Sammy Watkins' Rib

Why do you believe that? Sometimes players only get better by playing on the field. Zay's likely not struggling in practice. I guess we will see if Zay's snap count goes down. Possible with the emergence of Thompson and Matthews in his second game back from injury.

If that were the case he wouldn't be on the field at all. I'm for that, but know the coaches are not. It is what it is. Let's hope Zay can pull though. An argument can definitely be made that fielding a player with a 21% completion rate is not helping the Bills win now. The idea is that letting Zay work through his struggles will help the Bills win later either late in the year or next season.

What point are you trying to make with this statement? We already know what the coaches opinion is. They are going to let him play through it. I expect him to get 5-6+ targets easily. Let's hope for the best.

Fake news.

Yeah, I'd say that tipped ball to Holmes looks like a clear drop. So that's at least four now.

Yep. That one probably not as blatant a drop as the other three I mentioned (I'd have to look at it again) but definitely in the realm of a dropped catch. It was definitely a pass that you would expect and NFL receiver to hang on to more often than not is one way you could put it. There is some truth to this sadly.

Exactly the dropped passes stats is bogus. I mentioned three clearly dropped passes above so how does someone come up with a stat of only two? And these are just dropped passes, not even taking into account being out of position, not locating the ball with his eyes soon enough or failing to come up with "tough catches" near 100% of the time.

Off the top of my head there are three that he should have 100% caught. The Cincinnati game where he dropped the screen pass (referenced above), the Atlanta game where he dropped the 40+ yarder before the half, and this last game against Tampa Bay where he dropped the out. That's just off the top of my head. That doesn't include 50/50 balls which he seems to come up with close to zero percent of the time. NFL receivers are supposed to be making spectacular catches. Zay needs to start doing that.

If we can't get the guy catchable targets he needs to be on the bench and not on the field hurting the offense. Why is it that Taylor has far less difficulty throwing catchable targets to the other receivers and TE's?

So because you cannot be 100% sure that the guy will pan out your solution is to just not even try? That will work real well i am sure.

Yes, because by now if we have learned anything it is that GMs for the most part are as about clueless as fans as to who will turn out to be a good QB. Wilson, Carr, Watson, Dak, Cousins all good QBs that 31 and even 32 GMs passed on multiple times in some occasions. I don't want to hear that our GM wasn't sold on any of the remaining QBs so we decided to just not even try.

With Gaines out and Poyer a question mark I'm not feeling real confident. This feels similar to the Bengals game. We really want a win to show that we are not the same old Bills but again we got some key injuries that are going to make a tough game even tougher. I'm predicting a loss and hoping for the best. I say 5-3.

Ravens would have won the tie-breaker. Ultimately we still would have been heartbroken.I was at that Oakland game by the way. Started off great with a long TD to Watkins. We gave a terrible 3rd and 20 something IIRC and the Raiders ended up getting a TD on that possession.

This is a big game. No doubt about it. Starting 4-2 is nothing new for us during the drought. What would be new is actually winning a tough game home or away to climb to 5-2. It seems like clockwork, come the last weekend of October or the first weekend of November we lose 3 out of 4 that really brings us down to earth. Then in late December we win 3 out of 4 only to look back and wonder what could have been had we not had our mid-season collapse. Raiders could easily be a 5-2 team right now if Carr never goes down.

I think the caveat is if we do go 2-3 in those 5 one of the losses has to be to the Saints. If that is the case then even a 3-2 finish in the final five gives us a 7-5 conference record. Still no guarantee we get in but with the way this season has been going so far it does feel like a 9-7 team will make the playoffs this year. It's not likely a 6-6 conference record wins a tiebreaker in that scenario which makes it crucial that we win at minimum 2 of the four conference games coming up. Either way you look at it. The team needs to step up and play really good football either by going 3-2 over the next five or going 4-1 over the final five.

Takes 20 seconds to google the box score and see that that was not the case.

Never heard of momentum? Things change during the season.

I agree. I'm pointing out that I wouldn't call Andrew Luck and the success he has had in his career thus far a failure. If we do that, I believe we would also have to call other franchise QBs like Rivers and Stafford failures. I don't really see a lot of people making those arguments though. And Matt Ryan's playoff success was very similar to Luck's before last season and Ryan has been in the league much longer than Luck.

But again, why is it that Taylor struggles so much going to Zay but doesn't struggle nearly as much going to the other receivers on the roster? For it to not mostly be on Zay the explanation would have to be that we are sending Zay on harder percentage routes that have greater degree of difficulty for Taylor to complete. I really don't know if that is the case or not, but Thompson came in immediately and made some great catches that were not all easy. I agree that watching the games it seems like the majority of ball that go Zay's way are difficult catches. But since this has become so common when targeting Zay compared to the other receivers I feel like a lot of that has to be a problem with Zay. Not getting his head around fast enough, getting his head around but not locating the ball with his eyes fast enough, running a bad route, stumbling, thinking about where he needs to be instead of just reacting and being there, etc. Many different things can be going on to cause the catches to become difficult.

To the detriment of the team though? I'd be okay with that thinking if we were 2-4 instead of 4-2.

It worked in 2012, 2013 and 2014 for the Colts. I wouldn't necessarily say it's been a failure. Taking a team to a conference championship game is generally considered a success. And three straight playoff appearances is generally considered a success too. The Colts current struggles don't really have anything to do with tanking for Luck. Five whole seasons have gone by since then.

Denver is Toast. I think at least either the Chargers or Raiders enter the conversation come December, if not both teams. We really need to sweep the Chargers and Raiders. Both those games are going to be tough mothers though.

Things look much better when you are not playing a top 3 defense. The rest of the schedule is filled with a lot more teams with poorly ranked defenses like Tampa too so that's nice.

I'll probably actually take Baltimore to win that game in my pick em pool. This is far from a lock for Miami. I do wish Cutler was still starting though.

Whether he is a bust or not is irrelevant right now. That won't be determined for a couple more years. What is relevant right now is that the passing attack fails at a 78% rate when he is targeted. With the emergence of Thompson it might not be necessary to force Jones into so much playing time now. Go with Matthews, Thompson and Holmes and let Jones come in sparingly as the #4 receiver. Exactly. And the reason for these terrible numbers is likely a combination of different things, but the bottom line is, Zay being on the field is killing the offense right now. Put someone else in his place, have that player run the same routes or different routes what ever you have to do to eliminate that inefficiency.