dave mcbride

He has called pretty good games all season. His problem is being plagued by really bad qbs throughout his career (and the bills' qbs have collectively terrible this year). Given his track, Ithough, I simply can't see him getting a head coach job.

I disagree to an extent. The teams that have beaten them all have elite QBs and simply outscored them (NE, SD, Seattle, and LA). The Ravens put up more of a defensive fight, but the Chiefs still racked up points and yards. They're going to score regardless of weather; their QB and top skill players are too good for that not to happen.

I do think that NE would lose to the Chiefs in KC, but who knows who the Chiefs end up playing in Round 1. They'll crush TN if that's who they end up playing, but they could easily lose to SD, Baltimore, and Indy. I think the Browns are a tough matchup for the Ravens this weekend, but I also think the Ravens will likely win that game given how they're playing and what happened last year. Plus Harbaugh is a better coach than Gregg-o.

The sad thing is that if they beat the Jets, another trip to the SB is a very real possibility. I wouldn't want to coach against BB in a SB, and it is the case that every one of their 8 SBs has come down to the final minute. (Say what you will about the Pats, but when the play in the SB, you're assured of an excellent, exciting game.)

Really? They're pretty similar, actually. The Bills will wind up 6-10 or 5-11 with a generally pretty good defense and a terrible offense that struggles to run the ball and a big, strong-armed rookie qb with *genuine* (i.e., not made-up) accuracy issues who missed a handful of games mid-season and who also flashes excellent run skills. How is that different, big picture-wise, from the 2013 team? I'm in no way saying that Allen ends up like Manuel at all, but it's fair to say that there are some comparables to work with.

Good stuff - thanks for the link and the paste.

I think they need two. Foster is a legit starter, and anyways, no team has 4 good wideouts. Let's work in the realm of the plausible!

I don't recall any drops by him of note.

Podesta has always been the real moneyball guy in Cleveland. He hasn't lost any juice there.

Good post. I think Foster is a player who has the potential to be quite good, but they need a stud *and* a real #3 because Jones looks very low-ceiling to me. I suspect a decent #3 can be found in FA or, say, the 3rd-4th round. I wouldn't hitch my wagon to Jones after what I've seen, but perhaps he continues to improve. Foster appears to be better than what you're pegging him at here. He gets open, he has good hands, and he can blow by good CBs.

That's changing, as the piece indicates. There is of course recognition of the crazy number of variables in any given football play in comparison to other sports.

I recommend reading the piece in full. As for baseball, the teams that aren't analytics-driven are the bad ones.

Have at it. It's a fascinating article. https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2018/12/19/18148153/nfl-analytics-revolution

I actually do realize how many other receivers make that play, and it is precisely zero. I have to ask: have you ever played a sport in which the ball gets lost in the sun? I ask that seriously. I suspect you have never tried to make a catch in either baseball or football in which the sun got in your eyes and blinded you. If you had, you would never say something this ignorant. I'm not saying it wasn't a great pass; it was. It is just another example of a lack of attention to detail that plagues the franchise. The route should have been saved for later, when the sun wouldn't be an issue. The announcers were even talking about the players demonstrating concerns about the sun's placement in the sky prior to the game during warmups.

The ball to Foster *couldn’t* have been caught. He couldn’t see it because of the sun. If you can’t see it, you can’t catch it.

This. I think what's driving the criticism of Thomas on that play is that the Bills NEVER make high-difficulty catches. It's frustrating. If they made a few more, I think people would have categorized that one as "tough catch to make, move onto the next play." All the same, Allen is a bad touch passer right now and he has to understand that rifling it in is going to result in an inordinate number of incompletions regardless of the accuracy.

Great post. Speed is so important. We need more of it.

See my qualification above. Address the other difficulty and velocity issues. Those are real things that manifested on that play.

Look, that's in the realm of catchable, but it's in the fingertip region, he's leaping, the coverage is perfect, he's on the sideline, and the ball was thrown extremely hard. An elite receiver catches it 60 percent of the time, i think (although factor in Allen's velocity), and average receivers catch it less than half. The bottom line is that it's not an easy catch. And yes the Bills' receivers suck. I know that. But Allen has touch and accuracy issues at present that he needs to fix too. Again, though, i'm not saying that's a bad throw. Give the defender--who would have had a chance to swat it, a la leigh bodden, if he had hung on--some credit. He was in perfect position.

It wasn't right through his hands; it was on his fingertips. Big difference. The high pass that Gronk missed and which ended up as a pick was a pass that went right through the hands,

I'd qualify that further and say that while he has some bad games, his most notable tendency is to come up big in big games. Bear in mind that he played really well in that playoff game they lost to NO on the last second in 2013.

26 - Even you must be coming around to the idea that Foles is actually pretty damn good, right? That was a helluva show yesterday by him against a good team.

If you think, Whaley was responsible for drafting Zay Jones, I have some news. He wasn't.

Their offense is terrible. Like, really terrible. Ours is bad too, I know. You do realize that Larry Fitzgerald is running a 4.8-4.9 40 now, right? If the qb runs it, in, it's a td for him.

That is an extremely tough catch. Come on! It wasn't a bad throw because Thomas was blanketed, and that's the only place you can put it (alert: I am not blaming Allen). But that's a pass that's usually not caught. Coverage is huge too in that sort of situation. Give some credit to the defender, who was in position to swat at it in the unlikely the event he made that very difficult catch.