Thurman#1

How is he going to better anticipate his opponents strategy when it's week one and when the opponent totally switches the strategy they've used for years. When you always expect your opponent to switch things up, you'll be wrong most of the time. Most teams make small changes, occasionally bigger. It's not possible to correctly predict big changes any more than very occasionally. Expecting Daboll to correctly anticipate what the Steelers were going to do is ridiculous. What you hope your coaches do is perceive and adapt. Easier said than done, but it's far more possible than correctly anticipating major changes in strategy, especially in week one. That's where blame should be applied. I hear you, but watching the eyes is what defenses do. Nearly always. And Allen does a good job these days in looking them off. But yeah, pressure always makes things tough. For any QB.

Sure, there are advantages and disadvantages to deactivating anybody. That includes Moss. But deactivating him didn't create problems that were a serious part of losing this game. Nobody was injured. Nobody wasn't fresh. The Steelers had done all their game planning before knowing Moss wouldn't play. And yeah, the Steelers game plan was based on our not making significant changes to the pass game. So were the game plans of the 13 teams we beat in the regular season last year and the two we beat in the playoffs. We make changes each game. We did for this one. When they adjust to this, it might involve running a bit more. But it won't involve running so much that we wear down front fours. And teams have tried to wear out Cam Heyward and TJ Watt before. It hasn't worked. They handle it. They're great players and they're in good shape. But it does take the ball out of the hands of your quarterback, which in our case means taking it out of Josh Allen's hands, not something we'll want to do a lot of. Wouldn't mind them running a bit more. I've said so in several threads. Wouldn't have turned this game around, though. And like you, I would love to see them go back up to last year's levels of play action (which worked great last year even without us running a lot). But no, we're not going to turn into a run-heavy team. Wouldn't make sense.

They're perfectly capable of pounding the rock with Singletary. Moss is better, but Singletary runs through the middle productively all the time. Hell, he did it in this game. The problem wasn't who they sat, it was the plays they called, and that the Steelers had a terrific game plan to handle our passing game. And that our OL couldn't handle the Steelers 4-man rush. Of course they didn't start the game with 15 runs. We've been successful passing. We were successful passing against the Steelers. The game AFTER someone does what PIttsburgh did is the game you consider running more and crossing things up.

Interesting. I especially like when he says Pittsburgh knew Buffalo's rules. Other teams were watching. We'll have to make some changes. The way to beat that was for Beasley to fake inside and go long down the sideline. But the Steelers knew that's not the way his rules run on plays like that.

Yes, agreed, and the Steelers really did play damn well. Wonder if Roethlisberger's arm will wear down as the year goes along, as it did last year.

Certainly we missed some opportunities. More on offense than defense. But missed opportunities happen in every game. The other teams make some plays and humans aren't perfect so we miss opportunities. You'll never eliminat them but you have to minimize them.

Next year, we have about $20M left on the cap. $20.39M, to be specific. (Spotrac) 23rd in the league. We are not going to be able to do much about bringing in FAs next year. If those three guys you mentioned, (and it's an if, especially with Star), are off the team, we would soar all the way up to $24.6M. That would vault us all the way up from 23rd to, oh, um, still 23rd. And if they're gone, those three, they would need to replace probably two of the three if they carry one less DL next year. Beane has shown he's an intelligent handler of cap, conservative and he will keep money available for the future. But the COVID cap cuts came at the worst possible time for this team, leaving us with little money to work with in the last two years before Josh's major cap hits start.

I politely disagree. There's not much to analyze there, not when you're only able to look at five games, and they went 3-2 in those games. That's as close to no pattern as you can get in five games without having a tie involved. You're right the Jets were involved, but that only means that there's even less useful data. You can only play who you're scheduled. We lost two of the first three, when we were a bad team in the process of a rebuild. Won two of the last three when we're a good team. No real info there. We did what we were expected to do up until this year.

Singletary's a very good back. Not a bell cow, but he can be a #1 back, which is why he is one and why he was one his rookie year as well. And you're exaggerating about his catch percentage. His two seasons he's never averaged below 70%. Totalled around 72.9, and improved last year to 76%. Daying he will probably catch 60 - 75% is misleading. It's true, but actually he will probably catch 70 - 75%, which isn't awful, though it's not great either. If he wasn't a threat he wouldn't have killed them on those two runs late, and he wouldn't have averaged 6.5 YPC, and he wouldn't be averaging 4.8 YPC for his career.

Quick question ... how many people run 25 times a game consistently. Answer: nobody. Nobody runs 25 times regularly. Last year's carries leader was Derrick Henry with 23.15. And he had more than 60 carries more than the next hardest-worked RB. You're living in the '70s. Alright, it happened more recently than that, but that's not how things go today. If you're asking whether we win last week if we run him that much, no, I don't think so, but it would have helped. Would've opened up the play action game too, though they did much less play action this week than they averaged last year, according to Joe B. We had some terrific games last year throwing without establishing the run. I'd like to have seen them do that against the Steelers, but I don't think that alone would have made the difference.

There's no reason to think Gabe is faster than Sanders. They certainly weren't based on their 40s, and yeah, Sanders may have slowed up, but not a lot, and there was a major difference. Gabe is good, but he's no burner.

Strongly disagree about your conclusion about Sanders. They threw long to him all game, and he was really open. He's a guy who can get open short or deep. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR6QtSjNwEQ Look at 1:07 and 2:01 Love the 2nd one where he destroys his guy with a route and then throws the safety away, subtly enough to not get caught at it.

Davis isn't as fast as Sanders. Even after Sanders may have slowed up a bit with age, he looks significantly faster than Davis. And yeah, Josh threw it too far, but when a guy has five yards, you have to put more arch on it and put it shorter. Yes, timing was a problem. But it was a bad pass. Agreed they should get better with time together.

They like Sanders better. And if the two throws that Josh missed to Sanders had been on target, he'd have been close to 150 yards. He deserves it. Gabe is very good, but they think he's the 4th best on the team. I agree, personally. In any case, at the Bills site, he's listed on the depth chart directly ahead of Davis. https://www.buffalobills.com/team/depth-chart Agreed. He might have held onto it, but it would have been a terrific play. A play few WRs would have made.

Not at all. A negative test would prove you're not going to give it somebody, but wouldn't show you as any less likely to catch it inside and then over the next days till you started feeling bad or got a positive test, give it to others at that point. I wish we were far enough along to not have to do things like this as a society. But we're not. The pandemic is still surging along and we're not close to herd immunity. It's a shame, but it makes sense. This. It's not experimental. Nice post. Football relevance, hunh? Will anti-vaxxers with tickets sell to opponent fans? Could this tip the balance at the stadium by allowing more opponent fans in? That's all I got.

I agree with your main point, I think. But not at all concerned? The Chicken Littles are over-reacting, but I'm a bit concerned. A blessing in disguise? Disguise or not, a loss isn't a blessing. It's a problem. They shouldn't have needed this. Overall, as I say, I agree that this isn't cause for major worry, or at least not until/if they lose a few more. But it shouldn't be something we shrug off and say it's a wakeup call. They should've woken up before the first game, not after it.

And the problem is very much not the receivers.

This.

This. Yes, it's an issue. No, there probably isn't much they can do about it if they want him to run and extend plays, which is a lot of what makes him special. Fewer planned runs, maybe, but not much more than that.

Nah. Or at least not yet. Takes far more than one game to say either of these things. Joe B. also pointed out that play action was way way down this week, possibly because they ran so many 4 and 5 WR sets. A bit more of that should help. But we were actually running an offense that was somewhat different from what we ran last year. What the Steelers figured out was a fairly newish variant. Again, as Joe said, they were much more successful with 11 personnel than they were with 4 or 5 WRs. If the Steelers figured it all out, how come our plays with 11 personnel were so successful? Same question for Allen's regression. Too much recency bias in the many sky is falling posts this week. Far too early to say.

McVay has one game with Stafford. They might be a top five Super Bowl contender this year. Or not. We don't know yet. And yeah, Allen had less than 300 yards. How was Daboll holding him back when Allen overthrew a wide open Sanders on that bomb? Sorry, but Allen had a bunch of poor throws today. You like Allen, so you're trying not to put any of the blame on him. That doesn't make sense. He deserves a lot of the blame today, just as McDermott and Daboll deserve a lot of the credit for last year.

More talent than they do? Yeah, probably, but where's our Aaron Donald? Their roster on defense is terrific. Two first team all-pros on D. Our WRs are maybe stronger than theirs but theirs are really solid up and down. Their OL was better than ours last year, and while they lost a bit, IMO stands to be better this year. Overall the Bills have the edge but not by a whole ton. LA has a fine roster. The Bills were better, but they also played three games better, living up to their roster. And no, the leading at the half statistic is absolutely not "an important gauge of how well a coach held onto the game with minimal talent." It's not even close to purely a coaching stat, and pretending that the Rams can be said to have "minimal talent" is flat-out ridiculous. The stat to look at for how well a team holds onto the game is wins and losses. Again, McDermott's Bills were 12-1 in that stat last year. And that doesn't mean anything particular either, barring that it's easier to win when you're ahead at halftime And again, the Bills with Allen already are one of the Super Bowl favorites. McDermott's record in that ridiculous stat (and I don't know what it is, but it's just fine last year and this) doesn't affect that.

And while Goff has his problems, arguing that he's not competent is absolutely ridiculous. Allen on the Rams is maybe a Super Bowl top two or three team. So are Allen on the Bills this year.

It is absolutely not all on Daboll. But yeah, he deserves his share of the blame.

Really? You figure that last year's 13-3 team should have been considered rebuilding? We were no longer a rebuilding team last year, and we went 12-1 in games when we were ahead at halftime. So, you mean, this year only? Is that what you're looking at with the 0-1? Let's be honest, that stat has zero importance, both since it's as small a non-zero sample size of NFL games as you can get, and because the whole stat doesn't matter much. What matters is what the score is after 4 quarters. Wins, that's what matters. Whether you were behind or ahead at halftime has virtually zero importance. Last year the Bills went 13-3. That's three more wins than the Rams had? Are we supposed to feel that somehow those 13 wins just weren't really important, that they didn't mean much because they were ahead at halftime? Doesn't make any sense. And you know what else doesn't make sense? Pretending that it's possible to isolate coaching as the cause of that stat. It's just as reasonable to point to McVay's record when losing or tied at halftime, which . Does that mean his teams suck at comebacks? No. It means you're more likely to win when ahead by halftime, especially as sometimes you'll be ahead by a lot, and that equally you're more likely to lose when behind. So, which group is more important, the 6-19 or the 38-0? Neither. What's important is the 44-21, which is really impressive, but is greatly helped by him not inheriting a team that was rebuilding.