dave mcbride

For those who haven’t been following his injury, he is reportedly running at full speed (straight line) already. I gather he had the cleanest of ACL tears— no other damage to the adjacent parts of his knee.

He was actually really good in late 2023 and in the postseason. He was playing quite hurt this past season in the second half. But of course he has to make that catch. I'm not worried about him.

Deion Branch too off the top of my head.

Whenever I watch a healthy Bosa, I always think I’m watching one of the best pass rushers in the league. And if memory serves, he has produced against the Chiefs.

He really did play better as the season went on, and the advanced stats show that.

The Bills, minus their only capable boundary CB, would have been curb stomped.

https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/nazeeh-johnson-chiefs-knew-josh-allens-tendencies-for-qb-sneaks Link

What would that be? Houston, which had a bad offense this season, stymied KC (and Buffalo earlier in the season; it wa arguably Allen’s worst game in the past 5 years) because they have elite corners who can play man well. Elam sucks, but the best player for kc in that game was McDuffie. And he made the game-deciding play in last year’s SB. I now think you conflate all early CB picks — good and bad — as *all* bad and are so conscious of being “on brand” on this message board (sorta as a gimmick) that you lose sight of what NFL teams rightly value — defending against the pass.

The Bills arguably lost to KC because of fielding marginal, low-athletic-skills secondary players vs KC. It's a huge need.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6097505/2025/01/29/bills-chiefs-offseason-roster-free-agents/ Good comments here: “If there was one thing that became abundantly obvious, it’s just how much, through coaching, the Chiefs exploited some of the deficiencies of the Bills’ roster and some flawed planning to deal with them. These wound up being many of the tiny edges the Chiefs used to help fuel yet another trip to the Super Bowl. And while it leaves the Bills at home one game shy of their goal, it can help direct them over the next few months of roster building. Four positions felt it more than the others. Cornerback One central inflection point came when the Bills lost top cornerback Christian Benford for the game due to his second concussion in as many weeks. It subbed out one of the best defenders on the roster the entire season in Benford for the lowest-graded player on the whole roster, Kaiir Elam. Until Benford’s injury, the Bills had played zone coverage on 71.4 percent of the seven Chiefs dropbacks — a standard rate for their usual operating procedure. It was a downgrade in performance and forced the Bills to pivot, likely trying to accomplish two things to give their defense a fighting chance. First, given Elam’s struggles in their usual zone-based defense, they tried to accentuate his strengths. He’s put together a handful of solid reps in a smaller sample size as a man-cover corner over three years and seems far more comfortable in those roles. Second, the Chiefs burned through the Bills’ zone coverage when Benford was in the game. They averaged 13.6 yards per dropback on five plays, including two scrambles by Patrick Mahomes. That’s opposed to allowing 4.5 yards per dropback in man coverage. So, the Bills and defensive coordinator Bobby Babich made a big switch through the rest of the game, hoping for the same results as the Ravens game. But here’s the rub: the Bills ran man coverage only twice with Benford in the game, and Benford was the only reason they forced the incompletion on receiver Hollywood Brown to bring that per-dropback average down. Despite that, after Benford left the game, the Bills used man coverage on 50 percent of the Chiefs’ remaining dropbacks — a massive uptick from their 22.4 percent rate from the regular season. And the Chiefs were ready for it after seeing it on film from the previous game, armed with better, speedier receivers than the Ravens, and the Bills were down two members of their starting secondary. After Elam entered the game, the Chiefs took off against man coverage. They targeted Elam repeatedly, and his confidence waned. When the Chiefs ran some pick plays targeting Elam, he got lost in traffic. There was a second-and-9 play where Xavier Worthy was lined up in front of Elam in man coverage, and Elam gave Worthy nearly 10 yards of cushion pre-snap. Mahomes quickly spotted it, Worthy ran a comeback to the sticks and had an easy completion. There was even a play later in the game when Elam was in press-man against JuJu Smith-Schuster, and Elam got himself crossed up, stumbled for the next two seconds and fell in coverage, allowing Smith-Schuster to be wide open over the middle of the field. That was on the Worthy catch that brought the Chiefs within the Bills’ five-yard line, and Elam went unnoticed because of the controversy around that catch and the defensive holding call on safety Damar Hamlin. On top of that, the team’s other starting cornerback, Rasul Douglas, a better zone defender than when he plays man coverage, struggled against the Chiefs receivers. How bad was it? After Benford left the game, the Chiefs completed 11 of their 12 pass attempts against man coverage for 160 yards and Mahomes’ lone touchdown pass. Five of those 11 completed passes went for 15 or more yards. Three of them went for 20 or more yards. They averaged 13.3 yards per dropback. The Chiefs preyed on them in man coverage, using their speed and separation at wide receiver to their advantage and ran pick plays to enhance it further. Ironically, the other half of the time, the Bills were in zone coverage — what they had done all season, and the Bills allowed only 3.6 yards per dropback after Benford left the game. All five of Mahomes’ scrambles came against zone coverage, so that might have been part of their decision-making to keep on going with man coverage despite the results. But right from the moment Elam entered the game, man coverage was an overwhelming liability. All of this is important because Douglas is a free agent and turns 31 in August. He’s no guarantee to be back next year. Elam has one year remaining on his rookie contract, but nothing about his showings throughout the 2024 season should make the Bills feel comfortable that he can step into a full-time starting role in 2025. Finding a cornerback to pair with Benford for the long term should be a focal point because everything over the last three years has shown Elam isn’t that player. Safety Without top starter Taylor Rapp available for the game due to an injury, the top starting duo was Hamlin and rookie Cole Bishop. Bishop had some reps he’d want back and wasn’t a plus-player Sunday, but by far, he was the safety who trusted what he saw and was consistently in a better position to make plays and chip in with run support. He nearly came away with an interception because of how he read the play, too. One of the most significant pressure points of the defense that the Chiefs pressed was with Hamlin. As the season progressed, Hamlin improved from where he began early in the year. But the Chiefs game yielded one of Hamlin’s worst showings of the season. The hesitance he played with early in the year returned, which helped expose some of his athletic flaws. And then, with the Bills playing as much man coverage as they did after Benford left the game, Hamlin was pressed into one-on-one coverage. That led to several opportunities with separation and even a defensive holding call against him. Lacking the versatility to vary up coverages in a successful manner is a difficult thing to overcome, which questions his place on the Bills roster moving forward. Hamlin is a free agent as of March, while Rapp is signed for 2025, and Bishop is signed through 2027. Unless it was on a team-friendly deal with the understanding that Hamlin is the backup behind Rapp and Bishop, they might be better off allowing Hamlin to sign elsewhere and address the depth at safety in a different way.”

Joe B agrees, especially re the secondary: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6097505/2025/01/29/bills-chiefs-offseason-roster-free-agents/

4 of those who made it didn’t have byes and 6 who made it did. 12 teams had byes in those five years; 58 didn’t. I like my odds with the bye given that basic math. It’s hard to argue against that math.

Well put.

It's quite rare in the last 10-12 years for this to happen. Prior to the Chiefs run, the Pats had byes from 2011-2018 and made the championship game every year, going to the SB five times. The only that got the SB in the AFC with no bye in that time period was the 2012 Ravens. The bye and home field are huge advantages, and the stats show that. Of course, there are times where it doesn't work out for the team with the bye (the Lions this year, Baltimore last year), but going back to 2007, in the AFC a team without a bye has only gone to the SB three times (2012 Ravens, 2021 Bengals, 2023 Chiefs). 15 out of 18 times, a bye team made the SB.

Well said.