Utah John

It was an early Bucs coach who, when asked what he thought about his team's execution after another brutal loss, said "I'd be in favor of it". I think a lot of Bills fans would say the same thing about the refs in the Bucs game. But honestly, the refs executed perfectly. The game got a lot tighter in the fourth quarter so viewership remained high (good for ratings for TV, good for ads), and the team that was supposed to win was able to win at the end. It's times like these when all you can do is shake our heads in wonderment that we keep falling for this, thinking it's athletics when it's really just show business.

Michael Banks, Derick Bowers, Terrence Miles, David Meslow, Walt Coleman, Scott Novak, Ramon George This was from the ESPN page with the stats for the game. Scott Novak was the referee, the head guy. You might notice the name Walt Coleman. Apparently he's the son of the guy who Ralph Wilson tried to get barred from ever reffing a Bills game again, after the infamous "Just give it to them" game where the Patriots with Bledsoe got egregious calls to enable them to win.

The O line, hands down.

The Bills were able to have a big second half because Tampa Bay stopped attacking on defense. The Bills O line showed no ability to stop the TB rushers. The lesson that's going to be learned by defensive coordinators all over the league, as if they don't know it already, is that if you play soft defense, Allen will kill you, but if you attack, you can crush the Bills because our O line is pitiful. The Chiefs have two rookies playing extremely well on their O line. We have Boogie Basham.

Edmunds is playing the way Frazier wants him to play. Frazier has constructed the D to work as an 11 man unit. Edmunds is not called on to make those impact plays. He's there to eat up space on pass D, and to fill gaps on running plays. Those gaps fills are a problem, I'll agree. He's just not as bad a player as people here think he is.

I stopped keeping track of the number of times the refs charged a yardage tax whenever a Bill made a positive play. There's no other way to look at it except as a tax, like a sales tax. OK, Diggs makes a catch and is tackled on the 26 yard line, clearly not touched until past the 25. The ball is spotted at the 24. This was the most egregious case but this went on and on. The lack of a PI call when Diggs was held in the end zone, when a Bills TD takes the lead at the end of the 4th quarter. Can't have that. But Evans tackles Wallace and Wallace is called for PI. Josh gets hit late in the pocket, and late on a run out of bounds. No calls. OMG it was terrible.

Those of you of a certain age will remember one of the Rocky movies, where Rocky fought Mr. T. The theme song was about the Eye of the Tiger, about how a champion athlete needed the inner fire and drive to conquer their opponent. Last year the Bills had that. If they were in a close game, they hunkered down as a team and figured out how to win. This year they have the eye of the housecat. If they're ahead comfortably they relax and play well, and generally dominate an opponent. But when they're challenged, this year they wilt. They make enough mistakes to lose games they should win. They fumble on kickoffs without being touched. They fumble a simple handoff during a quarter when they had the wind against New England, costing them a chance to score when they could do it more easily. They drop easy passes that could turn into first downs. They usually play pretty decent football against tough teams, but they let ONE long run break free and they can't overcome it. Where's the team leadership? Who's holding the players responsible for their mistakes and failures? It's funny. Two years ago the defense was strong but last year they had a down year. This year the defense is generally very good, but they still break at the worst possible times. Sure, I hope they make the playoffs but they're not SB bound. Not this year.

There are other solutions to a defense attacking recklessly. For example, screen passes. The only screens the Bills run are those bubble screens to WRs. They don't work anymore because the other teams see them coming. Other teams use screen passes to RBs or TEs and have considerable success. You want to slow down the other team's pass rush? Make them pay for it.

Fitz would be a better player, but the Fitz Curse remains in effect. The starters always get hurt when he's the backup. Taylor would be much safer.

The Bucs beat the Pats in early October, before NE started playing well. And that was by 2 points. The Bucs beat the Colts in a really good, tough, competitive game that was fun to watch, and that could have gone either way. But, the Colts are the unBills. Where we can't run, they can't pass very well. Their offensive strength was countered by Tampa's defensive strength. Tampa is NOT as good on pass defense as they are on run defense. The Bills are still extremely talented. If Josh gets time to pass, the Bills should win.

Washington is playing pretty well, finally, but they're not great. So, how did they beat Tampa, and why can't we follow their method? There's no part of Washington's team that's better than the equivalent part on the Bills. There is no reason at all the Bills can't win.

That turned into quite a game. I guess the orange slices Roethlisberger's mom brought to the game really kicked in after halftime. The Vikings were playing like the drought-era Bills, searching hard for a way to lose. They almost found one, after holding a 29 point lead in the third quarter. If we could draft a guy like that in the third round, he'd be ours. That seems to be McBeane's limit on RBs.

McBeane built this year's team to beat KC, and wasn't looking in the rearview to see what other teams were doing to beat us. Other teams saw our strength was getting ahead quickly and forcing other teams to try to beat us in the passing game, which they're not going to do. They saw our front office struggle to find and keep the right linemen on both sides, and figured their best chance to win was to out-muscle our lines. Considering how badly our O line has played, and how much Josh still has accomplished, I think this might be the best year of his career so far. Statistically, no, but he's been running for his life so many times and still making plays.

How many times did the Bills's D stop the runner for no gain? How many for losses? I wasn't counting but I think there must have been 8-10 plays for no gain and 5-6 for a loss. OTOH there were probably 8-10 plays where the Pat RB assisted by the O line just pushed the Bills D backwards for 10 yards. The moral of the story is that the Bills CAN stop some runs all of the time, and all runs some of the time, but they can't stop all the runs all the time. But who CAN stop an NFL attack all the time? No one. The Bills D is not the problem. Our lightweight O line is the problem. Once the Bills figured out that Milano could run through the gap left by the pulling guard, resulting in two big negative plays, the Pats' running attack lost its spark. It's a shame that no one figured out what to do on those plays until so late in the game.

This game went almost exactly as many Bills fans expected. The weather was a huge factor (and could have been worse if the forecasted snow had appeared), and it disrupted the passing game more than it did the running game. And it's no surprise that the Bills aren't built to run well, and big powerful O lines give the Bills a tough time. All that said, we were very close to winning. Two fourth quarter red zone trips, and no points. Bass just barely missed his FG attempt and of course if he'd made it the Bills would have been going for another FG instead of needing a TD to win. This is a tough loss but we were one play from celebrating. The Bills still have a very strong team and just like almost all teams they have a couple of weaknesses. They're still definitely in the playoff hunt and will do well in domed stadiums and warm-weather locations. The dream of a SB trip this year is NOT dead. The Bills definitely need a strong, brawling, tough OG. Which is exactly what they thought they were getting when they moved up in the draft to grab Cody Ford in the second round. Every team misses on high picks occasionally. This year it looks like they found a good RT in the draft so maybe they're getting the hang of evaluating O line players.

Rats, I read the schedule too quickly, sorry, and thanks for pointing that out. Their other game is against the Titans, not the Bucs. The Dolphins could have the defense to stop the deHenry'd Titans so the same logic applies. They could make it to 10-7, and once again be just outside the playoffs.

One move I'd like to see is McBeane poach J.C. Jackson from the Pats (serves them right for poaching Stefon Gilmore from us). Jackson will be an unrestricted FA after this year. Jackson paired with White, while Poyer and Hyde are still playing so well, would be great, plus of course that weakens the Pats.

The Dolphins have two cupcakes and then the Bucs and Pats. They always play the Pats tough, and it's possible they'll catch the Bucs when the Bucs have the one seed locked up. So, yeah, who knows. I thought the Dolphins would be much better this year than they started out being, and I don't know why they sucked so badly early in the season. i don't think even finishing 10-7 is a lock for a WC slot this year, not with all the pretty good teams in the AFC all aiming for 11 wins or better. But if they do make it, they'll be a tough out.

If you watch the glory years Bills games, you'll see that for the no-huddle to work you need a RB like Thurman Thomas running behind a strong O line, plus an excellent QB and receivers. We have the latter two components but not the former two. Also I think the way plays are called is really different. Daboll is cooking up route combinations and blocking schemes as the game is underway, and giving that info to Allen. Kelly often called his own plays, which he could do well at that time but it's a lot more complicated now. So, no. I don't think it's a good idea.

Pat Paulsen. Presidential candidate in the 60s, from the Stag Party. OK, it was just on Laugh-In but he was terrific. Belichick is a great coach but not a great GM. He has always struggled to get good WRs. Occasionally it works out (Randy Moss), and he usually has good slot receivers (Amendola, Edelman), but generally this is the weakest part of the team. If they get lucky and draft or sign someone really good next year, the real challenge for Jones will be to keep that guy happy by hitting long passes with velocity. So far I haven't seen anything to suggest that Jones has particularly good arm. What he does have is accuracy, and a very good awareness of where his guys are and where the other team's guys are. By the way, comparing Jones to Brady is silly. The things Jones does well, Brady does better. and Brady still has a much better arm while drawing Social Security than Jones does as a young guy.

These overall stats don't tell the story. The Bills racked up insane stats against weak teams, and they've struggled against good teams or (Jags) teams with strong D lines. The most (ONLY) important stat is: four losses so far. Last year there was a long stretch where the Bills offense was just unstoppable. D coordinators get paid to deal with challenges like the ones the Bills presented, and they have done so. A strong D line and a competent defensive backfield will stop the Bills. This combination was installed to stop the Chiefs, and it worked, and then people tried it against us, and it worked still. Now it's up to our great O coordinator to step up and figure a way to counter the counter -- how to keep the offense running well against the types of defenses being thrown up at us. I've said before that the problem is the Bills were built to beat the Chiefs, and while we had our focus there we didn't see what other teams were doing to beat us. Other teams looked hard at our athletic but small O line and our athletic but small D line, and figured there was something there to exploit. So they did. And now to some extent we're trying to play last year's game on this year's field. Kansas City figured out how to counter the counter, and they've turned their season around. We need to do the same. Come on Daboll, let's see how good you REALLY are.

It's supposed to be John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave Now if he was a DB and was perpetually getting toasted, then maybe smoldering would be right. This. Brown's effectiveness would be diminished even more by teams playing two deep safeties most of the time.

The Bills aren't getting sacks but (a) they're getting pressures and (b) their pass defense is outstanding. It's been #1 in the NFL and might still be. So I'm not so worried about opponents passing. Jones is a very precocious rookie, playing like a guy with experience, but Frazier is second only to Belichick in thinking up ways to confuse rookie QBs. The run defense is the problem. The Pats don't have great backs but they have a great O line, and that's our kryptonite. I think the overall problem is that the Bills were built to beat the Chiefs, and they accomplished that, but while they had their eye on that goal, several other teams figured beating the Chiefs was so 2020, and they all bulked up into incredible hulks on their lines, and learned how to play two deep safeties and be patient. The game has changed in a year and the Bills aren't built to play bully-ball with the big guys. The only good way for the Bills to win is to jump out to a lead and force the other team to pass. But, getting out to a hot start has been eluding the Bills lately. Fix that against the Pats and I think the Bills should win easily.

The Titans are a shell of the team that beat the Bills. They're 8-4 (same as NE). The Bills are better than either of the teams I saw today, and there's no reason they can't beat NE twice. If Baltimore can lose a couple of games, the One Seed is available.

https://twitter.com/SandoNFL/status/1464072647277363202 You have to cut and paste the entire link into your browser. I can't get the entire thing to work so you can just click on it.