finn

The announcers have a narrative going already. Tough 49ers. They will just keep pounding. The Bills? Meh.

Did you notice that when Mahomes missed that deep pass the Al Michaels talks about how "they" missed deep and "they" have missed deep several times before? Not easy to keep the adulation going at times, but they sure work at it.

Yeah, but the sample size is too small to give real credit to Tua and Flacco. That puts Allen below only Newton as best in the league against the blitz. I notice that Allen is ninth best in bad-throw percentage. As someone here said, he's top ten or top eleven in pretty much every category you can think of, including, alas, percentage of passes dropped by his receivers. 😒

Or they could just be reading the usual narratives about Allen being inaccurate, inconsistent, wild, etc.

Getting Brown back this season--and finding a decent TE next season. I think the jury is in on Knox not being that guy. Same with three other long passes to Gabe. Remember the long bomb where he had to make a toe-touch dance to stay in? There was no one around him. And that other one down the right sideline--forgot which game--where it actually might have been a TD. And the long TD called back for (ob)Knox(ious') illegal shift--and actually a fourth, another TD, also called back for a penalty. He's been getting open deep all season long.

Are we sure "kicking" means punting? Maybe it means kicking the field goal instead. At least this season, I don't recall lamenting a punt at the 35-yard line or whatever, but Bass has attempted some very long field goals--and made most of them.

49ers are coming off a tough divisional game. It seems that is when let-down games happen, especially coming off a close win. But that's just my impression.

Defense trending up, special teams trending up, running game trending up (albeit in just one game), coaching looking good. If the passing game can regain its form--not too big an ask, at least when Smoke comes back--the Bills will be looking very good for the playoffs.

I could watch this all day.😁

Exactly. C'mon, the defense has played really well. It's the offense that's stumbling, especially the pass game.

I keep thinking of that fumble. Singletary had stopped running and it looked like he wanted to complain or something, holding the ball loosely. If the Bills lose, he's one of the key goats. (But I don't think they will lose.)

I agree; they're doing fine. 14 points against one of the best offenses is pretty good shooting.

Herbert is so calm back there, even when pursued. Pretty impressive for a rookie. I don't understand why our receivers aren't getting open--or why Allen isn't seeing them.

I don't understand why they play Winters. How could he be much worse? His side of the line is a turnstile.

I apologize, Bojo.

Going back to that third-down stuff, I'm surprised they didn't pick up on that in their self-study. Third and one means a qb keeper in a big percentage of the cases.

Every...single...time.

Wow. So much for defensive adjustments during the bye.

If I were the network pitching this game, I would stress that these two quarterbacks are the biggest stories of the 2020 season, apart from Covid. Allen has improved like pretty much no other quarterback ever, and Herbert has started better than pretty much any quarterback ever. The upside of both is immense. As good as Watson and Prescott are, neither is likely to improve dramatically. Allen and Herbert could. I think Murray and Jackson will fade like all the run-first qb's before them, and the big three in the next ten years will be Mahomes, Allen and Herbert.

Right. With McDermott saying Morse was "in the mix" and "putting the team first," it seemed like he was thinking Feliciano at center, with (I suppose) Ford and WInters at guard. If that was the case, he had to change his plans. You got to trust their judgment, but it sure looks from here that Morse at center and Feliciano/Boettger at guard is the better lineup. At least Boettger had two good games (NE and Seattle); Winters at his best has been mediocre.

Yeah, but that's just now, at this point in their respective careers. Both should improve, but Allen's trajectory is a lot steeper. No one ever says it, but Allen might well end up better than Mahomes in the long haul. I for one am glad we have Allen. Have you noticed how Mahomes reacts when his teammates mess up? After he threw that interception in the last Raiders game, he peevishly gestured that his receiver should have come back from the ball, throwing him under the bus in front of a national audience and taking himself off the hook at the same time. Do you see Allen doing anything like that? Plus, I like Allen's heart and ferocious will to win. I think history will show the Bills made the right choice.

I'm in the minority, but I never thought Jackson would be a long-term star. I would take him off your list, along with Mayfield, who is already turning out to be mediocre. But Watson is the real thing, along with Burrow and Herbert. Too early to tell about Tua. Both Carr and Tannehill are really good. I'm biased, of course, but I think Mahomes and Allen will turn out to be a cut above all of them. But you're right: The best young QBs are concentrated in the AFC.

What do these lists mean, anyway? I mean, sure, the Chiefs are better than the Jets, but are the Steelers better than the Colts or the Packers better than the Bills? If you look closely, the rankings are just silly. Team A might be better than Team B but worse than Team C, and so on. If you just have to rank (and it is fun), the most accurate means I can think of would be to match one team at a time against all the other teams and imagine them playing ten games in a neutral stadium. For example, if the Bills played the Cardinals ten times, I think the Bills would win six. So they're better and should be ranked above them. Any ranking could only be understood in terms of that one team. In this exercise, I have the Bills behind considerably behind the Chiefs and Saints, slightly behind the Steelers and Titans, about even with the Rams, Packers and Seahawks, slightly ahead of the Bucs, Cardinals and Colts, and considerably ahead of every other team. But you can't conclude they're the fifth best team or even tied for the fifth best, because matchups of other teams would yield different results. All you could meaningfully say is that the Bills are mostly likely in the second rank of teams (i.e., 5-8), without being able to say exactly which other teams would also be in the top two ranks.

It's hard to argue with stats, but I expect the Bills will improve quite a bit in the stretch run. They needed to bye to get healthy and work on their weaknesses, particularly running and stopping the run. If they can do one of these, they'll win at least three of the next six. If they do both, they could win five or six. Of the two, I have more faith they're more likely to figure out how to stop the run, with Klein coming on, Edwards returning to form, and the coaches figuring out something with the weak one-technique position. Maybe Harrison is finally healthy enough to contribute. I'm less optimistic about the run game, although Cody Ford combining with Dawkins gives me hope. I worry that the coaches think Boettger is the answer at guard and that Winters is anything more than a warm body.

Depends who you mean by "we." There were reasons why he was the last of the six qb's taken in the first round.