How would Buffalo perform with Kirk Cousins?

[DrDawkinstein]

22 hours ago, uticaclub said:

Wild card team instead of a division team, and losing in blowouts in the playoffs instead of close games.

 

Even with Cousins, the Bills still have the best QB in the division. Still our division.

 

Playoffs, you're probably right, are still a mess since a change of QB wont solve our playoff defensive woes.

[Mikie2times]

15 minutes ago, GoBills808 said:

I'm well aware that was what I said, if you think that's inconsistent enough to discredit the argument then so be it. Defense can play poorly for stretches of a particular season and still be SB quality overall in my eyes.

 

As far as the 2024 team goes yes I think it's a weak roster. But the OP was talking about the course of several seasons if im not mistaken. There is no need to pretend we haven't had enough talent to perform at championship level on at least one side of the ball the last 4years

 

 

 

Our defense is like the option in college football. It's good enough to make average teams look really bad. It completely folds as the competition rises. Perhaps that's McD as many have pointed out, perhaps we just don't have the talent as we play better teams. 

 

If you run a query on playoff performance dating dating back to 2000 Buffalo's defense has the 27th rated EPA out of every team that played in the postseason. Since 2019 in the regular season we have the 5th rated EPA defense. We should at least consider that we overestimate our talent based on the performance we see in the regular season. Our system is set up to destroy teams that abandon the run and without a QB like Allen that would no longer be the case. I do think Cousins on Buffalo would field a competitive team but it would expose a lot of warts that people don't see as a result of his impact on both sides of the ball. 

 

Look at where we fall since 2000 in the divisional round or later. 

 

Edited June 19 by Mikie2times

[GoBills808]

10 minutes ago, Mikie2times said:

 

Our defense is like the option in college football. It's good enough to make average teams look really bad. It completely folds as the competition rises. Perhaps that's McD as many have pointed out, perhaps we just don't have the talent as we play better teams. 

 

If you run a query on playoff performance dating dating back to 2000 Buffalo's defense has the 27th rated EPA out of every team that played in the postseason. Since 2019 in the regular season we have the 5th rated EPA defense. We should at least consider that we overestimate our talent based on the performance we see in the regular season. Our system is set up to destroy teams that abandon the run and without a QB like Allen that would no longer be the case. I do think Cousins on Buffalo would field a competitive team but it would expose a lot of warts that people don't see as a result of his impact on both sides of the ball. 

 

Look at where we fall since 2000 in the divisional round or later. 

 

Is there any other team in the league that has such divergent regular season/postseason results? And we want to chalk that up to a lack of talent of all things?

[Mikie2times]

16 minutes ago, GoBills808 said:

Is there any other team in the league that has such divergent regular season/postseason results? And we want to chalk that up to a lack of talent of all things?

I mean, we subscribe to the theory that McD just craps himself in the postseason. Which I'm still more aligned with. But to me it's not a huge leap to think a Top 3 QB and an elite front running defense can have incredible success against average teams in a horrible division and hit a wall against better competition. 

[Magox]

Josh probably wins you  1 1/12 to 2 more games a year over Cousins.

[HappyDays]

1 hour ago, Mikie2times said:

If you run a query on playoff performance dating dating back to 2000 Buffalo's defense has the 27th rated EPA out of every team that played in the postseason. Since 2019 in the regular season we have the 5th rated EPA defense. We should at least consider that we overestimate our talent based on the performance we see in the regular season. Our system is set up to destroy teams that abandon the run and without a QB like Allen that would no longer be the case.

 

One obvious counter to this is our performance against the Chiefs in the regular season versus our performance against the Chiefs in the playoffs. Each of the three seasons that we have faced them in both, our defense was much much better in the regular season game than the playoff game. Even the regular season game we lost to them in 2020 was not a complete slaughter like the AFCCG game was, and of course we beat them in the regular season in 2021 and 2023. The discrepancy is a bit baffling to be honest. But it shows that the roster has been good enough to beat them. It appears to be just repeated coaching mistakes killing us in the playoffs against them IMO.

[BillsFanForever19]

Not great, in my opinion. We don't always have the greatest weapons and so many of our games are pulled out by Josh playing hero ball, putting the team on his back, and literally scratching and crawling for first downs to stay alive.

 

Cousins isn't doing that and can't do that. The answer is probably somewhere in the middle of where Tyrod Taylor could take the Bills and where Josh takes the Bills.

[Scott7975]

On 6/18/2024 at 6:07 PM, DapperCam said:

I think the Bills would have a slightly worse regular season record and probably a much worse playoff record.

 

Cousins is a really good QB, but doesn’t have Allen’s ability to pull a drive out of his butt with the game on the line.

 

This says it for me. I think Cousins is good but to me its like one of those QBs that makes you pay for them because they are good, but not good enough to get you there.  He is like Dak Prescott, Alex Smith, Tua, etc.  Ones you can't really cut because they win games.  Ones you kinda have to pay but don't really want to.

[L Ron Burgundy]

On 6/18/2024 at 5:30 PM, Mikie2times said:

Would the Bills be a much different team than the Vikings the last few years if we swapped QB's? 

 

I started thinking the other day "what if Josh got hurt". We would be done I thought. I considered if that meant anything. That from my perspective we had no ability to support the loss of Allen when perhaps other teams sort of could. Bengals, Vikings, stayed in the playoff radar all year last season. Flacco took the Browns to the playoffs. Others stayed in the mix more so than I would expect Buffalo to. 

 

I decided to move the goal posts. What if it wasn't Josh, what if it was, I don't know, Kirk Cousins?  Then what happens....

 

So not a back up but what the NFL feels is an above average QB.  So would Buffalo be as good as Minnesota has been with Kirk Cousins as a starting QB?  Again, I don't think they would. I think we could get to a wild card game but our ceiling would be no higher than the Vikings and in my opinion it would actually be lower. 

 

Curious what peoples thoughts are on this and if that says anything to them about the strength/development of our roster?

I think we'd be bad.  No playoffs.   We rely on Josh too much.

[Mikie2times]

1 hour ago, HappyDays said:

 

One obvious counter to this is our performance against the Chiefs in the regular season versus our performance against the Chiefs in the playoffs. Each of the three seasons that we have faced them in both, our defense was much much better in the regular season game than the playoff game. Even the regular season game we lost to them in 2020 was not a complete slaughter like the AFCCG game was, and of course we beat them in the regular season in 2021 and 2023. The discrepancy is a bit baffling to be honest. But it shows that the roster has been good enough to beat them. It appears to be just repeated coaching mistakes killing us in the playoffs against them IMO.

It is confusing. Sort of the round peg in a square whole to most "theories". It very well could be situational or strategic in some ways. Maybe Reid doesn't go into his bag of tricks in our regular season match ups. Several of those games took place prior to the bye when the KC machine didn't fully take off. Even last year they were hardly in rhythm when we played. Not like we were either, but I would certainly rather they not be. 

 

I will break it down at some point but if you looks at both the regular season and playoffs it almost as straight forward as us performing against bad teams and not performing against good ones, especially on the defensive side. The Bengals have done whatever they want. The Colts did whatever they want. Both did so in postseason and regular season. Our dominance has come against awful offenses . Which maybe that's true for everybody? But I don't believe that's enough to label us talented. 

 

This is just our performance last year. Look at this cesspool of QB's. If we added 10+ EPA it was tagged Excellent, if we lost 10 EPA it was tagged bad.  Every QB with a pulse is tagged bad besides Dak and Baker, and I doubt Dak has a pulse on the road. 

 

Zac Wilson x2  Excellent x1

Sam Howell    Excellent

Bailey Zappe Excellent 

 

Mac Jones   Bad

Trevor Lawrence Bad

Joe Burrow Bad

Mahomes x2 Bad x1

 

Tyrod Taylor

Baker Mayfield

Russel Wilson

Dac

Easton Stick

Tua x2

Mason Rudolph

Jimmy G 

[CincyBillsFan]

5 hours ago, GoBills808 said:

Despite what @CincyBillsFanreads into this it's not a knock on Allen at all to suggest our playoff results wouldn't be dramatically different w Cousins. We'd still end up losing, just by more points

I disagree:

 

*  We don't make it to the AFC championship game in 2020 to lose o the Chiefs because with Cousins at QB we likely lose to the Colts in round one.

 

*  After barely getting by NE in round one of the 2021 playoffs KC blows us out in round 2 - no 13 seconds with Cousins at the helm. Hell we might not have even won the division as I doubt Cousins gets the late season win in NE to lock up the East.

 

*  I doubt the Bills win their division in either 2022 or 2023 with Cousins at QB.  Both seasons required late season prime time victories over Miami to win the division. These are the games that Cousins has largely sucked in. 

 

 

[TBBills Fan]

Superbowl!

[Billl]

4 hours ago, DrDawkinstein said:

 

Even with Cousins, the Bills still have the best QB in the division. Still our division.

 

Playoffs, you're probably right, are still a mess since a change of QB wont solve our playoff defensive woes.

What’s different in the playoffs with Cousins on the team versus Josh?  They still win against the Ravens in 2020, NE in 2021, Miami in 2022, and Pittsburgh in 2023.  They still lose to Cincinnati and Kansas City each time.  The only games that might have flipped is if Buffalo beats the Texans with Cousins in 2019 and/or loses to the Colts in 2020.  

Edited June 20 by Billl

[WNYFAN1]

On 6/18/2024 at 6:11 PM, uticaclub said:

Wild card team instead of a division team, and losing in blowouts in the playoffs instead of close games.

So pretty much the same result

[Big Turk]

We wouldn't have made the playoffs 3 out of the last 5 years.

[RyanC883]

On 6/18/2024 at 6:11 PM, uticaclub said:

Wild card team instead of a division team, and losing in blowouts in the playoffs instead of close games.

 

on paper I get the idea we are a wild card team, but I'm still not sure who beats us in the AFCE these last few years.  Cousins is still the best QB in the division w/o a healthy Rodgers.  I think we win the division and lose in the 1st round.  

[uticaclub]

3 minutes ago, RyanC883 said:

 

on paper I get the idea we are a wild card team, but I'm still not sure who beats us in the AFCE these last few years.  Cousins is still the best QB in the division w/o a healthy Rodgers.  I think we win the division and lose in the 1st round.  

Dolphins might have won it last year.  Us and the Pats flip spots in 2021. 

[Don Otreply]

As long as everyone participates in Kirk’s little prayer circles…, everything would be fine…, 😂🤣😆

[CincyBillsFan]

18 hours ago, Billl said:

What’s different in the playoffs with Cousins on the team versus Josh?  They still win against the Ravens in 2020, NE in 2021, Miami in 2022, and Pittsburgh in 2023.  They still lose to Cincinnati and Kansas City each time.  The only games that might have flipped is if Buffalo beats the Texans with Cousins in 2019 and/or loses to the Colts in 2020.  

With more talent around him on offense then Allen has had the last couple of years Cousins lost to the Giants in Minnesota in the first round of the playoffs. So what makes you think Cousins would have led the Bills to any playoff wins?

 

 

 

58 minutes ago, uticaclub said:

Dolphins might have won it last year.  Us and the Pats flip spots in 2021. 

I also don't think Cousins rallies the Bills in that 4th quarter snowstorm to beat the Dolphins in 2022 to win the division.

[Thurman#1]

On 6/20/2024 at 3:41 AM, GoBills808 said:

wrong

 

he's done it three out of the four last seasons

 

 

Well, I've made mistakes before, maybe this is yet another. I'm very willing to believe that I've made another or that we're in some way talking past each other.

 

The way I see it, on both ESPN and NFL Football Reference ...

 

Last year Josh had 29 passing TDs and 15 running TDs, totalling 44. Which is superb, but not above 50.

In 2022 he had 35 passing TDs and 7 rushing TDs, totalling 42.

In 2021 he had 36 passing TDs and 6 rushing TDs, totalling 42.

In 2020 he had 37 passing TDs and 8 rushing TDs, totalling 45. None of those are over 50.

 

Oh, wait, are you throwing in playoffs? Ah, maybe that's what you're doing here. I was honestly bumfuzzled about how our figures could be different. If that's what you're doing, it's pretty questionable. Playoff stats are considered separately, at least unless you go out of your way to say that you're looking at both. 

 

Combining those two means you can't reasonably compare the guy's total stats with the stats of most of the league 'cause you're allowing your guy more games.

 

Maybe you're talking about something else? 

 

In any case, he's not totalled 50 passing and rushing TDs any of the last four seasons. Seasons are 17 games long. 

 

Well, we can agree that Allen's terrific.