Thurman#1

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."

Train wreck in the Jersey marshlands. Love it. Interesting to see that Mehta says Bell has been a great teammate this year. My respect for him increased, hearing that. Mehta only said that the Bills "could use" an RB, not that the Bills were a possible destination.

I guess we'll have to disagree about how good the defense was in the Miami game. For me when you allow 18 points and force two turnovers, that's a pretty good game for a defense. Certainly they were bad against Philly. And fair enough if you're agreeing McDermott is a good defensive coach. If I misunderstood you, I apologize.

That's really not true. It's full of wild exaggeration, as Joe B's column today makes clear. You're right that he shouldn't bother, but not because people are dug in. Because a space eater can be doing a terrific job and still have a low run stop percentage. If he's raising the run stop percentage of the guys around him, he's doing his job. Run stop percentage has obvious problems to it. If teams don't think they can move you and so they run away from you, your run stop percentage will drop. The stat itself has major flaws. Some defenses are built to funnel backs to certain guys. The guys who make up the funnel will have low run stop percentages even when they're doing what the coaches want them to do.

Red zone defense is one small part of defense. We may be 28th at it but we're also 3rd in yards per drive and 3rd in points per drive. If you keep teams out of the red zone at a high rate, you can have a poor red zone D and still be an excellent defense. The bottom line is does the D stifle the opponent's offense, stop them getting yards, give our offense good field position and stop points from being scored. And the answer is yes. Our defense has played terrific this year. Not last week, certainly, but they've been elite over the course of the year. They have to keep it up, obviously.

Yup. Which should probably indicate to people that finding a current whipping boy and piling on .... maybe it's just not the smart thing. Maybe we should avoid grabbing a pitchfork and a torch and joining the stampede to the castle. Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, just kidding. Why choose low-key analysis and a wait till the evidence is in mentality over the where can we find a scapegoat urge? Waving the pitchforks is way too much fun.

Yup. Star did his job and some others didn't. No, it doesn't, as the article says Lotulelei was an impact run defender and the others weren't. So that indeed doesn't say much for the rest of the defense. But it does say a lot for Lotulelei. Again, still not convinced overall about him this year, but he's been doing what they want him to do in his career, right up through last year.

Pretty much everyone. A few muts and fruitcakes excepted.