Thurman#1

Probably been answered by now, but basically ... The ref screwed up his announcement. But the way it was called was correct, though the Broncos had a gripe for not knowing till a bit of time had passed that it was considered a first down. It was not incomplete. Reviews backed it up. He caught it, held it for several steps, was tackled, and after his arm hit the ground ending the play, he fumbled it. And he caught the pass beyond the first down marker, moving backwards, so it was correctly a forward progress first down.

It's not the best coached team that wins. It's the team that performs best. That can be because they're coached better, because they've got a better roster, because they get a lucky break, there can be a million reasons, often a bunch of them having an effect at the same time. The 1995 Cowboys won the Super Bowl, including a number of games that were close near the end. They won a bunch of those games and it wasn't because Barry Switzer was coaching them better than their opponents were being coached.

It ain't so. Or rather, sometimes it's so and sometimes it ain't. Kids are a reflection of their parents, unless they aren't, which is a lot of the time. Having said that, there isn't a person on that team or sideline that should be holding their head high. And when a team is consistently poor, the coach absolutely gets his share of the blame. Jeez. Not buying the bad vibes thing. That's the way he looks when he's tense. Looked much the same when down last year. That's not the problem, but he is absolutely contributing in a large way to the problems. They could come around. But it looks less likely every week. They just look like a bad team. Everyone is making mistakes. He's not likely to be fired in the offseason, no matter how many folks want it. But if things continue like this it's not completely out of the question, and there will likely be firings further down the chain.

Yeah. The whole team is in a funk. Overall the D is playing better than the offense despite the injuries, but they didn't look good against the Bengals. And yeah, the pass rush has just disappeared, though hearing about Rousseau's foot injury helps clear things up at least a bit. If Von gets a lot closer to what he was historically, the pass rush will look a lot better, I think. I'm not sure he will. Hope so We've seen the Bills snap out of it before. But sometimes teams just don't.

Nonsense is right, and you're absolutely chock full of it. "having such high EPA per drive means the tools are there for success, but the coaching is not delivering," you say. Sorry, man, but that's complete poppycock. High EPA only means the team is in a good situation at that moment. If the team fails in a promising situation that doesn't show you have bad coaching. All it shows is that the team failed. It doesn't say a damn thing about who caused the failure. The fact that you're instantly blaming that on coaching doesn't say anything about reality. It does show one thing. It shows that you - you personally - have decided who you want to blame, and thus are taking any input as proof of your narrative. It shows you're running on confirmation bias. Spacing on routes is a coaching problem. Unless a player runs the wrong route. Then it's a player problem. We don't know which is the problem on any give play. There is never any proof of it. There have been spacing problems on some plays, but not on most. Who's to blame? Likely sometimes it's a coaching problem and sometimes a player problem. You can "make it simple," if you want, but awful logic, even if it's simple, doesn't show anything whatsoever. We have good players. We have good coaches. It's still not hitting on all cylinders. When that happens in extremely complicated situations, the guy who wants to put all the blame in one place is simply showing he doesn't understand how the world works. He's crippled by confirmation bias. Anyone with even cursory knowledge of the NFL can show you dozens of good teams with good rosters performing really well for a while and then really poorly for a while, in the same season with the same coaches, and stretching over a couple of seasons. My favorite example is the Giants team that beat the 16-0 Pats in the Super Bowl. They looked like an early playoff out. Couldn't beat good teams all year. Then they started playing well. They're a great example, but there are a huge number of teams looking like two different teams year to year or even in the same year. The idea that you have here that good rosters never play poorly and therefore if they do it's on the coaching ... it's absolutely laughable. Of course good rosters play poorly sometimes. And bad rosters play well sometimes. It's a part of the league. High EPA doesn't show squat about this issue. Absolutely zero. It shows the team was in promising situations. It doesn't show who is responsible for the problem. There's blame to go around. The coaches - as I've said in this thread - have made some bad moves, such as blitzing Burrow. The players have also done some really bad work. Josh's INT against the Bengals is one good example. The play is built for him to hit the honey hole behind the CB and in front of the safety. The play is there. The receiver has four yards on the CB, the safety's not in the picture yet, and Josh underthrows it by a lot and lets the CB get back into it and make the play. There's been a lot of visible bad execution. And some visible bad coaching as well. That's just how things look when teams aren't rolling right. Plenty of blame to go around.

64% of snaps.

Nah. That's just dumb. Burrow has similar or worse problems? Neither. Mahomes has similar or worse problems? Neither. It's dumb. Yes, they have problems. Nobody's perfect. But are they similar or worse than Josh's right now? The idea's plain dumb. There's a reason those other guys have the top MVP odds and Josh ... doesn't.

Heh. Yeah. Problems in his situation and problems in his play. He'll come back. I'm not worried in the long-term. But short-term, yup.

Complimentary indeed. Consistent "not get the comment you're replying to, and then throw up a straw man instead" post. You do not disappoint.

Not surprising so many here are putting words in his mouth. His own words aren't all that bad, so if you hate him you have to make something up. He isn't even saying it was him who made this decision, or at least not there he didn't.

This is the problem with the "it all points to coaching and coaching alone" argument. You don't have a single reason in this post why this is true. Not one data point that shows why the players aren't partially to blame. The whole argument is "the bad results and our barely 500 record points to coaching and coaching alone." Why so? What you're essentially saying is that we're not doing well, so it's obviously the coaching. Which is simply a stupid argument. Carries just as much logical force as the opposite argument, that we're not doing well so it's obviously the players. The coaches absolutely do bear some responsibility. Marino points out the questionable idea of not using more tempo and of attacking Burrow with blitzes. Those are coaching issues. Equally, he points out drive-stopping plays where Allen threw a bad ball on the INT and threw into tight coverage when there were guys wide open elsewhere. That's a player issue, and he pointed out more such. There's a lot of blame to go around. Everyone deserves some.

Josh and Dorsey both carry very significant amounts of the blame. I think we do know. He's a guy with strengths and weaknesses we're all pretty aware of. He'll never be a #1. He's a solid but not exceptional 2, and he blocks really well, which is often discounted. He doesn't appear to be sudden enough to do much damage short but does well in the deep and intermediate range.

He got a better job. He'd made no secret of wanting a head coaching job his whole life. In previous seasons he didn't get offered a head coaching job. And you know this is on McDermott because of all of your connections in the Bills locker room? Or does it just conveniently fit your narrative so you find it easy to believe?

When healthy early, this defense was as dominant as any. The injuries have killed us.

Yup, the injuries are huge in terms of how the defense is playing below capacity. But the offense has been healthy and they're performing worse. Just because the talent is there doesn't mean the players are playing well. It just doesn't. People want to say that because we're not playing well the blame goes to the coaching. That's not solid logic in any way.

What difference does it make whether or not Von knows their record or not? None whatsoever. Completely insignificant to him. All he has to know is that the next game is the only important one for them this week, that it was a wildly important game. Did he seem not to understand this? If anything it means he's correctly focused. The past shouldn't matter to the players. The next game is where all of their focus should go. The idea this matters is pure dumb. The problem with Von is not that he's not engaged. It's that right now he can't win his pass rush battles. He's not back yet. Will he every get back? No way to know, but that's the issue with Von, not whether he knew something irrelevant to his Bengals game prep. But if playing him now gets him closer to what he could be, we should all be for it. If our pass rush isn't better soon They are what their record says they are, you say? Yeah. Fair enough. Correct. They will have to get a lot better to make a difference this year. You're dead right on that count. Edmunds looked very very good as an LB. Then we put in the new guy, knowing he's a bit small and that injuries might be a concern, as they were not for Edmunds. Look what happened. He's played very well. Now he's injured. I guess I'm glad to see you're al heated up about stuff. But perhaps thinking before you type, maybe a bit of editing, would work better for you. A lot of nonsense in there alongside the relatively few times you make very good sense. You say the coaching staff has made Josh joyless and the other word salad you used. But then you point out he's been the same player all along. That would tend to show the opposite, that it's not the coaching staff, that it's Josh, that he's an up and down guy. Where's the evidence that it's the coaches that did all this? There is none, it's just what you want to believe. They do need to make some changes. The coaches have got to do better. So do the players. If this team continues playing at this level they shouldn't be considered Super Bowl contenders even if they make the playoffs. I agreed with what Joe Marino said this week, that we blitzed way too much against Burrow, a guy who loves the blitz. That's a coaching error. Marino also went through the film and found that the drive-stopping plays were on the players and a bad penalty call/non-call or two. The players without the slightest question deserve their share of the blame in this. Not that that leaves the coaches blameless. They're not. But this is NOT all on the coaches.

DVOA doesn't tell you that much over shorter periods of time. Four games is too short. This doesn't mean they are the worst, it means they haven't been playing very well. Which is hard to argue with.

Home games at home in cold weather were manna from heaven for those teams. We could take it and the cold weather teams really couldn't. Kelly had no trouble playing in cold weather. Those were advantages. Disagree. I don't think there's been much of an anti-Buffalo fan bias beyond the hate that successful teams (see the Pats) always get.

A late bye is helpful. Means you're fresher going into the playoffs. That's a plus, I think. I was happy when I saw that.

It does tell you all you need to know. It tells you that a flag is a possibility and that it's worth eliminating that possibility for an audience that can't see any part of the field beyond the small bit where the camera is focused, usually on one guy holding a ball.

Dreading is probably too strong. Worried about? Yeah. Why wouldn't anyone? I have since I became a fan decades ago. It's part of the game.

I think you're being oversensitive to the most depressive folks on here. We have a good chance. So do they. With Burrow healthy they're a damn good team. If it were in Buffalo we'd be favored by a point. It's just that in the last few games the Bills aren't playing their best ball, and the Bengals are playing theirs.

Yup. Translation: I don't like him.

Not real likely, IMO. It's more complicated than having a general idea of the scheme. I'd expect some snaps for two, maybe even three, but not a ton, myself. We'll see.

We really don't have to win now. Not that I'd be against winning now, of course. But it's not like if it doesn't happen now it won't happen. There are some older guys who don't have much longer to go, such as Latavius Murray, Poyer and Hyde, Sam Martin, AJ Klein, and Von Miller as well, and now Linval Joseph. Those guys won't be with us all that much longer, and when we lose them, Poyer and Hyde would seem to be the biggest losses, and they can be replaced with McD's scheme and ability to coach up a D-backfield. Von would be a huge loss if he ever recovers to earlier levels. I hope he does, but this d-line is playing well even without that. What you don't want to be is old and bad. We're not. Could be a nose issue. I saw crappy tackling and play, but no fear. They looked more anesthetized than fearful. Again, Cincy is a very good team, especially when Burrow is playing well. Not especially physically terrifying, though.