dave mcbride

Daboll called 3-4 plays that had guys running free deep. Allen has gotta hit at least one of those.

I never thought they’d win this game and I was hoping for an honorable loss. They got that.

It’s amazing to me the level of ignorance regarding Allen’s talent. Now of course he hasn’t produced consistently at a high level yet, but he literally has the strongest arm in nfl history (not an exaggeration), Has prototypical size, and can fly (for a big QB).

So true. I hate domes so I disagree about creating one, but it is the case that Bills fans are pretty soft when it comes to cold weather games. You don't see that in GB, Chicago, Pitt, or NE. And it's not just about winning; the Bills had a lot of empty seats in the 1990s late in the season. Also, Sears isn't the right reference. Amazon is the better one!

I prefer pro, but where college excels over pro is the enormous diversity of styles, which is just more interesting to watch than the sameness within the NFL. Just about every NFL team basically runs variants of the same offenses and defenses. There are no Armies or Georgia Techs or Air Forces in the pros. Baltimore this year is a bit of an exception and frankly a breath of fresh air.

He played for nearly 20 years! Again, he played forever. There was no statistical improvement or decline as he got older. He was consistently average for his entire career.

Janikowski was 58-105 from 50+ (55%). Hauschka is better - 28 of 45 (62%). Christ, even Dan Carpenter was better (24-41 or 58.5%). The myth of Janikowski is strong.

yep. I do think that Hauschka's bad numbers mask a pretty good season in kicks under 50 yards (14 for 16). The Bills should probably avoid long kicks going forward, but that's a manageable problem to have and taking on a new kicker at this point could be a move that goes south fast. All four of their remaining games are in terrible weather environments, with Pittsburgh being infamously bad for kickers.

SJ's lifetime FG pct was 80.4. He's a bit overrated. The FG pct for Justin Tucker, who wasn't drafted, is 90.6. Gostkowski -- a fourth rounder -- is at 87.4 (and 88.6 pct in the postseason). He was probably worth it; he's 25 for 35 on 50+ yarders. He's the model for drafting a kicker. The Bills have a lot of late round picks, and spending one on a good kicking prospect isn't a bad idea. That said, so many good kickers - Will Lutz, Robbie Gould -- weren't drafted at all, and a average ones like Mike Nugent (80.9 pct; drafted in the second round) and SeaBass (first rounder) were. It's really a crapshoot. Hauschka is at 85.4, but he's really slipped in the last couple of years (although he is 14 for 16 in kicks under 50 yards this season). Interestingly, he's 95.6 pct in the postseason - 20 for 21.

In other words, he'd be a real problem for Brady if he was playing RT for the Pats.

Not sure I'd want to work for Tepper either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Tepper he told an interviewer in 2010 that sometimes, “if someone is an #######, like a waiter at a restaurant, I think, I could just buy this place and fire that guy.”[4] According to the Post, he “paid $43.5 million for the beachfront mansion of a former Goldman Sachs supervisor who had passed him over for promotion. Then he had the house demolished.”[28] He then built a house nearly twice as big on the same property.[46] He had bought the property from the ex-wife of his former boss.[47]

Brissett has been pretty good this year. If they had a real Kicker, they'd be 8-4/9-3.

He is being phased out of the KC offense, it seems - only six targets in the last couple of weeks. As someone who argued that he was always on the cusp of greatness, I have to confess that he's a massive disappointment. That said, he is still young, isn't as banged up as people think (it's always hamstrings now with him; not much else), and has a lot of talent. Someone will take him, and he might do reasonably well. It certainly won't be the Bills, though.

I think meathead is a little strong. In his two stints as DC at Chicago and SD, he took statistically bad defenses in the first season to elite ones in the next couple of seasons. Also, the NFL is one of the few arenas where high-functioning meatheads can thrive (even if not win it all). Rivera's best comp seems to me to be Vrabel -- both longtime NFL LBs. I mean, you can't last for a decade as an NFL LB and NOT be a meathead. Fair enough. I didn't watch it so really have no idea.

I think the Xs and Os stuff is a little overrated, to be honest. The key attributes of good head coaches are organization skills, ability to motivate, and -- not least -- a nose for good assistants (i.e., the guys who handle the Xs and Os). Belichick skews everyone's perceptions about this, but always remember that Parcells' great skill wasn't Xs/Os, but rather hiring Belichick, Coughlin, Payton, and many others. I'm not saying it's not important, mind you; it's just that I think a really good Xs and Os guy like Adam Gase is a far worse head coach than a guy like Mike Tomlin. It's not easy managing crazy people, and I guarantee you that there are about 10 of them on every NFL team.

He's a perfectly decent coach, and I would NEVER judge coaching acumen based upon snippets from those shows. His won/loss record is pretty good, although he has only 3 winning seasons to 6 losing ones (lots of seven-win seasons). https://www.pro-football-reference.com/coaches/RiveRo0.htm. He has a pretty good track as a coordinator as well and coached under some good people (Andy Reid). He has had genuinely bad luck at the QB position the last two seasons, and that accounts for a lot of the losing.

... and Brett Favre had arguably the best season of his career with Minnesota (his highest-ever qb rating (107.2), 4202 yds, 7.9 ypa, 33 TDs, and 7 INTs).

A key drop by Ertz too.

The two losses to the NFC were in games in which they had already clinched home field advantage and rested numerous starters (against Washington in the final game of the 1990 season and against Detroit in OT in the final week of the 1991 season).

I disagree. I think Baltimore will steamroll them next time and bear in mind that Cleveland will be missing their best player (Garrett). Baltimore is clicking on all cylinders now.

Don’t they have to play Baltimore again?

Yep.

He refers to Jason Garrett as “the Clapper” near the end!

To be fair, the Bills got the primest slot of the season this year: Thanksgiving in Dallas at 4:30. It’s the most watched regular season game of the year. That makes up for a lot of missed Bills-Jax Thursday nighters.

Because it is a really stupid system. His ypc is down in large part because of the increased rate of kneel downs. For real.