Beck Water

Yes, but keep in mind when Rivera talked about McDermott as a DC, he said he needed to rein his aggressiveness in.

That was really cute. Billl with 3 Ls....I have a feeling that you're not in Kansas any more

We had a discussion about that over dinner tonight. I think The Pit Sacrifice must be a Bills fan. Trying to appease it with fans of other teams could have an adverse effect. "No" to Taylor.

Yep, This. IMO, when I've watched the Ravens I think their offense is a different beast now. It's not just the LJax show, contain him and cover the TE and Done. They've stocked up on WR talent in the draft and FA, and Lamar seems very comfortable and decisive in the passing attack they're running. Like I said #5 for NY/A this season. What will be interesting is whether essentially 2 weeks off for Lamar and some of their starters has the Ravens rusty.

Don't forget Nick Broeker (Bills 7th round rookie, waived and snapped up) That would be the same non-logic that says "Josh Allen always lose in the Division round, Josh Allen always lose to Pat Mahomes in the playoff. This is no exception" I guess we ought to all skip the games, then.

So I've only caught a couple of Ravens and a couple of Texans games. I expect the pundits are all-in on the Ravens because Lamar, #1 seed - and they absolutely destroyed the NFC #1 seed 49ers. Looking under the hood, though, the way a fan with a little bit of football understanding but not deep knowledge about both teams sees it - The Ravens have the #1 defense in the league, and where it really shines is against the pass. #1 in NY/A. It's a bit more mediocre against the run, 26th in the league giving up 4.5 Y/A The Texans have the #13 offense overall, but it's based on a pretty strong #8 (tie) NY/A passing and a pretty "meh" #28 3.7 Y/A rushing. So that kind of looks like the Texans offensive strength matches up poorly against the Ravens defensive strength. On the other side of the ball, the Texans overall have the #11 defense, but it's actually #2 in rush Y/A, very sound - but #27 for NY/A passing. That would seem bad for the Ravens, who finished the season with the #4 offense on points, #3 for rush Y/A but this year the passing attack is more balanced, #5 for NY/A passing. So that kind of sounds like the Ravens have a balanced offense which can either go blow-for-blow against the Texans rush defense, or maybe find an advantage in the passing game that could open up the run for them. I think the Texans have a chance but in the end the Ravens will be too much for them, but I do think it will be more of a contest than many believe. I think the Ravens are a team that you have to have some experience with to "solve" offensively and defensively, and I don't know if the Texans have that.

I don't know whether they had crews working on it after the game and through this week, but there was more snow yesterday and today, so that needs to be cleared starting tomorrow. You can't preemptively clear snow that hasn't fallen yet.

It's my understanding they do install slides on the aisle stairs that channel the snow down to the field level where it's carted off. There were some videos of guys goofing around on the slides last week.

That's what they've done - the Bills have a contract with a company called Jani-King https://www.janiking.com/ Jani-King doesn't have a pool of snow shovelers sitting around being paid $20/hr, so they need to hire a bunch of people fast. One way to get the word out is to ask the Bills to announce it. The thing is, in this day and age $20 is a bit low for cold, physically demanding work. Aldi is hiring cashiers (warm, comfortable work) for $18.50/hr. Home Depot and such paying $17.50 again mostly work inside. So to bring people in fast, who are willing to work hard and spend more time shoveling than warming up, they need to up the $$ and have some kind of system where you don't see some areas getting shoveled by hard working people and other areas with people goofing off. Probably $22 would bring in enough people that you could bump the ones who are working hard up to $23 or $24 and send the slackers on their way.

Agreed. Starting with - if they didn't hit their target # of shovelers at $20/hr, they need to raise their rate of pay. And if they hit their target # of shovelers but only got the aisles cleared before the last game, they need a higher target #. 🥰🥰 "living in arm climates" As I understand it, the Bills do have professional companies clearing the sidelines, tunnel, and field. But the steep steps and seat areas have to be done by hand. What "snow removal company" is going to pay a staff to sit around in case they are needed? They're going to do just what Jani-King is doing: hire hourly workers.

Just saw this. There is open registration on this site. You don't need to be referred, you don't need to be approved. Anyone with an email address can register. That's both a blessing, and a curse. So for the Mods, it can be a bit of a whack-a-mole game to ban an account. Some folks will just go out and create a new account (or 3, or 7), which will draw responses. In particular, the dirty beastly one showed this pattern on the old Buffalo Bills message boards. Lop off one head, and half-a-dozen grew. It helps that starting new threads is restricted for new accounts, but there's something to be said that when a poster is well-known as a negative nancy or troll under a specific screen name, but is otherwise not being malicious or disruptive (not attacking people or posting inappropriate crap), Leave them Be. Most members know what they are and just shrug and refuse to engage (or already have him blocked) vs. a bunch of new screen names popping up that would take time to be recognized as more of the Same Ol Same Ol. Just thoughts.

Exactly. Compare and contrast, for example, the posture of a safety downfield needing to tackle Derrick Henry. Same posture. Same reason - has to hesitate a minute while staying in a ready position, because he needs to diagnose which way Henry is gonna go (in this case, straight over Hyde but he got stopped)

Gut is telling me: Feed the Pit!

I was thinking about that, and what would be a better leadership strategy. What I got to, is lean on the team's players. Have Tyreek Hill talk about playing in KC, what it's like, what his experience is playing there when cold. Find other players who have experience with cold weather games to share their lived experience. I think that would come across as much more real.

He was in the wrong place a few times and tricked, but it was also his first meaningful defensive snaps in 6 weeks and the conditions were challenging (with 70,000 maniacs screaming their heads off). It's possible he may improve. It's also the reason he's behind Spector on the depth chart right now, of course. Can't tell if Dodson is wearing a brace on his shoulder/arm Looks as though Douglas is wearing a knee brace under those sweats, and I can't say I think he's moving normally

It didn't change much, but against Pitt, I think we were more focused on stopping the run and short passing game, and telling the Reindeer to beat us deep if he could. It's a little tough to decode because 3 different players played OLB and at least 2 different players took on Rapp's role, but as best I can decode the Bills played 2 LB about 75% of the time using Spector then Klein then Williams, and played 3 safeties (Lewis, and then Hamlin) about 25%. Last week against Miami, Dodson/Spector played 75% of the snaps and Rapp played 25% Against the Pats where they were very much run/screen focused, Dodson played 87% and Rapp 13% So they do mix it up, but I think that 75%/25% split is standard, and they just expect Cam Lewis and/or Damar Hamlin to backfill for Rapp.

If you go to Youtube and search for "Hard Knocks Dolphins Episode 9" you might find something.

Don't forget Elam's interception I think Reggie Gilliam's gonna do something. SLEDGE!

He's certainly capable of it

I was thinking that might fold into 'assignment', but maybe not - we're way over my knowledge here. One example of what you mean, I think, would be a game the Bills played against KC a while ago. I forget who it was, might have been Baldy, might have been Cover1, but they did a breakdown of how the Bills used Milano in that game, and it was basically like a "super Spy" where the Bills D was playing to influence which direction Mahomes would go when he flushed out of the backfield, then Milano would be waiting to tackle him. It was really well explained and it was clearly a successful game plan where Milano had a huge impact on the outcome of the game and Mahomes gained very few yards. As I recall, PFF graded him abysmally for that game, presumably because he wasn't covering guys or tackling RBs and they had no idea what his assignment actually was.

Tim Fox? Raymond Clayborn? Mike Haynes? That's the frustrating thing about Elam. That series in the Steelers game was a microcosm of his Bills career to date: 1) gets run over on a tackle, I grant you by a larger player but our other smaller players hit and stick it 2) gets a well deserved DPI call 3) makes a pick in the EZ

I already addressed your first and last sentence, but I'd like to address these points. Again, you deserve a Shout! for your good Samaritan action taking care of a guy's snow removal crisis. You still need to be responsive of people's points. Let's delve into PFF graders and do some simple math. PFF states they employ 600 full and part time analysts but less than 10% are trained to the level where they grade plays and 2-3% percent to the level of reviewing and finalizing grades. OK, so that means they have less than 60 people grading plays and 12-18 people reviewing and finalizing them. We'll use 60 and 12-18 in our assessment. In a typical game there are average 63 offensive and 63 defensive plays. That's 126 plays per game for each team, or 4032 plays per week. Each of those plays involves 11 players PFF gonna grade, so 44352 player plays per week to grade. If less than 10% of their 600 analysts grade plays, that means each analyst is grading at least 739 plays over a span of a couple days. For the data to be useful for teams, they would need the grades at latest Tuesday after the game - Monday for their own players, since they review film and do corrections on Monday; Tuesday for their next opponent since that's when the coaches create the game plan for the next week, which they install with the team Wednesday. So less than 60 analysts would be reviewing 44352 plays in 24 hrs so that 12-18 people can review and finalize them. Let's say they work a 12 hr shift (brutal, but people do it). That would say they're reviewing 61.6 plays per hour. They say "Each grade is reviewed at least once, and usually multiple times, using every camera angle available, including All-22 coaches’ tape." 2 All-22 views, usually 3 or 4 broadcast camera views, so what - 10 seconds per view? Then there are those senior analysts. Let's say they only review 25% of the plays or 11088 plays, as the other 75% are considered straightforward. Again, to be useful to the team, these data are needed by Tuesday am at latest, so let's say we have 12 or 18 people reviewing those plays in another 12 hrs, that's 51 - 77 plays per hour. Let's contrast this with the NFL, where, let's say on offense, the Bills average 65.5 plays per game on offense. The OL coach has an assistant coach (and possibly an intern or another offensive assistant) and 5 players in on every play, so and his assistant have 328 plays to review and grade. That's half the number of plays, for twice the number of people per play, by people who know the play call and the assignment to start with. And that's the busiest room on offense. The WR coaches are grading 180 plays per game since 2 or 3 WR sets. The RB coach is grading an average of 71 plays per game since the Bills do very few 2 back sets. etc. Just on sheer arithmetic, it doesn't make sense to me that teams would rely on PFF to grade their players. Now: to your statement "we can all see on All-22 what the play is". I would like to remind you of a discussion that took place earlier this season between yourself, @Buffalo716, and @HoofHearted regarding what the defensive coverage was on a specific play thus what the assignment responsibilities were. You're obviously someone who knows some ball, but does the phrase "I run the coverage you’re referring to and it’s not played the way you think it’s played. If you’d like we can go to PMs and I can teach it to you" ring a bell? Yes, football isn't rocket science, but there are a lot of subtleties, and those subtleties impact what each player is actually supposed to be doing. You even ran into that here about 2 months ago, so I'm not sure how (if you're intellectually honest in discussion) it's so challenging for you to acknowledge this. The point is even guys who know ball and understand coverages can have to look at a play a couple times to understand what the coverage and thus the roles and responsibilities were supposed to be before zeroing in on how well each filled their assignment.

You earned *respect* for your Good Samaritan action of sending a snowplow to the drive of a brother fan with a snowblower. But I know it's been explained to you over and over that the data PFF pays for is not their grades. It would be nice if you would acknowledge this. In particular, in the first link, there are a LOT of data in those fields - of which player grades are only two fields. Ultimately useful player grades are based on 1) knowledge of the play call and the player's assignment in the called play 2) perception of how they executed their assignment, their technique and effort. The first is not data PFF has. The second is not objective data per se though coaches who know their players and scouts who watch a ton of film can be very consistent in this assessment. When former players such as Kurt Warner, JT O'Sullivan etc are putting together film they frequently caveat their critique "I don't know what the reads were in this play, for me it would be....". That's because even these guys who have forgotten more football than the rest of us will know, are aware that they don't understand the details of the play. And sometimes they're caught out by that (Warner calling out Reggie Gilliam as the first read on the throw where Knox got mugged)

I could be wrong here and again, hope I will be corrected but I think actual coaches grading game film are not considering things like the contract of the player, the difficulty of the assignment, and the ability of the player when grading. Those are things which are taken into account when "valuing the positions" and "ranking the players against positional value" which Beane has talked about the FO and coaches doing after the season. I redirect to what @Buffalo716 said upthread since I know he knows something about it: https://www.twobillsdrive.com/community/topic/252639-once-and-for-allpffffffffft/page/3/#comment-8885301 The coaches grade on assignment, technique, and effort. Did you "bring it" on that play? Did you use good technique? And did you "do your job"? If a player (like AJ Klein filling in for Milano in 2020) is giving maximal effort and using sound technique, but simply can't complete his assignment because he's being asked to do things beyond his physical abilities, then the coaches need to see that and adjust his assignment to something within his physical capabilities while he's on the field, but it's not taken into account in the grade.

I see your point about him being authentic, but I also see @That's No Moon's point that "Don't Think About Elephants" tends to bring thoughts of elephants into your head and "I wish it were colder" does the same thing with weather. I could be giving the Dolphins too little credit, but I felt that we damned near beat ourselves with stupid turnovers more than they damn near upset us. I didn't mean to be saying his players didn't care globally, because I'm sure they do, and maybe nothing he could say would make a difference - ultimately, I think they they were battling too many defensive injuries and had lost too many pieces from their defense to be competitive in KC and they knew it. But in that segment of Hard Knocks, he sure didn't seem to be impressing them.