Beck Water

I just want to give this guy @ckparrot some love. Go check out his twitter feed. He seems to be kind of an Erik Turner equivalent covering the Dolphins. He has a bunch of good play breakdowns from the Dolphins perspective.

It's a good question what each individual service's scores mean. There's some explanation on the graphic that they scaled the scores from each service from 0 to 100, so 100 would mean it was the best score and all scores are ratioed using it as a denominator x 100 (at least, that's what I would do if I were doing it). I think the point isn't the score per se, since we agree we don't know what each individual score means, but that 3 different sports rating systems are all giving the Bills good ratings for pass and for run blocking. And considering my concerns about Spencer Brown going into the season, I find that positive, even if I don't know the weedy details about what went into each score.

Bills media coverage seems really light for Wednesday. Wonder if a bunch of our reporters headed for London early to get a little "personal time" in?

Apologies if we've had this

In today's pre-practice presser McDermott said Poyer would practice "limited" today and when asked if that was positive said "yes"

I Hear Ya. I think for guys who have the ability to invest up front in good equipment and good services - really good video editor, good statistical service - the time commitment probably decreases once they've truly mastered how to use them. And maybe there's a medium where, as @HoofHearted says, someone knowledgeable could make some content at a "hobby" level of time commitment that would be popular with a niche audience and bring in some decent change, especially if it's at a podcast level where you just talk, vs. video But I know from personal experience that unless you have the gift of gab, it's a lot harder to even just get in front of a mic and talk coherently and interestingly for 30 minutes than people who haven't ever tried might think. It's why a lot of these pro athletes who try to do podcasts are not necessarily too enthralling, and pull views because of who they are not because of the quality of their content.

Well, if he isn't on the roster for 3 more games and then maybe doesn't play or is on a pitch count, isn't that later enough for ya?

Why do you think that? I looked for something better as a point of discussion and gave up, but this will do Different teams do things a bit differently, but there's a numbers game on the roster. The Bills roster breaks down: QB - 2 RB- 3 FB-1 OL- 10 TE - 3 WR - 5 Total 24 DE - 5 (+ need to add Von Miller within 21 days) DT - 5 LB - 5 CB - 7 (now 6 with Tre headed to IR) S - 4 Total 26 Specialist - 3 Now I can't tell you what the Bills are going to do. But we just lost a DT off our practice squad in Ankou. So would it really make sense to cut Ford (leaving us with 4 DT, and no backup if one of them is injured), in order to run with 6 DE? Just as a numbers game in maintaining a balanced roster with options in case of injury, I don't see it. We've been running with 1 more CB than we normally would. I think we may just not sign another CB and let Miller take Tre's spot, if they like Jonathan enough that they don't want to risk him to waivers.

Josh Allen needs to make sure he's only playing against one Josh Allen.

I wasn't there, but it was horrible enough to watch on TV. Pittsburgh foreshadowed that game, and it was like we'd learned nothing from that loss. Fundamentally, if there's one thing Urban Meyer knew how to do, it's shut down a spread offense. So what did we show him? Exactly what he knew how to do. Fourteen rush attempts, total, and 5 of them were Josh.

I believe Cover1 started out as Eric Turner and a few friends doing it to educate themselves and educate fans when their day jobs took them away from coaching... and still that way at times. But he's definitely moved away from bringing in guys who have a deep Xs and Os knowledge of the game as former players, coaches, or scouts and towards bringing in guys with a marketing/journalism background - maybe because the job market for the latter is tighter than the job market for the former, since there are always schools and teams looking for coaches and scouts? IDK. So nowadays they have a lot more content and a person has to sift and check the background of the host to understand the value. Don't know how commercially successful Cover1 is but I think it's Turner's pretty much full time gig now. Have always wondered about the press credentials criteria. There have been bloggers and podcasters who have managed to successfully monetize. Walter Cherepinski Football would be one example. He's been at it 24 years, can't say how much money he makes but either he lives on it or he has very tolerant parents with a very nice basement. Mike Florio would probably be the most famous example of a guy who started a website, ProFootballTalk.com, and made it his full-time gig. We know he must have made real money because he hung up his law degree and established law practice to go full time with it, but part of that was getting bought out by NBC and of course, being a lawyer, negotiating a favorable revenue-sharing agreement.

The Bills have 100% run mixed man and zone coverage at times. They especially like to do this if they can identify a QB's tendency on what he uses to diagnose coverage and exploit it. I'm trying to think but I believe in one of the KC games, I think regular season last year where we picked Mahomes twice, someone did a pretty good breakdown showing how Mahomes looked one way, diagnosed the coverage as man, and threw to the other side - but it turned out to be zone coverage there and INT! I'll see if it comes into my mind who did it and try to link it here, because I thought it was an unusually good breakdown of what was being done and why it worked.

If Terry Pegula "needs to step in and make" (force) his HC and GM to make specific personnel decisions on the gameday roster, he has the wrong men in charge. This is a Bad Bad Bad take. I don't know why this is so hard to understand. If Elam were awful, unable to play, he wouldn't be on the roster. Elam started 6 games last season and had a completion percentage of 70% against, 2 PD, and 2 INT. For comparison. last season Tre White started 6 games comp % 54.5% against, 6 PD and 1 INT. Dane Jackson 59% over 14 games. Christian Benford, started 5 games, 60.7%, 5 PD, 1 INT. The problem isn't that Elam is awful, the problem is that there are 3 CB on the roster who are better, plus a 4th "emergency" CB in Cam Lewis who can also play safety, nickel, and who regularly plays teams. It's nothing personal, it's personnel. Dane Jackson started last season and got beaten out by Benford. It's not personal, it's personnel Now Tre White is out for the season and Benford is day-to-day. It's a safe bet that Elam will be active on game days going forward, and it's possible he may get the start this week.

But what does that history have to do with this week's game? McDermott is still here, so that has some relevance to the last 3 games. But we have a different DC and OC. Josh wasn't even drafted for one of the games, the wildcard loss you mention during which Tyrod Taylor proved definitively he was not our starting QB. Josh was a rookie for another. The Jaguars have gone through 4 HC and 3 starting QB in that time. Edited to add: I think the relevance of the 'history' is that embarrassing 6-9 loss, during which the Bills demonstrated that if you don't take a team, any team, seriously; if you don't prepare hard and play hard every week; you can and will get your ass handed to you on Any Given Sunday in the NFL. I'm pretty sure that is NOT a message the Bills coaches will neglect, but I'm also pretty sure it has less to do with Jags head to head history.

I guess my point is - what does "historically", 10 years ago, or 20 years ago, have to do with the teams that are playing today? Even for a currently great team - I seem to recall that during the Pittsburgh Steelers superbowl run back in the 1970s one of the team leaders said "better take those rings off, boys, and put them on a shelf - they won't help you this season" We've played the Jags a whole 3x under McDermott (your chart is missing the playoff loss under Marrone). 3 times in 7 years, once during his first year when just scraping into the playoffs felt like a huge accomplishment. Twice during the regular season: one pretty solid 24-21 win Allen's rookie year where the Bills were never behind, and one totally embarrassing loss two years ago. During that time, the Jags have had 4 different HC and 3 different starting QB (maybe more, depending on how you count). History doesn't seem too relevant in a game with the turnover that NFL football has.

Others have gone into the "trap game" thing. What I'm curious about is your "they always play us tough" thing. Can you go into that a little bit? I mean, just above this post is a tweet showing a film clip of EJ Manuel throwing to Easley in 2015 "The Buffalo Bills always bring the big plays". There is so much water under the bridge since that play 8 years ago. Is there even anyone who was part of the Bills then, still in the building? Maybe someone lower down on the S&C staff or the scouting, or severing food or something? I looked, and there are actually 3 players who were on the Bills roster that game who are still in football - not on the Bills, but still playing.

That's actually more along the lines of what "golden handcuffs" actually means,but it's less about "job is so comfortable" or "work is easy" (both may not be true) and more about financial incentive, in the traditional meaning. Like you are offered big stock options at certain time intervals if you stay, but the options you already have aren't fully vested and you'll lose most of them if you go. So you stay even if you're expected to work 60 hrs a week and the work is crazy hard.

I think you need to balance adjustment to time difference, with maintaining the normal post-game recovery and "get right" routine. It's probably not the greatest idea to fill up a plane with a bunch of bruised and dinged players and let them stiffen. Better to do the normal recovery routine at home.

At a guess, and it's only a guess, the Bills decided to sign Miller to the PS before Ankou's agent communicated with them that Ankou would join Atlanta's 53 man roster So they may have made an unnecessary move in releasing Ateman It's possible that they'll want to fill Ankou's spot with a DT though. Minor nit, I don't think 'waived' is the right term for a practice spot cut, since all practice squad players are free agents and not subject to waiver claims

Thanks! Great stuff, great job putting it together. There's this: https://www.buffalobills.com/video/baldinger-bills-2023-defense-is-like-a-big-moving-amoeba

So we went through camp with 4 6'4" wide receivers - Shorter (IR), Shavers (PS), Dezmon Patmon (signed to PS at the end of the season), and Marcell Ateman. Now there is one (Shavers) Though we do have Shorter on IR.