BADOLBILZ

Shaq has fallen off this year too but he isn't a disaster like Phillips has been.

Why stop there? It can also be true that this is just part of the game. The SB was sealed on a legit but often not called pass interference........the Bills won Sunday with a controversial non-call ending the game. The hope is that you mostly keep yourself out of those situations and that when you do, you get the breaks. You string a bunch of them together.......the odds are you get burned. The Bills still had plenty of opportunity to keep NE out of the end zone. They failed.

Well I full expect to see even more Aaron Maybin-esque flopping on Thursday from our cheerleading hero Phillips..........stay tuned for the drama!

No and they need not. If you play poorly for 58 minutes and find yourself in a tight game at the end because of it you have earned the right to have the random officials calls help decide the outcome. And the more angry fans get about it the more bonded to their teams they become.

Purdy has the best group of skill players around him in the NFL. 2 elite WR, an elite TE and an elite RB. Jennings is their 5th option and their version of Gabe except he can actually catch contested passes so he's useful in the short game. Purdy with the Bills weapons........and without the easy reads of the Shanahan offense........is probably worse than the version that lost his last two games and looked like a total scrub throwing wounded duck INT's.

The Patriots were throwing him to the ground left and right on Sunday. It was yakety sax level stuff. He is such a fake hustle poser I literally can't stand seeing him on the field. And I absolutely KNEW by midway thru 2021 that the Cardinals would cut him because he was terrible..........and that the Bills would be there to pick him up hoping to recapture the guy who rushed the passer well for them in his walk year. What I didn't expect was to pay him around $5M when he was lucky to get another chance in the NFL at all after how he coasted in AZ. He showed an ounce of juice last year between injuries but has been total trash this year. Like 2022 Rodger Saffold bad at DT.

There really isn't any good excuse for Allen to be regressing mentally. If you don't work at it you get worse at it. And he hasn't felt the need to fine tune the mental aspect of his game. Russ Wilson was quite good for a decade despite never having the tools to be an elite pocket passer. Allen has those tools. He shouldn't need to run and the whole "let Josh run and fire Dorsey" movements are all functions of people being afraid to be critical of Josh and not wanting to own up to Beane not putting the talent at receiver to win with the "unprepared" Josh that they have been getting the past 2 seasons now.

Or his much bigger 2022 Eagles teammate Linval Joseph. Both on the couch........and neither can be as bad as Jordan Phillips at EITHER DT position (I still can't believe they brought back Phillips for a penny above league minimum let alone $3M with guarantees).

Yeah the #1 thing plaguing Josh Allen is his decision making. Which is a function of preparation, not intelligence, IMO. If he were prepared for what he's seeing he'd be much more efficient with his unreal skillset. But, to me this was something that the Bills should have known he would continue to struggle with. Ever since 13 seconds game I think he has decided that he is pretty great and doesn't want to put in a lot of hard work at the expense of his offseason joy. No reason you can't win a SB with a QB who isn't attentive to detail like a Tom Brady..........but you gotta' put weapons around him. It's the Big Ben model. Big Ben was a creep so people focus on that but aside from that he just didn't want to live football 24/7/365 and there wasn't anything the Steelers could do about it and he was still a top 5 QB either way so they leaned into it with a steady supply of playmaking talent.

He had 3 drops on 27 targets last season..........which is 11% drop rate which was statistically worse than Gabe Davis even(and he was terrible). Shakir has been used on shorter throws this season than last. He's 8 of 9 targets but it's been very short throws only aside from the one that he dropped but wasn't scored as a drop.

3 drops last season, actually. The horrible drop on that wide open bomb in the WC game versus Miami was a very big negative momentum swing for the Bills. And his hands sucked this preseason too, which I think you want to dismiss but Davis dropped a couple in preseason too. Drops in preseason are probably a good predictor of drops going forward, just saying. Also the 1 target that went incomplete to Shakir this season was probably Josh Allen's best throw of the season on that go route versus the Raiders..........put it right on him but he flailed at it and it fell to the turf........not scored a drop but it was very catchable. But in general Shakir seems to have soft enough hands(unlike Gabe and Knox who struggle with hand placement and technique) but Shakir hasn't impressed as a route runner and he seems to not be able to track the ball well on longer throws.

His 2024 salary is unguaranteed so Byard is owed nothing by the Eagles after this season...........surprised you don't know this. Costs them like $2M total to get him. If you think that move is going to help put them "in cap Hell in 1-2 seasons" you must REALLY hate all the work Brandon Beane has done in the past 2 offseasons.

Yeah the Bills offense played well enough to win the game but the first play INT throw to Knox and the 4th down drop by Knox were two turnovers that really hurt. Good article in The Athletic today..........Bills actually improved their season EPA offensively in the Pats game but the defense and special teams were just really bad.

Yeah and the Pats got 3 on their first drive. The interception on the next play is what really hurt. And it was a play the Pats had anticipated. Allen just showed a lack of polish by staring Knox down.

Hyde was talking about scripted offensive plays hurting them.

I don't think some slot only inside guy is any kind of answer. I know they had a good run with peak Beasley in 2020 but they also had John Brown opposite Diggs early in that season when they were REALLY explosive. In 2021 with Beasley they were inconsistent on offense, subsequently 6-5 thru 11 games like they probably will be this season........it just wasn't good enough. What they need is a WR1B.......like many of the top teams have. Diggs and Kincaid can be great slot options.

I think they are more likely to be all-in now than they were at 3-1 with false confidence in their offensive personnel after a couple blowout wins. A lot of the key players on this roster are older..........so sitting on draft picks isn't necessarily going to fully replenish those losses. I think they will still be all-in this season and that would require some trade activity. I think the approach could be to trade earlier picks for players and later picks so that they still have some draft pick numbers........that's a fairly common approach........and then hoping they find guys like Milano and Johnson and Benford with those later choices.

Knox is not tradeable due to vast amounts of immediate dead money required to move him. Whether people are prisoners of the moment is only relevant in a world where he could actually be dealt.

The first one? Dawson Knox.......and he had it with both arms against his chest but dropped it after subsequent contact. Turnover.

If they can get that 7th seed I can see a fairly winnable road path thru Jacksonville/KC/Miami to a SB...........which is doable if they can add a WR1B soon.

you forgot to ad "forever" after "suggesting". But the reality is that they need to play with a lot more urgency on offense to get in front of teams and "allow the defense to pin it's ears back on the DL and cover"........to paraphrase McD postgame today. The issues with playing faster: 1) They don't have to the playmaking personnel that they can just leave on the field in all down and distance situations. They've added a bunch of spare parts to "hopefully" be better situationally but they don't have enough playmakers that they can just leave on the field for 8-12 plays and trap a defense into favorable looks. This allows defense's to substitute and match up better and execute their game plan. Which typically includes slowing/shortening the game and subsequently limiting the Bills scoring opportunities in the process. 2) With the injuries on defense they lack the depth they once had to play 15-18 minute defensive halves if the uptempo style isn't speedboating the opponent.

Well I'm glad you've declared Kincaid the Bills "feature TE" because Knox got 2 targets downfield and both resulted in turnovers(INT/Downs). Kincaid needs to be running those routes and not the underneath nickel and dime stuff.

That's always his biggest problem but they are also at a confluence of having to scheme around a lack of playmakers and subsequently allowing defenses to match up. If they had the talent to keep the same 11 players on the field on all downs and distances they could run tempo and negate much of what teams are doing schematically to limit Buffalo offensively/shorten games. Instead they play into the hands of opponents, running slow developing clock grinding drives that allow lesser offense's to remain two dimensional all game.......which stresses the Bills vulnerability against the run and screen games.

Kincaid got more passes but I'm not sure you can say he's "the featured" TE. They literally came out on the first play with the intention of completing a long pass to Knox.......probably because the last offensive play against NYG was a drop of a catchable ball by Knox. The result this time was an INT and points that would provide the difference in the game. Allen should have looked the defender off but why is the guy with the bad hands running the longer route there? Peppers peeled off of Kincaid in the flat to intercept that ball. That should not be happening.........Kincaid is the much bigger threat downfield.

If you think the player grades are "completely" subjective.........yes, you have a vendetta. I can assure you that in most cases the player grade passes the eyeball test for performance in the systems/circumstance those players are in. The narrative that nobody can possibly understand a players responsibilities in a given system and therefore can have only an uninformed opinion on them is based on this idea that there is infinite nuance in how teams teach and play the game. Which would make it a little difficult to implement but you are welcome to keep thinking that because that kind of nonsensical belief at least drives discussion on TSW.