Sammy Watkins' Rib

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.

True. I think you can live with blowing one per game for the most part. Even today. Had we only blown one assignment that would have only been either 23 or 20 points give up depending on which OJ Howard TD comes off the board. I think you can live with that against a really good offense like the Bucs have. And most weeks teams definitely don't blow two coverage's for TDs. Teams are going to score passing TD but you want them to work for it.

The defense is what it has been all year. Outside of the two blown assignments on Howard which unfortunately went for TDs, this defense was playing exactly how it had in the previous 5 games. Bend but don't break. There's a reason why coming into this game they were #1 in ppg but only #13 in ypg. They also played the best offense they have faced to date so far. They gave up a lot of yards which was not too surprising. They gave up more points than you would hope but again, take away ONE play and they only give up 20. Take away TWO plays and they only give up 16. This team will give up yards for sure. Even taking away two blown coverage plays Winston would have gone over 300 yards. The key is keeping teams out of the end zone. Couldn't do that today.

Those are last weeks target numbers actually. He's up to 32 targets now on the season and only 7 receptions. A pitiful 22% catch rate. As another poster mentioned Taylor was 18/24 to all other receivers and 2/9 to Zay. And this is pretty much a weekly thing. So the question is, if we bench Zay and have another player run Zay's routes, can Taylor hit that player for better than a 22% completion rate? That's a pretty low bar. I got to believe so.

I still think this class will have a lot of QB's taken high, top 10, but how many will pan out and be good? That's another question.

Wasn't he number 7 in pre-season? He was #26 today.

No need for real concern about the defense. This defense was never going to finish the season only giving up 13-14ppg. That means they are going to have days where they give up 25+ on the scoreboard. Luckily for us today was one of those days and we still escaped with a W. They've been more of a bend but don't break defense by evidence of them only being ranked 13th going into today in ypg. I expect them to finish around 12-18 in ypg and somewhere between 7-12 in ppg. If they can keep that ppg ranking in that range or even better it will be enough to give our offense a chance against a slate of defenses much worse than the ones we have faced in our first five games.

Dilly Dilly!

Best offense we have faced all year I believe. We've been a bend and don't break defense really anyways. And that was how it was going today for most of the game until we broke on two TDs that were both broken coverage plays on Howard. We have a solid and sound defense but I expect them to finish middle of the back in yards and maybe 8-10 in points given up. Definitely hope Thompson can start next week for us. Thompson, Matthews and Holmes should be our primary three wide receiver set with Matthews and Thompson as starters.

Bump. 30 points and 434 yards of offense So the remedy for the offense today was a 30th ranked defense.

I thought we would move the ball fairly well on that drive. Wasn't convinced we would score a TD. But i was worried that even if we did we might lose on a late FG.

Yep. And look how well they are doing with an elite LT for the last 10+ years.