Thurman#1

There's nothing to this. They showed the catch over and over again. It was interesting and probably not a catch anyway.

When you have your hand all the way around the DL's back, you're going to draw calls. In any case, the reffing wasn't the problem. The Bills offense in particular not playing well enough to make the ref's calls irrelevant was the problem. Look at Dawkins' clothesline there. Wasn't called. Somehow nobody mentions the ones we get away with.

Different holds look different. Look above you for Folz's excellent breakdown of what happened and how it must have looked to the ref. EEyowtch!

Looked pretty questionable for me, honestly. I thought he didn't. But I wasn't sure there was enough evidence to overturn.

Thing is, they really have NOT allowed offenses to gash them. The Jets scored 20. And seven of that 20 came from a drive that started from the Bills 19 due to a horrible Allen INT. The Pack scored 17. The defense put us in position to win. When the offense scored a decent amount we beat the Pack. When they scored 17 (17 PPG would make us 28th in scoring, ahead of Houston, LA Rams, Denver, Pittsburgh and Indy) we lost. And when the offense gets back to normal, Bills fans should be thrilled if opponents go with that game plan, especially when we get back Milano, Poyer, etc. The D certainly has had problems with the run for the last six quarters. And they have pretty much kicked butt against the run the rest of the year. We're 12th in defensive YPA allowed right now, and that's after the last two weeks. If these problems continue, it might be worth worrying. Not even close to the biggest problem right now.

Even the last six quarters they've been very far from bad. Very far. Not great, certainly. But plenty good enough to win both games and nearly all games, really. If opponents were moving the ball easily, they'd score a lot. They didn't, because they moved the ball easily sometimes and plenty of other times not. The problem simply hasn't been the D, though they haven't been playing at their best. And you can try to ignore points allowed and injuries. But they still count a lot.

Yeah. Unfortunately, this won't be a week when measured, thoughtful responses meet a lot of approval. And KC didn't win because they played especially well. They won because Malik Willis was starting at QB for the Titans.

No. They really weren't. The offense was the problem. The defense allowed 20 points. And seven of those 20 points came on a drive where the Jets got the ball on the Buffalo 19 yard line. How, you ask, did the Jets get the Ball on the Buffalo 19 yard line? Well, someone on the offense air-mailed the ball to Sauce Gardner at the Buffalo 35 and Gardner wasn't really near enough to anyone in a blue uniform when he caught the ball that anyone could get to him before he got to the 19. There was one main problem. That was the offense that only scored 17 points. You'll win very few games scoring 17 points and then on top of that giving the other team the ball at your 19 yard line on a horrible INT. Ask Josh Allen if that was true, he'll tell you. In fact, you don't need to ask, he already has told you. He knows that's true, and so should everyone else. Was the defense perfect? Hell, no. But they were good. The offense was not. Scoring 17 yourself, on top of handing your opponent the ball on your 19 yard line? That's a horrendous game by the offense. This was on them. Allen knows it. So should you, and everyone.

Ridiculous. Way way way too early to have even an educated opinion about the upside these guys might have. And Cook has been decent. So far this class looks solid, with Elam and Benford looking good, Shakir looking like a really good bargain and Cook looking OK and the others too early to have much of an opinion on.

That's a ridiculous argument when used about rookies. They're nearly all about can and will and not does. Particularly after the first round or so, but overall that's the way it goes. When either guy is out it hurts. The defense, without Milano, was good this week. They weren't the problem. And while Dodson plays OK, when Edmunds is out, the defense misses him. The 2021 Jets game when the Jets got about their season average in points and about 50 yards more than their average per game, the 2021 Colts debacle and the 2020 Miami game, all missed by Tremaine are all good examples of that.

Oh, come on. They really do not suck. They don't. They're 6-3. They beat the Fins, put 40 up on them. They're a good team, though the Bills certainly should have beat them. "The Bills have very little talent on defense outside of him and Diggs"? Dude, please. I get that after losses it's automatically overreaction Monday and Tuesday and every day, but take a chill pill or 17. You're right that Allen played badly, and so did the rest of the offense. They're still very damn good most weeks. They deserve a lot of criticism this week, "they have very little talent" is a wild overreaction, even if you throw out Allen and Diggs.

Jeez, I didn't think he was too tentative. Just pretty bad. Wish he'd been more tentative on a couple of those plays.

A missed opportunity, yes. 2021 more than 2020, IMO. A hot seat? Good grief, no. Not unless the locker room falls apart or something. Oh, God, yes!!! "Wrote Paul Zimmerman in Sports Illustrated's 1981 NFL preview, 'If Charley Romes intercepts the pass that bounces off his chest in the last few minutes of the playoff game against San Diego, then the Chargers don't score on the next play, and win the game. And Buffalo gets to play Oakland at home – where the Bills crushed the Raiders earlier in the season. And Buffalo's in the Super Bowl.'" From Wiki, but I remember him writing this and I so agreed.

"Only solid targeting option?" Simply not true. Only spectacular targeting option? Now that's more reasonable. But very few teams have two spectacular targeting options. Teams that only have one targeting option don't end up with QBs 4th in receiving yards. There are very very few teams with two genuine #1 WRs. There aren't many to go around. Most teams don't even have one. Again, this is simply what you find when a team has a great WR. They get a large percentage of their QB's yards. QBs tend to lean on really good WRs, because they're really good. It's how things work. We don't need better receiver options. We have an excellent shot at a championship still, though not if Allen plays as badly as he did today. Same for the whole offense, really. But they generally haven't played this badly. This doesn't need to be fixed. And Odell wouldn't "fix" it. He might improve things a bit, though. I'm certainly not against it, but it's not a need. It would be a luxury. It'll depend on his health and the money he wants. Davis isn't quite converting as many of his targets to catches as he usually does, though. My guess is he's still a bit gimpy. We'll see. The offense does need to play better, though, than they did today.

Allen has thrown for 2403 yards. He's thrown 34% of his yards to Diggs. That's lower than you find with most of the better WRs in the league. Hurts has thrown 35% of his yards to one guy, and they are 8-0. Stafford threw 39.8% of his to Kupp last year and they won a Super Bowl. Yes this was a bad game. No, this isn't anything horrible over the course of a season.

Nonsense. Davis 2 catches 23 yards says several things. None of them that. It's data from one game. It says things about that game. Allen had a really bad game. And Davis wasn't great either. Davis doesn't look like himself yet either. The offense isn't working well. Allen was responsible for a lot of that this game.

I'm with you. Unless Josh really has some kind of physical regression and just can't do the things he can do now, we'll be competitive every year. He's that good. I hear you. Fair enough. But Beane is much better than Miami's GM all those years. And me personally, I'm perfectly capable of enjoying the hell out of this season while speculating about the future at the same time.

Well, I don't know if it's been studied. But my guess is that parents not allowing their children to play, and teachers and coaches being aware of the risks, and kids also being aware of it are absolutely the biggest factors. With perhaps the popularity of video games being probably in the top five. But rates of soccer participation are going up. And even ingrained stuff changes. Boxing was huge a couple of generations ago. And I think it was precisely the risks that have caused such massive drops in the numbers for boxing. EDIT: Here's another possible reason. Sports specialization. These days kids often stick with one sport only. https://www.kare11.com/article/sports/state-of-football-why-is-participation-down/89-587419390

About the stuff that I highlighted in red above, that's not clearly true. Football has the highest concussion rate, with ice hockey second but very significantly below, and soccer far below. Football: 64 -76.8 Boys’ ice hockey: 54 Boys’ soccer: 19 – 19.2 https://headcasecompany.com/concussion_info/stats_on_concussions_sports Rugby, on the other hand, is actually slightly higher than football. There are a lot of different studies out there, and kids rates appear to be different from adult rates, and womens rates different from mens. Womens ice hockey appears to have quite high rates, generally a bit below football but not much below. (Weird since women's hockey is non-contact.) Not to mention that CTE appears to be more about persistent impact as it is about concussions. And that most consussion frequency numbers are about number of injuries per "Athlete Exposures" (meaning number of practices or games), and that far more athlete exposures come in football than in hockey (six players on ice at a time and generally smaller teams, often much smaller) than in football. In this study, they estimated that football caused 55,007 concussions among HS and collegiate athletes, boys soccer 20,929 and girl's soccer 29,167. Far fewer concussions per exposure in soccer, so probably a lot more players and exposures. It's still early days in studying this. There's still a lot we don't know. And we do know that a fairly low percentage of concussion actually get reported. Somewhere around half. But linking stuff like the risks of football and the risks of driving, as you do above, doesn't make a lot of sense. It's hard to get by in society for most Americans without driving. Certainly not impossible, and easier in some big cities than elsewhere, but it's not hard at all to get by in society without playing football. https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/15/health/concussion-high-school-sports-study/index.html https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2140075/ https://www.medstarhealth.org/news-and-publications/articles-and-research-reports/which-youth-sports-cause-the-most-concussions

Even in Florida and Texas, this is having an effect. "In 42 states, the number of players went down year-over-year. In 25 of those states, the number of football schools went down as well. In seven, the number of players declined even though the number of schools in the survey increased. "In the eight states, plus the District of Columbia, where participation was the same or increased, four of them (DC, Nevada, Texas, Vermont) had more schools playing as well. (The other states: Alabama, Colorado, Hawaii and Oregon.) "Texas is the No. 1 state for participation (of course), but its participation-per-school rate is dropping quickly. In 2016-17 it was 153.3; in 2017-18, 135.3; and in 2018-19, 125.6. Meaning, its growth is coming from more schools offering football, not more boys showing up to play at every school." https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobcook/2019/08/29/high-school-football-participation-is-on-a-decade-long-decline/?sh=5374993633de That means Florida has fewer players and Texas has fewer players per school (the state's population has gone from 20.04M to 29.5M in the years the study lasted, from 1999 to this year. So schools are increasing as are student populations, but players per school are going down.)

What would he do if FanDuel called and said they'd cancel? Boy, that's a poser, Major. Um, He'd find another sponsor. The reason they paid him is he's worth it. He has millions of regular viewers. That's worth money to advertisers. Which is why FanDuel paid him. Oh, and yeah, the NFL sure did "chew them up and spit them out." You really were right on target there when you say "McAfee was no different." The NFL just abjectly apologized and backed down. It may well have been a mistake made further down the chain that the higher-ups didn't know about. McAfee put sunlight on the decision and all of a sudden, things change. The NFL doesn't like bad publicity any more than most big fat profitable corporations do. And McAfee is in a position to generate a lot of bad publicity, and we see what happens.

Yeah, I lived in northern VA for about six or seven years after college. Got several buddies who will be very happy about this.

If he sells, the game of football will be better off.

I like Eisen, very watchable. But he sometimes gets too excited, and if he said that, he clearly was having one of those moments.

We're the best team. But balls bounce funny. Teams get bad calls and bad breaks. Injuries happen. It's pretty frequent for even dominant teams to lose one of the three or four playoff games. Look at the 16-0 Pats. They didn't beat themselves. They just lost the game. But I wouldn't trade our team for any other at this point. Anyone saying that is using the word "elite" incorrectly. But in fairness, he might be a top ten guy now. Good news for the Fins.