PlayoffsPlease

Daboll's bigger problem is pretty bad play design. Also earlier this year John Brown said it was the most complicated offense he ever played in. That does not seem to jive with wood's assessment. At this point the Allen-Daboll combo is not great. Maybe its Allen, maybe its Daboll. Before I would assign the word "excellent" to the Bills offense, I would like to see them score more points against their opponents than the league does on average. Through the first 8 games, the Bills are scoring 16% fewer points against our opponents, than other teams have. This may not be a disaster. But it is quite clearly not excellent.

Muhammed Sanu stepped in and had 10+ catches yesterday for the Pats. Current version T. Brady (93 passer rating) is fairly pedestrian. I am a huge Josh Allen fan, but maybe in a league with the has the turnover it does today compared to when Elway played, teams don't have the luxury to have WR's take a year to adjust. Its a valid question.

The team could realistically get to 11-5 without every beating a team with a winning record on the day they played. Most would be happy with 11-5. The AFC is pretty bad this year. Any team in the playoffs could win any game. Its possible the Bills could stumble and bumble all the way to the Super Bowl. That would make most happy.

How are other top 10 picks faring in terms of overall impact this year?

Patriots get mentioned because they have dominated the league for 20 years and have the greatest coach and QB of all time. They have crushed their opponents compared to the Bills. Here are the Bills defensive results compared to how others have fared against the same teams. Jets. On average the Jets have scored 12 points per game. Bills allowed 16 - Below avg defensive performance Giants. On average giants opponents scored 20 points a game. Bills allowed 14 . Above avg. defensive performance Bengals. On average Bengals opponents scored 16 points a game. Bills allowed 17. Average defensive performance Patriots. On average Patriots have scored 30 points a game. Bills allowed 16. Above average defensive performance best game of year for the defense Titans. On average Titans have scored 19 points a game. Bills allowed 7. Above average defensive performance. At this stage, I ranked the Bills ahead of the Chiefs as the second best team in the AFC because the defense was performing at a high level Dolphins. The exposure game. On average Dolphins have scored 13 points a game. Bills allowed 21 Below average defensive performance Eagles . On average Eagles have scored 25 points a game. Bills allowed 31. Below average defensive performance. Redskins. On average the Redskins have scored 9 points a game. Bills Allowed 12. Slightly above average performance. The body of work the last three games (3/8 of total played) for the defense is below average. For the season as a whole the performance is slightly above average. Slightly above average is not bad. Its also not great. I would call it a slightly above average defense.

Defense is not great. Its performed at the league average against the teams they have played.

My process is simple arithmetic. It claims no statistical correlation. The arithmetic is correct. And it reaches a logical conclusion. The Bills have more or less performed against our opponents, the same as the rest of the league has.

I am Gumby Dammit, just say elite.

Well, it had one very above average game compared to other teams against that opponent, the new england game. It had one horrible below average game against the Eagles. Against all the other opponents, we allowed a fairly similar amount of points as the rest of the league. When you perform at the same level as the league average, that seems like an average performance to me. Of course I am only going on actual results, not eye tests or my imagination.

11-5 is possible. Its possible that we can go 11-5 without ever beating a team with a winning record. I am pretty sure we need to beat a team with a winning record to win a playoff game though. I stand by my process

It is an inarguable truism that you can only play the team on your schedule. And winning is good. However, I believe we are allowed to compare how the Bills against each of their opponents, to how the rest of the league has done against the same opponents. The season is 50% over, so its a reasonable statistical sample. (16 game seasons make large samples impossible) This table compares each Bills game result, to the average result that the opponents have faced. Our offense has scored about 16% ( 3.89) less against our opponents than the rest of the league has. Our defense has held our opponents to about 10% (1.89) less points than the league has. To me the 16% qualifies as below average. The 10% qualifies as average to slightly above average. If these results hold up over the next 8 games, we would end up with a 10-6 record, based on the following results:

just not usually

Defensive rookies who are very good usually make an early impact.

Browns are already out of the playoff race

It is not only chance. For example when the qb fumbles the snap from center the offense recovers over 80 percent of the time. Not fifty as pure chance would dictate.

if you recover a fumble it has no impact. The results far this season have no unusual impact related to fumbling. Just to clear, the results so far this season have nothing to do with fumbling. And recovering fumbles is not only chance.

But the net result is the team has fewer fumbles than the majority of teams in the NFL. It is just not a problem for the Bills. The Bills big gaping problems are ineffective game planning on offense, lack of pass rush and getting crushed in the last two games in the center of the D-line. People ranting about Allen fumbling or taking care of the ball often don't seem to realize all teams have turnovers.

There is a narrative that the Bills are somehow suffering because of Josh Allen fumbling an inordinate amount of times. This narrative is not supported by facts. The Bills have lost 4 fumbles so far this season. On eight teams have fewer than 4. Five teams have four fumbles lost. 19 Teams have 5 or more fumbles lost. I don't watch every NFL game. But Dabolls offense has more slow developing plays and more designed QB runs that any other team that I have seen this year. So he is going to get hit with the ball in his hand more often than other QBs. http://stats.washingtonpost.com/fb/tmleaders.asp?range=NFL&rank=086&type=Rushing

Or you can use wins to project the likelihood of future wins or making the playoffs, which means of course they are a metric.

He has a history of failure. It is not a shock if he fails again.

If they can't stop the run, teams will stick to running it down our throat. Don't make excuse for the defense that ***** the bed they way they did to start the second half in each of the last two games.

not even a tiny bit clever.

Dolphins exposed big problems with the defensive line. Eagles exploited those flaws ruthlessly. We will see if other teams are better at exploiting the problems or if the Bills are better at fixing them. This is a real thing.

Other than when a game is actually being played, I am a fan who is anticipating the next game, and generally reviews past performance as it applies to the next game(s). This is why a well played game and a close loss to the Patriots is much more satisfying than a poorly played game that resulted in a win over the Dolphins. In this particular example, the Dolphins game was a clear barometer that the next game against the Eagles could be a disappointment. Even though the Eagles game was a debacle, the entire Redskins season is a debacle, so the Bills should appear to bounce back against the Redskins. I hope the Bills win and play a well game planned well executed game this week. I don't understand fans who think there is no connection between past performance and future performance.

Lets not pretend they did not totally dominate the off-season.