PBF81

Another charity wager? 10 O/U?

Of course, but that's not much of an offensive plan though, is it. It's simply stepping out of the way and letting a QB that you're lucky to have that's getting little support from you do it all. That's the point of a lot of people, if all we're going to do is step aside and let Josh play whatever version of streetball that he wants to during the playoffs, it's pretty unlikely we'll win a Super Bowl much less get our offense humming on all cylinders. Davis is no different than Moss. He brings an even lighter draft profile and potential to the NFL than either Singletary or Moss. They couldn't use Sing/Moss effectively, don't expect the to be able to use Davis effectively. And what happened to Cook, all we heard about last season is how Cook was playing at a pro-bowl level, now the hype has receded somewhat without any further games having been played. Over 10 on Allen rushing TDs would seem to be a no-brainer. We'll find out soon.

Two things to think about. First, regarding the first bolded part, Brady got credit for us going 6-1 to finish the season. It was said it was due to his changes. Yes, the offense did not play better and relied more upon Allen than ever before over the past four season for offensive production. His rushing carries, YPG, and rushing TDs were at team record levels under Brady. So was it Brady, or not, as the reasons for us going 6-1? There are a lot of contradictions in the narrative. Secondly, as to the second bolded part, McD made the change because he was taking heat midseason. Did he really choose Brady over other options, then or after the season? Which other options had he considered? Bonus question, have we ever heard of a proven above-average OC candidate that McD has ever considered?

Expect? KC .... until further notice ...

Well, one thing's for sure, we'll see where this trends during/after the season and see how it ages. Will McD need a 10th season to try to advance past the Divisional Round again? Enquiring minds want to know.

For sure some disagree, but many agree as well. One thing is for certain, this season will provide a whole lot more information on it all. And FWIW, we nearly lost both of our last divisional games against NE and the Fins, we needed a D TD to beat the Pats, with Mac Jones, and a PR TD to beat Miami. That 6-1 drops to 4-3 w/o those non-offensive TDs and we are 9-8 and watching in January. The first three games will be interesting. Despite all the talk about how tough our schedule is, our first three games are pretty easy. Jax isn't anything special, Arizona sucks, and we own Miami, here or there.

Did it look "smoother"? Our last three games were not particularly smooth. We should have dusted both the Chargers and Pats and nearly lost both games with the offense looking anything but smooth, and as to the Miami game, while we logged a lot of yards, it wasn't a particularly "smooth" game. But question for you, .... Set-up: Under Dorsey we looked fabulous, on both sides of the ball, for our first four games. In fact, while we all thought that it was a positive harbinger, I distinctly recall letting people know that that pace was not sustainable and was mocked for it. But I never expected us to go so flat in the next six games. Under Bray we also looked fabulous, for our first couple of games offensively, and then our fourth game, but after that the offense went flat again. Allen and the O in both cases, with again, Cook playing worse later on. Question: To what do you attribute those types of patterns and inconsistency?

I can see that as well.

Well, OK, so for you it's all about who's wrong and who's right. Noted. I look for people that have some depth to their statements and what they post here. But you define one of the major issues in social media. So that's a good perspective I suppose.

Good luck with the Under. 8 of his 15 rushing TDs were in his last 6 games under Brady. It was one of the hallmarks of the Brady offense. At least we're getting warmer on what's going on under Brady. Anyway, if he produces rushing TDs at the same rate under Brady as he did this past season, then he'll have around 20. It was worse under Brady in the playoffs where he averaged 10 carries for 73 yards & 1.5 TDs/game.

Keep in mind though that he's had Allen favorites Diggs & Davis ahead of him. Now he's the favorite. It's going to be a very interesting season from the offensive perspective to be sure.

Hence the allowance for that. On the flip side, Jackson sucks in the playoffs, not as bad as Bledsoe was, but not good. So it's hardly a feat to keep an offense led by a QB that's had a mere one solid playoff game, this past season, and this past season against a wild-card team with a below-average pass defense. But otherwise? Not. Once in 8 seasons. At the end of the day, the question is what they plan on doing with this collection of receivers. It's not a typical WR cadre that a team in the modern era would piece together. Particularly with a QB like Allen. It's going to take some imagination and creativity to get it to work. The question du jour is whether or not they're up to the task.

Great post and thanks for the correction on the Jets!! It's fair although I would contest a couple of things, and some I've never argued contrarily. But consider also, that while Brady gets credit for our 6-1 stretch to put us in the playoffs, ... and win the division, coupled with Miami's late season mini collapse, the defense stepped up in spades in those 7 games. We would have lost the Pats game except for a D TD, and our Miami game was won on the lone play of that PR TD. Our D allowed 17 or fewer points in four of those seven games. During our 2-4 losing streak just prior to Brady's takeover, we allowed 17 or fewer points just once, against the Giants, which arguably had the worst offense in the league, ranking 30th in scoring and 29th in yardage. In those last 7 games our D allowed more than 22 points only once. In the six games of that prior stretch we allowed 24, 24, 25, and 29 to teams that were, quite frankly, ranking 13th, 22nd, 26th, and 30th in yardage offense and 14th, 16th, 19th, and 31st in scoring. Had our D continued to play as it did during that 2-4 stretch, we wouldn't have made the playoffs. Consider, that D TD against the Pats had we not gotten it, takes us out of a division win and puts us at the same 10-7 that got the Steelers the 7th seed, not sure which of us owned that tiebreaker for that 7th seed, but it's incredibly likely that we'd have lost two or three more games had our D not started playing better. So to your points, there is most certainly also a defensive element that was clearly not present in our 2-4 skid. We have a habit, perhaps a bad one, of stepping up at key times but letting ourselves down in terms of consistency. (Dallas in a huge game and the Jets in Brady's debut eg.) That's a trait that should befall coaching. It's not a positive, that inconsistency.

Agreed. But consider, if he weren't here, we'd have had a top-5 draft pick this year. The only reason why we even made it to the playoffs much less won the WC round was because of him. He can't be superman in every single playoff game. Again, agreed, but again, he cannot be superman in every playoff game, yet, that seems to be the expectation by some. But that also drives home the point that I've been making, on those occasions where he isn't his normal playoff self, the rest of the team needs to step up. That has yet to happen in 8 seasons under McD. It's not happened even once. Well, there's a long list of people that are frustrated by that. But again, if we don't let Mahomes hit MVS deep for 32 yards from our 48 to set-up their 4th Q TD, then it's quite likely that we're not frustrated. MVS, not Kelce, Hill, or anyone else.

Valid points and completely agree on field position. Red Zone performance is also key, but Cook was essentially worthless in the RZ, in general, not simply in one or the other half of the season. As to the rushing component, again, no disagreement, but where I step off is in Allen doing all the heavy lifting in that regard. 48 carries for 246 yards, 5.1 ypc, and 7 TDs in the first 10 games. 63 carries for 278 yards, 4.4 ypc, and 8 TDs over the last 7 games. As Rodney Dangerfield says in Caddy Shack, that's making his money the hard way. Again, there are some complexities to this, you seem to understand that. We could discuss this at length and into perpetuity. LOL I'm incredibly curious myself which is why I stated in the recent Questionmark/Concerns thread what the O scheme under McBrady will look like. And those saying that McD isn't influencing Brady's O aren't being honest with themselves. McD has a philosophy, which he's often and clearly stated as Complimentary Football and which he's even superficially explained. So obviously Brady's going "get with the program," but the question is whether that plays to Allen's strengths the best, or not; whether it minimizes the risks of his getting injured, or not; whether the team as a whole plays better that way, or not, or just Allen. Cook did not play better under Brady. For example, under Dorsey Cook logged a rushing 1st-Down on every 3.9 carries. Under Brady it was 5.3. That includes one rushing TD under both. It was Allen that accounted for all but the entirety of the difference in our rushing difference. A year earlier the same people preaching how that was good were preaching that Allen needs to run less. That came from the top, McD. So we'll see. What, six and a half more weeks 'til our first preseason game. LOL

Getting into some complexities there, and I hear ya, but keep in mind that offensive scheme style also impacts yardage offense. i.e., teams that don't pass well but run well or simply run more, will have worse yardage offenses, and there's a correlation on D as well. There are a number of things that impact all of it, but at the end of the day it's scoring that matters. Let's see how it shakes out this season.

Well, here's the thing with that, on one hand we're told that Brady outperformed Dorsey because he changed things up. On the other hand we're told that he was essentially still running Dorsey's offense. Can't be both. As to the Ds, not true. I use scoring D, not yardage D because scoring is what counts and we're measuring our points scored. The Chargers' D was awful at 24th, Miami's ranked 22nd and the Pats' 15th. The Jet D was all beaten up by that point in the season and didn't even resemble their starting D. Talk about injuries. Dallas was good but they came to Buffalo flat off of their biggest game of the year vs. Philly whom they beat the Sunday Night prior, while we came into that game as if it was our Super Bowl. The Eagles' D was worse than the Chargers' D and ranked 30th, and 26th in scoring. FWIW, the Jet D allowed 19.1 PPG through 9 games. Then starting with us they allowed 27 or more points in five of their last 8 games. The only three that they didn't were against anemic offensive teams the Falcons and Pats, and also the Texans. Keep in mind that we only averaged 19.3 PPG against the Chargers, Miami, and the Pats, two of which nearly beat us save for a D and STs TD in each of those two games. So many teams worse than us on O scored more than we did against all three of those teams.

... and who is he going to throw under the bus. Kicking coach maybe.

Would love to see the data. Did he post it?

I'd be curious how that breaks out over the first 10 games v. the last 7. aka pre/post Dorsey/Brady. The narrative is that he was better, generally speaking, under Brady. But my analysis has not seen that.

That's exactly right. Here's the thing, if you're a team taking a player like that, apart from differentiating how he played against talent that's likely to end up in the NFL vs. talent that's not, which is a big indicator, and which in his case was poorly, you also have to ask yourself whether his primary shortcomings are things that you can coach into him. His are a lack of speed or acceleration, which is not something that you can coach into him. So the ceiling is already low.

LOL, but it really is. Also, the whole narrative of him being a great contested catch WR is also false. Someone did a fantastic write-up about the metrics on that and he wasn't even close to being the best WR at the top of the Draft for that. He is great against talent that we'll never see in the NFL though. I don't see that pick working out well at all, and frankly, since it's not even a yardage thing, it shouldn't take more than a season to know. He's either got the size and can make contested catches at key times or he can't. Doesn't have much to do with things that typically take time to develop, like reading Ds or juking DBs.

Gotcha! Fair points, but again, it's not the regular season holding us back. Everyone that's being honest already knows that it's been McD's defense preventing us from advancing further in the playoffs. Not Allen. That is relevant to the point. The sidebar as to none of the other players on the team having stepped up in the playoffs with any consistency whatsoever also belies coaching. It's a pretty safe bet that anyone here would take a 9-8 finish, slipping in as a wild-card, then going 4-0 in the playoffs to win a championship, even if among those 8 regular season losses were 0-6 in the division. The Party in Buffalo would commence and many of us could die happy in that way. LOL What is not acceptable is posting a #1, 2, or 4 defense that plays like a #25th ranked defense (or worse) in the playoffs, or no players on the team stepping up but one that does everything. Again, without Allen we get the floor mopped with us in the playoffs generally speaking and instead of 5-6 under McD in the playoffs we'd have been 0-5 or 1-5 because we likely never would have advanced once and McD isn't even here at this point.

The point is that he played as a WR, slot or otherwise. He didn't play starting in the backfield, even as a "slot" where he was typically a good five yards from the OL. Let's keep this in perspective. He didn't come into the NFL raw without any knowledge of playing WR. And in the NFL he's nothing more than a slot WR either. If he plays split we may be in trouble.

No doubt, but in the world of problem resolution in business or for efficiency, you always go for the lowest hanging fruit that causes the greatest problems first and which will generate the greatest improvement first, eh. Without Allen McD would have been winless, or perhaps a single win (Balt), in the playoffs, and that only because Jackson chokes in the playoffs. No player plays perfectly, but Allen's playoff performances at least are greater on average than his regular season performances. The same cannot be said for the aforementioned failures. In short, he's not on the short list of reasons why we haven't won a Lombardi.