HappyDays

We have an all-world QB and an all-world RB

Offense makes it look so easy. Unfortunately the defense does the same. Same story every year.

That's exactly right. Feels like on a weekly basis we come in with the wrong plan on defense and are immediately having to adjust. Make this barely backup quality QB stand tall and throw.

So much spent on defense in the offseason and if anything it is worse than last year.

Our blitzes stink. The blitzer never stays in control and the sea parts up the middle.

It is seriously bad. Two years in a row, they can't figure it out.

3rd and long... our best opponent this year.

Brady's offense is so simple but I don't mean that in a bad way. We have like 5 things we do well and he just keeps spamming those 5 things and dares the defense to stop it.

Shakir is just awesome man. Not an every play WR but just makes plays.

Maybe with the very team he's playing against today... Samuel and a 5th for Rashid Shaheed, who says no.

I wonder if he'll be back at all this season. He was their best DL, without him an already thin group becomes a real liability.

Just to put it in perspective, the Saints are currently +870 to win the game. The Bills are +800 at -32.5. So the sportsbooks think it is more likely that we win by 5 scores than it is that the Saints win the game at all.

I don't believe anything the Packers did in the early 90s has any relevance to the organization today. If that were true we wouldn't have gone from Jim Kelly to a parade of nobodies for two decades. And by the way I think Jordan Love is a pretty good QB but he has a long way to go to be mentioned in the same breath as those other two. I also want to be clear I'm not saying coaching can't make QBs look better. Like Brock Purdy doesn't become a $265M QB if not for Kyle Shanahan. But I also think Purdy's limitations are pretty obvious when you watch him play so while the system makes him look better within his own skill set, elite offensive coaching hasn't magically transformed him into an elite QB. I'm neutral on the subject of starting QBs early vs letting them learn from the bench. There are positive and negative cases on both sides. Allen pretty clearly got better as he played more throughout his rookie season but that doesn't mean it was inherently the best path to developing him. My overarching take is that it doesn't really matter - elite QBs will become elite, bust QBs will bust, no matter what their situation looks like early on. You can look no further than what Allen survived in his early years after taking over for a franchise that was nothing but a laughingstock. We've been so spoiled by Josh Allen's play we've forgotten how bad it was before. As recently as 2017-2018 we had all-time goofy storylines going on like the Peterman game, Kelvin Benjamin eating his way out of the league, Vontae Davis retiring at halftime. Same old Bills we said. But then Allen ascended and all of it went away overnight. And now retroactively we credit the same organization that produced those moments for Allen's ascension? Yeah I'm not buying it.

So you think the Pats organization forgot how to develop a QB when they drafted Mac Jones?

Watch how the entire defense reacted after that win on Sunday and tell me they don't have a culture. Jim Schwartz as we know from firsthand experience is a leader of men. The Bills didn't swarm Doug Marrone when we beat the Aaron Rodgers led Packers in Buffalo, they swarmed Schwartz. Kevin Stefanski has been coaching with both hands tied behind his back because the Browns owner made the worst trade in NFL history. Baker was a perfectly fine player when they decided to move on from him. Nothing more nothing less. It took him longer to reach his ceiling than Allen, that is true. Is your take that if Brian Daboll was in Cleveland they somehow would have flipped trajectories? Yeah I just hard disagree with that. Allen was the architect of his own success. He rebuilt his mechanics from the ground up. He survived years of horrible pass protection and bottom tier WR play. He created the stability in the organization, not the other way around.

Yeah it is kind of impossible to play the "what if Josh Allen had this roster?" game, because him being with that team since 2018 would mean their roster would be totally different. Since drafting Allen, Beane has only owned one pick inside of the top 20. And that trickles down to every round in the draft. Some teams get to pick #5 and #37 with their first two picks. For those teams their 2nd pick might fall in the same tier as our 1st pick. And we've had that disadvantage for 6 years now so there is a snowball effect. It is not easy to find elite talent in that area of the draft, although you think Beane would have gotten one just by pure luck by now. The Chiefs are the only real comparison to our perennial draft position and their talent has dropped off significantly over the years. The Ravens had a top 15 pick in 2022 and got Kyle Hamilton with it. The Eagles have had three top 10 picks since 2020 and came away with Devonta Smith (elite #2), Jordan Davis (meh), and Jalen Carter (elite). The Bengals got Chase in the top 5. These are opportunities that we just haven't had. On the flip side, I've said this before but having an elite franchise QB creates a compound positive effect that is impossible to quantify. It creates stability in the organization which means the coaches don't get fired, so every new player is joining a very well established culture and system. You get to stop spending draft picks on the QB position. In training camp you aren't splitting reps, the starting offense is the starting offense and they get all of the reps together. You get first dibs at reclamation projects that are looking to rebuild their image with a good team, especially on offense. There are certain free agents and tradeable players every year that only a few teams have a chance at getting and you're one of them. Your QB's mere presence on the field elevates everyone around him which makes their development track easier. All of these positive effects compound over the 10+ years that you have that QB. So if the Browns had drafted Josh Allen 1st overall I 100% believe they would be a Super Bowl contender right now. Hue Jackson probably would have still been fired after 2018 and I have no doubt Kevin Stefanski could have had the same success or more with Allen that McDermott has had. They wouldn't have wasted all those draft picks and money on Watson so if anything their roster today would be significantly better even after accounting for lower draft picks every year. They might be considered a super team by now honestly.

Yeah imagine being Daniel Jones drafted to the Giants for example. You have awful OL play, Brian Daboll as your coach, JAGs at WR. Thankfully Allen was drafted into a better situation than that.

I hope Beane is paying a lot of attention to him and makes an offer at the trade deadline. That's the skillset this offense is missing to put it over the top.

Do you mean the CB blitz that Tre whiffed on? I actually liked that play call. If there's anything to critique you probably want Benford to be the one blitzing there, Tre isn't athletic enough to make that play as we saw.

I can live with player mistakes that lead to 3rd down conversions. I can't live with the coaching mistakes though. There's too much experience in the defensive coaching staff including our head coach for that to ever be the primary problem on a play. Joe points out the 4th down conversion where we had Tre manned up on Waddle with no blitz called. That is a coaching failure, made it way too easy for Miami to execute. This drive ends in a TD. The end of half TD I put entirely on coaching as well. On 3rd and 3 from our 10 Tyreek Hill is lined up in the backfield which should be an immediate red flag; instead nobody on defense pays any attention to him at all and Tua easily hits him for the 1st down. On the very next play Tre is playing outside leverage on Waddle with no inside help. Easy pitch and catch, TD. So that is 14 points directly attributed to defensive coaching failures. If you call a blitz and the offense beats it, you tip your cap and move on. But you can't have plays where the play call is totally wrong for the situation, or hanging certain players out to dry. And it's not just a one game problem, it's a continuation of a trend from last year. That makes me less receptive to the idea that we can just execuse it away as one bad game. They gotta get it figured out.

Bills 35 Saints 7 I don't have any grand thoughts about this one. We're going to beat them by a lot but probably not by as much as we could because we'll be resting starters in the 4th quarter.

Yeah Brady is still the GOAT for sure. The crazy thing about his career is he has what I consider to be three separate Hall of Fame careers - age 24 to 30, age 32 to 37, and age 38 to 45. Any one of those stretches was an all-time resume. That's how ridiculously good he was. To put Allen's career in perspective, he's still 3 years away from Brady's 2nd Hall of Fame career. And he just keeps getting better. After an MVP season last year he's shown an even better command of the offense so far this year. So who knows what his career will look like at the age of 35. The common belief has been that his production will drop off significantly after his physical skills decline. While he obviously won't be stiff arming the Aaron Donalds of the NFL in 10 years, there's to reason to think his mental abilities will keep improving and that will counteract the physical decline. Brady got to a point late in his career where he had basically solved the sport and couldn't be fooled. There's no reason Allen can't get there after 10+ years of play.

Sure the win margin in a game like this can be unpredictable because who knows what happens in the 4th quarter if the game is effectively over. But to put it in perspective the Saints are +830 to win this game. The Bills are +800 at -32.5. The sportsbooks are telling you it's more likely we win by 5 scores than it is that the Saints win the game.