Utah John

I love Melbourne. I've been there twice. On one occasion I actually made a proper right hand turn in Melbourne traffic, but it was more blind luck than skill. Could you perhaps explain the procedure for turning right in Melbourne? (For other readers, this is a real thing. There's a strange traffic rule there, or at least there was the last time I was there which was about 15 years ago.) Tennis players are real athletes. The women's game seems to reward power, leading to leading women players with thick, strong bodies like Serena Williams. The men's game is really different, where the men have to get power without a lot of bulk so they can be so quick.

Sure there are games where the coaches are out-guessed by the other team's coaches. It happens. But there are also games where Josh is just ... off. Not accurate or smart. He isn't always a combination of Superman and Captain America. Sometimes he's just a QB who misses an easy completion on a short out, killing a drive. It happens. Coaches and QBs and all the other players are human beings who sometimes make mistakes.

That's a great line but it's not the whole story. The biggest change on offense for the Bills has been the O line getting it done and the running game shockingly getting better right after the O line got sorted -- who'd have expected THAT? Now the play-action plays Josh uses so much are really deadly. IMO the bigger change of the two offenses has been the Bills getting the O line and running game going. The Chiefs O line got miraculously turned around this year with good draft picks and Thuney as a FA, but they were already playing well when the teams met in October. So the only thing new for the Chiefs has been the route trees. I feel confident Frazier and company are well aware of what the Chiefs are doing, and the Bills have the great overall D and great pass D to make the necessary adjustments. There are changes on D also, but they're about a wash. The Chiefs now have Ingram rushing the passer and Chris Jones in the interior, where he's better. The thing is neither of them has been putting up exciting stats. Right now their D line just looks like a good one, not an outstanding one. The Bills' D change is they've figured out how to defend against teams that go heavy and try to pound the run game. However that doesn't seem to be in the cards for this week's game, unless KC is ready to completely revamp their offense.

I'm puzzled by the fact that Hussey and his crew will do this game. Last week's Raiders-Bengals game was refereed by a crew led by Jerome Bogler but made up partly of Hussey's regular crew. The announcer said this crew (which screwed up with the false whistle on the pass from Burrow to a WR in the end zone) had not worked together before, but that it was made up of the best-graded members of other crews, plus Bogler. Maybe Bogler got put on the shelf for the playoffs after the debacle in Cincinnati, and they brought back Hussey because they needed a replacement. If so that might mean it's mostly the hybrid crew again (except for the guy who blew the erroneous whistle) but with Hussey replacing Bogler. If all this is so, then maybe the refs responsible for watching for DH and DPI won't be the same members of Hussey's crew that have the tendency to let them play and not call penalties. What a thing to be worried about. As someone else posted, you shouldn't have to take into account who the refs are when you put together your game plan.

Fine. The Bills play the Chiefs every year, it seems. Josh will get his chance.

When Tre White went down a lot of us were worried that the entire D might collapse. Far from it. Instead they've been playing at a higher level, with team defense suffocating opponents. Of course they'd be even better with White back but Frazier really has them working together brilliantly, so NO ONE has been able to light them up. Of course the Chiefs have the previous game this year to figure out what Frazier did to them last time, but that was months ago and Frazier hasn't been sitting in his office wasting time. He's been figuring out more moves to counter their countermoves. The Chiefs have two D linemen back, but only CEH on offense who wasn't there last time. The Bills were built to beat the Chiefs. Keep that in mind. NO ONE has had an effective passing game against them. Best case scenario, the Bills and Bengals both win this weekend, and the Bills win the AFCC at home the following weekend, shutting down the Bengals passing game.

The jail situation won't keep him out of Sunday's game, but if he gets covid while in jail and then shares it with his teammates, that would be soooo sad.

If you can punt and pin their offense back, and you trust your defense to get a three and out, you're counting on getting the ball back where you kicked it from, but now you'll have a first down. So a lot depends on how your own team is playing.

The Bills offense was vanilla-flavored vanilla against the Jets and Falcons. Daboll wasn't showing anything he didn't have to, and frankly it didn't look like the Bills were concentrating all that hard. They knew they could win comfortably, and that's exactly what they did. A lot of secrets kept under wraps were unwrapped against NE. I hope Daboll has more of them ready for delivery.

Boettger wasn't playing badly before he got hurt, but his injury forced the coaches to choose between Ford or Feliciano or Bates. They chose wisely. The other part of the improvement was getting Williams out of the RT position, where he was not playing anywhere near as well as he did last year. Putting Brown in as RT and moving Williams to RG made both positions better. The Bills have depth on the O line but not good depth. One injury to any of the starters and things can go south quickly.

Bad idea. They'd have to put up a brick wall so nothing could get by. Most of the team wasn't even born when Parcells/Belichick beat that earlier team.

Anyone wishing for the days of Ford and Feliciano?

Seriously, he probably could play LB. Not that I am proposing that, I just think he has the toughness, strength, and speed to do it. Jim Kelly thought he could play LB but he wasn't fast enough. Josh Allen is. Again, I am not suggesting this, just paying tribute to Allen's physical abilities.

Not actually true although why take a chance? https://www.latimes.com/sports/la-xpm-2012-may-17-la-sp-sn-gatorade-george-allen-20120517-story.html

The passion! The pneumonia!

I disagree about the Dallas -- SF game's refs. There were a lot of calls but I thought all or nearly all were correct, and I didn't see any fouls that weren't called. Dallas is just a sloppy team. The timing issue at the end of the game was handled about as well as possible, I thought. It was Dak's stupidity to keep running the extra few yards, wasting a second or two that Dallas couldn't afford to lose. As unfair as it would have been to the Bengals, it would have been the RIGHT call to do the play over, according to the rules.

Imagine that the Pats receiver and the Bills CB weren't there, and Hyde just had a clear shot at running down that pass and catching it. That would have been a 7.4 degree of difficulty catch. Now factor in the two other men running into the situation and NOW imagine making that catch, grabbing it just before it would have hit the receiver's hands. What incredible concentration and fearlessness.

Plus Hyde brought with him the tip about warm chicken broth for the players to keep warm.

The X-factors are still out there. Aside from Addison, I don't know about any Bills injuries from the Pats game, and for all I know Addison will be OK too. But, covid is still lurking. The refs have to figure out if they're going to call DPI and holding against the Chiefs defenders. Daboll and/or Frazier could be distracted by the job opportunities out there. Someone could get hurt during practice this week. The Chiefs have most of the same X-factors to lose sleep over. There's no telling exactly who'll show up on the field next Sunday.

The Bills fans had to feel like the Patriots dragon was slain, and it was. McDermott has his own personal dragon to slay, and it's his mentor and former boss, Andy Reid. Sure, the Bills beat the Chiefs earlier this year, but that was just one game out of a long season for the Chiefs. The Bills had turned that game into their personal Super Bowl, but the Chiefs didn't. My point is that Reid, Bienemy, and Mahomes are going to bring more to the field next week than they did before. The Bills are on a high now, well-deserved, but I think they're going to face a much more determined team than the Pats. The Chiefs aren't going to roll over and look for a blanket to get warm under. Next week might be the first close game the Bills win all year. If it's close near the end, I hope they don't start looking over their shoulder wondering what's going to go wrong THIS time. I hope they're just going to execute and prevail.

The Bills simply need to win three more games against teams that aren't as good as they are. It would be nice to play some at home but the Bills have generally looked just as good on the road this year as at home.

This is something I posted on the Washington Post site yesterday: Two years ago, there was a playoff game between the Bills and the Texans. (Really, the Texans who are such a mess now were in the AFC Championship Game just two years ago.) The Bills were winning 13-0 at halftime, and they kicked off to start the second half. The Texans kick returner caught the ball in the end zone and then tossed the ball forward. This was not one of the ways a returner can get a touchback. The Bills recovered the ball. The Bills were awarded a touchdown by the ref on the field, although the proper call was probably a penalty for an illegal forward pass making it a safety. But those refs were talked into disregarding the NFL's rulebook, and awarding a touchback to the Texans. Instead of going up 19-0 or 20-0, or even 15-0 with a free kick coming, the Bills struggled in the second half and ended up losing in overtime to the Texans. In the Bengals-Raiders game, the officials once again disregarded the rulebook and allowed the Bengals touchdown to stand. In both cases, the officials inserted their own faulty judgment into the game, choosing to disregard the rules, and in both cases the home team got a huge unearned break. In both cases the visiting team lost a very close game.

The key thing about that interception was that it denied the Pats the chance to think they could win. The Bills had taken the opening kickoff and driven the field, scoring their first TD. The Pats did not move the ball as easily as the Bills had, but they did move it, and that TD the Pats didn't score suddenly drained all the juice out of their offense -- they all started feeling really cold and not very interested. And their defense played like zombies the whole game. As time went on the Pats on the field kept looking fondly at the sidelines and the parkas. The cold was a real problem for the Pats but the Bills seemed completely unfazed. It turned out the open air stadium DOES give the Bills an advantage.

It's amazing how much better Singletary got when Ford and Feliciano were watching from the bench.

The TV announcers mentioned that Hyde made second team All-Pro but I never heard them say anything about Jordan Poyer making first team All-Pro. I think both players might have had just a skosh more incentive to show the NFL community what a travesty it was that neither made it to the Pro Bowl.