HappyDays

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.

The 2nd one that I bolded, Coleman did nothing to get open there. He just ran behind the flat defender in basic tampa 2 and up the sideline. He actually jogged the entire route until he realized the ball was coming his way which allowed the flat defender to easily keep pace with him and eventually undercut the pass.

Took me a few minutes to figure this one out. Nicely done.

I think he is mostly blameless, yeah. It is true that Allen isn't playing as well as last year, independent of anything going on around him. I don't think anybody denies that. But that's normal. Even the greatest QBs ever have down seasons over the course of their career. Those down seasons often coincide with the supporting cast around them having down seasons. Look at Brady's final season in New England. His best WRs were a 33 year old Julian Edelman and a rookie Jakobi Meyers. Gronkowski had just retired. All of this resulted in Brady having his lowest YPG, passer rating, ANY/A, success rate, etc. since at least 2013. A lot of people thought his career was over... Until he went to the team with the best supporting cast in the league, which got his statistical output back to its normal heights and he immediately won another Super Bowl. Look at Mahomes the past two seasons. Plenty of analysts have said he wasn't playing at his best in those seasons but it was understandable given the mess around him. I didn't blame him for the Super Bowl loss to Philly either - he had no chance in those conditions. So for me it's not just a Josh Allen bias, I try to be consistent in evaluating QB play within the conditions that they're given. The growing narrative that really irritates me is the one that tries to give equal (or greater) blame to Allen as it does to the rest of the operation. That's what bothers me about the Jim Kubiak article and a couple other analyses I've seen floating around social media. The expectations for Allen have gotten to be utterly ridiculous. Fans are saying out loud "we need Allen to play like the MVP for us to have a chance at the Super Bowl" but they're framing that as a criticism of Allen! That framing is totally backwards. And it seems to me that that mindset permeates the entire organization. No need for certain players to give it their all on every play, or for the GM to add legit talent, or for the coaches to add wrinkles and make adjustments. Eventually Superman will just put on his cape, right? Wow look at that 3rd and 16 where he ran around for 20 seconds before finding an open WR, that's the Allen we need. Ah but he threw an interception at the end of the drive. That means he's to blame for the result. Long post so just so summarize - Allen isn't playing at his best but I mainly attribute that to the architecture around him being a complete mess. We're running the same concepts that we've put on film a million times going back to last year. We have the worst pass catching talent in the league especially when Palmer and Kincaid are both injured. The OL hasn't been as consistent as last year. I hate the nitpicky analysis of "well on this play if you freeze frame it right here I think Allen could have maybe hit that 2 yard short crosser." It's too narrow-focused and it doesn't properly account for how NFL QBs make their reads. The big picture conversation is what I'm interested in and that's what Chris Simms gets into in that video. Those issues, not Allen, are why we have very little chance of turning this passing offense around.

Chris Simms on the Bills offense vs Miami: I considered making a new thread for this but it fits into this thread just fine. I recommend watching the entire 12 minute video. Nothing he says here should surprise anyone. Highlights: -When defenses are able to stop the run, we have no counterpunch. He points out when you face playoff defenses you will inevitably have a game where you can't get the run going, and we don't have any answers to overcome that. -Way too much is on Allen in the pass game. Nothing about it is surgical, it's all on him to create big plays. -He blames the personnel more than the play calling but does criticize the play calling for dipping into the same well way too many times. The same concepts are constantly showing up on film. We're attacking the same areas of the field over and over again and Miami's defense was clamping down on it. -Miami was in zone most of the game, cover 3 specifically 67% of the time. He says they were easily passing off our various crossing routes and we had no way of attacking them outside to get them out of those looks. He says "Allen can throw comebacks while sitting on his ass" but we don't have those routes on the menu because of our personnel. -He criticizes Coleman in particular. He says that several times Allen hits the top of his drop looking in Coleman's direction but Coleman hasn't gotten to his spot and/or is jogging, so Allen ends up having to move on in the read. You can tell how flabbergasted Simms is that this is the offense we've built around Allen. An all-time physically gifted QB and we're just asking him to throw button hooks and short crossers. We spam the same boring play calls and we have no one to take advantage of Allen's arm downfield.

Bills 24 Bucs 20 I'm not going to pretend that I have any idea what Bills team will show up this week. I'm just going with my gut. I think Tampa coming up to cold possibly wet Buffalo is going to struggle to find momentum. Our OL will be pissed at themselves over last week's performance so they'll have something to prove and I expect our run game to get back on track. Palmer being back will give our boundary passing game a boost. I expect somewhat of a sloppy game on both sides that we pull out mainly because of our home field advantage.

Correct and my confidence that they will do any of that is at an all time low.

And they only used about half of it. Also our roster right now is in better shape than theirs was last year so our rebuild doesn't need to be as comprehensive. My take is we basically just need 2 legit WRs, a true #1 and a #3 type to replace Samuel, and then we're fine on offense. Assuming Bosa walks in FA he needs to be replaced. Otherwise I'm good with this roster. Some other tweaks are needed like every team, but we're not looking at wholesale changes. We have the QB which is 80% of the battle.

When Allen retires that's when we'll be blowing it up and starting over. Replacing the coach and GM is a transition, not a restart. Did the Patriots start over when they fired Jerrod Mayo last year? Not at all. They already had their franchise QB in waiting, just had to make a couple roster additions and get a real coaching staff in the building. Boom, AFCE champs (most likely) in year one. The only Chicken Littles on here are the ones that are still afraid to make a change. I'm not afraid of the unknown, I'm afraid of the same story we see play out every single year continuing to play out until Allen hangs it up. We've probably already passed the peak of his physical abilities. The clock is ticking.

I thought the reads were much cleaner against KC to be honest. It's not like Allen had the stats he did in that game because he was dumping a 2 yard pass to Coleman with three defenders leveraged over top. The whole offensive structure around him was much better in that game. The run game was working, the pass protection was better. We managed to create four 20+ yard completions to Kincaid (x2), Moore, and Knox on time and in rhythm, and all four of our TDs happened on those drives. We played with a lead for most of the game which is the position our offense is designed to play from. So I don't think the difference between the KC offensive performance vs the Miami performance was because of the QB play. It's because all of the things that worked against KC didn't work against Miami. They shut down the run, OL played their worst game of the season, after Kincaid's injury Allen had no targets he could trust downfield, Brady fell back into predictable play calling. All of that plus the defense wasn't anywhere near as effective as they were against KC so everything just kind of snowballed.

It's worth noting that defenses aren't stupid. They've dissected Brady's offense and know where the "easy outlets" are. As a result those reads are not as open as they were when Brady first made them a staple of the offense. Defenses are forming a wall of coverage right where they know our crappy WRs' depth is maximized and the DBs/LBs are leveraging themselves to drive on those short completions. Allen (and every QB for that matter) is reading leverage. Not just separation, leverage. If he sees a LB with their hips bent forward sitting 2 yards over a short completion he is usually going to turn down that throw unless it's 3rd and short. Allen took one of those "easy outlets" to Shakir in this game - Shakir took a shot and gained 2 yards. He took one to Coleman against Carolina and the safety sitting over top of it came down and made the easy pass breakup. If he hadn't made those passes there would be people posting freeze frames saying "why didn't he hit this wide open target?" People vastly underestimate how fast back 7 players can trigger to the ball when they're properly leveraged. We can't live in this short completions against an ultra compressed defense world. You need to punish defenses that sell out against short completions, and we just don't have the personnel or the creative scheming to do that consistently.

He doesn't specifically comment on that, he does give Brady a lot of blame for this performance throughout the article though. On this play he says a QB sneak or run would have been the right choice which I agree with. But I think even some of his criticism of Brady is unfair. He keeps saying that Brady needed to lean on Cook more and that he got away from what has made our offense successful. I don't know what game Jim Kubiak watched, but in the one I watched the run blocking was garbage and Cook's ankle clearly wasn't entirely right. Not to mention we got down by 2 scores early so committing to the run wasn't really an option at that point. As I've said before, every fan and analyst is tripping over themselves trying to find solutions that don't exist with the current personnel. "Allen needs to play with more fire." "Brady needs to run Cook 30 times a game." "Give Elijah Moore more targets." These are all nice ideas but they're all ultimately circling the drain that is this WR room. It's like some people still don't want to admit that Beane just utterly failed to give his QB and his OC the tools to be successful. We thought we could replicate last year's performance without making a single meaningful change to the WR room or to the scheme, and the resulting failure we're seeing this year was entirely predictable.

I'm going through the article now, and again I am wondering why some of these all-22 reviews don't at least try to understand why Allen is making certain decisions or turning down certain throws. Like Jim Kubiak here blames Allen for the failed 4th and 1 that Miami was all over. Here's the screenshot he uses: Kubiak's take on this play: What are we doing here? He thinks Allen turned down the pass to Shavers to try and... throw a TD to a covered Jackson Hawes who's standing at the 30? He even draws a sight line from Allen to Shavers. Does anyone notice anything in the middle of that sight line? Like say a charging Miami defender directly blocking Allen's vision and throwing window to Shavers? I really don't mind criticizing Allen when it's warranted but some of the analysis I see is just crazy to me. The offensive system and the players around him clearly have him out of rhythm and playing without confidence, that much is obvious. Can we agree that he's not playing at his best while also giving him some grace for the absolute mess surrounding him?

The steam has run out on the McDermott and Beane era. I think the trade deadline was the final nail in the coffin. This team needed a big move to inject some energy and belief into the locker room and I don't think it's a coincidence everyone played flat in the game immediately after the opportunity passed. We've finally gotten to the "make a change for the sake of change" moment. Not right now, might as well finish out the year. But next year there is no chance anybody in that locker room is feeling confident if we just run it all back. Confidence begets success in pro sports. Get some new voices in the organization and reset the mentality of everyone in the building. If anyone still has doubts about moving on, the one thing that should convince each and every Bills fan is that Josh seems to have lost his mojo. Forget his play on the field. Look at him on the sidelines and in his pressers. The most important person to the franchise clearly isn't confident in this operation and that above all else should force a change.

Kubiak is my first choice by far but Saleh with McDaniel at OC intrigues me. Both San Fran guys so the connection is easy to make. Saleh always had his defense performing at a top tier level and it wasn't his choice to bring the circus to town in New Jersey.

? If the ball is thrown to the 35 it's a definite pass breakup. Coleman isn't even drifting that way, he's running straight horizontal. I'm not sure what you're seeing here Alpha. Also I don't agree that those two throws are "standard NFL throws." The 1st one is one that can be completed by most NFL QBs but it is very low percentage because of how tight the CB is to Coleman. The 2nd one I genuinely don't think any normal QB is throwing that one to a spot 35 air yards downfield just out of reach of the flat defender and right where Coleman can make the catch. This is not a "hit your back foot and throw a rainbow" vertical shot. It's late in the progression and Allen has to rifle it to a spot way downfield to a jogging WR.

Yeah I don't know why we are calling this and other similar throws "turndowns." Allen is reading the leverage of defenders. There's a LB sitting directly over top with his hips leaning forward which means he is in position to drive on it, not to mention the other 2 sitting defenders you highlighted, so the best case scenario is a 3 yard gain, more likely 2/2.5. For reference as measured by success rate you would want to pick up 6 yards on 2nd and 10. I absolutely hate that this sort of play constitutes the vast majority of our passing offense right now. Defenses are forming a wall of coverage where they know we like to run our little crossers and nobody other than Kincaid has shown an aptitude for getting behind that wall consistently. Maybe Palmer can do it too, we'll see. Right now it's way way too easy for our opponents. They'll give us these looks all day until we force them out of it.

I think that's over selling it a bit. There's two throws which I think you are referring to, one along the left sideline where Allen threw it outside when it appeared that it should have been placed inside, and one along the right sideline that was underthrown (although Coleman could have still caught it off the tip). Here they are in order: The first one of those is a low percentage play from any QB especially since the defender was practically riding Coleman's back downfield. Would have had to be an absolutely perfect throw 45 air yards downfield. Nice release from Coleman but he stumbles out of it and doesn't have vertical speed so there is no clean separation. You'd like to see better separation to make it an easier throw or maybe he draws DPI when the CB catches up. The second one, I don't think that throw is even on the menu for most QBs. Looks like basic tampa 2. The throw ends up almost like hitting a honey hole shot except 35 air yards downfield which is obviously not typical. Because Coleman is jogging on his route Allen has to rip it in there to beat the buzzing flat defender which means he can't get air underneath it which makes it more challenging to have perfect ball placement. So yes Allen has the arm strength to theoretically hit this throw but that isn't a point in Coleman's favor. And it's not like he did anything special to separate here, he's just running (or, more aptly, jogging) behind the flat defender in tampa 2. If Allen had hit both of these miraculous throws that would have been more akin to Gabe Davis' "breakout performance" against KC than a legit star turn from Coleman IMO. Especially given how poor he looked on almost every other rep throughout the game.

I need another coffee. I spent a full minute racking my brain trying to remember who on the Bills wears #12.

There isn't a single 1st round pick Beane has made, other than his first one, that I wouldn't trade for Waddle right now. The position is THAT important and it's not like he's found any superstars with those picks.

He isn't quick enough off the line or nuanced enough as a route runner to be a full time slot WR. He does his one trick extremely well, possibly better than any WR in the league (when he's fully healthy). You think back to when Beasley was in his prime, Allen would hit the top of his drop and the ball would be out because Beasley was already open. You don't get that with Shakir. Either you get him a manufactured touch with a YAC opportunity or you have to wait for him to work open after the initial read of the play has passed. The fact that he's our best WR is a major condemnation of the job this front office has done.