Thurman#1

I'd argue that between both of those groups you have maybe 10% of all fans. And maybe 0.1% of fans actually go look through all the All-22. It's far more like: 1. Those who rely on box scores, stats and fantasy football to determine how a player is performing. 2. Those who look to All-22 reviews and film studies to judge player performance. 3. Those who don't watch or look at anything much after the game ends but social media and then scream about "the eye test," and "don't you watch the games?" 4. Those who look at the NFL highlights later on. 5. Those who look at a play or two on the All-22 if there's a lot of talk about it. 6. Those who formed their opinions weeks or even years ago and do whatever will best reinforce their prejudices. 7. The sensible folks who put the game away from about 4:30 p.m Sunday to about 12:30 p.m. the next Sunday. 8. Trolls 9. The ones who look at a lot of both the stats and the film. ... and frankly I could go on. My guess is that over 90% of fans don't fit either of your two categories. Oh, and PFF does an excellent job. They're not perfect at all, but they're fine. They're limited in that they don't get the calls, the playbooks and game plans, but neither do we or anyone else. Everyone is limited in those ways, and yet the film is less limited than many insiders claim it is. Having said that, certain areas of play are more opaque than others to film breakdown leading to understanding. But again, most NFL teams pay PFF for their analysis. They wouldn't do that if PFF wasn't good at what they do. Stats can never tell the whole story but they are absolutely a reflection of what happened on the field. And film leaves a lot of room for evaluation analysis, categorization and conclusions. And that means lots of room for mistakes. Both have their strengths. Both have their weaknesses. One major problem with film study is that the vast majority of people who say they do it are looking at maybe three plays and therefore radically generalizing. But the best way to understand is to use both. But lately there's so much available I find myself wondering whether better understanding is worth the large investment of time I have to put in. It's only football. I could be working on my novel.

So then how about Allen against high level opponents, which would be the Patriots. 13 for 28, 46% 0 TDs and 3 INTs. And no, their overall passing stats aren't statistically close to the same. In completion percentage, Jackson is ranked 18th among QBs with more than 100 attempts. Allen is 28th. YPA? Jackson is 13th and Allen 25th. INTs? Allen is in a five-way tie for 8th-most, putting him in the "top" 12 in the league in total INTs.. Jackson is in for 13th-most, so he's in the "top" 18. TD/INT ratio? Jackson is 12:5. Allen is 10:7. I'm not going through and counting the rankings there, but let's just say that Jackson is within the 22 QBs who have double the amount of TDs, and Allen is not. Passer rating? Jackson is 14th and Allen is 27th. They're not close. I wish Allen's were better enough to get close, but they are not. And again, those are the passing stats, ignoring fumbles and run yards. Twist of Fate isn't right to have given up hope for Allen, and the fact that he has has clearly colored his perceptions. Allen is young and appears to be trending up. Good things could happen.

20 yards more per game is a lot. Especially when Allen has thrown five more attempts than Jackson has. Producing twenty more yards per game out of fewer attempts, that's really better. And twenty yards per game isn't 1 or 2 more passes, it's about three more attempts ... per game. Allen is averaging 6.8 yards per attempt, so twenty more yards would be three more attempts ... and again, Allen has thrown slightly more than Lamar has, not less. Jackson has been much better this year so far. Josh's 82.9 passer rating vs. Lamar's 95.4 shows that clearly. More TDs, fewer INTs, Lamar's four fumbles vs. Josh's ten ... and that's not even counting run yards, where Josh has been very good and Jackson All-World, on target to gain 1274 yards for the year. This is the kind of move that people with losing arguments tend to make. People aren't saying that. You're having to resort to exaggerations and straw man arguments. Mostly what people are saying is that Jackson has been very good this year and Josh below average though either one could get better or worse down the road. They're both young. Plenty of very good QBs were still playing below average football this early in their careers. But as for how each has played this year, Jackson has simply been a lot better. I'm just happy to see that Josh does seem to be trending up lately.

"... might be a bit of a fraud ..." is absolutely does NOT mean that Sportsline "agrees with the premise Bills are overrated." You've done a mighty poor job of paraphrasing there. A reasonable paraphrase there might be that they think it's possible that the Bills may not be as good as their record would make you think they are. A 71% chance of making the playoffs isn't a team you think is definitely overrated. They're right that the Bills have questions. But they never said what you think they said.

Right, which makes him a weight that almost no DEs play at ... 3-4 DEs excepted. Mario Williams is one of the only ones I can think of and again, he's a physical freak and far taller than Oliver. If Oliver still isn't much of an impact guy in his second and third years it might be worth while thinking out of the box. Not now, though. Oliver played at Houston, and the opposing talent wasn't even close to NFL standard. It's likely to take him a while.

He's quick for a DT. But he's not DE quick. Strength is his main tool, strength and first-step quickness. Not so much the ability to run fast, though. DT is his position. And it's very very early in his career. That's nonsense that Kyle consistently opened up running lanes by shooting the wrong gap. Just ridiculous. Kyle was excellent against the run and when he shot his gap, which is what he shot, it was disruptive to the offense. There was some talk about this around 6 years ago, but the idea disappeared, because it was stupid at the time and after.

When a player is open long, a good QB hits him. You don't have to worry about overthrowing them or putting more air under them. Again, we've had a ton of chances when Bills receivers simply got behind defenders and were open. The throws didn't have to have a lot of air under them. And as for 50/50 balls, of course we have a guy who can do that. That's precisely Duke Williams' forte. But it's beside the point. If you can get open - and guys like John Brown, McKenzie and two or three times even Zay Jones simply got behind their guys and were way open - you don't need to win 50/50 balls. You just need a QB who can hit the 100/0 throws. And yeah that's tougher on deep balls, but not 0 for 13 tough.

Fair points. I personally think we have an identity, it's just not a very successful one yet. We're a team that's trying to open things up for short to medium passes for Allen and to try to be tough in the run and to run a lot. But I'd argue that not many teams with QBs performing the way Allen is can be said to have a successful identity.

Not so much. Look at Tyrod under Roman and you see a sensational half a year, his first seven of the 14 games he played in 2015. And then you see that the Bills played the Pats who put forward a blueprint on how to contain Tyrod. And in the second half of the year he was the Tyrod we know, with completion percentages QB ratings and general stats that stayed nearly the same. From that Pats game on, Tyrod was neutered, and Buffalo lost despite the Bills defense playing really well. Tyrod went 20 for 36 for 233 yards with 0 TDs and 0 INTs and a passer rating of 75.3. And despite the Buffalo D holding New England's offense to 20 points, the Pats beat us 20 - 13. Whereas with Lamar Jackson, he also played the Pats at about the halfway point. Jackson went 17 for 23 for 13 yards, a TD and no INTs, a 107.7 passer rating. Baltimore won. So far, that's about the opposite of the mid-season turnaround that brought Tyrod back to earth. QB ratings of 75.3 and 107.7 tell a very different story about Lamar Jackson from what we saw with Tyrod. Oh, and in those two games, Tyrod had four runs for a total of 1 yard, while Jackson had 16 attempts for 61 yards running. Could Jackson regress too? Sure. But no sign of it so far whatsoever.

We agree on most of this, John. Yup. How can people complain about play calling when we won and scored enough points to win most games? And yup, Allen could easily improve. Or not. But it certainly could happen and is still a very reasonable possibility so early in his career.

I disagree. We've seen plenty of long balls this season where the WR had simply run past the CB and was open. And Josh missed long. Fighting for 50/50 balls may be required on some plays, but there have been plenty of long misses this year and most are simply bad throws.

The DC and the OC especially are traditionally the scapegoats for unsatisfied fans. And what is actually happening is that sometimes the coordinator is in fact at fault but probably half the time or more the actual problem is the players not performing well enough. Fans don't want to say bad things about the players and particularly the young QB because let's face it, identifying and whining relentlessly about an easily defined scapegoat that fans don't have much of an emotional tie to is a great deal more satisfying than facing up to the fact that the players have a long way to go, and that it might take a good deal more time for things to get cleaned up ... or the players simply might not be good enough. I don't know if that's you, but it's most of the people on here attacking Daboll. He's an easy target and looking deeper requires thought, discipline and a commitment to a long process of improving and hard work. And the painful understanding that sometimes the team just isn't good enough.

Nonsense. Those fans aren't "telling it like it is." They're moaning and bitching like six year-old girls who didn't make the final five at one of those horrible kids beauty pageants. These fans don't want the Bills to be great. They whine and kvetch that the Bills aren't great NOWNOWNOWNOWNOWNOWNOWNOWNOWNOWNOW and they hold their ears and don't listen when people talk sense to them about how things take time. They're the creampuffs.

Oh, please. Clickbait. "Most flawed"? Total clickbait. More flawed than the 2015 Falcons who started 6-1 and finished at 8-8? Absolute crap. Yeah, there are a lot of questions with this team. And yes they've benefitted from their schedule. But that headline and a lot of the article is just attention-seeking behavior.

Whatever.

DVOA is a really good number. But disgustingly accurate goes beyond what it actually is. More, you have to look carefully at the specifics of it all. Quick example, what's the Bills defensive DVOA when NOT adjusted for strength of opponent? The answer is ... 3rd in the league. So, it's purely adjustment for opponent strength that has placed us so low. In other words, our schedule has not let us demonstrate (for DVOA anyway) strength. We've done very very well defensively this year - and unadjusted DVOA agrees with that. But we were only allowed to play the teams on our schedule. Basically the Bills have proven as much as they can against the weak slate they've faced. Unadjusted offensive DVOA is 24th. Special teams are also part of it, but when your offense is 24th and your defense is 3rd, that doesn't make you the 25th best team. It only means that though you're somewhere around 12th before they start adjusting for opponent. We've proven a lot against the schedule we've faced. But the adjusted DVOA scores penalize you for a weak schedule. Fair enough, but you have to keep that in mind as you look at the rankings.

Nice post.

I greatly appreciate all the hard work, but disagree with one major underlying assumption. You give credit/blame for how long it took to get a 300 yard game to the QB. And that just doesn't make sense. Whether or not you get 300 yard games has a lot to do with chance, a lot to do with your OC, a lot to do with game situations, a lot to do with your receivers and a lot to do with how many passes the QB throws in a game. Most of the reason Allen hasn't got a 300 yard game yet is that he hasn't thrown all that many passes. 28.59 passes a game. That's just very few. There's nothing special about the number 300 either. Russell Wilson didn't throw much either, early in his career and he hit 300 for the first time in his 17th game, and for the second time only in his 28th game.

Star has been fine. He doesn't do what the fans want him to do, but that's irrelevant, because he has done what McDermott wants him to do. He may (or may not) have regressed this year but he did his job last year. It's not a mistake that our defense has been very very good since we brought him in, nor that they've done well against the run. (23rd in YPA in 2017 without Star, 9th in YPA in 2018 with him and so far 15th this year even after our worst game against the run in recent memory, in which Star played well, as Joe B. noted). Benjamin got us to the playoffs with that game in the snow. And with his history, it was a move that had a good chance to work. It didn't, but it was a very reasonable move at the time. Our RBs have also been fine. And while we could use more from our WRs, when you look at the resources we spent on them, they've all worked out except Zay. Brown and Beasley have been worth it and we didn't spend many resources on anybody else. That may well change next year but so far most of their WRs have been worth what we paid for them or more. Agreed with the rest. Scheme fit is an underconsidered part of whether guys work out somewhere.

He's made it clear why he passed on Mahomes. In getting things started in every area, he simply didn't have enough time to put into evaluation. I'm sorry, but this is totally understandable to me in a year when the next year was widely considered to be the best QB year in recent memory. And the Watkins trade has panned out in every way so far. We saved a ton of money, got a lot of draft capital for the move up to get a QB and passed on a guy who hasn't even come slightly close to being worth his contract. Half of KC's season is gone and Watkins is on pace for an 820 yard season. Letting him go was flat-out smart. And if Allen doesn't work out, moving up for him won't have been the wrong move. Choosing Allen will have been the bad move.

Looked to me like it could as easily have referred to his years in Carolina, or both.

What's gone wrong? At 5-2, not all that much. Things could certainly get worse. Or better. But right now we are coming off a bad game but beyond that they could easily be just fine. IMO they aren't quite as good as people thought they were. But still a very very good defense and an offense with some problems.

Yeah, and as Logic pointed out above, Taylor was playing 3-tech in Miami and Peko is a 1-tech. Maybe they don't want to switch him, or maybe they tried and he didn't do so well at the new role.

Wouldn't mind a bit seeing Taylor activated. But if he isn't, it's probably because while we don't see him practice, McDermott does and they don't think he'd be better than Peko.

Yeah, not so much. "When Lotulelei wasn’t in the game, the Bills allowed 5.09 yards per carry to Eagles running backs. With Lotulelei in the game, if you take out the 65-yard run by the Eagles that wasn’t primarily his fault, the Bills were allowing just 3.15 yards per carry. And, if the Bills linebackers do their job differently on the second level, Sanders likely runs for just a 6-yard gain, which would bring the average to 3.29 yards per carry. "Lotulelei even helped create a sack for Shaq Lawson early in the first half, and then later took on the double team to enable Jordan Phillips to get a sack. I focused all of my video efforts on Lotulelei to drive home the point: He wasn’t the problem on Sunday; he was a strength."