BADOLBILZ

Nice LAMP post @eball! Some of the complaints are certainly over the top but they will most likely be the 5th seed in the AFC after 14 weeks when the Dolphins beat the Texans tomorrow. Because they came out flat after the bye......consistent with their annual mid-season slumps that have dashed their home field advantage hopes in each of their prior 3 seasons. Same thing happened in 2017. Coaching is the common denominator. And they did it by blowing big leads twice in the second half to fall out of the #1 seed and first place in the east. That is going to upset fans given SB favorite expectations and the importance the team itself has placed on earning the #1 seed. You know that. It's also a good time to remind you that you quit your (26 year?) season tickets in disgust at the organization when they fired Rex and hired Sean McDermott.

Agree. And it shouldn't be that way with the defense, the reserve safeties and LB's should know their assignments inside and out because they have been here for 2-3 seasons now. The promise of the McDefense was that you could do more with less talent in the secondary because it was more about being assignment sound than matching up individually. But additionally they have been running this D for 6 years now and teams know their tendencies when they put together a game plan.........so the Bills are trying to change things up while also dealing with injuries and limited practice time. On offense it's frustrating but there is also the school of thought that doing less things well is better than trying to fool opponents and doing it to a fault. Daboll was the latter much of last season. "Gotcha'" plays make you look brilliant when they work and stupid when they don't and you keep doing it anyway. I totally buy that Daboll wanted out, just like he wanted out of Alabama. That Wyche/Mularkey style of play calling grates on people like Saban, McDermott and Cowher. The Bills problem now is that simple doesn't work when you don't match up......and after 2 offseasons of neglecting to improve the offensive side of the ball they just don't have the horses to just line up and beat the men across from them the way they did in 2020 and to a lesser extent in 2021. I think they clearly over estimated their personnel coming into the season. Right now, "simple" is actually harder on Josh Allen because he's having to break down defenses with his feet........whether it be holding the ball to get covered receivers free or tucking and running with it.

I didn't miss your point. We have a lot of fans who will always think that other teams aren't as impacted by injuries. Even when the Bills are incredibly healthy like last season. The new one now is "yeah but the Bills injuries are to GOOD players". The Lions had both of their starting guards out.......their #1 CB got ruled out late in the week.......and they also had to elevate a DE from the practice squad and they were a 4-6 team with a 31st ranked defense to start with. But "woe are we" who had to deal with injuries to what is generally regarded as one of, if not the best, rosters in the league. Injuries didn't level the playing field by any means. The better team won. It still would have been an upset if that team with those players and that winning culture would have lost to THAT team.

In the TSW tradition of "But, but didn't you hear?" Not having Tre White cost the team a Super Bowl! The Chiefs version of Tre White....Tyrann Mathieu.......got knocked out a few plays into that game and their secondary was a mess that night but to some Bills fans the Chiefs stole the victory because the Bills were without Tre.

Yeah I was kidding. Edmunds wouldn't even have been in position to see and catch the football. He, unfortunately, has no nose for the football whatsoever. And I'm not kidding about that, unfortunately. He's made significant strides this year but he just doesn't have the processing speed to transition from hit it to get it like guys like Poyer and Milano.

I think it's just a bit of over-adjustment to Daboll's inconsistent (wicky-wacky) play calling tendencies. And McDermott might have something to do with that, I don't think he loved Daboll's work last season. If not for a number of inexcusable Allen turnovers this offense looks MUCH more productive against a much better schedule than they faced last year. At worst they've been more consistent. The Daboll lovers hate to hear that but there hasn't been a 6 point performance against the worst team in the NFL this year now, has there? And I'd also add that the personnel isn't as good on offense this season either. Saffold has been pretty lousy. Beasley and Sanders were replaced by Shakir and Kumerow/Hodgins/Gentry(I guess?). Yikes. I'm not enamored with the work of Dorsey either but I agree that he needs some time to figure it out. Daboll was terrible at many stops before he became a genius overnight.

Favre would actually top that list of 4-5 "others" IMO. He had a knack for firing those long frozen ropes thru traffic at high velocity.

He did his best Edmunds impression on that ball that was thrown right to him though. They finally have reached the season where they miss Edmunds when he is not out there but watching Klein play is a reminder that an instinctive LB can be good enough.

Yeah the week before they managed their time much better at the end of the half. I was surprised that they didn't do the same this week.........should have come up with a TD there against a bad defense with it's #1 CB out but they ran themselves into a short play sheet. The Bills script-flipper/opponent soul crusher as currently constituted is Allen running the ball so like any running team they are more dangerous when they have the time to afford to be able to run the ball. But overall I think McD notably out-managed the Meathead. Which was necessary because the Lions OC was in Frazier's pants for much of the game.

Of course.........if he slides and that kick is 3 yards further back..........the same shaky Bass kick is then wide left. Allen has had to push the envelope because they tried to build a super defense instead of a super offense...........and to this point that approach has failed to yield top seed results. When you have the best football player in the league at QB you should take the shortest distance to greatness, IMO.

The whining about injuries and hyperbole like "I've never seen so many injuries" has been pretty absurd. The Bills have been a remarkably healthy team under McDermott and have still been one of the healthier teams this year. Bottom line: it's harder to maintain consistently excellent defense than it is offense. Once you have a great QB it's hard to hold an offense down. But you can have 7 studs on defense but a couple injuries can lead to assignment errors that undermine everything else. The Bills are experiencing that with a relatively normal attrition rate. Additionally, every season a player or two unexpectedly gets exposed. Most recently it's definitely Dane Jacksons lack of ball skills with his back to the QB. Similar to what teams figured out with Edmunds a couple seasons ago when his passer rating against skyrocketed. If the worst thing that can happen is a ball ending up on the turf that's usually a risk worth taking.

I thought Beane had learned his lesson when he acquired Brown, Beasley and Diggs in back-to-back offseasons and they started calling WR their "fastball".

When you have Josh Allen throwing the football.........you don't just want a pure slot receiver.......you want a two stud WR's who can play inside or out. Then one of them is always in the slot in 3 WR sets and their route tree isn't limited from the slot because they can do it all. This leaves the other boundary spot for a deep ball specialist like Gabe Davis.

The drop % and the inability to win contested catch situations are glaring issues. @dave mcbride correctly pointed out the contested catch situation he won versus Minkah Fitzpatrick.........but generally speaking if the DB is anywhere near the ball he doesn't catch it. I think part of the issue could be him not knowing what he didn't know about himself last offseason. Davis had been getting highly favorable matchups for his first two years so he wasn't really having to catch the ball against tight coverage very often. Maybe his offseason work will be very much about winning despite contact as he seeks that contract. Ultimately, the Bills just figuratively dropped the ball at the WR position the past two offseasons and that's why we've had to watch Davis play a role he isn't suited for at this point.

Nothing anyone says on TSW is inherently "useful". Thinking otherwise is just your cracked perception of reality.

You'll have to be much more specific with your second paragraph. MLB has guaranteed contracts and they still play games with payroll. One team can have a $40M payroll and another can have a $300M payroll. My Yankees, for instance, have had payrolls of around $250M on $900M in revenues in the 2010's. The NFL shares revenue near equally with players and teams are required to spend 90% of their cap over a 3 year period. Guaranteed salaries are a "massive boon" for certain individual players but not for the players as a whole if the dollars aren't there or aren't being spent.

It's not really disputable by the numbers. The NFL only seems *somewhat* random at times because the talent is more evenly distributed than in other sports. Even with the systems in place to create parity there have been multiple seasons in the past 50 years where NFL teams have had entirely undefeated AND winless regular seasons. That's effectively impossible in MLB, NBA and NHL. The inherent competitiveness in their seasons allows those sports to maintain a level of fan interest without the full range of parity inducing measures in place. Trying to qualify and extract "season is too long" only serves to emphasize the point. The NFL can't play long seasons........so they can't operate like those sports. If they did the product would take a massive hit in popularity and LIKELY even have to contract.

This has been speculated a little on TSW with the way IR is now........so I wondered when we were going to see this kinda' news. Coming down the stretch and he knows this is his last best shot at getting a SB ring. Next season the veteran roster pieces will start falling off in larger numbers so it's going to cease being a monumental upset every time they lose a game.

And subsequently a toothless union or none at all.......so you can make them practice a ton if they like having a job! You might like that but there wouldn't be parity and the league wouldn't be able to pick it's own number in TV negotiations without parity. Pete Rozelle knew that NFL football couldn't reach it's potential without parity. People say "any given Sunday" but in truth none of the major sports is as easy to dominate when you have superior personnel than football.

I didn't feel it was actually a hold. But I agree about not putting your hands in position where you appear to be committing a penalty. The defender flopped to his left after Gilliam struck him square and took him out of any chance of making the play. And the defender didn't even do a particularly good job at selling it........but he got the call. That handsy stuff got Hamlin too on the PI. Also had little impact on the play result and could have easily been left in the pocket of the official. There were numerous cases where the Browns committed egregious fouls that impacted play results......which were not penalized. I think Oliver got blatantly grabbed numerous times on plays where he was poised to make a TFL. It was a particularly poorly called game, IMO. Not just a few notably bad calls in an otherwise well called game(like the Minnesota game). I'm not a ref blamer and would never have blamed a loss on that if the Bills didn't win.........but it was not a good performance. Again though.........I think that adversity actually helped spark them a bit. They've been jumping out to big leads and coming out of the locker room comatose in the other games since the bye. They were on point until the last third of the 4th quarter when they took their late game snooze. That was an improvement!

You wouldn't feel that way if you looked at the system thru the free market lens. The unguaranteed multi-year contracts actually greatly benefit the players as a whole. It's something that fans can't understand because no players union would allow it...........but if every player were to become a free agent after the season the owners would have a massive hammer over them. The overall size of the pie that the players earned would be a mere fraction of what it is under the current system and it would be extremely difficult to keep them unionized. In a sport with a 100% injury rate, as players say, nobody would get multi-year deals. Nobody. When Marvin Miller and the MLBPA first pushed for free agency........MLB owners dangled that "total free agency" to them hoping they'd take it. But Miller wasn't that dumb.

Sure but you are comparing apples and oranges...........the Bills are a pass first offense with a great QB and the Niners are a power running team with Jimmy G. This is why people like myself and @ScottLaw were presuming the Bills were going to operate more under center and with traditional play action this year...........they didn't have the receiving personnel to run a lot of spread without it turning into Josh Allen being the leading rusher. None of us wanted to have to see Josh Allen run for 800-1,000 yards........but here we are. Maybe they evolve more that way as the season progresses but Gabe Davis just isn't a reliable enough receiver to be a high target guy in a spread attack. Which is what they need if they want to keep playing Daboll-ball.

Lumping him in with 32 other teams receivers when Gabe Davis has, at worst, the second best QB in the NFL throwing to him..........in a pass crazy offense...........that's where your argument ceases to illustrate perspective. The Bills passing offense is Diggs and Davis and little else.........and he simply hasn't seized the opportunity. The bulk stats give the impression that he's been very good but those numbers should be GREAT given the opportunity he's been given. 50% completion and nearly 20% outright drops aren't even mediocre numbers........they are terrible and threatening for the worst in the league for a receiver who is receiving any volume of targets. It's not his fault that too much was expected of him after he had so clearly proven to be inconsistent in his two prior seasons as well..........but they have what they have and really need him to step up his game despite having to face decent CB's now. Teams that win SB's have more reliable WR2's than that. It's a commonality. That doesn't mean they can't defy that with a ham-handed WR2..........no rookie OC has won a SB since the 1980's either and that doesn't mean Dorsey can't. But it's a handicap, nonetheless.

What is really glaring is watching opposing receivers dominate contested catch situations against the Bills since the bye........but Gabe Davis just can't catch anything that is remotely contested. It's not just the nearly 20% outright drops that are reducing him to a 50/50 proposition on pass attempts. I didn't expect Davis to catch the deep pass against Sauce.........but he sure could have.......and he needs to come down with some of those if they aren't going to be able to divert the top 2 CB's away from him and allow him to get more open.

Davis is the modern day version of Alvin Harper. The issue is that the team........and so many fans.........seem to have thought he was going to step up and be a stand-alone WR2 or even a WR1B type. That wasn't likely to happen. He'd never shown that range or consistency. It was careless to not stock the cupboard with more quality.