dave mcbride

I agree

He had a tackle for a loss earlier in the drive

Announcers have shifted almost completely to brady and gronk record-breaking talk.

That’s largely because TB can and will run the ball.

Note that i said “unable.”

Being both unwilling and unable is indeed a real problem today. TB’s rushers are just teeing off.

Not true. Watch the replay

He was the opposite of wide open. The de occupied the throwing lane

That was a good throwaway. It would have been a pick

Blowout’s a-comin’.

You know, the funny thing is that Darrell Bevell actually was a SB-winning OC in Seattle with a creative offense. And he got there again the next year albeit Seattle lost in the last minute on the Wilson INT (not as bad a call as people think because NE had brought in their heavy stop-the-run package and Lynch had usually been stuffed in those situations over the course of the season).

Yeah, but that’s *extremely* rare. It happens once or twice a season.

Trying to figure that out!

There is an alternative universe where they are 10-2, but since all of the advanced stats (not just FO) show that the Bills have performed poorly late in close games on both sides of the ball, they are a rightful 7-5 in the universe we actually live in.

Presumably, and the offense has performed poorly in three of four close games (pitt, NE, Jax). The one where they produced was the Titans game, although even that one was punctuated by a bad failure on 4th down.

Good points. I’m speaking out of emotion because his play - especially in crunch time and in competitive, important games - has been so bad.

Pretty interesting. As you gradually increase the importance of the “garbage time filter” for the Bills offense, it gets significantly worse (and Allen declines too). The defense doesn’t do so well either, although weirdly if you max out the GT filter it goes from being bottom-half-of-the-league-defense with the filter at 2/3 to a top D. The other thing is that if you choose, say, the last 7-8 weeks with the garbage time filter maxed out, it has the Bills ranked 27th in offense. https://rbsdm.com/stats/stats/ I can’t say I understand it all, but it feels reasonably accurate given the Bills’ struggles in close games.

Agree, but I’d add that Marv was very good at a skill that is very under-rated—capably managing the personalities that comprise an entire NFL squad, many of who are borderline psychos.

Nope re: Williams. His cap hit next season is $8.9 million if he’s on the roster and $3.6 million if they dump him. That’s $5.3 million in savings. A team-friendly deal, basically. He is not going to get any better, and I’d get rid of him. The only reason to keep him is to have him as a viable backup at RT, but isn’t that why they drafted the guy from Miami? https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/buffalo-bills/cap/2022/ Belichick certainly has, but he is also someone no one should ever be compared to. He is sui generis.

Totally disagree. This team was by everyone’s estimation a SB contender. They have gone 3-4 in their last seven games and in the process have lost to their archrival because they were outcoached, got blown out at home by a team they beat in the playoffs last year, and lost to the worst franchise in the league over the last decade because their vaunted offense couldn’t score a TD.

Re funbles in practice, they’re not hitting much, particularly at this time of the season, so I would be surprised if players are fumbling much there.

Well, the common thread with breida and mackenzie is immediate trips to the doghouse after fumbling, which is really short-sighted.

Football Outsiders eviscerates the Bills: https://www.footballoutsiders.com/walkthrough/2021/buffalo-bills-vs-chumpzilla @BADOLBILZ, check it out, especially the comment about McKenzie. ”And if you (understandably) hate silly metaphors and crotchety columnist wisdom: the Bills rank 28th in late-and-close DVOA on offense and 26th on defense.” ”She's punishing the Bills for their lack of creativity, precision, and ferocity. If there's any such thing as an "it factor," some combination of intangibles that converts into an extra dozen yards or so in a close game, the Bills lack it. That deficiency keeps roaring to life and making the Bills' DVOA and reputation look like a cardboard skyscraper.”

I felt that they thought they could treat it as a “mask tendencies” game because the plan was a very generic josh allen-spread-pass scheme and they didn’t seem to alter it all throughout the game. I got the sense watching that game that the bills always felt that they were going to pull it out using their base plays.

That was the one game where i felt the offensive staff mailed it in. My hunch is that they didn’t want to give away any plays they really liked to upcoming opponents and assumed that they’d overwhelm a terrible Jax team on talent differential alone. They bizarrely kept the same approach all game even though it wasn’t working and the game was within a fg throughout.