BuffOrange

I've said since forever that Coach of the Year award is a joke. It just goes to the team that underachieved the previous year half the time. Replacing a clown like Romeo Cronnel is a good way to win it.

Well it's not 1992, so the "last place schedule" only matters for two games. The fact is sometimes you get lucky and play bad divisions - the AFC West teams have that luxuary this year playing the NFC East & AFC South. I'd much rather play a 1st place schedule and not be in Brady's division every year. When I say "toss-ups" I'm just thinking about the point spreads being 3-4 or less which I think it would be @Philly & home vs Dallas. So far we're 2-2 in those games @NYJ, @Cleveland, Baltimore & Carolina. It's not really fair to call the Pats & Bengals games toss-ups in hindsight just because they were close. Granted you can make the case we wouldn't be favored by much more than 3 vs Oakland or @Anybody, so I wouldn't argue too much with 3-3.

No but they do get the Texans & Browns at home before visiting the Ralph. Their defense is definitely (and sadly) my fantasy MVP so far.

Jags, Giants & Raiders are wins. @Tenn is a loss. Dallas & @Philly are toss-ups, so give 'em a split there. 4-2.

How did the Bengals offense overcome the momentum after the Bills opening TD drive? How did their defense overcome the momentum of the Leohnard int? How did the Bills overcome the Bengals momentum when they went down 24-10? How did the Bengals re-take the momentum after a blowing a 14pt lead? Here's a theory: Momentum is a garbage term that gets thrown around by announcers that doesn't mean anything.

The Packers yesterday called time out on 4th&13 from their own 1 to avoid a Delay of Game. No seriously, that happened. Trent Dilfer swears "it's a coach's league" though so that must be true.

I guess if you watched the whole game you would've noticed a 4th down produced one of our TD's. The 2pt point doesn't make sense. The difference between 7 and 3 is greater than the difference between 2 and 1. But since you brought it up, going for 2 in the 3rd Qtr (OMG too early!) did win the Carolina game.

Well a lot of his rants are a bit repetitive, ha. It's just easy to deal with when you agree with him almost all the time. I could listen to him destroy Gavin Newsome every day for a year. BTW that Grantland pod I mentioned does an "adopt a team" feature every week where they pick a somewhat obscure national team and pay special attention to their game/film (they did the Titans & Lions previously). On Friday they picked the Bills for this week so that ought to be an interesting listen on Wednesday.

QB and health are obviously the correct answers. Sure, we could upgrade OL, LB, CB, TE, and OC. We might be pretty good like the Bengals if we got all that by miraculously hitting on every single draft pick... Or we could be legitimately good just by having a good QB.

I think this is the most valid criticism of playcalling I've read (it is bogus 98% of the time imo). Right on with the Woods TD (and not just because it worked). I kept waiting for that deep playfake on 1st down to happen vs NE but no, after a 6yd FJax run it was always the same play into a brick wall. Doing something until it stops working is cool vs West Virginia. Against a Front7 that's better than your OL, not so much.

The Bengals defense is way too good to mount a bunch of 15play, 80yard drives. Especially with such an unknown QB. We needed big chunk plays and we got them from Graham and Goodwin. Seems weird to pick the aftermath of this game as the time to complain about WR depth. I will sign up for the 'put Easley in over Hogan' campaign though. Does Marcus just trip over himself on every route in practice? Even if he does he sure as heck came to play on gamedays in the preseason. Seems baffling that he never gets a chance.

I'm more often the guy people say they're going to block than the homer who says "wah, you're not a real fan 'cause you're negative"... But I disagree with pretty much all this. I would like to see Marrone be more aggressive in certain situations but the fact that he went for it on 4th down twice today and went for 2 in the 4th Qtr vs Carolina (OMG in the 3rd Quarter!) is some indication of being open to analytics - so that point is not fair. As others have asked, how good do you expect the 4th CB in line to be? Would Seattle's 3rd&4th CB's be good if they had to start every week? You need to accept that injuries play a major role in a league where the W/L line is so thin. Pretty much every team that wins consistently has gotten lucky @QB at some point along the way, with a few exceptions of teams who are unusually loaded everywhere else on their roster, like the Bengals & 49ers.

If Boomer Esiason were in charge of our 4th down calls we would've had 3 more points. Wait no, actually we would've kicked on 4th&8 instead of throwing a TD to Chandler, and then we would've needed a 2pt conversion to tie at the end (which we probably don't get if the 4th&1 is any indication). It was hard to listen to his uber-conservative verbal diarrhea all game long. There he is cherry-picking examples of 4th downs not working but conveniently he doesn't mention that the FREAKING BENGALS (the team that's playing in the game he's announcing) beat the Patriots just last week largely because they went for it on the goaline and Belichick didn't. Hopefully that's the last time that mouth-breathing Simms clone is in the booth.

What brain-dead Boomer forgot to mention during all of his nonsensical conservative/cliche rants was that the Bills never go for it on 4th&8 to get their 2nd TD if they're down 24-13 so it worked out fine.

You're talking about a team that willingly hired the coordinator from the Lions league-worst unit. It shouldn't be a huge surprise that garbage Special Teams have cost us two games in a row now.

Someone please shoot Boomer in the face; I cannot take it. No mention of Cincy going for it on 4th&goal from 1 last week and getting a TD while NE kicked a FG in the same situation; which was arguably the difference in the game. Carry on with your retarded cherrypicked examples on why kicking is the smart play though.

Grantland has a football podcast with Bill Barnwell & Robert Mays on Wednesdays & Fridays. I liked the preseason team previews a bit better than what they're doing now during the season. Still it's a decent in-depth discussion on teams/games beyond the token stuff geared to casual fans on espn. Oh, and Adam Carolla rules. Been hooked since March. Can't believe it took me so long to find him.

You're sort of all over the place but: A) None of that explains why ATL would give up a 1st. B) Hopkins > SJ3 next year is based on what, a couple catches vs Tennessee? C) I like Woods as much as the next guy but if the scouting report on him was accurate (which so far it appears to be ie how 'polished' he is) I don't know how high his ceiling is going to be in years to come. He seems like pretty much an ideal WR2 or 1A. D) SJ being over the hill by the time the Bills are ready to contend makes it sound like they're a 3-5year rebuilding project. They're not. They have their share of good players and a couple weaknesses, just like teams that make the playoffs. The difference between them and playoff teams right now is QB and health. If EJ is good they can contend next year. If the EJ is not good they're screwed (assuming they don't draft another QB in April, which I would advocate but not holding my breath).

Ya ATL would have to be out of their minds to give up a high pick when they're not going anywhere this year anyway. Julio is coming back next year AFAIK. Also WR's last longer and matter more than RB's so not feeling the Richardson comparison.

So you don't want him for nothing? The thinking in this thread is why trades are way harder than they should be - everyone overvalues their own players or in this case their leverage with guys they're never going to play. You're not going to get LeSean McCoy - a starting RB in a good offense is as much as you can realistically hope for so take it. Who knows how good TRich is. I was in the minority on the main board saying the Browns crushed that trade IRL when it happened. But he does have fantasy value going forward given the scarce RB's this year. Can't really defend the Jaguars game, but Seattle is Seattle and he only had like 2 days of prep time for the 49ers.

I am a big advocate of 4th down aggression. But it is curious that he chose to kick a FG near the goaline w/ 2min's left in the half in Miami, and went for it last night with no time leftover. The field position advantage you gain after getting stopped is a point in favor of going for it in the former scenario but not the latter (and btw the Dolphins ended up kicking a long FG before the half after a kickoff which negated those 3pts). To be fair that did not cost them the game last night because they never would've gone for it on 4th down in FG range if they were down 27-24 at the end.

True WVs defense was crap. That doesn't mean Geno played well in those games or that the Syracuse D was loaded with NFL prospects. He didn't and they weren't.

I would agree that putting everything on the OCs is excuse making. Kid played well and Id feel good about it if I were a Jet fan. I also remember Chad Henne carving up the Jets on mnf his rookie yr - and that was against an actual good defense. I'm not sure rewinding that Nassib thread will be as funny as some seem to think 5yrs from now.

Do some actual research rather than cherry picking isolated games. Bill Barnwell has written about this a hundred times - Even good teams don't win much more than 50% of 1score games over a long period of time.

Yup. This happens every year yet people still believe the "good teams win close games" rubbish.