HappyDays

I didn't have any problem with this read from Allen. It's 4th down and the 1st read appears like it will be open, you take it every time. Palmer getting knocked down and Latu getting slowed up disrupted the timing because Allen is waiting for the short crossers to pass so he can throw the ball. I'd like to see Knox show some awareness here... He's just standing watching the ball come to him and somehow doesn't realize a defender is on his way to the ball. Step up and sn*tch that thing out of the air.

Bills 30 Texans 13 An underrated quality of Allen is he does well in revenge games. Played like crap against New England in 2019, beat them twice in 2020 including one blowout win. Wasn't ready for the big lights in the 2020 AFCCG, the next year was the 13 seconds game. Lost to Jacksonville in London in 2023, destroyed them in 2024. Allen remembers how he played in Houston last year and I expect him to have a little extra motivation as a result. Houston's defense is still insanely good and TNF games are weird to begin with so I'm not expecting a fireworks show from start to finish but he'll make some plays. The Texans offense is exactly the type of offense McDermott tends to do well against. Backup QB, no run game, one WR to worry about. I expect this to be one of those games where Houston has a good drive early and we all start feeling frustrated, and then for the final 50 minutes or so their offense looks totally hapless and we end up with like 3 turnovers. So I'm predicting a slow constricting victory where Allen keeps making enough plays to put us on the scoreboard while Houston's offense slowly falls apart.

That was a terrible route. Allen was waiting for him to get open along the backline but he got bullied all through the route and took way too long to get to his spot. Against cover 0 he needed to win and flash open within 2.5 seconds. Let's not get too carried away about the WR room from one game. Tampa called a lot of cover 3 and Brady had the right calls in to beat them. I put this week's turnaround on his improvement much more than the WRs. Shavers' biggest completion (other than the 1 of a 1 throw on a scramble drill) came on seemingly a busted coverage. Samuel still has trouble reading the field and making route adjustments in real time. Hardman is too tiny to be a legit downfield threat. Palmer and Kincaid should be our top 2 targets, the rest of these guys are JAGs.

We've tried ball control the last two KC playoff matchups. The strategy fails because KC's offense has their way with us and then our offense inevitably has to open it up anyways, and it's hard to change up your whole offense like that in the middle of a game. Might as well just open it up from the start so they're ready to score on every possession in the 2nd half... Yesterday wasn't always pretty especially early on but Allen got loosened up and was throwing rockets and dimes the entire 2nd half. Score 40 and you'll win almost every game.

Good. I would rather trust the offense to win a shootout than trust the defense to win a low scoring slobberknocker. The entire team building strategy from the offseason additions to the weekly gameplans should be about putting Allen in position to score 40 PPG. The defense sucked yesterday and it didn't matter. Our offense made them irrelevant.

Stroud and Pitre both likely out:

Mahomes hasn't been very good in recent weeks. He threw this awful INT in FG range in a game decided by 3 points: Also threw this terrible pick six that was overturned by a questionable illegal contact penalty: I thought he would get back to his high standard of play this year after a couple middling seasons but it hasn't happened.

I was at the game today and I always have a harder time paying attention to individual performances in person. I'll give my game balls to the two game changing players on each side of the ball: Allen Bishop I don't know if they talked about it on the broadcast but it was deceptively windy on the field today. It wasn't a coincidence both QBs had some errant passes and multiple WRs had trouble corralling otherwise easy catches. Given the wind and the fact that Tampa mostly shut down our run game while we were hopeless in stopping theirs, Allen had to put the team on his back and he did. This was a game where the difference in QB play from each team ultimately decided the result. The defense as a whole was awful, it is hard to find positives in a game where JAG RBs had their way with us. Bishop however has seemingly overnight become our best defensive player. I can't remember the last time a Bills player took this kind of leap in the middle of a season. We have ourselves a true ballhawk and the importance of that can't be overstated.

Bo Nix has the worst deep ball I've ever seen. I never see it even come close

Beane actually had a good track record going of not selecting total busts with his 1st pick. Allen, Edmunds, Oliver, Diggs (trade, but still), Rousseau. You can debate the value of some of those players but none of them were busts. Kincaid is in the same category. Unfortunately he seems to have selected 2 busts out of his last 3 and that is going to really set back any rebuild plan.

Nobody should be getting their hopes up about Gabe Davis. I get that the WR room is dire and that leads to fans desperately clinging to any possible answer, and a familar face is an easy thing to cling to. Realistically though Gabe was ideally a WR3 at best the last time he was here and I think he's still making his way back to even that level... The PCL injury has taken a concerningly long time to rehab, he developed blood clots after his surgery which put him on blood thinners for several months, and he was recently held out of practice for knee soreness. I wouldn't assume he is ready to jump full bore into an NFL game at this point. Any team could sign him for free to their active roster right now. Pittsburgh who is desperate for another WR worked him out a few months ago and never circled back. That should tell you how bad the medicals were. This is not just a case of the Bills coaches playing favorites. I expect him to get called up at some point, maybe as early as next week, but I'm keeping my expectations very low.

So your opinion is that superstar players are a waste of money because if they get injured you're screwed?

Fans were downplaying the Pats earlier in the season even after they beat us, but now the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. We don't need to overreact to them handling maybe the worst team in the NFL... I would easily trade their coaching staff for ours, that's where they have a massive advantage over us. They still have some real roster deficiencies though. The CB tandem is excellent of course. The safeties are middling and the LBs can't cover. They have no difference maker on the DL. On offense their OL is fine, their RB room is fine (maybe better than fine if Henderson continues his momentum from the past two weeks), the WR room I would put slightly above our 2019 room in the sense that they have a couple good pieces but no true #1.

You can watch the play yourself. Coleman is lined up at the bottom: Yeah he's half assing that route. Could a perfect throw have gotten past the flat defender gaining depth, sure. That doesn't excuse Coleman's effort here though. This isn't an instance of separation, he's just running through a zone uncontested.

Coleman was close to useless on Sunday. I was one of his biggest supporters in the draft process so it gives me no pleasure to admit this. He's jogging on a lot of his routes. He's slow off the line and not where he needs to be when Allen gets to the top of his drop. He doesn't make good adjustments to the ball in the air. He had one good play against Miami's #4 CB. Good for him. The rest of the game he showed poor effort and poor technique. Best case scenario is he flushes this season and comes back a new man next year. The more likely scenario unfortunately is that he is just a major bust.