Post-game thoughts after a disappointing loss

[LeGOATski]

1 minute ago, purple haze said:

Bengals have a better team wherever the game would be played.  Both lines getting beaten up had nothing to do with weather.  But folks gotta search for reasons, especially when the loss is still fresh.

 

 

Yeah, the Bengals execution and coaching were much better today.

 

Historically, light snow has never been an issue. Wind or heavy precip would've been an actual issue for both teams today, but this was not such a day.

[Mark92]

Has Frazier been fired yet?? No. I'll check back later

[Billz4ever]

2 hours ago, Logic said:

I'm just gonna get my thoughts out about this painful loss before I take some time away from this forum. It takes me a while to get over season ending losses, so I'm gonna take a break for a bit, and I'll be back for free agency and draft season. Until then...

Right now, I'm not angry, I'm just really disappointed. What a painful way for this season to end. After a season in which the Bills only ever really beat themselves and lost just three games by a combined eight points, the Bills picked a hell of a time to get thoroughly dominated on both sides of the ball. This loss is so disappointing, so painful, exactly for that reason: because the Bills were just thoroughly and absolutely dominated. This game was never really close. The Bills never really had a chance. With as talented a team as they are -- that was a really painful and deflating way for the season to end.

As Brandon Beane is fond of saying, playoff losses show you where you're NOT as a football team. They show you where you're lacking. Well, what did today's loss show us?

 

To start with, this was a total team loss. No one unit or coach or player is solely to blame. From the front office, to the coaching staff, to the players, everyone shares the blame for this loss. 

If you want to understand the main reason the Bills lost the game, just look at the battles in the trenches. The Bills were outclassed convincingly on both the offensive and defensive lines. This is a failure of the front office -- Yes, of Brandon Beane, who we all love. So much draft capital and money spent on the defensive line, and they couldn't even SNIFF Burrow today. Yes, Jones and Miller were out, but that's no excuse. The Bills still boasted multiple 1st round players on the d-line. Couldn't stop the run, couldn't pressure the passer. Absolute domination. The front office also deserves blame for the mediocre-at-best offensive line they trotted out there this season, which was soundly beaten multiple times by Cincinnati defensive linemen. Brandon Beane needs to take a long hard look this offseason at the offensive line and yes, somehow, again, at the defensive line.

Next up we have the coaches. It is hard to conclude anything other than this: The Bills offensive and defensive coaching staffs were BOTH outcoached today. The offense lacked creativity, rhythm, reason. The defense -- which, yes, was without some key players -- looked absolutely toothless. When you boast defensive minds like Sean McDermott and Leslie Frazier, getting out-schemed and beaten as badly as they were today by the Cincy offense simply should never happen -- injured players or not. Today saw total failures of coaching on both sides of the ball.

Lastly, the players deserve blame. For as much as I can say about the personnel and the coaching, at the end of the day, it's up to the players to make the plays. The offensive linemen got whipped all day. The defensive linemen got driven off the ball all day. The corners and linebackers had multiple coverage mixups. The receivers dropped passes. The quarterback missed open receivers or went big play hunting at inopportune times -- again. 

The bottom line is this: Despite a season with many highs and many great moments and a 13-3 record, all of the Bills' season-long deficiencies caught up with them today. The sky is not falling, and the Bills are likely to be playoff and title contenders for years to come. But unless they want to exist a Groundhog's Day of painful yearly playoff exits, they're going to have to take a long, hard look in the mirror, and figure out a way to fix the multiple things that ail them. 

Personnel, coaching, execution in big moments, all of it needs to be better. It was a hell of a season, and I'm proud of the Bills for weathering an insane amount of adversity to make it to the Divisional round of the playoffs. But that's not enough for me, and I know it's not enough for the players and coaches either. It's up to them to figure out how to make sure it doesn't happen again in 2023.

Excellent post.  I don't even have anything to add.  You said it all.  Enjoy your break and time to decompress from this.

[purple haze]

1 minute ago, LeGOATski said:

Yeah, the Bengals execution and coaching were much better today.

 

Historically, light snow has never been an issue. Wind or heavy precip would've been an actual issue for both teams today, but this was not such a day.

Have to get better up front.  Have to.  Beane should focus on the O-line first.  So many resources already spent on the D-line.

[LeGOATski]

1 minute ago, Scott7975 said:

 

Their team has big tough guys.  Our team has finesse type smurfs.  

 

I'm not going to argue with you all night.  This isnt the first game we lost due to bad weather.  This isnt the 90's Bills with an amazing run game that can play well when the passing game isnt there.  They dont even have the o line of the 90s.  We have a bunch or revolving door slack asses.  This team is not built for weather.  This team is build to throw the ball all over the field.  Thats what Josh and this team excell at.  They dont excell at the run game.  They dont excell at dink and dunk.

Based on what exactly? Are you looking at their heights and weights? What stats are you looking at?

 

You can just say the Bills were out coached and out executed and the weather had nothing to do with it. 

 

It's okay for you to just say that.

[LeGOATski]

Just now, purple haze said:

Have to get better up front.  Have to.  Beane should focus on the O-line first.  So many resources already spent on the D-line.

Yep, offense offense offense. They need stars. It's an offensive league.

 

They keep losing to offensive juggernauts in the playoffs.

[Billz4ever]

2 hours ago, Big Turk said:

I just think they were spent. They looked spent. They looked flat and they looked like the tank was on E. 

 

People may say otherwise but based on the accumulation of things week after week to overcome, at some point you just have nothing left to give.

 

I can't be mad at them. They went thru so much this year, probably more than any team in history when you look at everything combined.

 

Hamlin is OK, that's good enough for me. 

 

They need to sort things out, figure out what they are going to do and come up with ways to overcome their shortcomings which look far bigger than they did at the start of the season right now.

Honestly, I'm glad we lost this game.  Once we got into the 3rd quarter and it became pretty clear to me there was not going to be a dramatic comeback, I accepted it and was thankful we didn't have to deal with the hype of the KC game where we'd have to live with getting bounced by KC again and this time, the narrative would be that it was by a hobbled Mahomes...or even worse, somehow manage to survive KC, advance to the SB and then be staring at the Bills 5th loss after getting crushed by SF or Philly.

 

This was a crazy season and the hype was real since the end of last season. This was probably the most hopeful year for Bills fans since the 4 in a row trips.  As the season went on and Von went down, I just had that feeling this team wasn't going to be good enough this year.  Turns out, I was right.

Edited January 23, 2023 by Billz4ever

[SectionC3]

8 minutes ago, Mark92 said:

Has Frazier been fired yet?? No. I'll check back later

I’m more worried about getting the OC a new job.  There’s a temptation to say that we screwed up letting Daboll leave after 13 seconds.  But this year was one thing after another with Tops,  Araiza, snowstorm #1, the Tre white drama, the Miller injury, snowstorm #2, the frigidity in Chicago, and the the Hamlin crisis.  I think they were gassed, and McD deserves credit for getting them this far in view of all of the adversity.  
 

That said, I’m done with Dorsey.  I heard during the year that certain people in the building thought he was in over his head.  It sort of makes sense now.   Everything seemed forced in the second of the year.  We cannot waste another year of Josh/Diggs with this BS.  

[Nextmanup]

2 hours ago, MAJBobby said:

So glad they got run out of the stadium if they were losing. Exposes how bad the construction of this team is. Need a real OL, Real WR2  protect Josh and Give Josh weapons. We have the worst Weapons group in the playoffs this year and one of the worst OLs. Stop spending All you premier assets in Defense. They are irrelevant in the Modern NFL when facing a top end Offense.

This entire post is the best thing I've read here today/tonight.

 

Having a defensive coordinator masquerading as your head coach is always going to be a problem, however.  He is ALWAYS going to be D first.  It's just how he thinks and what's in his blood.

 

You'll notice all other teams playing this weekend are coached by offensive guys!

 

 

[Norcalbillsfan]

19 minutes ago, LeGOATski said:

Yeah, the Bengals execution and coaching were much better today.

 

Historically, light snow has never been an issue. Wind or heavy precip would've been an actual issue for both teams today, but this was not such a day.

Heavy wind and rain would have been worse for the bills. The Bengals run game destroyed us. We had no run game, would have been a blood bath.

[LeGOATski]

1 minute ago, Norcalbillsfan said:

Heavy wind and rain would have been worse for the bills. The Bengals run game destroyed us. We had no run game, would have been a blood bath.

And they would've destroyed us in a dome too. It wasn't weather related. The Bengals O line and D line were playing in the same conditions as the Bills O line and D line.

[Scott7975]

23 minutes ago, LeGOATski said:

Yeah, the Bengals execution and coaching were much better today.

 

Historically, light snow has never been an issue. Wind or heavy precip would've been an actual issue for both teams today, but this was not such a day.

 

So their run game picking up like 10 yards a clip with 3rd string linement vs ours picking up like 2 yards a clip with all of our starters was just coaching?  I dont think so. Its ok to admit weather slows down our offense.

[LeGOATski]

1 minute ago, Scott7975 said:

 

So their run game picking up like 10 yards a clip with 3rd string linement vs ours picking up like 2 yards a clip with all of our starters was just coaching?  I dont think so.

Yes. Better execution. Better coaching. They were playing in the same conditions. Their backup linemen didn't have some kind of magical weather advantage.

[Scott7975]

1 minute ago, LeGOATski said:

Yes. Better execution. Better coaching. They were playing in the same conditions. Their backup linemen didn't have some kind of magical weather advantage.

 

How do you know the execution didnt have anything to do with the weather?

[LeGOATski]

8 minutes ago, Scott7975 said:

 Its ok to admit weather slows down our offense.

What historical trends are you looking at that show weather slows down the Bills offense more than other offenses? This is paramount to your point.

[dakrider]

Bills beat KC in week 6 and then had their bye in week 7.  They just never seemed to come out after that with the same fire.  They were mostly beating inferior teams in a lot of close games.  Last year as some have mentioned, Bills seemed to pick it up the 2nd half of the Tampa Bay game and then looked really good to end the season. They just couldn't find that gear this year.

 

[Scott7975]

1 minute ago, LeGOATski said:

What historical trends are you looking at that show weather slows down the Bills offense more than other offenses? This is paramount to your point.

 

Pats game last season.  We lost because they ran the football and we couldn't pass the ball.  True or no?  Our offense was held to its lowest points of the season today true or no?  

 

Even if you come up with some theory that says both teams are affected exactly the same then its still not an advantage, which is what I said... there is no home field advantage.  This team is not built to play in crap weather.  That is a fact.  To play in crap weather then you need a good run game.  Im not talking running a few times a game and having a good YPC... im talking an actual good run game where you can pound the football like they did to us today.  This is why they were less affected by the weather than we were... because they COULD pound the rock which opened ***** up for their dink and dunk. We cant.

[BobbyC81]

I was originally going to respond to the OP with ‘’Ditto’ but changed my mind.  I also was so disappointed in this game that I was reluctant to come here today, but here I am.

 

As with probably all of you, if this had been a good game but the Bengals just made more big plays, I’d still be disappointed but not as much as I am now.  We go thru the year of free agency, the draft, minicamps, preseason with great hopes.  The regular season showed some warts but the team still went 13-3.  For the season to end this way, it’ll take a while to get over.

 

For some teams with Super Bowl aspirations, a game like this could cause them to go back to the drawing board.  I don’t know what this franchise will do.  Many of us have been critical of the soft zone defense with some hoping Frazier would get a head coaching job this off-season.  With today’s game being the most recent on his resume, I don’t see it happening.  So, unless he retires, resigns or  Pegula pressures Beane and McD for a fall guy, I don’t see him going anywhere.

 

Bottom line was this team did not look good enough today.

 

Silver lining: this team likely would have really gotten slaughtered in the Super Bowl.

 

Like the OP, time for a break from Bills football, and maybe football altogether.  I’ve watched every Super Bowl since V so it could be time to end my streak.  Out.

[CircleTheWagons99]

3rd Best team in the AFC. 

[LeGOATski]

1 minute ago, Scott7975 said:

 

How do you know the execution didnt have anything to do with the weather?

Because I saw no Daquan Jones to plug up the middle and Ed Oliver getting double teamed by a well schemed rushing attack. I saw zero stunts or disguised blitzes to confuse the Bengals O line. I saw zero press coverage or shallow zones to take away the quick passes. I saw plenty of missed tackles by the Bills and not as many by the Bengals. Everything being coaching/execution. 

 

There was no wind.

 

There was light flurries.

 

The Bills have put up huge games before in those same conditions.

 

So what historical trends are you seeing that point to a big weather disadvantage for the Bills?