Virgil

So, if at the end of the season, he’s thrown more int’s that TD’s, looks lost and is missing reads, and there’s a guy who looks like Luck, you wouldn’t consider it. Yes, it’s a dumb question based off what we know right now. I’m looking at it from the end of the season and Allen bombs. I don’t think that’s the case, but I’ll entertain the hypothetical

Robert Woods should have been resigned. His contract is a bargain and he’s really shown what he can do with a QB. Dareus I’m torn on. He wasn’t motivated and didn’t fit the process. But isn’t that a coaches job to motivate and reach players. Darby makes no sense to me still. Especially with our current DB situation and the style we run. Nothing could be done about the O-Line situation. There weren’t any FA’s and we filled other positions of need with picks. It sucks and was unexpected. The money we spent on Murphy and Star is the biggest question for me. If we don’t get a pass rush going or plug the run, we just wasted 20 mil.

I get what you’re saying and I’ll humor you. If there were an Andrew Luck type talent and Allen was hit or miss all season, I’d consider it. The position is that important and worst case scenario you get picks in a trade. However, any QB’s in next years draft will also be a one year wonder, so I don’t see any “sure thing” guys there. It kinda sucks that we could pick top 5 and so far there isn’t a game changing talent. People keep saying Bosa or Oliver, but I would hate to see us keep spending picks on defense when we have so many holes on offense. I hope Allen shows enough to be the guy and there’s a RB or WR that just blows everyone away. Ultimately, I’d love to see Allen prove he’s the guy, have there some be enough QB talent that a team trades us a kings ransom to get him and we stockpile picks. Those picks build our line and our FA money fills out the rest

Where about? I’m middle River

You put way too much effort into this. 1 - Go into dresser and grab undershirt 2 - Rip undershirt in half 3 - pick up stick on the ground 4 - place cloth on stick 5 - Waive white flag before coin toss 6 - enjoy your Sunday

Eagles run zone and are the second rated defense in the league. But they get pressure with their front 4. Pass rush makes everything else better

Bills fans represented well. Once it was a 3 score game, many people retreated into the hallways or left. By the second half, it looked like a preseason crowd

The rain picked up from time to time for both QB’s. It was at the lightest in the 1st quarter

Thanks for reminding me of something I wanted to add. I can't think of a game I've seen where I wasn't thinking about all the ways we could mathematically come back and win. Even the 56-10 game against the Pats, we were within 2 scores at halftime I think. When it was 17-0, I knew it was over and had absolutely zero hope. That's never happened to me a in a game before. Ever. Ravens fans were laughing that Ducrappe starts for us. They couldn't get him out of there fast enough.

Is that what this line is for?

Debatable. There's honest rumors of Beane running both drafts on some level

1 - What happened to Allen when he went into the Ravens sideline? Some of our guys got pretty fired up after that but couldn't tell why? 2 - Did the first FG attempt get tipped? 3 - What did Dawkins do to earn the Unsportsmanlike penalty? 4 - How was McDermott's clapping game?

He was smaller in person than I thought he'd be. I don't see how he's viewed as a clogger

To be clear, I'm not saying the O-line was good. I'm saying it was better than the dumpster fire I expected and couldn't be blamed for the terrible passing game.

I think you have to add the decision to give that FA money to Murphy and Star to your list. This line is his choice and defense is his specialty. He knew he could't fix those things you mentioned and that's why I don't get upset about it. The defense is made up of mainly his players and it got smoked.

This is the worst loss in the history of the franchise in my opinion. The Pats 56-10 game was a slightly bigger point margin, but the quality of the Pats vs the Ravens makes this worse.

Allen vs Mahomes will be the defining legacy decision of the McDermott/Beane era.

Writing the first thoughts of the season shouldn't feel like this and I apologize for the quality, not to say that they are usually high quality anyways. First off, I was at the game where it was raining and I couldn't really use my phone to take notes, so most of this is from memory. Second, it was hard to keep myself at the game until the end and if Allen didn't come in, I probably would have left in the 3rd. I've never left a game before the last 4 minutes, and that includes today, so I say that as an example of just how bad today was. With that, here we go. 1 - Baltimore Fans - If I go to a game, I like to comment on the atmosphere. The Bills fans absolutely represented today and we were out early. Walking by the main Ravens lot, I was shocked at how empty it was at 10am. Rain or not, even the local bars were fairly empty. When I did make my way to the busier areas, I saw just as many Bills tailgates as I did Ravens. It was surprising to see but reminded me how great a fan base we have and how we deserve better. Waiting in line to get into the stadium and at our seats, the Ravens fans were pretty tame and I never felt unwelcome. Even a few fans said how impressed they were with the Bills fan presence. 2 - Offensive Line - As for the team, I figured I'd start with the only pleasant surprise of the game. I was expecting the QB's to have zero time to throw as the Ravens usually played with one safety deep and stacked the box. For the most part, Peterman and Allen had enough time to throw and the offensive line wasn't the reason for the poor passing game. Now, they didn't create big holes for the running game, but that didn't seem to be in the gameplan early anyways (more on that later). Overall, they were fine. 3 - Defensive Line - I understand that one of the main keys to a strong defense is being able to get pressure with your front 4 and we just spent a ton of money in FA on our line, but I still don't know what I saw today from them. First off, why was Yarburough out there so much. In the first few drives, he was out there for the majority of the snaps and opposite of Lawson no less. Where was Murphy and Hughes as our bookends getting pressure because Star and Kyle are eating up the middle? I know that Murphy was on a snap count, but we put very little pressure on Flacco and even let him slide around inside and out of the pocket easily. You just can't give Flacco that kind of time. If that's what almost 20 mil in upgrades gets us, then we might want to hold onto our receipt. 4 - “Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!” 5 - Benjamin - I didn't have a personal opinion when we traded for KB and don't feel like we've seen enough of him to know what we have. We know he's playing for a new deal in a period where WR's are getting paid well. He showed flashes again the Panthers and then we didn't showcase him after that. With that being said, today was not a good day for him. I don't know if he's just slow or didn't care today, but he looked like he could care less about being on that field. He didn't look back for the ball on a few plays. His fight for the ball was lackluster at best and he dropped Allen's would be first NFL touchdown. Overall, I didn't like what I saw from him at all today against a Raven's team that was missing their top DB. He should have been featured and helped Peterman in his start but was instead more disappointment 6 - Peterman - Peterman now has a full 4 quarters of stats to his resume and it isn't pretty. He had throws that were behind receivers, executed plays where he forced it to his first read, even though the play was clearly blown up, and made some beautiful passes directly to Ravens receivers. Oh yeah, and he didn't execute a single first down in the first half; something only down twice before in the NFL (Peterman loves making history like that). I was all for Peterman starting this game. I'll admit that. He looked good in the Panthers game and with the 3rd stringers. But we all said that we needed to wait and see what he'd look like again against a real NFL defense. Well, we saw it. I want to preach patience and remember that it's only his second year and only has prepped as a starter for a few weeks. But overall, he's historically bad when he's in there. We can say it's Daboll, the rain, or even the WR's, but I have to believe that anyone else gets at least a first down in the half. It's nothing personal, but you simply can't be that bad. 7 - Special Teams - The failed recovery of the muffed punt summed up the entire game for me. We couldn't even fall on a ball correctly. The first missed field goal was well short and I don't know if it was tipped or not. We almost had one returned to the house on us and then we fumbled a snap. It takes a team effort to lose this badly and all 3 facets of the team contributed. 8 - Overall Defense - I'm more upset with the play of our defense than anything else. This was supposed to be our strength and we weren't going up against world beaters. I didn't expect a big win, but I didn't expect to give up more than 20 points. Not only was there little pressure, but had so many breakdowns in coverage that you'd forget we had an entire preseason to prepare for this game. We weren't ready and our scheme was highly ineffective. The middle of the field was left open again with a soft zone, we got thrown all over in a rainy contest, and we dropped some sure interceptions, maybe even pick 6's. You can't even say that the defense gave up because the offense wasn't supporting them either. We were down 14 immediately after some poor penalties and breakdowns in coverage. Just a pathetic display. 9 - Daboll - I'm going to be upfront here and say that I wasn't happy with the hiring of Daboll. I don't see what he's done to earn the jobs he's had. His offenses have ranked near the bottom of whatever league he was in, but somehow it respected by the big name coaches. With that being said, I feel like I can summarize his play calling by pointing out that he was sending his 2nd and 3rd string TE's deep on plays and actually took shots at them. Let me repeat again that we didn't get a first down in the first half. Our first one came in the 3rd on a busted play. The Ravens stacked the box and dared us to beat them. As a Bills fan, I want to be wrong about him. As someone who looks at his track record and what I saw today, I'm not optimistic. I'm looking forward to the All-22 to see if it's more QB than scheme, but Peterman was as much Daboll's choice as he was McDermott's. 10 - McDermott - As a head coach, you are the voice of the team and expected to support your players. I know it frustrates the media when he gives bland answers and refers to the tape. On the flip side, he's also the window to the team for the fans who pay to see the team. His lack of comments and overall stoic demeanor about a historic loss in a season opener was bothersome to me. I'm NOT saying his job is in jeopardy, even though I know people will copy and paste just this next piece, but a performance like this is what can get a coach or GM fired. At the end of the day, McDermott had an entire off-season to prepare, draft, and sign players to create a final product on the field. He made the choice to start Peterman and mentally align the players. He failed in every single component of the game. When we were beaten by the Pats 56-10, it was to a superior team and that game was at least 21-7 at one point. We didn't look like we had any right to be on the same field as the Ravens, who were without their staring DB, TE, and missed the playoffs last year. To me, this is the worst loss in the history of the franchise on that merit alone. If I told you that our offensive line would be about average in the game and still told you the end result, would you believe me? We had 3 blowouts last season and he was able to pull the team together and this was a road game. Even for those thinking this would be a rebuilding year, we didn't get spanked this hard during our 3-13 season. Next week we have the Chargers and I don't even know what to expect anymore. Hopefully we can get some momentum from the crowd and some decent weather. Allen has to start going forward or I think McDermott risks losing the team. He's now butchered naming a starting QB twice in two seasons. Rebuilding or not, you have to find victories in defeat to build on. There weren't any today. Go Bills!

Allen is warming up on the sideline

This worries me. He was our Gaines replacement and we were a far worse defense without Gaines on the field.

Wtf?!

I’ll be by in about 45

Power plant is right near the harbor and they have a dueling piano bar called “howl at the moon” that’s pretty legit. They sell jungle juice in large bowls for the ladies....or me

Anything going on before the game?

He was all about the money and we just gave him a new deal. When healthy, he’s great, but he can be very hit or miss. Also, for all of our offensive line woes, LT hasn’t really been one of them. I still agree with trading him.