HappyDays

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There are some early signs that Lane Johnson will not play today... Inactive list out in 20 minutes.

Doug Pederson just can't help himself with 4th down aggressiveness. He goes for every single one and I've seen it hurt his team more often than the opposite. Why not go up by two scores heading into half and put pressure on the young team with a rookie QB?

I'm surprised Diontae Johnson is still getting snaps after this display:

Are you serious? I genuinely can't tell.

He's the same player he was here but he happens to be playing in the best offensive system in the NFL. James Cook would be unbelievable in that system.

We're still doing the Isaiah Hodgins things? He's played barely half of the Giants offensive snaps this year and has 14 catches for 142 yards.

That's what the Shanahan system looks like with an actual talented QB. It's crazy to me that every offense isn't adopting some version of that system.

This is the first game since probably the London that I feel genuinely hyped up for. A top opponent where a win would mean everything. The Dorsey to Brady switch and how the offense looked against the Jets has given me some hope that this season is still salvageable... Maybe that hope will come crashing down today but it gives me a reason to really care about this one. Go Bills!

This would be a major development.

They need to get rid of turf entirely. Every player wants grass fields. It would improve the product over the course of a season with less season ending injuries to major players. It's a win/win situation for everybody.

How dare the billionaire owners let this continue. Even from a purely self-serving perspective, why would you want to endanger your own assets by trotting them out on this field? The NFLPA should release a public message advising free agents not to sign with the Jets or Giants or any other team with a similar field unless this crap is fixed. Advise high draft picks not to sign with those teams. Something has to change.

This game is so bad it culminated in a ref spitting blood. The Jets have invented several entirely new methods of ineptitude in this one.

It's pretty clearly the pass catchers. Mahomes can't find open guys and when he does a lot of times they drop the ball. In the Josh Allen era I've become somewhat of an expert on that handicap so I know what I'm seeing when I watch the Chiefs. I've seen more negative plays from Mahomes this year compared to last, but again I think having worse pass catchers makes him feel like he has to press more to move the ball. I don't blame him at all for their struggles this year. I mean it definitely mattered. That stretch of 2018-2020 was obviously the best offense in the Mahomes era. 2021 I thought Mahomes genuinely was the problem with some of their offensive struggles, including the AFCCG where I thought Mahomes was the single largest reason they lost that game against the Bengals. It happens. And last year he still had a great offensive supporting cast, it just wasn't "two HOF pass catchers plus a HOF play caller" great. I just wish people gave the same level of understanding to Allen that they give to Mahomes. We've seen what Mahomes looks like with a bad OL - he got blown out in the Super Bowl. We've seen what he looks like with a bad defense - he failed to beat the Pats in the AFCCG. Now this year we've seen what he looks like with a below average group of pass catchers. Allen has had to deal with all of these issues at various times since his rookie year. He's overcome them about as well as possible IMO. I agree that Allen's ceiling is higher than Mahomes and that as a trade off his floor is lower but overall I think they're very similar talents.

This is the dumbest half of football I've ever watched

He hasn't been a game changer all year. His skill set only works if he gets wide open space to work in. He is not good at all in small spaces.

It's a good reminder that having an above average WR2 really is THAT important. It has a trickle down effect to the rest of the offense. Going from JJSS to MVS is a massive drop off and it affects everything. That's why in the offseason I was so gung ho about signing DeAndre Hopkins. Also to be fair Kelce looks like he has lost a step too. Maybe dating a once in a generation superstar has caused him to lose focus or maybe it's just age. But clearly he is not his usual self right now. In retrospect isn't it crazy that Mahomes had Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce both in their prime?? I mean that is an all-time great offensive supporting cast.

I'll be honest, the Chiefs got really lucky with JuJu Smith-Schuster. He is NOT a JAG. He started his career getting 900 and then 1400 receiving yards and looked like he would be a top #2 option for the rest of his career. But a series of injuries led to his next few years being spotty at best. That's why the Chiefs got him so cheap, not because of talent but because of health. And of course because they have a horseshoe up their ass they got one final healthy year out of him and he was a great #2 for them, before his knee fell apart after signing with the Pats. Our cheap free agent with a high injury risk was Jamison Crowder and unfortunately it just didn't work out. No doubt JuJu is a MUCH better WR than Davis when healthy. If our WR2 had a 77.2% catch percentage last year, instead of 51.6%, it would have made a huge difference in our season. You could make the argument that Mahomes had his best year last year, again if you contextualize it properly. Not as flashy as 2018 but more impressive from an individual standpoint. But even then he still had Kelce in his prime, a very good #2, and the 2nd best OL in football.

Brady's career was over after his final year in New England. That was the narrative. Then he went to the best team in the NFL at the time and suddenly had a resurgence. Yes even the GOAT needed several great players around him to look his best. Allen has become a victim of his own success. He has turned JAGs like Gabe Davis and Dawson Knox and Khalil Shakir into productive NFL pass catchers, and as a result people think his supporting cast is better than it really is. I see people praising O'Cyrus Torrence as having a great rookie season, when in reality he's been giving up pressures left and right over the past month and the OL as a whole has dropped off quite a bit after a good start. Allen's physical and mental abilities make everything look so much better than it is.

Mahomes is playing as well as usual IMO. But having a lesser supporting cast makes him feel like he has to press more than usual, and the opportunities just aren't there for him. For the first time in his career he's playing with an offensive supporting cast that is about equal to Allen's supporting cast. Luckily for him his defense is one of the best the league has seen in the past few years. Figures. Allen for my money is having the best season of his career if you contextualize it properly. Diggs isn't as special as he has been (why is no one talking about this?), Davis has somehow been even worse than usual and would not even start on many teams, Knox was having his worst season since he was a rookie before going on IR. Our defense and special teams have been worse than ever in Allen's career which puts the offense in bad situations. Not that his supporting cast is awful - Diggs is still very good, Kincaid has been ramping up, and our running game is the best it's been in the Josh Allen era when we actually commit to it. But pretty much our entire offense this years starts and ends with Allen's right arm. Look at the leaders in TDs per game this year: 1) Miami 2) Dallas 3) Detroit/San Fran (tied) 5) Baltimore/Buffalo (tied) Only one of those teams is being run pretty much exclusively through its QB - with respect to Dak Prescott and Lamar Jackson who are both having very good seasons, but both also have teams that can win in multiple ways. The Bills can only win in one way. It is not a coincidence that Allen is leading the NFL in total TDs per game and ranks high in turnovers per game. That's a sign of a team that needs its QB to be the engine that drives everything all the time, and that's just not a sustainable way to win games consistently. Allen will reach his ceiling as a player when his supporting cast reaches its ceiling. He's a better QB now than he was in 2020 in pretty much every way that we measure QB play but his supporting cast is worse. I'm regularly shocked by the theories I see on here about Allen's mental state based on things like his demeanor in press conferences and 5 second shots of him on the bench in broadcast footage. It's honestly a total joke.

Bills 37 Eagles 24 I readily admit that I may have egg on my face after this one, predicting a double digit victory over an elite opponent. I think what it comes down to for me is the position these two teams are in. The Eagles are riding an emotional high coming off a victory over the team that beat them in the Super Bowl. They're on a short week. They are 9-1 so this game against an AFC opponent means practically nothing to them. The Bills are desperate. They have to lay everything on the line for the rest of the season. 4th down attempts, trick special teams plays, anything and everything is on the table. They really NEED this game. I don't discount that emotional advantage. Plus, I genuinely believe that the Bills offense turned a corner last week. I don't think it is just a one game Joe Brady novelty bump. I think he has immediately unlocked what this offense can do well and will commit to it. And the Eagles defense is more vulnerable than advertised, certainly worse than the Jets. I think Allen, going against a Super Bowl caliber opponent in a massive game, will be in assassin mode. He's going against a team that doesn't regularly have to game plan against him. The leash is off him for the rest of the season - he won't hesitate to run when it's appropriate. All of this lines up for him to have maybe his best performance of the year. I don't really know what to expect from the defense in this one to be honest, I just trust that the offense will carry the day and never let up. I'm getting late 2021 season vibes from this team and I'm riding that wave until it crashes. When they play their best football I truly believe they can blow out any team in the league. So that's what I'm betting on.

I've seen you mention this term before. What is a Pirate game? A specific type of stunt?

Kurt Warner posted this video yesterday: He has been saying that Dorsey was not the problem and didn't agree with him being fired. So in this video he tries to show how our offense against the Jets was exactly the same which to him is proof that Dorsey was not the problem. But interestingly he kind of accidentally shows that Brady's offense is not the same. Same concepts but dressed up more, like you said. It's almost bizarre how Kurt Warner glosses over some of that stuff in this video. On one play he fails to point out that a Diggs motion against the Jets made Kincaid a lot more wide open than he was in a similar play against the Broncos. He compares a true mesh against the Broncos to a fake mesh against the Jets but to me those concepts created entirely different passing windows to Cook in the example plays he shows. If you get a chance to watch this 10 minute video I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.