TheBrownBear

He was good considering the circumstances (2nd year, on road in OP, SNF), but nothing he did wowed me or struck any fear in me. Now, that may still come, but last night wasn't it.

Pretty good stuff. Agree with most everything except the Brady criticism. The penalties and early turnovers hamstrung the offense in the first half and Josh refused to take the easy stuff (at least to my eye) on the final field goal drive. I don't see the offense as feast or famine as you suggest - we've been one of the most efficient offenses in the league this year and under Brady generally. This is what it looks like when you shoot yourself in the foot. The Bills formula is not making mistakes while letting the other team beat themselves. We didn't do that tonight and in a league where every team is so close, you can only get away with that kind of sloppiness against the worst teams. The most glaring issues remain the lack of real WR talent and the secondary, and those are mostly personnel/Beane issues.

The D has issues for sure and we played like crap generally. A lot of those yards were our inability to tackle and finish plays. It wasn't guys running wide open all night or getting blown off the ball. Pats were the more disciplined team and made the important individual plays. I'm just not too concerned about this in week 5.

Pats are a good team and they were game tonight. We still out-gained them and won the TOP battle. It's not like they pushed us around or dominated us. We lost this game because of penalties, turnovers and poor tackling. I'm not that bothered by the loss. These are all things we can and should fix.

Agree. Bills teams under McDermott seem to need the occasional humbling loss to refocus them.

Holy crap. I haven't been in a postgame thread in a while and now I remember why. Tons of posters whose names I've never seen with the most kneejerk idiotic takes.

We had 10 penalties and 3 turnovers and lost by 3. Let's pump the breaks on the full on doomerism.

Oh well. Hope we learned a lesson not to take an opponent too lightly. We were sloppy and dumb most of the night and paid for it. We have two very winnable games coming up and we should hopefully get healthier in the next few weeks. Defensive backfield is still a huge issue.

I bet he'd make a piss-poor jockey.

Check the comments in TikTok. Bunch of butthurt Lamar fans. 😁

Not ready to kick him to the curb yet, but he also looked poor in the preseason and camp compared to Gore. His regular season stats (2.6 ypc) mirror his preseason stats (1.71 ypc). He was at 4.6 (PS) and 3.9 (RS) as a rookie. All signs point towards a regression.

Davis and Ty Johnson look like they are running through quicksand. Is the offensive line as good as we think (asking honestly - I'm not a watch the tape guy) or does Cook and Allen's greatness mask their deficiencies?

Beane went out and attempted to significantly rework the defensive roster. We are missing three of those pieces right now in Hoecht, Ogunjobi and Hairston, and two of our best defensive players are injured on top of that (Milano and Oliver). Yeah, I know these things happen and you have to be able to roll with the punches, but that's a significant amount of talent missing at the moment. Despite that, we've been pretty good outside of the Ravens game save the third down defense against the Fins and some shoddy tackling in the first half against the Saints. We currently rank #11 in ypg (290). We can be better, but your OP is completely hitting the panic button by calling the past couple of weeks "awful" performances when they've statistically been better than average outside of a couple of areas. I concede you may be right and we aren't reaching our potential due to Babich, but unless McDermott is seeing something glaring on the inside, I don't think the present performance (given the currently available players) warrants placing him on the "hot seat". If the defense gets shredded by the Pats on Sunday, then maybe we can start to heat up that seat.

It's both a compliment and an insult. It speaks to one's ability to get people to engage with their content - usually in the form of a controversial or outrageous take. I applied it to your thread here mostly because of the all-capped "NOW" implying that holding a team to 19 points and less than 300 yards was some sort of five alarm fire situation. I think you're wrong on the "hot seat" notion, but I do share concerns with you about the defense holding up against better teams and I would have preferred to see them dominate against the Fins and Saints at home the way they did in New Jersey. I think it's mostly execution on the part of a young secondary and missing some key players in the middle, but could McDermott calling plays lead to a better performance? Maybe. Or maybe even probably given McD's track record. We are only four games into the season and the D hasn't cost us a game yet, so I'll exercise patience for now. We have a few decent tests sprinkled in over the next six weeks (Pats, Chiefs, Bucs) and should have a better idea of where we stand then.

I think they still win 10 games minimum and that will win them that division.

10 pages in 24 hours. Kudos to OP. This is top level engagement farming. And no. Babich isn't on any hot seat after holding all of our opponents to sub-300 yards the past three weeks.

I agree with everything here, but I do think there's sideline opportunities for us if and when we need them. I think we've been content to dump off and nibble chunks of the middle of the field over the past three games, since those were essentially "limit mistakes and let the inferior opponent lose the game" type of matchups.

It seems Josh is getting the ball out more on time this year which is limiting Coleman's chunk play opportunities in scramble drill situations. Keon has definitely taken a step this season, but it won't be reflected in his YPR numbers.

Man oh man, that Cook deal is looking like a bargain right now.

What's wild is that Cleveland had their pick of any of those top 4 and now they're starting Joe Flacco while the Big Four are thriving for other teams. That's got to sting. Same thing for the Jets to a lesser extent.

It sounds ridiculous, but I came to the same conclusion last year. We are witnessing the greatest to ever play the position and not many people (especially outside of Buffalo) are realizing it - too caught up in the "rings" narrative.

I like Goff. He's a great pocket passer than can do damage when he has time to throw. The reason he's overlooked is because he has zero ability to run or make off-script plays. There was a 3rd and 5 last night in the second half where he steps up in the pocket and has room to run, but realizes he doesn't have the speed to pull it off and he tries to make a short off-platform throw and he doesn't get it anywhere near the open outlet receiver. That play epitomized why he'll never be considered in the top tier of QBs.

I think Lamar is a fantastic QB, a future hall-of-famer, and it's only a matter of time before he wins the Super Bowl (same as Josh). I love how both he and Josh have surpassed expectations and defied the stereotypes that some people tried to hang on them. Yes, Lamar isn't the most telegenic or charismatic guy and that's probably why you don't see him in a ton of commercials. I'm sure him not having an agent doesn't do him any favors either. But, again, he's a great player and seems like a good dude, so I don't understand why some need to constantly deride him.

Picked that up in the team store this summer. I never noticed the genitalia. Thanks for pointing that out.

Sorry, the "cakewalk" was referring to this week, but I wasn't clear. The Pats game should be a tough one. Not sure about the Falcons.