know how much we benefit from playing in Buffalo. We are more of a finesse team until proven otherwise and those type of teams don't do well in the high winds and snow.

Brown would have been very good today. His size, speed, and power were well before his time. He accomplished what he did playing between 12 and 14 games. He had 7 season in which he averaged more than 100 yard per game. Walter Payton and OJ had less than half that total. He is one of the true legends.

We will make the playoffs without him. Why not give him until the back half of the year? We only get one shot at this and we have already showed we can be a regular season champion without him. We don't need him until the playoffs.

It's hard not to wonder what the game would look like if the world took it as seriously as we did. So many exceptional athletes exist that will never touch a football.

I put my cat to sleep of 18 years a few weeks ago and it's just not normal right now. I'm 41, which means I have had her for basically every major moment in my adult life. It's not supposed to be normal. I have also lost a parent. I'm glad you felt comfortable enough expressing yourself on here. No normal way to deal with loss of somebody you love. Person or animal. Time is about it.

Super interesting read. In general terms, regardless of blitzing, I think more teams will be looking to contain Josh in the pocket vs flat out rush him. The goal being don't let him run. Running helps his game so much. Helps him establish rhythm, gives him an out when he doesn't have a good read. It's sort of the dimension that made him a unicorn along with some of those insane broken plays. At the end of the day, teams are going to force Josh into being more of traditional NFL QB. To sit in the pocket and not scramble. To take the underneath routes and be patient. As several have mentioned, it's always punch and counter punch. This progression of teams removing what you do best, then getting back to the drawing board and understanding how to beat it. Repeating over and over. This progression is what makes the great ones truly unstoppable. I think Josh and his team are aware of what teams are doing. I think he trains in a way to combat the latest strategies being used. I certainly think we have upgraded our short attack heavily. This could be a really great year for him if he learns how to navigate these new twists teams are throwing at us. Looking forward to it!

He also passed to Jeremy Shockey. You would REALLY think the guy would value the TE position. We will see.

It was about how defenses blitzed us less in the 2nd half of 2022. A long with how teams that know us well like divisional opponents seemed to alter strategy and forgo blitzing last year when they had done so at a much higher rates in the past. Then how we did very little it would seem to counter it.

You would think Sacks, but the correlation is not even relevant (at least as it relates to Allen and the Bills). Probably more reason to not do it.

That would be interesting as the data certainly shows his targets getting way outside the range he has lived in historically. He was always higher in air yards per target, but he didn't stay high. For context, he averaged 10 yards or greater in air distance per throw 5 times in the 2nd half of 2022. Mahomes and Burrow have have eclipsed that mark a combined 4 times, since 2020, combined.

Thank you Gunner. As far as all these "bad offensive line" posts or getting home with just the DL, the line has always been bad. Yes, that contributes, but nothing was new in that in 2022. Bad line, no running game, same as 2019, 2020, 2021. Virtually no blitzing that is teams playing us different. I look at it as zone concepts as you said. Containing Josh in the pocket. A lack of development in our short and intermediate passing game. A lack of weapons in our short and intermediate passing game. No running game. Buffalo destroying every record they ever had in Air Yards per attempt. Hell, it could be an NFL record. I don't think teams really cared if Josh had time if everything above was in play. As one poster mentioned, I do believe we have looked at this specific issue and a lot of our signings have been related to it. As Beane says, you look at your last loss of the season. Cincy didn't blitz us either and those conditions, when your entire offense is built on the deep ball. It doesn't work.

That is nowhere close to being the reason when looking at it relative to his career. He had the lowest rate of pressure of his career last year by a large margin.

I agree. I think it's a very bad combination at the moment. Favre style mentality combined with an OC that doesn't do a great job scripting and creating the underneath. This is another interesting look. IAY/PA is air yards per pass attempt. So basically, how deep is Josh trying to throw on average. The true demise at the end of last year appears to be the combination of less blitzing and deeper throws. You can see it pretty clearly in the heat map. 14.8%, they did the same and I agree 100%. Blitzing sort of forces the issue. I almost think forcing the issue is probably good for Josh. It limits how much he thinks. Helps his timing. Creates running seams. If you can keep Josh in the pocket and play coverage, then make him think. I think that's what teams game planned against us last year.

I have been looking at a lot of splits involving Josh the last month and this is one that really stood out to me. Josh was Blitzed relentlessly in 2019, 2020, and 2021. If you look at times Josh was blitzed on 45% or more of his passes, none of them came in 2022. It happened 16 total times prior. Teams did have some success in this style when the %'s really ratcheted up. I can only presume when the blitz % got 50% or higher it was also probably working. These were those games Then something changed last year. Josh has been blitzed 20% or less 14 times since 2019, half of those times came in 2022, but to me, it's much more telling how our division rivals played us. (Blitz % is on the far right) Jets Patriots Dolphins This is a massive change. Pre 2022, we played 18 divisional regular season games, 0 of them resulted in a Blitz % below 20%. In 2022, ALL OF THEM DID In trying to understand when this trend really started, it appears like the Miami game or Jets game. But if you look before that point. Tennessee always played us like this and Pittsburgh certainly decided to do so as that game plan was so out of character for them. So when we think what changed so much in the back half of 2022. Certainly his injury plays into it. I also wonder, did teams just start playing us more in the mold of bend but don't break? If that is the case, did we ever find out an answer in how we beat that approach?

Vegas will see this as at least a 3 point advantage, perhaps 4 points. I would make the early line on this Buffalo -2.5. They adjust the spread on a east coast to west coast tilt. It matters a decent amount that the Jags will already have been there a for the prior game. I hope the team can overcome it. It's a good Jaguars team.

Bills fans have become Glenn Close from Fatal Attraction

I'm sorry to tell you this but that is Josh

I like that you said what the acronym is. How old am I? How old are you 🤣

I mean, Brady looked ridiculous as well but that ended up ok. He's probably feeling himself a little bit after making a quarter billion, being single for the first time. Might it impact him in other ways? Who knows. Part of growing up and becoming who he is. Everybody else seems to think he's a pretty level headed guy. I'm going to go with that assumption vs thinking this is a problem of some sorts.

This is looking at expected points, playoff averages vs regular season averages and total variation. Negative = negative variation regardless if it's offense or defense. As you can see, Buffalo takes a pretty deep hit basically everywhere. The only place we didn't was on offense in 2021, but the defensive performance in 2021 was actually worse than our offensive one 🤢 KC is just consistent on offense. Incredibly so. On defense they fall in a similar way as Buffalo. Then for the Bengals, Burrow has avoided a major offensive regression and his defense seems to be the most consistent. Clearly it is very hard to maintain the quality of play you have in the regular season come playoff time. Buffalo appears worse in both regards at doing that. KC appears best at maintaining it on offense. The Bengals seem to be the most balanced as a whole.

Based on expected points Buffalo had it's second worse offensive performance of the year the week prior against Miami. We would have lost that game to just about any other team, and it would have most certainly been on Allen. Yes, 2021 was, until this point, our year. Allen was dominant that year in the two games we played. 2020, we had our worst offensive performance in expected points in the playoffs against Baltimore. Then our 3rd worst against Kansas City. Buffalo has had 15 games with expected point value of 4 or less for just the offense since 2020. 2 came in the 2020 playoffs, and 2 came in the 2022 playoffs. The defense also crapped itself, but a sub 4 will tend to cost you the game by itself unless you get an elite defensive showing. One thing I will say about the Bengals and Burrow, is the defense did more for his playoff success than him and the offense. He has had similar poor offensive outputs in the playoffs, like Buffalo and Allen have had, but his defense picked him up. Ours did the complete opposite. We have only had two above average defensive performances in the playoffs since 2019. Ravens/Covid home game and Miami last year (which gets hidden by a lot of points, but they were dominant non the less). I believe I wrote on this in the past, likely will again. As far as discussing why we are or why we are not, is Allen better than Burrow or not, etc. The difference in defensive performance, especially when it matters, is nearly everything.