colin

That really grinds my gears

between this game and the number of non calls on just completely obvious fouls in front of refs, including an eons early false start on 4th down by the rams, last week; it's pretty clear the refs just want to let offensive fouls go, some on D in coverage too (but i think there is a bit more judgement there and the refs might miss some). as a biased fan i see more against us than for us, but I have seen them both ways. i think our team plays a faster more spaced style, so it hurts it more than it helps us. baltimore, for example, commits a foul on just about every play, but only gets called on a few of them. maybe we can get rapp and bishop together and just assault guys and get away with it on the playoffs, but im not a fan of letting obvious fouls go, and im particularly against inconsistent calls. the last onside was clear, detroit just erred on the side of being insanely aggressive and dared teh refs to flag it, and they kept their hands in their pockets.

I didn't break down the all 22 film obv, but in general the NFL is really letting offensive and defensive holding go. Scheme and Allen buying time like vowels on wheel of fortune means our guys eventually get open, but it's crazy what gets let go. I think this is a part of why coop a d Coleman didn't get much, along w the game plan to destroy their base d. It's like they've been on playoff calls mode since our game vs KC, the atmosphere has felt that way too

The whole dline has a switch flipped. The back 7 was beyond awful after like 42 good minutes, but they had Spencer Brown and cam Lewis and someone else who I dont think I'd recognize playsong, so it makes sense, kinda. I think they were way off vs the Rams. Also, and we benefit from this sometimes too, in the past 2 bills games the refs are letting some shocking OL holding go. On two of the late scoring drives by Detroit I saw bills defenders getting spun around by holds and no flags.

I voted dline, as of right now that's what we need the most. MCDs whole system is about a platoon of dl running like horses so that the small but present windows in the passing game aren't reachable. If we had a miles G or bosa on this line we beat the Rams and maybe even Houston this year. One thing that makes my mc confidence low is if we play the game of "switch QBs with the other team, do we still win" it's really hard for me to find a team in the NFL where that's true. Maybe cinci because they have a great QB so the loss on the exchange is less and their team has played badly, but that team has eaten our lunch the 9 quarters we've played them.

You're high in Ingram? I'm meh on him, which is actually kinda positive for a back up corner. I know it's hack at this point, but he shows good space and some skills, so I'd kinda like to see him at FS and bishop at SS, and elam at corner. They are backups for a reason, but every one of them is a better athlete than the guy they would be replacing today

Well, we might see the guys I peg as real athletes, elam and bishop starting today. I hope they make some BIG strides towards fulfilling their potential today, cuz boy howdy are we gonna need it.

I agree with this completely. Sadly, i've not seen much from mcd to show that he will go against type, but it's pretty obvious at this point that our d is soft and does poorly when it does not get turnovers.

ya, i get why he didn't start right away, but they can't find a package for him? my issue is mcd is so stubborn with his personnel and scheme it's just impossible for him to adapt. aj klien over dorian vs kc in the playoffs last year, elam getting zero burn despite being one of our few CBs to get picks in the playoffs, it makes me think mcd leaving a lot of meat on the bone wrt player development. this guy had peterman start over allen.

i've said it before, and i'll say it again. another coaching blunder and defensive melt down loss in the playoffs, mcd has gotta go. i count mcd as having outsized influence on the gm. he was hired first, was in the first draft where the pick for mahomes was traded for tre white (such a mcd move) when beane was not, and has shown to be very very stubborn on who he plays or not (remember nate peterman?). all the signs point to mcd running the operation. to the posters saying we'd get a dud like vrable -- vrable has done no worse than mcd in the playoffs, he was the number one seed one year and lost to cinci at home just like we did (except the titans seemed to have a chance in that game after the first 4 drives, we did not), he beat number one seed on the road in baltimore (our max win is what, 5 seed?) and he lost to kc in the afc chip game (our highest accomplishment) all with flipping tannyhill at qb. what would mcd accomplish with tannyhill at qb?

So, in 2017 the bills had a rag tag team on D but scrapped together a flukey 9-7 record and got to the tourney, where the d played great but the tyrod O was cheeks. in 2018, we started to see a pattern that would continue until now on D. we faced baltimore to start, peterman had his famous 0.0 passer rating game (i remember throwing like 8 incomplete passes and nothing else would have created a better stat, he might be the worst performing nfl qb i've ever heard of). The d was on easy mode and the ravens just targeted edmunds who was out of position in our "all parts must be in place" D and just walked on us. The next game rivers and the colts went to buf, the career of josh allen started with very little fanfare, and we were obliterated by the rivers passing attack in the first half. then davis retired at the half (lol, the most bizarre thing ever!) and our D in the second half and for the majority of the rest of the season was at the top of the NFL in yards allowed, and for the most part in scoring as well. I remember being shocked at how a pretty rag tag squad (poy and hyde were known as former scrubs who played on their heads, rather than the all pros they became) of aging vets and a couple talented guys (our dline was headed by rookie harrison phillips, lorax, kyle williams, and free agents trent murph and star, and we had 2nd year tre white and rook edmunds) just frustrated nfl teams constantly allowing few big plays and forcing punts and timely turnovers. this pattern of being totally solved and blown to pieces in a couple games and being basically lights out the rest of the time continued until this very day, even with josh allen maturing from a lost uber talent raw guy behind some of the most garbage OLs and with the lowest level of skill talent around him to the FarvElway he was always meant to be with a dominant line and a mix of some real talent and lots of overperforming jags. McD clearly has something on D. He's had too much success against too many teams in too many games to be a rex ryan or jom shwartz who piles up mega stats when the D is 65% of the cap and is executing a very specific scheme well, but the complete lay downs from the first couple drives to the buzzer have still been there on D, even with what is basically the best player ever leading the scariest O on the planet. the bottom line for the McD skeptics is that given we have a nuclear bomb on O, we do not accept a D that is structured to maximize the average result on D if it leads us to games vs good teams (particularly in the playoffs where he has never beaten a 4th seed or higher) where the D will squander any level of play by the O, including literal all time dominant performances, let alone a less than cosmic performance from 17. we simply don't believe that this is the way it must be. he must adapt his concept of complimentary football to include moving out of his comfort zone on D in order to have an answer for the Rams of last week, KC of several playoffs, and cincy in the home divisional game where instead of accepting a slow and steady death he makes some kind of move (not just in game, but in prior preparation) to change his focus to doing what had to be done with who he has on the team to get allen the ball back so he can continue to make the greatest plays anyone has ever seen from an NFL QB, even if it means allowing more frequent deep passes. his tendency to sort of desperation dial up poor blitzes and last ditch coverage changes as a half measure while still being crippled by his fear of players making mental errors forcing him to start aj klien over a talented dorian williams has ended at least 3 pristine chances at a super bowl in the past several seasons of allen's record run at QB. he can't win them all, but he must win one, and soon, or else he's simply the modern shottenhiemer who's playing for a good loss to the champion.

Bills 37 Lions 27

the proof, to me, from watching the rams loss was what the offenses had to do to score. the bills had allen run around, buy time, scramble and make guys miss, make hero throws and scan the field all day to see who might get open. we also had a few balls hit the ground on miscommunication. stafford just had to stand still as no one was near him, and throw (great throws for sure) to the open man, or the wr ready for a screen, or do the lil jet sweep thing, and it ate us up. this is also the case for all of the above mentioned playoff losses. allen plays on his head, the other team just executes the plays as written, and we fold on D. I suppose it is possible that the bills have simply made the worst roster decisions for years on d, and have signed slow small weak wood players to contracts they don't deserve, and that mcd has magically coached these crippled losers into at least statistically being a top flight D, but that's even worse and would mean we need the gm and hc to be replaced by people with some idea. mcd has this season and the playoffs to show he's got some way to improve.

we have some pure athletes in the back end, williams, bishop, and elam, but mcd's scheme is too complicated for them, or he's too much of a picky peter for them to get burn. he's gotta go to war with the army he's got. milano is not back, williams was a monster (he slowed down a bit when he hurt his knee, but i think he's fine now), bishop was trash with a couple huge mistakes but he can learn to fix that, hamlin can't learn to be an athlete like bishop is, and elam is our fastest and most athletic corner with good man skills. they have to take their lumps rotating in williams and milano and playing bishop and elam (on rotation is fine) to get them up to speed vs all these crummy offenses we blow out so that we have some kind of answer vs a team like the rams. if you want results you haven't gotten you need to do things you haven't done, and the anti mcd brigade (I'm a member) just think he's too stubborn to realize this.

I'm meh on black licorice, i am a fan of Hawaiian pizza tho. lil ham bacon and pineapple, maybe hot peppers if it's a spicy night.

The reality is our d was trash, d line was woat, and rams had a day. the bills just don't like to get out of their base shell nickel d. the reason why almost 80% of rams passing was to those two guys, mostly out of the slot, was because the saw they could exploit what we were doing on d with them, and we didn't make a change. that's the mcd way, he doesn't like to make changes to impact specific players on the other team, and that's why we get torched when we can't get pressure and the other team can find open guys underneath the deeper coverage, be it cover 2, 1, or 3. its like mcd has sold his soul to stop the deep pass. it makes scoring against the bills hard, but when someone can square the circle and exploit the d front with power running or accurate passing (honestly, misdirection is the real culprit) then we get boat raced like we did sunday and in playoff losses.

i know people don't like it, but i love the all red's

kick those knees up pennstate10, let's work!

the solution for our DL is the same as it is for offensive playmaker -- we need a great DL player. A great player makes players around him better because of his impact. Oliver is the picture of a guy who can never do that. Von was a guy like that many years and two knees ago. I'm ambivalent between DT or DE, we just need someone on the DL who is so disruptive and skilled that it changes how the whole unit is blocked. Maybe Crosby is available for a 1st and one of our seconds in the off season? We need a stud in the stable.

you know, that's a great point. we lost the turnover battle if you consider a blocked punt a TO (i do) and especially since they just got it back for a TD. if we only allowed a FG after they got the ball back, we might have won the game with a lead the whole 4th quarter. If the bills d gets zero TOs, they are trash. sadly, that's the reality of it. the good part is russ, lamar, and mahomes love to turn it over. the bad part is a well oiled on time O like the rams or detroit just exposes everything we lack on D. I kinda feel like the d and mcd and babbich know the pooped the bed and need to show out next sunday

mcdermot is all about hard working and smart guys, he loves that. he loves milano and bernard and aj klien and high motor DL who run stuff down, and corners and safeties who diagnose and communicate. the problem is, he loves them to a fault. bishop was hot trash his couple games when he played for injured starters, but he's an athletic marvel, as is elam, and similarly williams. having guys line up far back and run so much means we need guys who can run all day, which generally means guys who are less big and less explosive, and the rams knew that and figured out how to get the second level to go the wrong way for a step and bait our hard charging DL over and over, somewhat similar to what baltimore did, except baltimore did it with power and the rams did it timing and stafford dropping dimes. i really hope mcd and babbich figure something out, because their scheme was great vs kc. i think we are too heavy game script dependent. with the greatest qb of all time on the team, you should not plan to get a lead and grind and hope the other team makes mistakes, that is what the colts did and their d was similar and only won a chip when that one safety caught fire between injuries and just super charged their d. mcd's scheme can work but he needs a chaos machine on the DL like "the kraken" was, who can single handedly just beat people in front of him and disrupt runs and passes. ultimately our guys are a bit over fit to his overly specific scheme, and thus elam, bishop, and williams just can't be worked in to the d to do what they do well, because everyone on our d has to do so many different things and with the line just bolting up the pitch all day, a step or two at LB or db spells disaster vs a high quality qb. im still on my if he wins it all he's here as long as he wants, and if he gets his pants taken down and spanked on d in the playoffs again he's gotta go. with ja17 and especially with him and that line we have on o, we need a d that has a chance to get stops vs top flight opponents.

I hope you are right, douglas has really been struggling lately. I think McD is like most coaches where he simply has no time for mental mistakes, and Elam (along w Williams) tend to make those kinds of mistakes rather than just being slow or unathletic. part of that is his complicated scheme in the back end. every time we see elam play we see him make some kind of mistake, either being grabby, or gambling and losing. we've also seen him make just crazy clutch athletic plays getting breakups and interceptions. our d had a total lack of juice all game yesterday. let's hope elam gives us some vs detroit.

McClap honestly has his guys, and his guys get burn over people who are not his guys. we saw this with aj klien over williams vs kc in the playoffs, and we saw this last week and this week w Milano playing. Milano doesn't look ready to my eyes.

you are right, but this particular game was a bit special. the rams have the best pressure rate in the nfl. they've not been good vs the run. on running downs their coaches smoked our coaches with the rock paper scissors game. they knew what we were trying to do and just consistently mashed it up. on passing downs, they barely ever got to allen, and let him buy tons of time over and over. some of that was them doing a containment rush and playing coverage deep, but an other big part of that is the refs let offensive holding go a whole lot more than they called it. we tend to notice it more when it doesn't get called vs our guys, but even on the replay on the long RB pass TD, hollis just grabbed the hell out of the guys collar he was "blocking". when our d is not creative, does not play stunts and games upfront, does not disguise coverage, and does not threaten some kind of effective blitz or dog, we get less turnovers and we kind of fall apart. To me when our team isn't playing d with confidence we see what we saw. clutching and grabbing in teh secondary, biting on play action, etc. also, our d tries to cover every blade of grass on the field from multiple formations, so they need to communicate. milano being super rusty doesn't help that. babich (presuming mcd gives him enough rope) got caught out vs baltimore and just never recovered. same thing happened yesterday. my silver lining is that we got the super man josh game but d and coaching collapse game out of the way before the playoffs. we really seem to have these more often on the road than at home, so if we fluke into the 1 seed by kc finally losing these tough games and us running the table from here on out that should help.

no, we have seen the bills D just choke, put in what are the statistical worst games, or bottom 10, of the year in the playoffs. not of our team for the year, but of all teams in all games for the year, that's like 270ish games and in the playoffs we have had bottom 10 and lower of 270 total games in the year, just like we did vs the rams. it's not that the d is consistently bad, it's that they are shockingly bad vs good teams in high importance games. if our d was bad but not terrible vs the rams, if our special teams were bad but not terrible vs the rams, if our coaches had the same awful game plans there but didn't make such goofy choices, we win or at least have a much better chance too. that's our criticism, not that we lose to good teams, but that the d lays a game just so so out of type, so far below what they've done before, in these high profile games that even allen LITERALLY MAKING HISTORY with spectacular performances is not enough to overcome awful D, awful special teams, and awful coaching. our last two losses in the playoffs to KC were exactly that. we did the stupid kick off vs kc w 13 seconds left, taking no time off the clock while we were kicking it 3 yards short and stuffing guys before the 25 (old kick off rules) all year. our d collapsed hard and played sidelines vs a team w 3 time outs. that's sub 13 year old playing madden coching. last year, our d made one single stop when mcdermott was forced to take human corpse aj klien off the field and allow our 3rd round rookie to actually play, and we had a really nifty fake punt w damar hamlin which gave the ball away, similar trash to the 12 men denver fg, the 13 second kick, and the punt block last night. mcd has never once had an efficient stable defensive performance in a big game vs a non bottom seeded team in the playoffs. not one time. he is not usually efficient when it counts, he is consistently terrible -- and terrible beyond the frame of our injuries or how our d tends to play, terrible at a statistically bottom performance for the entire year of all teams.