BillsFanSD

One guy on a team of 53 guys says something mean and you people freak out over it. Embarrassing.

I voted to fire the OC and DC. I don't actually feel strongly about firing either of these guys -- Frazier has been reliable and Dorsey has room to grow -- but on par I would be open to parting ways with either or both. Wait, what? Josh Allen is a product of pass blockers who can't pass block? He's the product of deep threats who can't haul in on-target deep balls? He's the product of jet-sweep gadget guys being pressed into service as full-time slot receivers?

How do you know this anything to do with Josh? I wasn't seeing a whole lot of plays designed to set up the short game, especially involving Cook. I know they were sprinkled in a little bit, but the QB can't execute plays that aren't being called.

This is just stupid. Come on, man.

This isn't an elephant in the room -- we all know that the difficulty level gets dialed up now that Allens' contract kicks in and we have to make tough decisions about our own free agents. Going forward, the Bills are going to need to prioritize what they want to be good at and live with being weak someplace. But they need to be genuinely good at whatever they choose to emphasize. In other words, we can't pour half a dozen draft picks and massive FA contracts into the DL and then have the DL be so-so. They need to succeed at whatever they set out to succeed at. Personally, I would feature the OL, and after that the WRs. You have an all-world QB. Build around him. If that means that the defense becomes kind of average, that's okay.

This is a slightly-unconnected observation, but I'll put it here anyway because it's close enough: Other teams play their rookies. This team is absolutely allergic to letting their rookies see the field. This has been a consistent theme of McDermott's tenure -- remember Frank Gore trying to fall forward for positive yards late in games while Singletary was standing on the sidelines? Our general attitude toward the draft should be that anybody good enough to be drafted in the first 2-3 rounds should be good enough to start and we failed as a coaching staff if they can't see the field. It was infuriating to see players like Elam, Cook, and Shakir have their rookie seasons go to waste like this.

Sure, but Mahomes isn't any better than Allen. These guys have different play styles, but they're interchangeable in terms of talent. Mahomes has a better supporting cast and better coaching. If we had Mahomes and KC had Allen, they would be prepping for the AFC championship and we would be lamenting our loss to the Bengals.

Seriously, regardless of what you think of Allen, the pass protection today was disgraceful. Worst game of the season by far on this metric, and this line hasn't been good all year.

Same. Sadly, this game was never really in doubt, which makes it a lot easier to swallow.

There really wasn't much Allen could have done today, at least from that one viewing of the game. He took care of the ball until the garbage time int. Had some he'd like to have back. Had some drops. Had some nice ones. He wasn't winning this game.

Couldn't agree more. Very nice write-up. My only caveat would be that this seemed to be "one of those days" in terms of it being a total team breakdown. And the Bengals are a very good team. Let's hold off drawing sweeping conclusions from this one game in particular. But man, we've had issues with both lines all season . . .

Anybody who feels disrespected over this particular practice -- which is a longstanding one in professional sports -- is stupid. We should quit worrying about what stupid people think about things. We can carry on with our business while they sit their furrowing their brows in a vain attempt to understand the situation.

Maybe. The best way to shut these people up is to bring home a Lombardi. If we lose to the Bengals this week, we're probably going to get ripped as having taken a step backwards relative to last year. Obviously the specific criticism we receive will depend on how the game goes and exactly how we lose, but this team is not the plucky underdog that went to Houston any more. Everyone's expectations are higher now, including the media's. That comes with success. If we win this week and lose to the Chiefs in the AFCCG, the narrative is going to be that we're 0-3 against KC and the Bills will never get over that hump and Allen is worse than Mahomes and McDermott is worse than Reid etc. These stories write themselves. If you don't think that a bunch of sportswriters already have rough drafts of this article sitting on their hard drive, you're mistaken. But who cares? I'm not going to be completely satisfied with this team unless/until they win a championship. If the media want to give them a hard time in the meantime, that's okay with me. Ultimately, winning fixes everything, and I'm not going to be really happy until we win anyway.

The fact is that Allen has turned the ball over too many times recently. Many of those turnovers weren't his fault. Some of them were. When a QB is turning the ball over, the talking heads are going to talk about it. This entire fanbase needs to grow thicker skin. Good teams and good players get criticized all the time, because they find themselves in big games that attract lots of media attention and folks need to find narratives that drive clicks. That's all it is. If Allen leads us to a championship he'll be a generational QB again.

Who cares who the analysts are picking? Seriously. Betting markets have actual, demonstrated predictive power. Analyst picks mean nothing.

The Bengals are a very good team and they are perfectly capable of coming in here and beating us in our own stadium. They and the Chiefs are the only two teams I put in the category of "As Good as Buffalo." No NFC teams are as good as we are, but two of our AFC rivals are and we're playing one of them this weekend. So no, of course Burrow doesn't feel like his team should be underdogs. They're about as good as we are, and honestly I'm surprised the line is as large as it is.

If Miami is going to emerge as our main rival within the division, I'm at least glad they have a cartoon-like, easy-to-hate head coach. You need a little color like this to stoke a really good rivalry. It's like how Miami-Buffalo would have been a good rivalry back in the 1990s anyway, but it took Bryan Cox to elevate it to the next level.

A lot of people on this forum would be better fans if they just watched non-Bills football from time to time. Okay, sure, our win over the Dolphins was kind of ugly. But we won and we were clearly the better team from start to finish. If you watched the next game and actually paid attention to what was happening on the field instead of just nursing your stupid little grudge about the fringe WR who got away, you would have noticed the #3 seed getting upset in their home stadium. Say what you will about the quality of their wins, but that's a 13-win team getting beaten convincingly by a team that nobody had sniffing the playoffs back in week 1. If you kept watching, you saw the Big Bad Unstoppable Bengals get taken to the wire by a Ravens team missing its best player. They needed a bizarre, stupid, one-in-20-years 14-point play to secure the win against a wildly inferior opponent. But sure next week is hopeless. This team is doomed, I tell you.

I thought Allen played extremely well yesterday. His receivers let him down with huge drops, neither pick was his fault, and while he should have just eaten that sack it would also be nice if linemen blocked a bit better. His one legitimate mistake was trying to do too much on a play that we've seen him manufacture brilliance on before. That's acceptable. The deep shots during "that" part of the game were annoying, but they were there for the taking. I don't know whether that was Dorsey pushing, Allen pushing, or just everybody taking what the defense was giving us, but it's not like they were forcing the ball into double coverage or anything. Those were favorable matchups.

That's the sort of play I associate with the post-Kelly playoff Bills. Always some backbreaking play.

omfg

Sure, that's possible. That certainly isn't the vibe that we're getting from Ravens-land though. I don't recall any Bills players calling out Von Miller for dogging it, after all. That should tell you something. Another way to frame this is "Even Sammy Watkins questions Lamar's toughness."

I'm inclined to agree with Watkins. He might not be the right guy to point this out, but everybody expected Jackson to be back out there weeks ago. Reading between the lines, I suspect Harbaugh agrees with him too but is smart enough not to say so out loud. Edit: Also, does anybody think that Watkins is just speaking for himself here? If one guys says it to a reporter, you know there's another dozen guys who quietly agree.

I like Lamar and he's a fun to guy to watch. Any team who gives him Allen/Mahomes money is making a franchise-altering mistake.

This. I'm totally fine with Miami wasting a season if that's what they want to do.