Luxy312

There's plenty of teams that make the playoffs already. Nothing really needs to be changed at this point. 37.5% of NFL teams make the playoffs right now. That's enough.

Very ironic (see signature). LOL.

Fitz = Cassel = Orton = Kolb. At the end of the day, they're all average pocket passers. If anyone thinks that any of those guys would have been able to pick up the third and longs that Taylor picked up on Sunday, you're nuts. EJ is a better runner than any of those 4 and probably wouldn't have picked up first downs either. As for Fitzpatrick, he's mostly lost against the good teams and beat the bad teams. Can't say I would want him over what we have right now.

Media relevant, no doubt. However, talking of them like they're playoff relevant or competitive with the better teams of the NFL is premature. They've played 3 teams with a winning record so far and have gone 0-3. They lost to a Jacksonville team that had just 1 win before playing them in London. In terms of this thread and Cowherd, I'm not sure I could actually care less what he thinks. Rex wore a Clemson helmet during a presser. 1 - He did it to support his son. He's required to do these press events and let the media stage be his stage to support his son. 2 - It took NOTHING away from his preparation of this team for the game on Thursday. Does anyone believe for a moment that Rex spent any amount of time thinking about doing this? 3 - Rex isn't blathering on about how he's going to beat the Jets or talking smack like he did coming into the New England game. Personally, this is a positive for me. Keep the focus of the game in practice and out of the media.

I'll take the old "eye test" any day over this metric. It's not even worth trying to explain what's wrong with it. Kind of like Bruce Jenner / Caitlyn Jenner / whatever you want to call him / her / it.

No to Welker. He's only a fit in the right offensive scheme and it's not in Buffalo. Roman's offense doesn't use a lot of the slot receiver as the #1 or #2 read. Heck, on a lot of plays, there isn't even a receiver going out into slant from the slot to even be a target. To boot, what are we really missing out on with Harvin? Was it his 5 carries for 31 yards or his 218 yards and 1 TD receiving on 19 catches/30 targets? At this point, I think I would rather see more of Chris Hogan. Clay was virtually invisible against the Dolphins as well. They have to find a way to get him the ball more. However, pass on the guy that could get suffer permanent brain damage if enough rain drops hit his helmet.

In the 8 games he's played, Fitzpatrick has turned the ball over in 6 of them. If the Bills can win the battle of possession, they have a good chance at winning the game in NY. The Jets are 3 point favorites to open in Vegas, so they're simply getting the home field advantage. If I'm writing the Jets game plan, I think it looks something like this. 8-9 guys in the box on every play. Do not get gashed by big runs. Revis plays Sammy no matter where he lines up. Again, every play. Take Sammy out of the passing game. On the flip side of things, they'll ask Fitzpatrick to NOT turnover the ball. In their wins, they're +12 in turnovers. In their losses they're -5. Huge!

I don't see any possibility that the Bills are drafting quarterback next year in the first round. Just look at how efficient the kid has been under center. His completion percentage is only worse than Romo and Weeden as starters. 10 TD passes to only 4 INT's. So barring some major meltdown from Tyrod where he doesn't continue to perform at a high level, the Bills have their franchise QB. To boot, the Bills are not in the position to simply draft "best available player". Like most others here on the board, I would think that OL will be a team priority. I'm not sure whether DL or LB's would follow that, but the order is irrelevant. They have more needs to fill, then now drafting a QB that could possibly not have a start int he next 6-8 years. Folly is what I call it.

The fumble was on him. He's holding onto the ball far too long. One thing I've seen repeated over and over again is that he goes through his initial progressions (about two seconds pass) and then pressure starts to build. He continues looking around, almost lost at what to do. There's no line in the NFL that can hold off defenses indefinitely. Brady is snapping and throwing his passes less than 2 seconds from snap. THAT is what we need to see from EJ that we haven't. Decisiveness. Not waiting 4 seconds and then "locking on" to the receiver he wants to throw to in double coverage.

Easy answer for you and you have to look no further than the Bills game for it. Brady's AVERAGE time between snap and throw was less than 2 seconds. Defenses not wanting to get beat deep are often playing 5-10 yard cushions. For whatever reason, other teams think that more guys in coverage is going to mean a better chance of beating lady Brady. It's stupid. To beat him, you have to physically hit him. That doesn't mean sending 3 on most downs (which Buffalo did).

OK. So the fact that our pick 6 should have been a P.I. call doesn't matter? I weigh that just as big as Robey. Easy just to pick one though to axe grind, isn't it?

I've said this many many times before. The single biggest factor to winning and losing games is turnovers. In about 98.5% historically of games in the NFL where a team goes -3 in turnovers, they lose. EJ alone was -3 yesterday and the Jaguars scored 21 points off of those turnovers. Robey was one play. The refs missed plenty of other calls for both teams. Picking just one play/call is myopic at best.

Why? The Jests have less sacks (8.0) than Buffalo (9.0). What would give you the impression that they're so intimidating?

Honestly, if they lose to the lowly Jaguars, I'll say the Bills are pretty much done for the season. If I see Mario Williams drop into pass coverage even once, I'm going to puke. The real problem that this team has is the offense. For all of the weapons that have been added, this Bills team leads the NFL in 3 and outs. We're near the bottom in yards of total offense per game (27th). We're near the bottom in first downs per game (27th). The defense is 15th in yards allowed per game and 11th in first downs. At the end of the day, they have to beat Jacksonville. Coming off a bye week, they cannot lose a fourth straight home game to the Dolphins. As for the Jets, I'll call them a TBD. We're going to see just how good their media termed "vaunted" defense is this week. I wouldn't at all be shocked if the Patriots hung 35 on them.

32-20 Buffalo. I based that off the scores against common opponents. Bills are riding the roller coaster so far and last game was a **** show. Think they bounceback this week with an impressive offensive showing.

I don't think this is true at all. My biggest problem is that it seems like every other play where Rex is only sending 3. Not sure how 3 is supposed to get pressure when opposing QB's are blocking with 5 + a TE or RB. As for the "milling around", that's not really right either. They purposely shift around on the line to try to make the offense guess where they will be coming from. Different guys rush at different times making for multiple looks. Another point I made in another thread is that it's hard to evaluate any defense when the offense is terrible. Bills are 29th in yards and 29th in first downs on offense. They've taken nearly 100 yards of penalties a game. No defense can look good when the offense isn't even close to average.

1 home win. 3 home losses. That's pretty much the only stat that I need to see. Realistically at this point, they probably have to go 8-2 to make the playoffs.

Well that's pretty funny because two of their wins came against THOSE teams and they haven't played the other two.

I'm not sure there's a lot to be excited about. Defensively, the Bills are below average at this point. 17th in yards allowed per game. 22nd in first downs per game. 25th in sacks. This is NOT the defense we expected from this team. That said, I do think that you can place some of the blame on the offense. 29th in first downs per game. 29th in yards per game. 62 penalties as well for 583 yards. Next closest is Denver with 50 with 135 less yards. At the end of the day, there is no team in recent memory that had a stellar defense without even an average offense and special teams. People so love to cite those Ravens teams and all of their playoff appearances. One has to simply look back and can see that while the defenses looked good on paper, the offenses were regularly in the top half of the NFL. Simply put, the Bills are just not going to get it done with the anemic stinky product that they're putting on the field offensively. They're lucky to be 3-3 at this point.

My negative/concern for what it's worth is that for the last two games, the Bills are playing to the level of their opponents. This simply cannot continue to happen if this team is going to have any chance of a run in the playoffs. Taking a third loss at home in an AFC game will simply be unacceptable. I know the Bengals have played pretty good this year. They're scoring a lot of points, but this next game absolutely must have a sense of urgency.

The point was really made as an analogy to McCoy. Shady hurt one of his hamstrings. After further evaluation, the Bills found a tear in the OTHER hamstring. My point is that we could easily see a situation with Watkins where we don't actually know exactly WHAT is ailing him. He's had hamstring issues before to boot.

Yolo is right statistically. Penalties are almost anecdotal. If you want the real stat that matters in games, one needs to only look at turnovers and history of W/L in the NFL. In the last 20 years, collectively: -1 in turnovers lost about 90% of the time -2 in turnovers lost about 94% of the time -3 in turnovers lost about 99% of the time Buffalo was +3 versus both the Colts and Dolphins and won. They were -1 versus both the Patriots and Giants and lost. Marv Levy used to say that if a team is consistently winning the turnover battle that ANY team will be 10-6 or better. That's what it takes. Pretty much everything else is ancillary.

What's the significance? Has he historically been tough on Rex teams?

I agree with the OP 100%. We saw it in the Patriots game and we saw it again in the Giants games. Our opponent was putting 8 or 9 guys in the box, just daring the Bills to throw the football downfield. The Bills counter is only sending two WR's out into passing routes. Run the damned spread! Pass it every down if we need to.

As a HC, Rex Ryan is 9-2 in first games versus a rookie. Will the trend continue?