BillsFanSD

No clue what FPI is, but I kind of like that the Jets are about as bad as we are good.

Nope. Stopped reading here. If the last two NE games didn't kill this narrative, nothing will.

At this point -- before FA and before the draft -- the Bills are still one of the two best teams in the conference, and probably one of the two best teams in the league. We'll be a somewhat popular SB pick in August. Not worried about the overall state of the franchise.

This one is kind of a head-scratcher since I was sort of hoping he would not be retained anyway. Oh well. Good for him I guess.

I agree. The kick-off has been over-analyzed IMO. Kicking it deep would have been a perfectly fine choice if that's what they intended to do. The defense just need to not give up two huge plays. They proceeded to give up two huge plays.

We absolutely dodged a bullet with this guy. I mean, not that Rex was a huge improvement or anything, but this franchise would probably be in a radically different place right now if Marrone had somehow been retained.

What do I care? The season ended a week ago.

With the possible exception of Russell Wilson, those QBs are all just overpaid. There's nothing wrong with Josh Allen getting Josh Allen money, but there would be a lot wrong with Kirk Cousins getting Josh Allen money. (I know Cousins isn't paid that much -- you get the point).

Yep this is hugely important. Much more so than whoever we hire if Frazier leaves.

Don't tell anybody, but the 2017 Jaguars were a better team than the 2017 Bills. Also the 2019 Texans/Bills and 2020 Chiefs/Bills. We lost those games to teams that were better than us. This year was different of course, but still.

Statistically, somebody needs to read up on drawing sweeping conclusions from small sample sizes.

I get why people feel this way. During the drought years, I watched the Bills every Sunday at 12:00 CT and then played video games or something the rest of the day. In a typical season, I probably watched about half a dozen non-Bills games. That includes the playoffs. I never even saw the Philadelphia SB, for example. That all changed in 2017. When the Bills are actually in the playoff hunt for real, I just feel a lot more invested in the various storylines going on in the league and what's happening in games involving other teams. It sucks that the Bills are out of it, but the Chiefs and Bengals are both major characters that are going to be coming back in the next season. We'll be seeing them again, so I'm very interested in what happens to them in the next few weeks.

I saw this article too and just rolled my eyes. I have a very high opinion of both Burrow and Herbert, but I don't actually believe that any coach -- including the coaching staff in CIN and SD -- would actually pick either of those guys over Allen if they were building a team today. I mean, come on. That's not just me being a homer. If you had asked me last year if I would rather have Allen or Mahomes, I would have picked Mahomes.

Good for him. ***** those guys.

Extremely well. Obviously this is an offense-first roster, but our defense was good enough to get the AFCCG last year and right back to the same opponent this year. (Yes, it was a divisional game, but that was just an unlucky draw -- if we played the Bengals last week and lost the exact same game the exact same way to the Chiefs this week, nobody would be talking about this being a step backwards or whatever). Do I wish our defense had played better against Mahomes? Sure. Probably most Monday mornings, there is a DC somewhere in the league waking up wishing that his defense had played better against Mahomes. I'm sure KC wishes that their defense had played better against Allen. I'm sure NE feels that way too. So what? Superstar QBs with talent-rich offenses will sometimes make good defenses look ridiculous. It happens. Freaking out over one such instance is a textbook example of a wild overreaction to one result.

Folks should really about these things in terms of probabilities, not certainties. The Chiefs are very clearly IMO the best team remaining. (If the Bills had won, they would be the best team remaining -- these teams are 1A and 1B in the NFL right now.) But they probably lose to the Bengals around 30% of the time or so. A bad bounce of the ball, a pass that bounces off the receiver's hands instead of getting caught, or even just the vagaries of a coin flip can swing the outcome of a game. Probably they'll beat the Bengals because they're a better team, but it's not guaranteed. The Chiefs will also be favored over whoever the NFC puts up. The Rams are a better team than the Bengals (not so sure about SF), but the Chiefs will probably still be something like 3.5-4.5 point favorites in that matchup. They'll lose that game maybe 40% of the time. So yeah, if somebody offered you 3:1 odds on KC winning the SB, you should jump all over that bet, but realize that it's going to pay off a little less than half the time. The reason why I say that is because people seem to think that the Bills a) were somehow "supposed" to win last week, when it was always a 50-50 proposition and b) would somehow cruise to the Lombardi trophy even though we would still be underdogs against the field.

Yep. We lost a coin-flip game in a weird way. It sucks, but man some of the people on this forum seem to think that the 2021 Bills are the first team to lose a playoff game.

For some reason, people on this forum think that our team is somehow at fault when other teams get good. I don't get it.

I'm assuming that nobody is actually stupid enough to think that we need a new HC. If that's your fix, I'm glad you're not in a position to make any decisions for this franchise.

Not exactly an irrational decision. Would you want to go from driving a Ferrari every day to trying to jump-start a 98 Civic?

There is nothing to "fix." If we could somehow bring back the exact same roster next year and alter the rules of time so that nobody gets any older and nobody is any more injured than they were on Sunday, I'd happily take my chances against KC again. They were quite clearly a somewhat better team than us last year. They are not a better team than us now. The Bills and Chiefs are the two best teams in the league. We're not going to bat 1.000 against other elite teams and not realistic to expect us to. Beane has succeeded in building a championship roster. Of course, we won't be able to bring back the exact same roster. We're probably going to be in the market for at least one and maybe two WRs. We'll probably see some turnover on the D-line. I still think we should add more talent/depth at CB and I would like to take a long hard look at RBs who might be available in FA or the draft. But we're just talking about tweaking things around the margins, replacing a small number of not-especially-irreplaceable FAs, and maybe upgrading a few spots where we're getting a little old. The core of this team is set.

For me, it's Wide Right and Music City Miracle, with 13 Seconds coming in a very distant third place. Sunday's game wasn't the same as either of those. Wide Right was a last-second SB loss in a game we absolutely should have won. We lost that game to an inferior opponent. Of course that stings. It should. Music City Miracle was "only" a WC game, but the Bills were a legitimate SB contender. The Titans, after all, did advance to the SB and came one yard away from sending it into OT. (In fairness, the Rams were a better team than either the Bills or Titans, but they under-performed in SBs). That game also felt like the end of an era. Flutie was shot, Rob Johnson was at best an unknown commodity, and Thurman Thomas, Bruce Smith, and Andre Reed would never play another game for the Bills ever again. There was no reason to expect that that would be the start of a historic 17 year playoff drought, but I think most of us realized that we weren't going to be getting another shot for a while. 13 Seconds is totally different. Yes, we blew a game that we absolutely had won in regulation. Yes, that sucks. But we head into the off-season with a legit superstar at the most important position in North American sports and no serious salary cap problems to worry about. This team should absolutely be right back next year and the year after that and the year after that. This is just a painful speed bump.

The team that we had beat in the wild card round came within one yard of winning the super bowl.

No, but they did beat the 49ers a couple of years ago. That was after years and years and years of Andy Reid not being able to win big games.

Which opportunity would I rather have? Become the guy who leads Josh Allen's offense, a role that just got my predecessor one of 32 HC gigs? Or become the guy who leads Daniel Jones? Tough call.