Utah John

It was McDermott who outclassed McDaniel yesterday, not Dorsey. McDermott is the one who figured out how to slow and then stop the Dolphins' juggernaut. He did it by attacking the weakness on Miami's offense. They have a great set of players at the skill positions but Bills fans know all too well that without a solid O line the skill positions are wasted. McD attacked the Miami O line, which wasn't great to begin with and which had lost two starters including its best player. The difference was that our O line is FINALLY playing well, and the Miami D line is as bad as the Miami O line -- actually the Miami D overall is bad. I can't recall the announcers calling the name of ANY of the Miami defenders except Kohou whom Stefon Diggs embarrassed repeatedly. When the Dolphins killed the Broncos, the Broncos offense actually had quite good stats. It was the Broncos D that was the problem. So the Dolphins put up 70 against the Broncos horrible D and the Bills put up 48 on the Dolphins weak D. Don't get me wrong about Dorsey. I'm not criticizing him at all, it's just that I'm not sending his sainthood nomination to the Vatican quite yet. Let's see what he does against the 49ers.

The last time the Bills played the Jags, they played horribly in Jacksonville and lost even though at that time the Bills had much the better team. Who knows why that is. The Bills generally have the Dolphins' number but the Jags have had the Bill's number for decades, going back to the Jags eliminating the Bills from the playoffs in Kelly's last year. The time change is really going to work against the Bills, what with the Jags staying over after their game yesterday. I think the Bills ought to be traveling to England tomorrow or Wednesday at the latest.

This was possibly the worst-officiated game I've ever seen. The most blatant mistake of course was letting the extra play go on after the third quarter expired. That could have led to a Packers TD and put the game into question. There were two calls against the Lions where even the TV referee consultant said were wrong, and they led to a Packers TD. It's a good thing the Lions were so much better than the Packers, that a complete travesty didn't take place. My Lifelong Obsession With the Worst Team in the NFL - The Atlantic (Tim Alberta author) https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/detroit-lions-nfl-football-fan-defeat/675220/ Worth a read. So much of his experience mirrors mine as a Bills fan. The Bills just got good a few years before the Lions managed it, otherwise the similarities would be uncanny. Here's the beginning: Even now i can still see him, the man in gold and white, streaking down the sideline all alone. And then the ball was in the air. It hung up there for what felt like my entire childhood, spiraling in slow motion, traveling 50 yards in total. I remember gasping. Just a few minutes earlier, my favorite team—my first true love—the Detroit Lions, had taken a three-point lead over the hated Green Bay Packers. It was the first round of the 1993 NFC playoffs, and it was my first time at a Lions game. The sound of the 80,000 souls crammed into the Pontiac Silverdome—a glorified warehouse in the blue-collar suburbs of Detroit—was deafening, a roar of humanity unlike anything I’d ever heard, the decibel level shaking the cement beneath our bleacher seats. But now, with less than one minute remaining, as the football dropped into the hands of Sterling Sharpe, the man in gold and white, there was silence. The Packers’ unproven young quarterback, Brett Favre, had just made the most spectacular touchdown throw of his career and eliminated the Lions from the playoffs. I was inconsolable. The Lions had been the better team; even a kid could see that. We’d outgained the Packers, out-converted them, outplayed them. But we’d lost anyway—in dramatic, dream-shattering fashion. It was too much for my 7-year-old emotions to process. So, I wept. First in the stands as time expired, then in the swarming, beer-soaked concourse as my family searched for the exit, and for the entire hour-long car ride home. Finally, as we pulled into our driveway, my dad spun the radio knob leftward, turning down the postmortem show. “It’s just a game,” he said, smiling gently. “We’ll win the next one.” It was the only lie my dad ever told me.

Also working against the Dolphins is the fact that they won't have the opposing team sitting in the baking sun while they're in the shade. The same thing that happened to the Bills last year caught the Broncos last Sunday. If the Dolphins expect the Bills to be too wiped out to play well, they could be a little too overconfident. What's the over/under on sacks of Tua? (It would be bad form to ask for the o/u on Tua concussions, wouldn't it?)

The worst part of Thursday night football is the damage it does to the players and coaches. They have a regular schedule for game planning, healing injuries and bruises, coaching up the plays for the game, etc during the week for Sunday games. Monday night screws it up to an extent, but Thursday is just too far out of the healing/coaching schedule. I don't think ANY of the players prefer Thursday night games to a steady dose of Sunday at 1 pm local time.

We lived in California for years, and I agree about the nice early start times. Later we moved to Alaska, another hour west, so the early games started at 9 am our time. That was almost too early. That said, if "the biggest benefit to the west coast is that MNF/TNF are done by 8:30pm" that's not really saying much about the west coast.

Even better, stick with Nathan Peterman and use the Josh Allen pick on a defensive lineman no one's ever heard of.

Not mentioned in the NFL.com quote was how many yards Cook has. I looked it up. It's 267. That averages to 89 per game, which would put him over 1500 for the season. And he got his 267 yards on 44 carries, which is 6.07 yards per carry. All this without any really long runs. He's getting close to ripping one for 75 yards, which will make his stats look even better.

Let Josh be Josh.

I think it's Poyer's turn, or Rousseau's. So far we've had highlight games from Milano and Bernard, Floyd and Oliver and Jones got sacks, and Hyde and White got picks last game (and White had the kind of game we remember him having all the time). This defense is loaded with players, and it's hard to tell which ones will pop up with special plays in any given week. But for a safety playing against Miami's receivers, or a pass rusher against Tua, I'm expecting either Poyer or Rousseau to be the star this week.

Peter King has indeed been a Bills supporter over the years. I think what's going on is that the sports media have decided not to feature the Bills after the great but disappointing season last year. (The NFL itself has a little more integrity -- Josh Allen OPOW last week, and Bernard DPOW this week). Matt Milano had an incredible interception against the Raiders, and it didn't show up on any of the highlight chatterboxes for week 2. I think Bills and Raiders fans were the only ones aware of that play. Giving the benefit of the doubt, maybe the media are just trying to find new stories and new angles. The only story about the Bills over the offseason was Stefon Diggs' supposed unhappiness. So now the Browns have finally shown signs of life, and it's time for Peter King and others to give them some attention. Maybe that's all it is.

More to the point, our O line gave up zero sacks to the vaunted Commanders' D line with four 1st round draft picks. Allen often had all day to pass and had very few pressures. Our O line, all across the board, is shaping up to be, well, not really a strength, but not a liability any more. Brown is part of that. (Two much better guards are the biggest reason.)

Interesting perspective. My impression of Daboll was that he was actually good at making adjustments during the game. Probably it was more a case of him having a lot of plays ready to go, and he just went to the ones that were working.

Another obvious tell is that there's a room full of other diners, and no one is paying any attention to Josh.

Tackling, too. And falling down. And blocking. Any kind of contact, really.

A word of advice. NFLST is now working OK for me, but I went through some real struggles getting it set up during the preseason when ST showed some bonus games. Do everything you can ahead of time to shake out the bugs. And Tremaine Edmunds will be in position to watch them both. Russell Wilson's stats for the Dolphins game were actually good. Their O was just overshadowed by the incredible collapse of their D.

Speaking of delegation: McDermott has figured out how to be a good HC, and I think he's probably delegated some of THOSE duties to others so he could do a good job as DC as well as HC. It seems to be working. It could turn out that if the Bills lose a few more games they should have won (e.g., the Jets) the team will start to question the current arrangement, and McD might not be in a strong position to address the situation, not with his DC duties eating up time. But for now, I'm happy.

I think it's McDermott's work as DC. Gone is Frazier's passive D that relied on Edmunds' size and speed to limit the damage, and waiting for bad opposing offenses to screw up. McDermott is attacking, and other teams haven't figured out how to respond. McD was an excellent DC in Carolina, and I suspect he was frustrated during Frazier's tenure. And he finally took action, easing Frazier out in the nicest way possible.

The biggest problem with getting Daboll back is that he'll be trying to leave again. Some team will give him a second chance as HC, and by then Ken Dorsey will also be gone. I suspect the Bills looked at the Raiders and Commanders as easy wins, not worthy of showing everything the offense could do. This week, everything comes to the fore. Let's hope so, anyway.

All your points about the historic nature of the Jets SB III win are valid. In fact there's some evidence that that SB was handed to the Jets through officiating and intentionally poor play by the Colts, so the Jets could win and the balance between the leagues would seem better. That said, Namath's good years were only from around 1967-69. His knees were injured so badly, and the Jets roster grew so much weaker, that he was no longer as effective. The point being that he had only about three really good years. Most QBs in the HOF have much longer periods of success.

Amazing how the hype about the Jets evaporated with a single sack by Leonard Floyd. Rodgers is still a good QB but (even before the injury, of course) he's not elite. All the great players the Jets are said to have, except for Rodgers, are still there. If the team could collapse like this just from a single player's absence, it wasn't that great to begin with. I'm sure the Jets are ruing their decision to let Mike White go to the Dolphins. White would be starting now.

The 1999 team's defense WAS great. Bruce Smith was still playing (for the Bills), along with Ted Washington and Sam Cowart, and it was just dominant. I recall telling a co-worker before the playoff game between the Bills and the Titans that the winner was going to the Super Bowl because both teams had such good defenses. I was right, and I think I would also have been right if the Bills had just covered the final kickoff like professionals. The offense was generally good, too. We had Andre Reed AND Eric Moulds. We had Thurman Thomas, Antowain Smith, and Jonathan Linton (whom we've forgotten about but who was pretty good). The O line was good, with John Fina and Ruben Brown. Unfortunately, we didn't have a dominant QB, and Ralph Wilson forced Wade Phillips to play the wrong one. This led to a defensive struggle throughout the entire game, because the Titans also had excellent personnel. The Bills had a SB-quality team, and I think probably would have won the SB if they'd made it there. Agreed. But don't overlook the other side. The Bills offense has been running in second gear, which has been good enough to win two games. I'm assuming that Dorsey has a long list of plays he's held in reserve, that will let the O dominate the Dolphin's D. Check the Broncos stats. Russell Wilson had a good game, which was just overshadowed by the collapse of the Denver D. The Bills have a considerably better O than the Broncos do, with more weapons and a better O line. And a better QB of course.

Regarding playing 1 pm games in Florida cities, particularly Miami, in September: I think there's a case to be made to OSHA that those games should not be allowed. Seriously, putting the visiting team in the direct sun while the home team is in shade, is going to get a player killed eventually. It's one thing to have a home team enjoying a better locker room, but the field conditions should affect both teams equally. A cold day, a wind day, or a snowy day (or all three) in Buffalo affect both teams equally. To the point of this thread, it's great that Bills fans travel well, but the travel would make even more sense when it turns cold in Buffalo (November) while the rest of the country is still warmer.

Yeah. He clearly had given himself up and was not trying to advance the ball. That could have been a really bad turn of events if the Bills hadn't been able to push the ball out from the goal line. Could have been a safety, or could have resulted in a punt from the back of the end zone.

In the fourth quarter, the Bills broke the will of the Commanders. That's not supposed to happen with professionals, but you could see the entire Washington offense, particularly Howell, just shrinking in anticipation of the abuse they knew was coming immediately after each snap. After that, it was sharks in the bloody water. Fun for us to watch and a warning shot to the rest of the league's also-rans, but shocking to see the Commanders fold like that.