BADOLBILZ

Yeah the Eagles are STOUT in the middle of their DL. That is the biggest difference. Not the pass rush. The Bills vulnerability in the middle often takes the starch out of their pass rush because inviting the run leads to the ends having to be more assignment sound. And stout in the DL allows the LB's to make plays. That's why Baun could become an NFL DPOY candidate. Eagles also improved their secondary by going with 2 DB's early in the draft last year. But it just so happened in this game that the pass rush showed up for them and now fans who don't really follow the rest of the NFL that closely think they had a fearsome foursome of pass rushers on every down. Not the case.

Being rested, healthy and on a neutral field played an important role as well. The Chiefs had some advantages over the Bills in that AFCCG, which could be attributed to the bye and #1 seed. They didn't have those against the Eagles. Good for Fangio though he was like 0-9 all-time versus Mahomes prior to that. Blind squirrel finally found a nut.

I wonder if Jahmile Addae is out. I was so glad he left the U because the Hurricanes CB's were a mess with him there(and he didn't recruit well, which matters in college).........so I wouldn't be surprised if he is blamed for not getting better results from the CB room in Buffalo too. He was supposed to fix Elam with his different than John Butler technique training. Didn't happen.

I got click baited into a story about an assistant trainer changing teams. Shame on me.

Yeah the Chiefs had a great game plan for the Bills and the home field advantage to execute it. They weren't as fortunate.....or prepared......last night. Level playing field, both teams healthy and rested.

Yeah the Eagles want a better DL too. They had just 41 sacks and 30 hurries on the season. Versus the Bills much maligned DL which had 39 sacks and 62 hurries. Josh Sweat and Milton Williams.....both pending free agents coming off statistically underwhelming seasons.........each just had their best games of the season in their last game and that's all that most non-Eagles fans saw of them this year. Remember they had a historically great pass rush coming into their last SB versus the Chiefs and got nada. Good OL beat good DL on neutral field. A lot of it comes down to playing well in the last game. Just saying. Eagles weren't loving their pass rush this season either.

They think they are a dynasty already. Vic Fangio 0-9 all time against Mahomes? No problem in their minds.

It's not about changing allegiance on a dime it's about new fans. That's basically kids/young adults age 5-20 mostly. Those Giants SB wins had a tangible impact on the amount of non-Bills fans that exist in the Binghamton to Bath or Syracuse to Rochester ranges. The Eagles have an impact into CNY.......where they are currently local team #3. Way ahead of the Jets.......because the Jets haven't won or been in a SB in half a century. These areas are closer to Buffalo than to Philly or Meadowlands, they are in NYS and should be almost entirely Bills fandom. As far as Chiefs fans being annoying? Where? Not in western/upstate NY regions. They barely exist. And they will never have the reach that teams like Pittsburgh or Dallas have. NY and northern PA is our footprint in the US. I understand that some people think the world is the internet but the reality is that the people who keep the stadium full and impact the local economies by spending on the Bills are those in the region. The less success teams like NYG and Philly have the better it is for us. The success the Chiefs have is not tangibly relevant to the long term health of the Bills franchise. A SB loss won't devastate them.......they are still going to be back in contention for it for the foreseeable future. A terrible game by Jalen Hurts? Maybe Howie decides to shake things up.

Yeah it's weird how some Bills fans are rooting for those assh0les out of pointless spite. It's like "yeah let the most annoying fan base in football become another obstacle to the Bills winning a SB". Very shortsighted. I want Jalen Hurts to be 0-2 in SB's. I know how that story plays out in round 3. Teams get over long time obstacles in-conference......less so after losing SB's. Those tend to become self-fulfilling.

Yeah McBeane are the first one's to talk about how you end your season influences decisions in the offseason. And the Chiefs clearly play better special teams and their defensive staff was a step ahead in preparation for the Bills offense in the AFCCG. That was obvious. So makes sense........try to get special teams coaching that actually makes a tangibly positive difference AND maybe they use Ryan Nielsen in conjunction with their advanced scouting to prepare game plans further ahead so they are working more on nuance/detail the week of the game and maybe can win some more downs with scheme.

Agreed but at what looks like just a $1.2M cap hit though, some teams will want one of those. FAR more tradeable contract than Kupp. If the Rams manage to get someone to take on Kupp's cap hit then just get Les Snead a gold jacket already.

Yeah there are usually a handful of prospects who just get overlooked and get under drafted and then in hindsight it seems like even the reason for skepticism in the first place was ill conceived when you see teams reach for players at other positions in the same draft. They end up being draft steals. The guys like George Kittle. Or more recently and painfully for Bills pass rush fans, Maxx Crosby and Trey Hendrickson. Jackson could be one. At his best he's looked like a guy who could be drafted early in round 1 but then him never truly breaking out has created some prospect fatigue. Then you got guys like Shaq and Epenesa who just seem entrenched as a first round pick in every mock for a year and it's like "welp, somebody's gotta' take them I guess we're screwed if he's on the board". I was surprised AJ actually made it to round 2 because of that......even though he didn't look like much of a pass rusher.

Not a fair comparison though because the Bills hired Jauron after he had already proven his limitations as the HC of the Bears for 5 full seasons. McBeane would have been just another first time, 1 and done if Allen had busted. The Jauron era in Buffalo started with exasperation at the terrible hire. Also, you had a chance to reach a SB with middling QB play back then. The Bears made it with Rex Grossman not too long after canning Jauron. Jake Delhomme lead a team to a SB appearance in that time. That's just not the case since 2020(a couple years after Mahomes/Allen/Jackson arrived then more studs followed). Too many teams have really good one's to be able to negotiate thru the playoffs without getting taken out by them. Both QB's in these SB's every year now are guys who have proven they can put up MVP numbers. It's just unfathomable that Jauron got 9 chances(seasons) as an NFL HC. That shouldn't have been his legacy. It should have been his career as a player. Being remembered as a disaster of a HC for 2 franchise's is on the owners and GM's that let him stay far too long at those jobs.

Go Chiefs! People who think Chiefs fans are bad have NO IDEA how annoying Philly fans will be if they win again. It might even make them more likely to return to the SB and a tougher out in the event that Buffalo gets there. Eagles fans used to cry about losing that SB to Brady........then they avenged that. Avenging their loss to Mahomes will make them insufferable and create another bandwagon franchise in the region to poach potential Bills fans. I don't really get people wanting the Chiefs to lose so badly.........why does it matter? Are people under the delusion that the Bills are going to catch the Steelers, Patriots, 49ers (or even Chiefs) as the most successful franchises of the SB era? Almost zero chance of that. Be concerned about things that tangibly matter. Like battling the Eagles and Jersey teams for fans 75 miles or more east of the stadium.

Yeah I thought he'd live a very long life like Marv. But I think he had to take care of his ill mother for some years after his coaching career ended and that kind of thing will take a toll on you.

Nah. History just repeats itself. Dudes were getting killed in bars by old timey guns with lead ball ammunition in the early 1900's arguing over who was the MVP in baseball. And that was when these people only READ about the players and didn't have informed opinions from seeing them. A few years later they were wearing masks and social distancing. The concept that anything has changed.....particularly for the worse....... is so wrong it's hard to even take those opinions seriously. Recency bias just abounds.

Yeah the best thing you can say about his tenure is that he cleaned up a sloppy mess of unwatchable football that Mike Mularkey created in 2005. Which was no small task. A lot of terrible personnel decisions were made in the year prior to his arrival AND by Levy when he did arrive so that roster needed to play the only way he knew how........not to lose. The ultra-conservative style got the best out of JP Losman and allowed the defense to be opportunistic. The pass defense ranked 7th in 2006. As I said then though, after that first year he should have been fired before the commitment to mediocrity set in. And with he and Levy as the braintrust the roster just got worse. So instead, his final couple seasons in Buffalo were probably the low point of the franchise for a lot of us. The peak of their irrelevance and it took 5 years to fix the damage he, Levy and Russ had done to the roster by prioritizing non-premium positions in the draft, letting good talent walk or acquiescing to trade demands and trading away the only HoF talent they had during the drought(Peters). Once in a blue moon a team can play not to lose and have a winning record but you need an easy schedule and a ton of bounces. It ultimately doesn't work against good teams which is why his Bears went one-and-done after entering the playoffs as the #1 seed in the NFC in his only winning season. To some extent this 2024 Bills offense was a play-not-to-lose offense but with a great QB........and we saw the diminishing returns from them in the playoffs. First and foremost we should remember Dick Jauron was a GREAT NFL player. I'm sure he was a fine coach and a great guy to organize a mess for a year but unfortunately his style as a HC maximized bad talent and minimized good talent so the ceiling for him was very low. No way he ever wins a SB then or now. RIP Dick and thanks for 2006

I have the Jim Kelly one from 30 years ago but the arm with the ball got broken off in a move and I can't find it. That one from decades ago looks more like JK than this Allen one looks like Allen. I was interested in getting it to put on my desk but saw what they looked like when they came out and it just looks like some random dude in a Bills uni. There are also 7" NFL figures(I think McFarlane) and they have several of Josh but the first one looks like Mitch Trubisky. Yeesh. The most recent one still looks like Mitch but has him scrambling to the right........which was basically the signature play of the Brady offense.......so spot on. Dave and Adams had a mountain of like 100 of them(blue jersey white pants) and the variant(white jersey blue pants) last time I stopped in there last month. https://www.bigbadtoystore.com/product/variationdetails/302668?mkwid=|pcrid||pdv|c|pmt||pkw||product|151855|pgrid||cpgnid|22116119442|ptaid||adext||&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAAD_vdsX3X9ohvb9nJ62_lU14TyjWl&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIqIW-kPuxiwMV_CizAB2BNjYQEAQYBCABEgLnQfD_BwE

If the right flag or fathead came out I'd be interested but not shirts or plaques. I'm not real big on wearing player jerseys even(though I own an Allen authentic). Josh is nearly everyone's favorite Bill ever but I still root for the fan base first, team laundry second and players 3rd. Something we could display at the tailgate would be nice though. I would suspect Teepublic or Etsy will have Josh MVP sticker designs out in a few days that would be sufficient. Then you let those bad boys weather on your pinto bumper for a few years and it's vintage. MVP T shirts are more like something Steeler fans would wear to the grocery store. Kordell MVP!

It doesn't actually look anywhere near that realistic, btw.

I still have a ton of 80's and early 90's cards. I did a lot of research on prospects every year and didn't just buy packs off the shelf I would speculate on large lots of certain rookies via mail order and nailed a few of them. In some cases the profits were insane. I bought two lots of 500 Eric Davis Topps rookie cards for like 15 cents apiece and sold most of them for like $10 each to dealers at card shows when he was blowing up. It was easier money than Wall Street in the 80's. Like finding it on the street in 1987-1989 before the market tanked. I was paying for college and still stacking some $ and staying in Nikes etc.. The Sundowner might have got a little of that money too. It was great fun. Some of my fellow collectors thought I was crazy selling hot cards but being able to buy lots of hundreds of a new cards in the mid-80's might have been the first sign that this sh!t was going to become worthless. I obviously should have sold all of them but I can't complain. I mean, imagine getting real money for Willie McGee rookie cards. I'll leave what's left for my grand kids(to throw out, probably) except for those few selects like the 80' Henderson's. I never sold a Rickey he was my player.

Yeah I am all for ideas that force pitchers to throw the ball in the strike zone. Not being able to bounce sliders without consequence with nobody on base is a good thing for me. But I do think that's a much bigger rules change than the manfred man on second base in extra innings. The inherited runner on second doesn't bother me at all........if you can't resolve the game in regulation then you get what you get. And the author complains about the luck of the draw between getting a fast runner on second or a slow one because the ghost runner is the last batter of the prior inning? Well, how about having more athletic players? Add the ability to steal first rule to the Manfred man rule. Not one or the other. More action and less games decided by nameless relievers who are spent after 15 pitches is GOOOOD. I've said it before, but the strike zone needs to be a circle that fits inside the current zone. Take away all those corners. This stuff they are throwing combined with the fact that the zone is expanded by the width of a baseball on all 4 sides because all you gotta' do is hit a seam on the corner to get the call? That is why the league hit .242 last year. And if they don't take away those corners, they will never be able to automate the strike zone. Pitchers will learn how to nail the edge of that up and in corner that umps usually don't give them........and then batting averages will drop again. If suddenly pitchers have to locate in a smaller zone then MPH will drop and there will be less of those unhittable breaking pitches thrown..........and the ball will be in play more and hit squarer etc..

At this point, the Sabres need to be just making trades that they can win. After sitting on all these young players for years, the roster is about to start aging into that 26 year old average when teams actually start making the playoffs. So unless you can win the deal, let it play out. I heard WGR talking about a Quinn Hughes for Dahlin deal that would see the Sabres getting the perceived better player in return because the Canucks would want fellow Swede Dahlin to team up with their enigmatic young star Elias Pettersson.

Yeah the Bills are their team. And Canada's. But the Bills don't seem to have any interest in actively cultivating a fan base in certain countries like some teams do. Gotta' get Poland before da Bears.

Pitchers and catchers report injured on Feb 12! (And.......sure enough.......RH reliever Jake Cousins out for a month with shoulder soreness. Never fails some of these dudes always arrived injured.)