When healthy: we were the best team in the league.

[Success]

21 minutes ago, BullBuchanan said:

Happy to help.

It's pretty simple: The Ravens, Chiefs and 49ers all boasted elite defenses in every phase. When the Bills faced top defenses this year, they often struggled (Jets, Chiefs, Patriots, ), they also had success against top defenses in the Steelers, Raiders, Cowboys, but only the Cowboys were though to be in the upper end of defenses. The Ravens, 49ers and Chiefs (who eliminated us) were all cream of the crop.

I'm not saying the Bills would lose by 20, but I could absolutely see a loss by 10+ to the 49ers, or even the ravens, in a game where the Bills were never really in a position to win. I know it feels good to think "oh we were a play away from beating KC" or whatever, but that's why they're stacking Lombardi's, while Josh is working on his short game. Despite the small difference in scores, there's a chasm of difference between the top teams in the league and where the Bills are now.

I think if you run a simulation from the division round forward 100 times, I'd be shocked if the Bills win out more than 5-6 times. They just aren't built to go deep and they never have been. We'll be running it back once again this year and you guys will get all excited when they win 11-12 games, and you'll be so disappointed and shocked when we get dropped out early in the playoffs. I won't be. I've seen how champions have been built the last 20 and especially the last 10 years.

You go all-in or you go home.

 

A "chasm?"

 

You're obviously entitled to your opinion, but I'd characterize it as overly negative.

 

If we made it to the SB, which we could have if Chris Jones got to Allen a half second later, chances are we would have had Bernard, Spector & Benford back, as well as a healthier Douglas. I'm probably missing someone, too.

 

It would have been a great game against the Niners, that I'd give us a 50% chance of winning (at minimum).  I mean, we beat the champs in the regular, and the divisional loss was a very winnable game.  I can't really comprehend the idea that there is some sort of "chasm" between us & the contenders.

 

EDIT:  I did miss some guys - we would have likely had Rapp & Davis back for the SB also.

 

 

 

Edited February 21 by Success

[BullBuchanan]

2 hours ago, Success said:

 

A "chasm?"

 

You're obviously entitled to your opinion, but I'd characterize it as overly negative.

 

If we made it to the SB, which we could have if Chris Jones got to Allen a half second later, chances are we would have had Bernard, Spector & Benford back, as well as a healthier Douglas. I'm probably missing someone, too.

 

It would have been a great game against the Niners, that I'd give us a 50% chance of winning (at minimum).  I mean, we beat the champs in the regular, and the divisional loss was a very winnable game.  I can't really comprehend the idea that there is some sort of "chasm" between us & the contenders.

 

EDIT:  I did miss some guys - we would have likely had Rapp & Davis back for the SB also.

 

 

 

None of those players, outside of maybe Douglas is the kind of difference maker we'd need to win a Super Bowl. That's the problem. When I say there's a chasm of difference it's because Bernard isn't Warner, Spector isn't Greenlaw, Davis isn't Aiyuk or Samuel, Rapp isn't anywhere near as good as their top 2 safeties.

It's not that the elite teams have one elite guy we can just go out and get, it's that most of their players are better than ours which makes it really tough to overcome.

Every time you play Kansas City, you do so knowing you're playing the best QB and Tight End in the sport and there's nothing you can do about that. You can't get better than them from a talent perspective. They also happen to have a top 3 coach of all time that as an offensive playcaller can dismantle the best defenses in the game. So what do you do?

[Mikie2times]

54 minutes ago, BullBuchanan said:

None of those players, outside of maybe Douglas is the kind of difference maker we'd need to win a Super Bowl. That's the problem. When I say there's a chasm of difference it's because Bernard isn't Warner, Spector isn't Greenlaw, Davis isn't Aiyuk or Samuel, Rapp isn't anywhere near as good as their top 2 safeties.

It's not that the elite teams have one elite guy we can just go out and get, it's that most of their players are better than ours which makes it really tough to overcome.

Every time you play Kansas City, you do so knowing you're playing the best QB and Tight End in the sport and there's nothing you can do about that. You can't get better than them from a talent perspective. They also happen to have a top 3 coach of all time that as an offensive playcaller can dismantle the best defenses in the game. So what do you do?

This

[Sweats]

I honestly think KC and the Bills are fairly evenly matched on the field, however, where the Bills are lacking is coaching.

It seems that KC gameplans each and every week for every opponent, whereas the Bills, kinda look like, "well, it worked for the past 3 weeks, so let's keep going with it" attitude/style. 

You can see the coaching from both teams is miles apart. KC looks like they do their homework every week and Buffalo looks like they waited till the last minute to complete their school project, then just whipped together some twigs and glue, realized it would never work, then just went with the old "my dog ate my homework" excuse.

 

The excuses are getting stale, tiresome, boring....there is zero accountability from the top on down.

I don't want to hear excuses about injuries, when every team gets them over the course of the season and every team deals with it and it seems that no other franchise hangs their hat on the injury excuse quite like Buffalo Bills fans.

 

I have spoken.

 

[ChronicAndKnuckles]

On 2/18/2024 at 5:48 PM, Success said:

 

He also said that Beane hasn't built a Super Bowl-caliber roster yet.  Which I disagreed with, as his team - which is clearly SB caliber, as they won it - barely squeaked by a very beat-up Bills team in the playoffs.  I mean, if Diggs makes that catch, it's a very different game.  If Chris Jones gets there a half second later, it's a different game.  We were right there w/ KC - so how were we not SB caliber?

 

And I'd disagree a bit on superstars.  Diggs is a superstar.  I don't think he was healthy down the stretch.  Kincaid is a superstar in the making.  We have one of the better pass rushes in the league.  Our O-line is as good as it has been in the JA era.  Cook is easily a top 5 RB.

 

EDIT:  I completely forgot to add how much I enjoy KC fans coming here and Chiefsplaining to us why our team isn't good enough.

 

Exactly. How many “superstars” did New England have all those years ? Randy Moss of course and Vince Wilfork. Wes Welker if you count slot receiver as its own position. I’d rather have a team loaded w/ very good players and a couple elite ones at important positions like QB/DT/WR. 

[beebe]

17 hours ago, The Red King said:

 

They slowed down KC well enough in the regular season.  Remind me who covered Kelce in that playoff game?  You think our healthy starting D would have been ripped up even half as bad?

 

The people on this forum have convinced themselves that Klein did horrible on Kelce. It's not even remotely true. 

 

Kelce caught five passes for the game, tied for the fewest playoff catches in the Mahomes era. 

 

Kelce's catches vs Bills:

• Catch #1 (1st quarter, 6:45 left): Kelce beat Klein downfield for 16 yard gain. 
• Catch #2 (2nd quarter, 12:15 left): Kelce beat Klein downfield for 28 yard gain.
• Catch #3 (2nd quarter, 3:33 left): Kelce caught 22-yard TD pass on blown coverage (Poyer, Johnson, Hyde). Klein was nowhere near the play and was actually on the other side of the field. 
• Catch #4 (3rd quarter, 11:49 left): Kelce caught 3-yard TD pass, perfectly blocked screen pass, clearing out Johnson, Rousseau and Jackson, with Klein nearly coming over to make the play short of the goal line.
• Catch #5 (3rd quarter, 2:45 left): Kelce catches 6-yard pass with Poyer isolated against him in coverage.

Kelce caught exactly two passes against Klein, both in the first half, and Kelce caught just one pass the final 26+ minutes of the game. The busted coverage that was the combined effort of three vets in the Bills secondary was far more damaging than the two catches Klein allowed against Kelce. The bigger issue in this game was MVS (!!) beating Taron Johnson one-on-one downfield and then catching a pass between Hyde and Douglas downfield later in the game; and the Bills' entirely healthy D-Line generating zero sacks.

[LABILLBACKER]

15 minutes ago, beebe said:

 

The people on this forum have convinced themselves that Klein did horrible on Kelce. It's not even remotely true. 

 

Kelce caught five passes for the game, tied for the fewest playoff catches in the Mahomes era. 

 

Kelce's catches vs Bills:

• Catch #1 (1st quarter, 6:45 left): Kelce beat Klein downfield for 16 yard gain. 
• Catch #2 (2nd quarter, 12:15 left): Kelce beat Klein downfield for 28 yard gain.
• Catch #3 (2nd quarter, 3:33 left): Kelce caught 22-yard TD pass on blown coverage (Poyer, Johnson, Hyde). Klein was nowhere near the play and was actually on the other side of the field. 
• Catch #4 (3rd quarter, 11:49 left): Kelce caught 3-yard TD pass, perfectly blocked screen pass, clearing out Johnson, Rousseau and Jackson, with Klein nearly coming over to make the play short of the goal line.
• Catch #5 (3rd quarter, 2:45 left): Kelce catches 6-yard pass with Poyer isolated against him in coverage.

Kelce caught exactly two passes against Klein, both in the first half, and Kelce caught just one pass the final 26+ minutes of the game. The busted coverage that was the combined effort of three vets in the Bills secondary was far more damaging than the two catches Klein allowed against Kelce. The bigger issue in this game was MVS (!!) beating Taron Johnson one-on-one downfield and then catching a pass between Hyde and Douglas downfield later in the game; and the Bills' entirely healthy D-Line generating zero sacks.

Listen, our D line never generates pressure in the playoffs.  It's a disturbing anomaly dating back to the Houston game.  Klein being old, rusty and basically unprepared didn't help. But there were defensive breakdowns all over the D that day. Let's face it everyone,  Andy is just worlds better than Sean in scheming.  And that's not likely ever going to change. 

[FilthyBeast]

It's always hypothetical if/when/but/etc with this team.

 

If we would have had a competent coach that understood the game wasn't over with 13 seconds left on the clock in the playoffs apparently the Bills would have won the superbowl in 2021 despite the fact that the Bengals and Rams would still have been left to play.

 

If we magically had a 100% healthy roster the last 2 years in the playoffs we would have also won the superbowl, despite the fact that there is probably no team in NFL history that has won a championship under those circumstances including the Chiefs who were without several key players, including an all pro guard in the AFFCG and SB.

 

But to the point of this thread, no this was not the best team in the NFL if most of the players in question weren't injured. We've seen a 100% healthy milano and white in the playoffs and they've done absolutely nothing against the Chiefs too just like all the other paper tigers this year in the postseason sans JA17.

[14774]

Woulda's, coulda's and shoulda's = Buffalo's legacy. 🤦‍♂️

[ShakAttack]

It’s funny how each off-season fans talk about how they can’t wait to get x, y and z back. This was the same thing before last season even started. What makes anyone think that next season we aren’t going to lose a few important starters at some point? Most teams do. Yes, we did have it worse than most these past couple of seasons due to the fact injuries would accumulate at the same position groups making them harder to overcome, but we can’t just assume the starters at the beginning of the year will be the starters at the end of the year, because they won’t. 
 

there is only one Kansas City (aka teams that do not lose critical pieces at critical stages of the season)

[SaulGoodman]

5 minutes ago, BobBelcher said:

It’s funny how each off-season fans talk about how they can’t wait to get x, y and z back. This was the same thing before last season even started. What makes anyone think that next season we aren’t going to lose a few important starters at some point? Most teams do. Yes, we did have it worse than most these past couple of seasons due to the fact injuries would accumulate at the same position groups making them harder to overcome, but we can’t just assume the starters at the beginning of the year will be the starters at the end of the year, because they won’t. 
 

there is only one Kansas City (aka teams that do not lose critical pieces at critical stages of the season)

 

If that were true, KC would probably have another SB victory. Probably wouldn't have been sweating at the end of the AFCC last year either if they hadn't been down Sneed, Gay and 4 of their 5 best WRs, with a limping QB. 

[The Red King]

I think extremism is the issue in this thread.

 

* No, injuries were not the only thing wrong with the Bills.  It's wrong to say that the team was perfectly fine and would have easily gone undefeated w/o injuries.

 

* It is, however, equally ignorant to say that those injuries were a "non-factor" that all teams had to deal with.  Buffalo had a lot of key injuries, and came into that KC game decimated in comparison.

[T master]

On 2/18/2024 at 4:29 PM, Success said:

The Jets game was just weird.  The season opener, Rodgers getting hurt early, Allen kind of falling apart.  But after that, we tore through September.  Allen was firing on all cylinders, and the defense was as good as I've seen in the McDermott era.  It was smothering, aggressive, flying to the ball.  Man, was that D good.

 

Our D when we faced KC at the end was a shell of that D.

 

Every team has to deal with injuries.  No doubt.  But seriously, who dealt w/ more, and which team was clearly impacted by losses? We lost Hines & Damien Harris before things really started.  Then, in one fell swoop, we lost Milano, Tre & Jones.  Arguably the top 3 guys on our defense.  Then we lose Benford, Rapp, Spector and Bernard, the latter of whom had picked up the slack in ways that were completely unexpected. So excited to see him AND Milano on the field this coming season.

 

It wasn't just that we had to navigate the playoffs without quite a few of our best players. Even some of the guys playing, like Rasul Douglas, were clearly playing hurt and less effective.

 

People always say the same thing:  "excuses, excuses."  To which I respond:  "reality."  If KC had the extent of injuries we had, and we were as healthy as they were, I have no issue saying that there isn't a snowball's chance in hell they would beat us.  

 

 

But - But - But - It's all that dam McD's fault he's just a terrible HC just ask some here they will tell us !!! 

[akinko_kd]

The reason for the similar situation two years in a row is probably not just a coincidental factor.
Perhaps too small or not young enough.

 

Taron Johnson's repeated concussions were concerning.
Maybe more 3LB are needed to avoid his damage buildup.

[FilthyBeast]

19 hours ago, BobBelcher said:

It’s funny how each off-season fans talk about how they can’t wait to get x, y and z back. This was the same thing before last season even started. What makes anyone think that next season we aren’t going to lose a few important starters at some point? Most teams do. Yes, we did have it worse than most these past couple of seasons due to the fact injuries would accumulate at the same position groups making them harder to overcome, but we can’t just assume the starters at the beginning of the year will be the starters at the end of the year, because they won’t. 
 

there is only one Kansas City (aka teams that do not lose critical pieces at critical stages of the season)

 

This is just it, regardless what this 53 man roster looks like heading into the start of next season....there's likely going to be key injuries again in terms of both season ending and short term variety. It's just the way things work.

 

And I don't dispute the fact that this team has been unlucky in that area in recent years, but maybe it's time to look at the training staff as one solution. But to the best of my knowledge they haven't changed anything on that front.

 

Also regarding the Chiefs, I've pointed this out and agree....but they did lose Joe Thuney for the AFCCG and Superbowl (a big time injury) and obviously that didn't stop them from being the first team in 20 years to repeat as world champs.

[ShakAttack]

4 hours ago, FilthyBeast said:

 

This is just it, regardless what this 53 man roster looks like heading into the start of next season....there's likely going to be key injuries again in terms of both season ending and short term variety. It's just the way things work.

 

And I don't dispute the fact that this team has been unlucky in that area in recent years, but maybe it's time to look at the training staff as one solution. But to the best of my knowledge they haven't changed anything on that front.

 

Also regarding the Chiefs, I've pointed this out and agree....but they did lose Joe Thuney for the AFCCG and Superbowl (a big time injury) and obviously that didn't stop them from being the first team in 20 years to repeat as world champs.

 

Very true, regarding Thuney.  At the same time, I have always felt that teams can overcome one major injury, but when it is multiple starters, it becomes insurmountable.

 

Look at it this way.  Yes, they were out Thuney, and Omenihu (who technically is not their starter).

 

But the Bills in contrast (only naming starters):

 

Tredavious White

Matt Milano

Christian Benford

Terrell Bernard

Gabe Davis

Rasul Douglas (was playing, but should not have been due to injury. Honestly, we may have been better off with Elam. He has picked off Mahomes once, after all)

 

Every single one of those guys was extremely valuable to the Bills and were sorely missed vs KC.  That includes Gabe Davis, considering Sherfield's abysmal play in that game.

[T master]

On 2/18/2024 at 6:15 PM, LABILLBACKER said:

Milano going down was catastrophic.  He's basically our only true All Pro player on our defense. Tre & DQ going down again paired with Von never stepping up destroyed the season. Even the 6 game winning streak was riddled with close calls against weaker opponents. The only way we can pass Cincy or KC in the playoffs is with a fully healthy defense. If the gang can find a strength & conditioning team to minimize injuries this fall, sky's the limit. Bernard paired with Matt is collasal.  Still have my doubts about our front 4 pressure?  It's critical we get out week 1 on a great start. And draft Josh new weapons.

 

A Bills fan that get's it ! Thank you sir you have restored my faith in Bills fans to know the difference of what is staring us all right in the face rather than blaming the coach .. 

[Teddy KGB]

What is this nonsense 

 

these guys lost to Mac Jones and were lucky to beat Tyrod 🫣🫣

[Andrew Son]

38 minutes ago, Teddy KGB said:

What is this nonsense 

 

these guys lost to Mac Jones and were lucky to beat Tyrod 🫣🫣

Weren’t those games without Milano, White, DaQuan, and Von?

 

Our D simply was incredibly decimated.

[Sweats]

On 2/21/2024 at 11:07 PM, The Red King said:

I think extremism is the issue in this thread.

 

* No, injuries were not the only thing wrong with the Bills.  It's wrong to say that the team was perfectly fine and would have easily gone undefeated w/o injuries.

 

* It is, however, equally ignorant to say that those injuries were a "non-factor" that all teams had to deal with.  Buffalo had a lot of key injuries, and came into that KC game decimated in comparison.

 

 

 

 

Let's put this into perspective, shall we?

Yes, we had alot of injuries on D.

Yes, we could not beat KC this past playoffs. Our D couldn't stop Mahomo allllllllll day. KC moved the ball at will up and down the field, while we made zero adjustments to compensate.....however, it was actually not our D that lost the game, if you can believe that.

 

If our O could have milked the clock in the final 5 minutes of the 4th, like most teams would have done, we could have come away with the win....i'm confident of that. It was actually our O on the field, not our injury plagued D in the final 5 minutes that just couldn't get it done.

 

Sure, injuries on our D can create the issue of us losing the game, however, when it was our O on the field at the end of the game who couldn't get it done, then.......what else ya got?

I'm not buying what youre selling.