BillsFanSD

I think Allen may have passed Thurman for #1 on my list.

Allen McKenzie Hyde Singletary Edmunds had some nice plays today as well.

I'm disappointed in how the season has gone so far, and I'm not optimistic about the team turning it around. But I'm still enjoying it. This team has an extremely bright future, and if "making the playoffs as a wildcard" is what now constitutes a "down year," that's quite an improvement from where we were not that long ago.

Seems pretty on-brand for the 2021 Bills team.

Kelly was the right QB for that team. Allen is the right QB for this team. The gap between those two guys and whoever #3 is is so large that it's misleading even to name a #3.

Harrison Phillips need to get a game ball. Guy was on fire today.

The Bills got a nice, workmanlike win over an overmatched opponent. Nothing to celebrate, but nothing to feel bad about either. Next week's game is huge. No clue why some of you follow this team if you're going to get upset over easy double-digit wins.

Teams with legitimate championship aspirations don't whine about the weather in December and January.

This team should have been set up with first and goal at the one, with four chances to win in regulation. In what universe is that "not good enough to win?"

Yeah, but wins and losses in close games are high-variance affairs. It's not that we're doing anything inherently wrong during close games, just that we're getting unusually unlucky. Yesterday we were all set up with first and goal at the one yard line at the end of regulation. Or at least we would have been, with just normal officiating. That we weren't was totally outside of our control. Last week we played the game in a wind tunnel. Our uber-reliable K missed a chippie earlier in the game, so we absolutely had to have a TD. Shaky execution, poor play calling, and a really dumb penalty committed by Knox snuffed out that final drive, but if we play the last series over again we probably win that game about half the time or so. Just not that time. We had the Tennessee game as good as won. All we had to do was pick up a routine fourth-and-one with our 6'5" 240 lb QB. Oh no our pro blow LT got blown up and our pro bowl QB slipped and now it's game over. If we replayed that last series, how often do we win? 8o% of the time? 90% of the time? Just not that time. I forget how the Pittsburgh game went, and the Jacksonville game doesn't count because there's no excuse for that game being close in the first place. But there are three unlucky games right there that could have easily gone the other way with just undisasterous luck.

Obviously it would be great to win out. And this team is good enough that's it's certainly capable of doing so. We're going to be heavy favorites in three of these games, and I like our chances to get the split with NE (although that's still a tough game of course). That said, I'll be honest that I'm kind of pessimistic. Despite what we saw in the second half yesterday, this team just doesn't seem to have clicked. This season feels like a very slightly better version of one of those innumerable drought seasons where we're "in the hunt" up until about the second to last week of the season only to get bounced due to one too many inexcusable or fluky losses. The obvious difference is that we have a top-shelf QB on the roster so there's good reason for optimism going forward, even if this year feels like a bit of a wasted season.

I've been pretty disappointed in the production we've gotten from Sanders. That's not a crack on the guy -- he's old, and it looks like he may have hung around for one year too long. If we had acquired him a couple of years ago when we first tried, maybe last year's playoff run ends differently. But I agree that it's time to get Davis on the field more. At this particular moment in time, Davis seems like the better player.

Nothing against Trubisky, but this team belongs to Josh Allen. If Allen wants to give it a go on crutches, that's fine with me.

"Rigged" is too much, but everybody knows that certain teams (Dallas, Pittsburgh, New England) and certain players (Brady) get the benefit of every close call. Yesterday was a good example. The Bills were certainly good enough to beat Tampa. But when the officials intervened to force overtime and then gave them a little more help with the PI on Wallace, it was a little too much. It's hard to beat any good team three times in the same game.

Obviously the Bills still have a very good chance at the playoffs. And that's good I guess because anything can happen once we get to the postseason. But really, so what? Sneaking into the playoffs as a wild card team is so far under any reasonable expectations for this season that I'm not going to celebrate a random playoff appearance. One-and-done was great in 2017 but the bar is rightly set much higher now.

Under normal circumstances, giving up 222 yards of total offense would be great. These weren't normal circumstances. This game was played in a wind tunnel. Our opponents left their regular playbook back in Foxborough and ran a high school offense that Belichick probably designed on the flight to Buffalo. They made absolutely no effort whatsoever to pass the ball, which in the modern NFL is like playing with both hands tied behind your back. The Bills knew they were going to run on every play. They still gave up 222 yards on the ground. Despite knowing exactly what was coming. Yeah, that sucks. Edit: If you want to start a thread about how our offense let the team down, I'm happy to chime on on that one too. It's not like this was all on the defense or anything, but it was definitely partly on them.

I can point to 222 reasons for why this is mistaken.

I agree. Last year, this offense was a totally one-dimensional pass-on-every-down show. And it worked! Because we have an all-pro QB who can paper over some problems with pass protection, and he's throwing to a collection of really good receivers. Why hand the ball off to some guy who's going to get hit at the line of scrimmage and maybe fall forward for a yard or two when you can throw to 14 and 11? This year we're handing it off on second and long and pissing away red zone plays just to check an imaginary "did we run the ball enough?" box. And last year this team was mentally dialed in pretty much every week. We lost some games here and there, but you never felt like they just showed up and expected their opponents to roll over for them. That's been the story every single week this year except (not coincidentally) the KC game. Even stupid errors like all the pre-snap penalties ultimately come back to coaching. Maybe a season like this was inevitable. Maybe this team just needed to learn a hard lesson about what success in the NFL requires. It's not like this would be the first roster to take a step backwards after a really good year only to get back on track the following season. But yeah fundamentally this is still a SB-caliber roster. This staff just didn't get the most out of them.

I think it's fair to be disappointed in this year's team. It's not an overreaction to any one game in particular. They pissed away Week 1 to an inferior team, lost a tight one to Tennessee (no complaints there), lost to a relegation side against Jacksonville, got blown out by an inferior Colts team, and now lost to a team that practically didn't even dress a QB. They beat KC, but otherwise their wins have all come against a parade of chumps and backups. Could they get hot and make a run in the playoffs? Sure. There are no scary teams in the AFC and anything's possible. Much more likely is a quick one-and-done. I have no idea how anybody would watch this team for 12 games and feel good about them beating another playoff team, let alone three or four in a row.

I'm legitimately baffled at how people don't understand this. The announcers went on and on about how the safety came off Beasley to come back into the passing lane for Davis. It's not like anybody had to carefully break down the all-22 to see this -- it was obvious in real time and called out by the broadcasters.

Josh Allen is the only reason why we had a good opportunity to win this game. Literally nobody else on the team stepped up at any point. Except maybe Diggs who had one really nice sideline catch to make up for the perfectly-thrown TD pass that he dropped. This. Not a fan of Jerry Sullivan, but the defense deserves to be called out on their inability to stop the run. Not that Poyer or Hyde are the main culprits here, but still.

I've been impressed by Mac Jones's play. He's going to be a good one IMO. Wouldn't trade Allen for him, and it's not a close decision.

This. I do not want to see the Colts again. I do not want to see the Titans with Derrick Henry back, even if he's limited. I do not want to see Cleveland even though they look like a dumpster fire right now. But really the entire AFC playoff bracket will be filled by pretty good teams who are perfectly capable of beating us if we don't bring our A-game.

This game, man.

Heck of a drive there by Indy.