Low Positive

This article is hindsight at it's best. 363 yards of offense should be enough to win a football game. The Bills also had more total yards more first downs same yards per play better third-down conversion rate fewer sacks allowed (Bills sacked Maye 4 times) fewer punts Yes, the Pats had slightly more passing yards, but the Bills had a bunch more rushing yards. If they stopped the Bills offense, then we stopped theirs even more. I know it didn't feel like it at the time, but that's what the stats and game fiim tell you. The more I keep watching the game film, the more I realize that it was a close game that the Bills lost because of two completely unforced fumbles and stupid pre-snap penalties. Erase either one of those, and they win a close division game. In fact, erase that stopid TE end around fumble, and the Bills might win going away because who knows what happens if the Bills go up 7-0 after forcing a punt on the opening drive. In fact, the Bills were moving the ball on both their opening drives, but fumbles and penalties, not the Pats defense, stopped them. But because Joe B has a weeks worth of long-form content to create from one game, we get BS like this. Sorry, but I'm starting to get exhausted by people looking for, and drawing, absolute conclusions from a game that was won because one team made completely preventable mistakes. The only takeaway from this game should be that the Pats are a good team now, and the Bills can't play sloppy football and expect to win anymore. That's it! BTW, I hope Palmer is running laps today because of that idiotic illegal procedure penalty in the first quarter. That killed a drive, all because he can't line up right. Completely inexcusable.

I agree with all that. No one on here talked about it because we're a bunch of old men, but my son told me that the new "mature" Diggs went live on IG after the game to gloat. Pats coaches stopped him after a few seconds, but he's still the same petty dude.

it's not like we've been cruising to division titles. Remember, just two years ago, the Dolphins led the division for the majority of the season until we beat them in week 18.

There is some truth to that, but we all also suffer from BBFS. And part of that is undervaluing our own players and overvaluing other teams players. Take a player like Ed Oliver. If the Bills had never drafted him and he was a Raven, half this board would get a warning from @simon in a non-Bills game thread for asking "why can't the Bills have a player like that?" every time he made a play. But put a Bills helmet on him, and everyone thinks he is average at best. All of those feelings used to be valid because for almost 20 years, this franchise felt like a joke. We hired guys like Buddy Nix, and we go fed "cash to the cap," and had guys retire at halftime. We had a coach quit! Not retire, but outright quit!. That never happens. Guys like Drew Bledsoe, Marshawn Lynch, and Stephon Gilmore couldn't wait to get out of this backwater on the fringes of the league. Now, this is a well-run NFL franchise that players want to play for. But that perception of ineptness is set in stone for most of us. It's hard to get past. Sorry for all the philosophizing, but I have been thinking about this lately when I realize that my non-Bills fan friends have a much better opinion of Beane and McDermott than I do. BTW, the Bengals fans I know would trade their all-world WRs for our OL in a second. Sometimes we lose sight of the fact that the team is pretty good in the trenches, and that goes a long way in determining games.

This place is always bad after a loss. But this one was especially hard because of who it was to. It also didn't help that Diggs was the one who did the damage. Most of us have been waiting for the Bills to suck again for the past 6 years, and losing to the Patriots with 3 turnovers takes us right back to 2012. Losing to the Pats just feels like a regression to the mean. Those feelings will never go away unless the Bills win a Super Bowl. For what it's worth, my most depressing theory is that the killer wasn't 13 seconds. It was being unprepared to play in the 2020/2021 AFC Championship game. We were the surprise team of the season and one win from the Super Bowl. Then they came out and looked like they didn't belong. We've been chasing that tail ever sense.

Only one QB had a big passing day against us. The problem is that one of them did it in the last game, so it feels like everyone has been carving us up.

Folks, this is not baseball or hockey. You can’t remake a roster midseason. You can tweak, but no NFL team makes multiple impactful moves at the deadline.

Making the playoffs are not a given. There have been two years during this run when they had to end the season on a 6-7 game winning streak just to get in. Remember that game when they almost got beat by Easton Stick in LA? That would have ended that season. How about when it took a Matt Ryan meltdown in Orchard Park just to get the chance to lose in 13 seconds? The Playoffs are not a given, especially with another good team in the division. The Bills need to get focused.

The Bills killed a lot of teams last year with pretty much the same dudes. And in fact, Philly didn’t steamroll everyone. The only teams they destroyed in the regular season were the Bengals, Cowboys, and Giants. They really didn’t start rolling until the NFC Championship Game. Heck of a time to find your A game.

You would have felt the same way last year if you were a Philly fan. The Eagles went 2-2 before their week 5 bye. and in three of those four games failed to reach 24 points. They actually lost 33-16 in Tampa going into that bye. Must have been a fun two weeks on Philly sports talk radio.

Sorry. I’m just tired of people making arguments on here that they think are correct but that are not.

He hasn't been any good since the NFL closed the loophole that allowed his WRs to be running full-speed at the snap like it was a Roughriders - Roughriders game.

Did someone say foot?

I agree with you, but just to set the record straight I wouldn't call Tre's 1 year, 3 million contract "meaningful" in the 2025 NFL.

But you have to have some defense. Last year, Joe Burrow had 4,918 passing yards, 43TDs, and only 9 INTs, and his team missed the playoffs. Their offense was insane and they kept losing high-scoring games because their defense was as bad as their offense was good. I get that you can win by leaning into the offense, but there is a limit. And that limit is probably giving up 44 points to Russell Wilson and the Steelers at home.

The problem is that you don't just need a #1. Any team with a #1 also has to have a very good #1b or #2. Like Higgins in Cinncinnati, Addison in Minnesota, or Smith in Philadelphia. It's too easy for defenses to take one guy away. That's why the Jags spent all that capital to get Hunter even though they hit on BTJ the year before.

Tell that to the great Howie Roseman.

My back-of-the-napkin math has that at ~42 million cap hit to have two low-round rookie QBs.

And I don't know why. The Texans also play a base 4-2-5 defense and play even more zone coverage than the Bills. It's not like Poona Ford, who has done better as a NT in a 3-4 on both LA teams. (for the record, I had to look up all this info on other teams' base defenses.)

Well, it doesn't sound like he was in favor of it. Just like he wasn't in favor of drafting Sanders. Haslem makes decisions on his own.

Wow. Stefanski wasn't consulted and said that the "Joe trade" took him by surprise. [Yakov Smirnoff voice] What a franchise [/Yakov Smirnoff voice]. https://www.si.com/nfl/browns-kevin-stefanski-shedeur-sanders-will-back-up-dillon-gabriel

Or they demanded that Russ allow Skyline to sell a "Dangeruss Spicy 3-Way," and Cierra said no.

Our Strategy was to take away Maye's #1 option in Hunter Henry and stop the run. They did that pretty well. Unfortunately, that opened things up for Diggs. As a fan, that was the worst possible outcome.

This times 1000. It's like on hockey boards when a great player like Austin Matthews scores an amazing goal, and everyone analyzes the Sabres' defense to find out who missed their assignment. Sometimes the other guys make great plays.