Thurman#1

First, the defense is better than the offense the past couple of games. Second, your conclusion doesn't follow from the premise, IMO. It's understood within the framework of deferring to double dip at the half that the other team having the ball first is valuable to them and potentially consequential. It's a tradeoff. A reasonable one, IMO. Um, not at all. The first half puts your team ahead, or behind. It frames the second half. It's very very very meaningful.

For years ... YEARS ... we had people on here telling us the whole problem was our mediocre run game, that we needed to take the pressure off Josh to act like Superman all the time by getting a good runner and a good physical OL. So we get that and now it's that the problem is that we've taken the ball out of Josh's hands. Josh isn't playing as well as he usually does. Nor is most of the offense. Plus losing Kincaid and Palmer is going to tend to reduce passing effectiveness. I don't know what the solution is, but I'm pretty sure it's not to give him more difficult throws. Mix in more longer and mid-range stuff, maybe? More bunch formations and such? I'm not against bringing in another WR in a trade, but people keep asking for Chase and for Garrett Wilson. Better to be realistic. Maybe a speed guy would help. The Bills have a record, a long and consistent record, of fixing problems they encounter early and in the middle of the season by the time December rolls around. Hopefully that will continue.

No, of course not. The idea's batshit crazy.j

That's not a fact, friend. It's an opinion. Also that it's all about failed draft picks isn't just an opinion, it's a very questionable opinion. As I pointed out above, he's considered a top ten drafter and GM pretty much without exception. Shouldn't say without exception, I guess, but the exceptions are pretty much all Bills fans after losses. And judging draft picks as early as you're doing in several cases here just isn't good practice.

Every QB misses a few. Penix was 20 for 32. Last week he was 20 for 26 and overall he's completing 62.4%, which is pretty decent. Don't want to hear about it? Tough. You will, and you should. It's part of the picture. The D had a ton of injuries, with DaQuan's absence in particular apparently doing very bad things to our run defense.

Um, no. On one they didn't go for it and took the field goal, and that should count agains the Bills? And on the other they didn't kick the field goal and that should count against the Bills? Either way? Yeah, um, no. That would have been 13 points. Or zero. Pretending you know - either way - is utterly ridiculous. Worth noting that that missed field goal drive started on the Atlanta 47. A team gets the ball there, a field goal try is not a bad result for a defense. When the points don't go on the board, they don't count. The defense wasn't good. Nobody should say that. But they were a lot better than the offense. They weren't awful by any means.

Fair that responsibility for talent acquisition goes to the GM. He indeed can't be held unresponsible for bad picks like Elam. He also can't make great picks like Benford and Deone Walker and many others without receiving credit. All on Beane. Beane's draft record is consistently ranked very high almost without exception. For good reason. Yup, the buck stops there on the draft. Doesn't mean he doesn't factor in McDermott's input a great deal. He absolutely does, particularly in terms of what kinds of players are wanted. But yeah, it stops on Beane. But again, his drafts have been quite good. Amazing since they consistently pick so late. Here's what you get when you google "best drafting GMs rankings NFL": #8 https://www.nbcsports.com/fantasy/football/news/rotopats-2025-nfl-gm-rankings-analysis-for-all-32-teams #5 https://nflspinzone.com/nfl-power-rankings-ranking-the-best-gms-in-the-league-for-the-2025-season-01jyd16br9kj/2 #9 https://nfltraderumors.co/2024-nfl-gm-power-rankings/ #5 https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1157-nfl-daily-with-gregg-rose-29915968/episode/ranking-almost-every-nfl-general-manager-277425860/ #9 https://gameday-analysis.com/2025/07/11/every-nfl-gm-in-2025-ranked-from-worst-to-first/ #4 https://www.vikefans.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=13121 #8 https://youtu.be/X9ouCU9Fr6U #6 https://nfltraderumors.co/2025-nfl-general-manager-power-rankings/ #4 https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6655181/2025/09/24/nfl-front-office-rankings-vote/ #7 https://www.profootballnetwork.com/nfl-gm-rankings-2024-howie-roseman-brett-veach-eric-decosta-at-the-top/ And it goes on and on and on and on ... just like that.

First, we're 4 - 2. Not that bad. Yes we looked pretty poor in this game. But there's every reason to think we can get much better. Second, the idea that the (quite good) situation is all because of Beane is just stupid. It comes down to Beane, to McDermott, to the coaches and staff and players. Same as all the other teams. I do remember Zay Jones. Beane was in Carolina when he was drafted. I do remember Charles Clay. Beane still had three more years to go in Carolina when we signed him. The first paragraph was so poor, I didn't read the rest, figured it was most likely just trolling. Which is sad. But yeah, if not, quite a lot sadder. The Bills do have a lot of work to do right now. But reading this entire post would stil have wasted my time.

Wilson and Waddle won't be going in the division. Not going to happen.

You can say this about all of the great coaches in history. You can't win consistently without a good QB. On the other hand, coaches who've lost with very good QBs aren't all that difficult to find. Look at how Denver did under Wade Phillips with Elway. Compare Russell Wilson's results under anyone but Carroll. Philip Rivers never put up big win percentages consistently and it wasn't because he wasn't a great QB. Matt Ryan was up and down under different regimes. Dan Fricking Marino was on teams that were very inconsistent about win percentages. McDermott's consistency and win percentages aren't all on Josh, though he certainly Allen has a large part in it. It was pointed out above that he made the playoffs with Tyrod at the beginning of a rebuild. That was terrific coaching.

We're third in points and third in yardage. Nobody is holding back on this offense.

I have no idea what you are talking about here. You are Josh Allen? WTF? To get back to sensible talk, let's look back. You tried to blame this on the defense. And the defense played pretty decently overall. Sure, they could have done better. But they held the Pats to 23. On a day when the Pats got the ball and started drives on the Bills 38 and also the Bills 7. And on those two tremendous opportunities the Bills held them to a total of three points, getting a turnover and holding them to a field goal when they started the drive only seven yards from the end zone. This game was 90% the offense's fault. Not 100%. But mostly. Three turnovers and 20 points scored.

Brady - in the first half - handcuffed the offense into two fumbles without either of them being hit by a defender till after the ball was out. Those fumbles are on Brady, apparently? Five drives in the first half, two of them ended by preventable fumbles. The first punt we have a second and five on the Pats 37, and on that play an eight yard run and a first down are cancelled due to an illegal formation play. That's Brady's fault? Now it's second and 10. That's followed by two incompletions. That's Brady's fault? Should've been a first down on the 29, but a stupid penalty aborts that.

This game was still winnable, if, only, Oh, I don't know, if the offense doesn't have three preventable turnovers. THREE TURNOVERS!!! Josh and Kincaid collide and there's a fumble. I'm still not clear if that was supposed to be a handoff or not. But in any case it was a dumb mistake. Keon just drops the ball after the catch. He's not doing that often. But he did it today. Josh throws into very tight coverage, with two guys on Shakir, and doesn't lead him far enough, allowing the CB to make up that step. Shakir could also have come back towards Allen, cutting off the angle. Just not a good play. More, that INT came on a 2nd and 13 at the Pats 19 yard line, and the play before was an offensive P.I. penalty on Shakir for blocking downfield beyond the one yard threshold before the pass arrived. That P.I. penalty came on a 2nd and 3 at the Pats 9 yard line. That should have been a TD. Two poor plays in a row.

If you stand up, they could just block higher, just hit you in the thighs or waist. That's the problem.

Thanks for clearing that up about the final Pats game. "A cause"? Yeah, fair enough. No arguing that. But "a cause" means a non-zero effect. I think that is indeed very clear. But it could be 1% of the cause. It could also be more, of course. I'd argue it is indeed a bit more than 1%. But that it were any kind of major cause that in the games he played, the Bills offense's production would have been a lot better in the plays when he was on the field and teams had to account for him than it was when he was on the bench and defense didn't have to worry. And again, nobody's ever been able to show anything like that.

Fair enough. But correlation does not imply causation. I mean, you might say, "Hey, look at the final Pats game. The Bills only threw for 129 yards. And Amari didn't play. That's pretty clearly a massive fall-off without Amari." But then you wouldn't be left without much to say when someone replied, "Don't you think that Josh Allen playing one snap to keep his consecutive game streak alive, handing off and Trubisky playing the rest of the game might have had to do with even more of that dropoff than Amari not playing?" And that one game was responsible for more than a quarter of the shortfall between yards and points in games he played and games he didn't. If Cooper was the causation rather than mostly just the correlation, it would have been pretty easy to tell. He only played 46% of the plays in the games he was playing. You could throw out all the games he didn't play in and look only at the games he actually played in. And there'd have been a major difference in those games in how the Bills performed depending whether he was riding pine or in the huddle. Nobody has ever showed any stats showing anything like that. At least that I have seen. Have you seen anything like that? And it's not like this hasn't been pointed out before. People were looking to prove this. If there'd been a major difference, IMO it would have been trumpeted to the heavens.

No, it's not. But that is one way of missing most of the point. And whether you want to hear it anymore probably means to me about what it means to the Bills. No, it's not. That's nonsense. We HAVE pulled away from the pack. We're 4-1, tied for the best record in the league. And we're third in scoring.

Not the whole place, but certainly large swathes of it. Certainly including this dumb thread.

I did wonder about that. Far from a sure thing, but yeah, it's possible. He didn't play like Josh, but that does happen sometimes even when non-concussed.

That's much more about how many passes each guy is getting than it is about how long the plays are. This is what yardage stats (and completion stats) look like in an all you can eat offense. Target stats look like this: T-#44 Shakir T-#44 Coleman #62 Kincaid #104 Palmer Palmer and Kincaid in particular are making a lot of yards for the amount of targets they're getting. More specifically, in Yards Per Catch (YPC): #22 Palmer #25 Kincaid #70 Coleman #71 Shakir

Kincaid, Moore, Palmer and Samuel all have plenty of down field catches behind them. No, none is a deep threat specialist. It certainly wouldn't be bad to have one of those around. But we've got guys who can do it. For instance, he threw four deep ball against the Pats and completed two. That's not bad for twenty yards or more, the completion percentages are always low for passes with longer air yards. https://nextgenstats.nfl.com/charts/single/all/team/2025/week/josh-allen/ALL529264 I know there have been, in earlier games, instances where guys were open long but Josh quickly went to the short sure thing. Which I personally don't have a problem with if it keeps the chains moving.

I thought it was interesting seeing the Pats "spinning into eight man coverage," initially confounding Josh, but seeing Kincaid quickly figure out how he can be QB-friendly in that situation. (13:00) Interesting also seeing (4:45) where he makes a case that Josh took the lower-percentage shot giving Coleman a contested catch shot where the CB has him partly stacked and Josh doesn't give him a back-shoulder ball. Eric argues that a shorter pass to Kincaid would probably have made the 1st.

While I agree with much of this, there certainly are other ways to run better routes than to "get quicker feet to run sharper routes." You can adjust mechanics, you can adjust timing on cuts, you can learn to gently and imperceptibly push off or do a better job of boxing out ... there are a ton of ways to get better at this. It's not clear what will happen. Certainly it's correct that he might pretty much stay the same guy. Or stay the same guy in terms of separation but win more contested catches as he seemed to do in camp. Or get better at separation. We'll have to see. You're right that some guys improve a ton, and some guys just don't. Yeah, I'd certainly agree, but an extension could be worked out so as to make things easier to swallow for the Bills. I'm sure Knox is aware that many think he is overpaid. I'm hopeful they can find a way to come together. I like how he's looked this year and I like how the multiple TE offenses have looked as well. I'm hoping we start to see even more variations and tendency breakers come out of those formations, as well as just the effects of the extra beef.

Well, if I'm a Keon Truther, what are you? A Keon liar? I wouldn't have used that word if it weren't the opposite of what you used. I don't think of you as a liar, so you know, but I don't appreciate what you called me either. So, if I went back on your posts about Keon, none would mention Thomas or McConkey? If so, you're a bit unusual for folks with your point of view. Do I agree he has failed to meet expect expectations? Not particularly. I think having expectations this early is fairly unreasonable. Has he met my hopes? No. But he was injured last year, and still had a pretty solid year for a rookie. And we're only on week five of his second year. By the end of the year he might easily be having a great year. Or not. Too small a sample. No, he has neither met nor disappointed expectations yet. Too early to know, reasonably, so early in his second year while they work out what they are on offense after spending most of his rookie year unable to squeeze with one hand.