BADOLBILZ

They just went 3-1 with their backup QB and they are the #2 seed in the NFC.

Having watched all of the other sports during the pandemic it seems like every team has that guy or 2 that really didn't prepare themselves enough during lockdown. I suspect Ford was that guy for the Bills. He wasn't good last season but he was awful this year. He wasn't worthy of his top of round 2 draft status but he's better than he showed this year.

For the most part the refrain before the season was that they will go as far as Allen can take them. So I don't think it's a crazy shock that Allen has been excellent. I think the manner he has been excellent..........short to intermediate accuracy improves and not running nearly as much and still not fixing the deep ball issues.......is surprising. But it was feasible for him to be excellent. The defense was supposed to be "top 5" and Diggs was supposed to be a revelation at WR. And more importantly we were told back in the struggles of 2018 that year 3.....2019........was supposed to be the year all along............and it almost was but they still went 0-2 vs. the Pats and stumbled down the stretch and came unglued in the playoff game. 4 years into a regime we shouldn't be the least bit surprised to be a SB contender.

Judging from your self description as a "drought survivor" my question might have been a bit too on point. No, I will not be crying. As I've said before, the journey is the reward. But I guarantee there will be a bunch of folks on here who will say they will.........that also for years made excuses to me here as to why it was justifiable to stop showing up for Bills games after Thanksgiving. After a couple of decades of sitting in the stands at the end of so many Bills seasons with only like 10,000 others........for playoff-meaningless games where the team couldn't have PAID people to show up........I find it a bit hard to believe that there are quite this many tortured souls. There is a little emotional tourism going on...........that's fine, no real harm, it's just a game..........but it was amusing watching all the bandwagon sufferers when the Bills finally made the playoffs in 2017 and it should be amusing watching the social media reactions if they win the division tomorrow.🤞

I think the question is how would winning a SB change your fandom going forward? The woeful Bulldog on WGR basically said something I thought may be true for some Bills fans............he was a passionate Red Sox fan.........spending a bunch of money following them...... until they won a World Series and now he cares a lot less. He fits the profile of a lot of folks here.........he wasn't that interested in the Bills or Sabres until he moved away..........and then after living elsewhere for a while he became an avid fan of all things Buffalo because he felt like he needed that struggle as part of his identity.

My bad. My point was that they didn't just plow thru them handing the ball off for 80 yards though. They had to pass their way out of a first and 20 to start with and had to use their QB as a runner to extend the drive. Long drives help shorten the game but they don't necessarily say a lot about the quality of the offense(obviously see 2017 Bills).........the Raiders had a 20 play drive tonight against LA Chargers and they then had a 14 play drive to start OT that burned thru almost 7 minutes of clock before the Chargers called a timeout on 3rd down. It was a good drive by the Bills but it's one of those cases where someone tried too hard to put it into a perspective that made it look like something astonishing. That Steeler defense is pretty beleaguered......especially the LB corps....... and as a whole they haven't been playing like a playoff team for many weeks. The Bills took care of business against a team that's really in a rut........not unlike the Bills were in that Tennesse/KC portion of the season.

People with glasses like Pegs have faces that beg to be snowballed

High ankle sprains are 4-6 week injuries typically and considering that he had other injuries to heal and that his game is built on speed and change of direction it was a pretty easy prediction to figure he'd be out the full 6 weeks(which is what the New England game will make it).

The Bills had success on that last drive because they didn't limit themselves to running the ball. It wasn't just ground and pound........Allen dropped back to pass on 7 of the 12 plays prior to the two kneel downs. He ended up scrambling for yards a couple times and one of the drop backs resulted in a Morse holding call. It was an excellent display of offensive football but long drives are not new under McDermott they were critical in Jauron-balling their way thru the 2017 season. Among the many long drives was an 18 play drive against Atlanta and another 18 play drive against Jax in the wildcard game.

That too but I was responding to your point about the tackles.

IMO Feliciano has been excellent at center since he first filled in for Morse when he got concussed in training camp in 2019. Morse is an excellent athlete who could probably hold his own at tackle but he just isn't as physical as Feliciano inside.

The fans of those other cities teams aren't famous for doing crazy Bills Mafia culture things(like smashing thru flaming tables) either though. A common theme in racism is a fear/rejection of culture. Some black people see what mostly-white Bills fans are filmed doing and their extreme allegiance to the team and town and think "why?". And they think they would be arrested if they did something like that etc.. It's just another form of intolerance. Every race is capable of having biases..........Foxworth admits that as if it should be accepted and OK............but in today's culture it is not OK to be honest about that.

We caught a big break when Bud Dupree got hurt. Dawkins has not been nearly as good as Williams at his position this year.

I remember being disappointed in the uni's for the SB XXV. I was definitely hoping for the blue tops. Pro sports teams started going with more aggressive, darker and black backgrounds in uniforms in response to the sneaker/hiphop culture in the very late 80's so the all-whites were definitely uncool........they looked like tighty whities and gave the teams that wore them the look of the nail instead of the hammer. That culture has passed and now there is an element of cool to wearing even terrible looking pajama style uni's like the color rush reds. Those things just need a trap door on the back of the pants to complete the look. Less aggressive colors are making a comeback in uni's in general.........like the powder blue coming back to baseball uni's. So white on white isn't a white flag look anymore. The Bills sold a good deal of black, red and blue jerseys and hats in that 89'-92 era...........I've got an awesome Thurman Thomas jersey and a "Griswold" hat of the like. The Bills never went all in with the black color scheme but the Sabres eventually did though.

Yes I was one of those not pleased about losing Pettine. Daboll might just be improving.......that's good NOW.......but I'm not sure that thinking he is just a slow learner makes for a very promising HC outlook. One of the important parallels I see between Weis and Daboll as EP OC's is that Weis was heavily (over)credited for making Tom Brady.......and that "QB guru" thing really is the main sales pitch with Daboll.........he isn't actually blowing the doors off the league with his 2020 offense there is just the perception that Josh Allen was a very difficult project to tackle. I suspect the likelihood that Allen also proves to have been the much bigger variable in that OC/QB equation is much more likely than Daboll going from a thrice-fired NFL OC to a stud HC. He would be the first of that kind.

I think 3 years is enough of a sample size.

2019 Edmunds........AFC's 3rd option at ILB. 2015 Tyrod...............AFC's 3rd option at QB. I was wrong about Edmunds being a "first alternate" but your confusion/mistake was lumping the two leagues together for Tyrod Taylor and not Edmunds. That game must have been a hybrid game with league's mixed.......because each league goes with 3 QB's..........Tyrod isn't even an alternate he's just on the original roster if it's AFC/NFC. If we lump Edmunds into the pool of NFC LB's last season........in addition to the AFC.........he would haven't been invited in any form. The NFC is stacked at ILB.

I think the MAIN thing that holds Edmunds back is play making. He lacks consistency sure, but he just doesn't make big plays. For instance.......last year Devin Bush had 2 interceptions and 4 fumble recoveries for Pittsburgh. That's 6 times he flipped the field for his team. Turnover differential being arguably the most important stat in the game.........the fact that Edmunds has no nose for the ball playing off-ball greatly detracts from his game. I'd really like to see your list. You may have Hightower and Bush off this year because they are opted out/injured but the actual overall season that Edmunds himself has put together has been largely disappointing. I think it would be a surprise to people to see where Edmunds stacks up in the NFL. The perception is that he is a top 5 or 6 and he's not even close. You didn't even mention Roquan Smith and he's leading the NFL in solo tackles and has 4 sacks. Edmunds is closer to the middle of the top 32 ILB's than the top.

So I guess you are saying that the perception that he is such a good OC could just be because he has top offensive talent?(because he was a bad OC with bad talent) You might have a point. The Bills have a top 5 QB and receiving corps and a good, expensive offensive line. But they are only 10th in yardage and 9th in scoring and tied for 11th most giveaways. In Roman's one full year in Buffalo(2015) they finished 12th in yardage and 10th in scoring and 20th most giveaways. We are all pleased with the improvement but they aren't setting the league ablaze offensively just yet.........and there is reason to wonder if Daboll's loss would be that important. Maybe Daboll is just another Charlie Weiss and his replacement would be an upgrade.

Yeah Tomlin is simply trying to light a fire under his players by saying they got manhandled. That was hardly a slobber-knocker performance by the Bills. The biggest weakness of the Bills defense is tackling and Sunday night was hardly a revelation in that regard.

It will be a buyers market but "most" teams are not going to be in cap trouble. Only 13 of the 32 teams project to have less than $10M in cap space at this point including the Bills who are at about $4M.

The Bills don't need more women in their coverage of the team...........they just need more talent regardless of gender. They have guys like Tasker and Bulldog slurping and stuttering relentlessly........and providing little insight.......on the mic during the day time shows at their flagship station and Maddy is flat out inaudible. Maddy's mom is a play-by-play person with a huge voice so she got a leg up in the biz but not sure how far she can go with the faint pipes.

If you mean that Daboll usually gets fired immediately after one season as an NFL OC.......yes different than Roman. If he were the Bills original OC choice in 2017.......with that garbage talent at WR and Tyrod throwing to them..........he'd have been 0-4 at NFL OC jobs. He landed in a better spot than previous jobs because of the built in excuse of a rookie QB and having a HC who would have looked incompetent if he fired two straight OC's after one season. He got the offense within shouting distance of average in 2019 after a dismal 2018 and now he has a QB and WR corps who can make most any of his calls look good. I think what you see with Daboll is a solid coordinator............but he's not going to get the job done with modest talent.........he's not at that level. But what kind of offensive mind/play caller he is isn't going to determine if he is a good HC anyway. Different skillset. From my understanding where Roman is lacking is the leadership and social skills to do well in HC interviews.

Well statistically he was clearly not at a pro blow level in the AFC last year.....and the bar was much lower in the AFC than NFC. He was actually in a muddled performance group with a lot of solid players whose names the average NFL fan wouldn't even recognize. What he WAS was healthy and available in mid-January. When you pick an ILB that early you expect All Pro type play........it's like selecting a RB that early.

You don't know just how far down the list he was. I know this........there is no way that Edmunds had a better year than Joe Schobert in 2019. And you've probably never heard of Joe Schobert. You don't know if Edmunds was the 3rd alternate or the 8th anymore than you knew that about Tyrod. Just because you don't know the names of the guys who play inside in the NFL doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of more effective players than Edmunds..........it just means that it's a position overshadowed and considered less impactful than coverage and pass rush players. @GunnerBillI'd be interested to see your inside linebacker rankings for the NFL for 2019 or 2020 seasons.