Sammy Watkins' Rib

Even if we include all the games as you are wishing, what do we end up with? I'm guessing we still end up with a defense that still underperforms it's regular season numbers and an offense that equals it's regular season numbers. And no, I have not done fact checking on that but that is just what my memory and I eyeballs can recall.

Certain games being like the most important games? The divisional and championship games? Let's not forget it was you who asked the OP why not include all playoff games?

He's not a bad player. His talent alone wins a lot of games in the regular season. He's basically the equivalent of the Bills defense in the regular season. You know he's going to help you win a lot of games and as long as he stays healthy (big question mark) you are making the playoffs every year. I'm no Lamar fan this year. But come on. Hist first MVP in 2019 was very much legit.

Okay, what do you have to say about the rest? You pick out one little thing where I am wrong. Meanwhile your entire premise is wrong. Even if the D played well against the Pats 15th ranked yardage defense (middle of the pack) who cares? The Bills offense had a perfect game that day. Get back to me when the Bills defense actually shows up in the divisional or championship round. You know, like how K.C.'s defense showed up today against Baltimore in only allowing 10 points, allowing the Chiefs offense to have a below average game and still win comfortably.

I voted no and no on the poll.

Lions fans are absolutely out of their mind to be mad at Dan Campbell. Lions literally just arrived this year as a legit team. Get back to me after the Lions have been relevant for at least three seasons then we can discuss making a coaching change.

Harbaugh, Tomlin and McD they are all interchangeable. That said, I don't think any of the three or necessarily bad. Who's coaching today that has made the Super Bowl in the AFC and isn't named Reid, Belichick or Taylor? Is the answer only Tomlin and Harbaugh? Crikey, if so.

So F'ing happy Lamar fell flat. He will go down as the biggest joke of an MVP in my memory. The Ravens signature win was against the 49ers and that was the game that won Lamar the MVP. And what happened in that game? The Ravens defense intercepted the 49ers QB's five times. Yeah, okay, Tyler Huntley could have won that freaking game. Why not Allen or Dak? Feel like if we are including Stroud, then Allen and Dak are also both reasonable candidates. Heck, I even think Lamar is a reasonable candidate. I just hate this crap where it seems like according to media (and they are likely right) that Lamar is a shoe-in and will probably win with 80 or 90+ percent of the vote share. To me that is ridiculous. If Lamar wins it should be a close vote.

Bengals absolutely own McDermott. If Hamlin doesn't die on the field, we are literally talking three straight games where the Bengals offense starts the game with TD's on each of their first two possessions.

How about Josh Allen?? You can't not make it to a Super Bowl with two Josh Allen's. And to your point, there's a lot of stats out there that will show that since 2019/2020, or the last 4-5 years, the Bills are easily the second-best team in the entire NFL, only behind the Chiefs. They have been consistently great for 4-5 years now. Only the Chiefs can claim the same.

Is it true that the offense has underperformed though? I think the offense performed almost exactly to their regular season standard last week against KC. The only divisional/championship game they really fell totally flat was last year against the Bengals. FireChans, doesn't believe in wind. It's just a total coincidence that Bass and Tucker (GOAT kicker by the way) both missed 2 FG's each of gimmie 40 yard distance. Nah, wind wasn't a factor in either team being able to move the ball.

Even playoffs on the whole, off the top of my head they have only been "meh" compared to their regular season dominance. Colts wild card they were total garbage and bailed out by the offense. Ravens divisional. they were great in a game that had weather conditions that clearly hampered both offenses to a great deal. Honestly hard to even gauge how great they were given the conditions. Patriots wild card, they were good in a game where the offense was literally perfect. Both units beat up on the trash units of the Patriots. But the Patriots defense was the strength of that team, top 5 in both ppg and ypg, and yet the Billf offense had a perfect game. The Patriots offense was average that season and the defense still allowed 14 points. They couldn't even hold them to under 10 and the offense was literally the worst unit on that Patriots team. Dolphins wild card. Mixed bag. They give up 24 points. They were put in tough situations by an offense that turned the ball over three times but still managed to score 34 points. But they were playing a third string QB and you would think they could have kept the Dolphins offense to 20 points or less even with the turnovers. Steelers wild card. I won't get on them too much for this game. Sure, it would have been nice if they had a dominating performance from start to finish. In the end they gave up 17 points against a well-known bad offense that averaged 17 ppg for the season. I'd say that is the definition of a "meh" defensive performance. Had they given up just one more FG on the day it would have been a straight up bad defensive performance. As for your question of why just point out the elimination games and not all the playoff games, well because one side of the ball is at least showing up half the time or more against the best competition. The defense is literally a no show against the stiffest competition every single postseason. How are we supposed to make a super bowl if we can't get both units clicking against the best playoff competition? Why are the Chiefs going to yet another Super Bowl? Is it because their unbelievable offense scored 17 points against the Ravens? No, because their defense held the Ravens to 10 points. I can't even fathom a Bills defense holding a divisional or conference championship opponent to such a low total. I'll be happy if they can just hold the next team they play in such a game to 24 or less. The Bills defense in their last four divisional / conference championship games: 38, 42, 27 and 27 points given up. So basically, the Bills offense has to be great every single game against the best coemption. They can't have an off day where they only score 20 or 24 points and still expect to win.

Well actually it shows one side of the ball is clearly worse. Which was the point of the exercise from my perspective. Why have the Bills not advanced to the Super Bowl at least once over the last five years? Because the defense greatly under performs too often. The offense pretty much hits its regular season averages more or less.

My order as well. I'd probably put Tyler Huntley before Lamar though. LOL. Not out of the question given Lamar's injury history.

If anything, it comes down to coaching and defense I think. I'd like to do the same exercise I did with the Bills, for the Bengals post season vs. regular season performances. I'm guessing we would see a lot more green and blue for the Bengals post season defensive performances.

Or the opposite is needed. A year the Bills actually earn the 1 seed. Avoiding a tough opponent in the divisional round. Three straight years they have loss to the Chiefs, Bengals and Chiefs in the divisional. No shame in losing to those teams but you certainly don't want to go 0-3 against them and you would prefer to avoid that caliber of opponent until at least the conference championship game. Jags, two game regular season winning streak against us aside, I still would have liked our chances to advance to the conference championship game each of these last two seasons if the Bills had matched up with the Jags or Texans at Highmark. And as the stats in the OP show, the Bills are still a tremendous regular season team. I think we had a lot of negative things this past seeason as well that will kind of fall back to the mean in a positive way for us. I don't see Allen having as many turnovers he did this past season, and I don't see the team blowing close games to the likes of the Jets, Pats and Broncos in the way that they did.

Below are some of the raw stats of the rankings noted in the OP. Not a shock to anyone, our biggest factor in not having been able to get over the hump in any of the last 5 seasons has been the defense failing to live up to regular season performance standard. Key: Red = Poor performing difference greater than 3.0 Green= Positive performing difference greater than 3.0 Blue= Nuetral perfomring difference between +/- 3.0 (with the exception of 3rd down percentage, see note under 3rd down percentage) Defensive PPG: Year Reg. Season Def. PPG Post Season Elimination Game Difference 2019 16.2 22 +5.8 2020 23.4 38 +14.6 2021 17 42 +25 2022 17.9 27 +9.1 2023 18.3 27 +8.7 Offensive PPG: Year Offensive PPG Reg. Season Elimination Game Difference 2019 19.6 19 -.6 2020 31.3 24 -7.3 2021 28.4 36 +7.6 2022 28.4 10 -18.4 2023 26.5 24 -2.5 Defensive 1st Downs Per Game Given Up: Year OPP. Reg. Season 1st Down Per Game Elimination Game Difference 2019 18.4 19 +0.6 2020 21.9 29 +7.1 2021 16.7 30 +13.3 2022 19.6 30 +10.4 2023 18.4 21 +2.6 Offensive 1st Downs Per Game Gained: Year Reg. Season 1st Down Per Game Elimination Game Difference 2019 19.6 24 +4.4 2020 24.8 24 -0.8 2021 23.4 23 -0.4 2022 22.9 19 -3.9 2023 22.4 27 +4.6 Defensive Opponent 3rd Down Percentage: Year OPP Reg. Season 3rd % Elimination Game Difference** 2019 35.8% 46.2% +10.4% 2020 39.8% 60% +20.2% 2021 30.8% 61.5% +30.7% 2022 37.5% 60% +22.5% 2023 38.6% 20% * -18.6%* *KC only faced 5 third downs all game, going 1-5 on third down attempts. They had an explosive offense in this game. Offensive 3rd Down Percentage: Year Reg. Season 3rd % Elimination Game Difference** 2019 35.8% 52.4% +16.6% 2020 49.7% 35.7% -14.0% 2021 46.4% 42.9% -3.5% 2022 50.3% 41.7% -8.6% 2023 49.8% 50% +0.2% **Here, a neutral difference is anything between +/- 10%. There is greater variance in a stat like 3rd down percentage in a single game, so I believe it makes sense in this case to allow for a larger span for neutral performance. Simple tally of the above: Defense: 1 Green, 12 Red, 2 Blue Offense: 4 Green, 4 Red, 7 Blue

Anyone but Lamar.

That's obvious sarcasm from Chaos.

If this is the case, it was odd that the officiating crew had to huddle up for such a long time to make the call. Typically, when the officials huddle up it is because they have to determine between multiple officials both contact and where the QB was on the field or had the ball left the QB's hand or not. If it is as simple as you suggest, can't throw a shoulder into a passing crosser, regardless of if the ball is released yet or not, I don't see the need to discuss it in depth with the entire crew. It's an easy call to make with just one official if that is the case.

It's pretty crazy to me how much group think there appears to be in the MVP voting process. I really don't get it. I'm not saying recent past MVP's didn't deserve their hardware. They absolutely did. But look at the percentage share of votes they get. Last year with the new voting system, Mahomes got 98% of the vote share. It absolutely did not feel like Mahomes season was that decisively above all the other candidates last year. Even with the old MVP voting most winners had 80%+ of the votes. Really surprised we don't see more winners in the 60% range.

On the flip side, the Ravens defense has been great all season and certainly far healthier than our defense last week. KC could have trouble scoring over 20 points.

Burrow is already better than Allen in half the media's eyes because of one Super Bowl loss on his resume. If you don't want the media to gush over Lamar you better start hoping for a Ravens loss tomorrow. And Burrow doesn't even have two league MVP's like Lamar will.

Lamar will be the weakest MVP winner I can recall. It's not like the Ravens offense and Lamar are playing like 2019 Ravens and Lamar. And KC's defense has been very stout all year. It would absolutely not be shocking for the Ravens to be contained.

It was. My posts going into the season were about the team not going backwards. McDermott accomplished that barely. I said he had to have this team play in a competitive game in the divisional round after playing a noncompetitive game last year. Now midseason, like everyone else, when we were 6-6 I thought it was playoffs or bust for him. As long as he got the team to the playoffs I didn't care how the team performed, he would be back as coach in 2024. But going into next season. It's conference championship game or bust. He won't get a pass for going on a 6-game winning streak to end the regular season next year. And we actually need to advance next season, or he is out.