Drunken thoughts after the game

[Special K]

Dude you need to cut your losses WRT Evans.

 

0 rec 0 yds 0 TDs in today's blowout against Pitt.

+1

 

 

You are right, he is wrong, and drunk or not, he will never admit it.

[Nanker]

I think it was a combination of the fact that the Chiefs are not that good, and the Bills, if they do what they need to, are way better than people think.

 

The Edwards/Wanny defense, not a 3-4, not a 4-3, is a revelation. Barnett is way better than Poz, only because half the plays are pass plays.

 

Bryan Scott had a great game too.

 

It's the 3.5-3.5 Defense. The new secret weapon. :p34r:

[Beerball]

Exactly. They played great for them. It's foolish to say they played great. Fitz was unbelievable in this game. His pre-snap reads are great. He decides where he is going to go with it and he throws it immediately. There are better QBs in this league than Fitz that would be way worse than Fitz on this team. He's pretty much the perfect QB for it, outside of the true studs. Even a guy like, say, Philip Rivers, who is known and regarded as a very good QB in this league, for good reason, I don't think would be any better than Fitz is on this team. We have a bunch of weapons, but he has no time. he just makes quick decisions and gets the ball out and is fearless.

 

That TD pass to Donald Jones was extraordinary. Watch the replay from behind the line.

Yes it was extraordinary. I'm not sure which line you're referring to, but I liked the view from behind the defense. Chandler all 7'11" of him was camped out at the goal line and Jones came around behind him. There's no way the defender saw the ball coming, but I don't know how Fitz saw it either. Perfectly thrown ball and great anticipation. FWIW Fitz had the #1 rating in ESPNs new QB grading system.

 

What really surprised me about that play...Chandler didn't take a swipe at the ball as it whistled past. It was fairly close to him and with his wingspan he could have at least gotten close to it, sure glad he left it alone.

 

Who ever said Evans was the Ravens #1 receiver? They have this Boldin guy you know.

 

Not bad for a drunken purge, Kelly. I'd love to see Byrd play like this all year...three or four big tackles for us in the 1st quarter alone.

3rd down stop in the first quarter was big.

[Chandler#81]

Totally agree with your synopsis of the QB and OL and it pretty much aligns with what I've been arguing for years now - good QB play makes pass protection look better than it is. People are saying the OL played great. IDK, they were not bad and they were better than I thought. But that's about as much as I'm willing to give them. I mean watch the 2nd Chandler TD - if that's any other Bills QB in the last 10 years you're looking at a sack and potentially a game-changing fumble and everyone is screaming bloody murder about how horrible our line is and my personal favorite "Joe Montana would get killed behind this line" posts.

 

IMO, you're all drunk. The OL run blocking was excellent, including down field blocks. This makes Pass protection better because we had a balanced attack. Chiefs didn't know what to expect. As for 'the other' Chandler, his 2nd TD was the result of a major blitz no OL would stop. The safety assigned to him came on the Blitz and Fitzy threw to the wide open guy.

 

Go ahead, keep slammin' the OLine..

[BuffOrange]

IMO, you're all drunk. The OL run blocking was excellent, including down field blocks. This makes Pass protection better because we had a balanced attack. Chiefs didn't know what to expect. As for 'the other' Chandler, his 2nd TD was the result of a major blitz no OL would stop. The safety assigned to him came on the Blitz and Fitzy threw to the wide open guy.

 

Go ahead, keep slammin' the OLine..

 

You're completely missing the point. You may be right about the QB and not the OL being responsible for the extra blitzer. I don't pretend to be Ron Jaworski and anyone here who does is kidding themselves. My point is that wouldn't stop everyone from blaming the OL if Fitz had held on to the ball an extra split second - I've seen it dozens and dozens of times, at which point I'm the one defending the OL, who everyone else is "slammin".

[Kelly the Dog]

More sober but not sobering thoughts on the game...

 

Unsung hero of the game? McIntyre (along with Shep). What does he do? Probably make the play of the game on the opening KO, causing the fumble, with Shep recovering. How about that for the first play of your career. It completely and immediately took the fans out of the game and instantly put the momentum in our favor which we never gave up. I still think we would have won this game, and maybe handily, without that play. But it also could have been much different had we not made it. Good hit, good recovery.

 

CJ obviously didn't have a good game but he also didn't have hardly any chance. It wasn't as though he was hesitating, he was pounced on immediately. And for everyone that says he needs to just take what he can get and not just try to bounce things outside, that's exactly what he did on his TD run. It's just the kind of runner he is. Freddy is surely our #1 guy, and deservedly so. He was and is awesome. But CJ will be an important cog. IMO, he will average over 4 YPC this year, but it will likely be a lot more of the 8 yards on one and 0 on another, rather than a consistent 4 per touch like Freddy. I do think he is going to start to hit some homeruns but we will have to see. He needs holes. Freddy had a couple but not many. CJ had none.

 

The offense was great, no question, and we really didn't even use all our weapons. Brad Smith only played a handful of plays, and I think Chan held him back only because the regular stuff was clicking so well. Roscoe didn't get involved much, but again, to me it was Fitz's excellent pre-snap reading and knowing where he wanted to go with it. Fans and coaches often harp on a QBs ability to go through progressions as the primary indicator of his ability to read defenses, but on this team, Fitz's pre-snap reads are more important. He doesn't have time to go through progressions. He makes one quick decision and fires. It was in evidence on almost every play yesterday.

 

Merriman was a factor, and a big one, even without putting up stats. I think, however, that his shoulder was not only hurting him but the coaches didn't ask him to just do everything to get to the passer like they will in other games. They looked to stop the run first, and they looked to just contain Cassel because he didn't appear to be able to beat us.

 

Stevie Johnson continues to make circus catches and drop balls. I don't know if that will ever not be the case. But he's so good sometimes, that I'll live with the drops because he's spectacular and he scores TDs. He's very likely going to be a star, and yet will continue to drop passes. Gotta love the guy though.

 

On a similar vein, it kind of makes me laugh to hear people continually say that Fitz is not an accurate passer because there are 3-4 throws a game when he just blows it and throws ground balls or misfires. Yet, there are also 3-4 throws a game which are remarkably accurate into microscopic windows that he has no business throwing let alone completing. And no one in their right mind would blame him for not completing that pass. So, hypothetically, if he completed 3-4 more per game on the balls he should complete but threw incompletions on the 3-4 that he had no business completing would you say he was accurate? I think most would. He's plenty accurate, considering the time he has and the separation out receivers get, which overall is rather slight.

 

Kelsay had a decent game without doing much, as did Andra Davis. Our LBing is strong. We had to contain Charles and we did, despite his misleading YPC average.

 

Good thing Lindell can't kick the ball in the endzone, we really benefited from that fumble recovery on the opening KO.

 

The real story of the game, and maybe the real reason for optimism is exemplified by one play -- the Leonard Pope TD catch reversal. Even though he clearly did not catch that, earlier Bills teams would never have gotten that call. I don't know why, but it's true.

 

Donald Jones needs to learn how to time his jumps and keep his feet down.

 

A Williams looked good. I have no problem with him missing that INT although arguably he should have just batted it down. A CB needs to jump routes like that. The timing IMO will come with experience. He looks to be a very good player. As a team, we shut down a very good WR in Bowe. Breaston doesn't impress me much. The Chiefs have little besides Bowe and Charles (we'll see what baldwin brings when he plays but I'm not counting on it).

 

Props to Chan for having the team really prepared, the team had only the one turnover that didn't matter and few penalties.

 

Bring on the stinkin' Raiders.

Edited September 12, 2011 by Kelly the Fair and Balanced Dog