HappyDays

Yeah it's like I said earlier, that play encapsulates everything about his underwhelming play this year - poor understanding of zone spacing, poor body positioning, and finally a drop. He did everything wrong on this play. It turns out there's a reason we didn't get him involved a lot this year and it isn't because Brady doesnt know how to use him or because Allen just happens to be randomly less accurate when throwing in his direction - he just flat out hasn't been good enough. If I'm the Bills I'm walking into the offseason with the assumption that Kincaid and Coleman are both busts, and I'd make my draft and FA decisions accordingly. If one or both of them take a big step in their development, great that is found money. But I'd assume the worst and plan from there.

I haven't seen a lot of NFL media people talking about Allen's legacy today. Mostly they're talking about the drop and his teammates letting him down again. It would have been nice if I had called scissors when my opponent called paper. Spags' brilliance is in his unpredictability. He has by far the best blitz packages in the NFL. There's no tell pre-snap. You're left guessing. Wouldn't have mattered anyways. I don't have confidence that Kincaid would have made the catch even if the play developed normally because he failed in every big moment last night.

I wish the play call had featured a hot route. You have to know Spags is likely to blitz on 4th down even if you don't know from where. But most of all I just wish Kincaid had tracked the lob pass and made the easy catch. Oh well.

Not on the QB. Spags is the best defensive coach in the NFL. I mean there's no accounting for that. You're basically just guessing.

To be clear I'm talking about our matchups with KC in the playoffs. Adding Crosby or Garrett would certainly lead to better defensive results in the regular season. But nothing about the game last night is making me think "if only we had a premier pass rusher." What's the point? Andy Reid out schemed us and Mahomes was getting the ball out to a wide open WR within 3 seconds on most plays. Rousseau is supposed to be the best contain EDGE in the game and he completely failed in his responsibilities. If anything on defense I want to see us add to the secondary, clearly the entire secondary needs to be rebuilt outside of Benford. But that can't be the primary focus of the offseason. The primary focus has to be developing an offense that can score on every drive against KC and especially the last drive. That's how we get over the hump. Twice now Allen has had the ball in his hands with a chance to win and we couldn't finish them off, because the players around him failed to support him.

The problem is that our offseason strategy made it impossible to be patient. Coleman was forced into a role he wasn't ready for because there was no one above him in the depth chart. That's why I keep saying they need to over invest. Everyone understands draft picks are lottery tickets. We keep buying one at a time and expecting to hit the jackpot. We need to make a repeated concerted effort to add to the room like the Steelers have done for years and just by sheer luck we will probably get a couple hits. KC has had a bunch of disappointing WR picks but they hit the jackpot with Rashee Rice and Worthy looks like he could be a good pick, all because they kept investing in the position. I'd like to make a major FA investment too just to be 100% sure we have a stud in the room. The half measures strategy isn't cutting it.

My take is and has been that a stud pass rusher isn't going to make this defense perform notably better in the playoffs, but a stud WR would make this offense perform notably better.

One thing that really bothered me was our offensive game plan seemed to be hyper focused on getting into short yardage situations, and then getting just enough yardage to convert those into 1st downs. We didn't try to push the envelope at all and it burned us at the end. It's too hard to make a living on nonstop 3rd/4th downs against an extremely well coached and talented defense. Yet getting to those downs was seemingly our goal throughout the entire game. Meanwhile KC was moving the ball at will through the air with no fear. The respective game plans had us on our heels the entire game and when we had a chance to really take control of the game in the 2nd half we blew it with the same conservative play calling.

I've become almost resigned to it. McDermott is going to be the head coach. The defense is going to do this every year in the playoffs. So what strategy can we follow to still break through even with these barriers? For me I think we need an offense that can put up 40 consistently. Make the defense irrelevant. I know every team has trouble getting past KC, but we're the only one having trouble in this specific way. Their other playoff opponents aren't giving up literally historic production. McDermott and his hand picked DCs just can't figure it out.

I'll just throw this stat out there, heard it from Joe Marino - Mahomes had a 64% success rate on dropbacks last night. That is the highest ever of his career. Not his playoff career mind you. His entire career. I said I'll lay off McDermott this offseason and I will. But here we are again, defensive head coach and we are giving up historic production in sudden death games. Will it ever end?

Genuine question for you - if before the game you could have accepted the Bills scoring 29 points, would you have taken that? I would have for sure. I thought coming into this game that holding KC below 30 was the bare minimum expectation. I mean we did it to Baltimore who unquestionably had a better offense. But at least now we know that as long as our current coaching staff is in place KC will always be able to score 30 on us. No matter how much we invest on defense, no matter how healthy we are coming into the game, no matter where the game is played, they will get their 30 points. So now we have to move forward with that knowledge and make decisions accordingly. We need to score a minimum of 34 points to feel confident (although not certain) that we will win the game. That's not really a fair standard for our offense of course, especially against an elite playoff defense, but it is the standard and we need to invest appropriately to make sure we can deliver that result. So I see both sides of this argument because I'm on both sides. On one hand it's plainly ridiculous that the offense should need to perform at an almost perfect level just to have a better than even chance of beating KC in the playoffs; on the other hand it is a simple fact that that is what is needed, and we should stop pretending otherwise. Do what's necessary to make the defense a non-factor and maybe Allen will get his one Super Bowl win.

I'm not going to say the officials lost us this game - we made plenty of our own mistakes and deserved to lose. But in a game that everyone knew was going to be decided by one possession, the officials literally stole one possession from us. Period. No debate, that's actually what happened. That's worth noting and it's worth being angry about. And it's not just Bills fans' anger - NFL fans from across the social media world are all angry about it too. There are people I follow on Twitter that don't usually comment on football, and even a few of them have brought it up unprompted. I've never seen anything like it. It's become the dominating narrative of the game, rather than the great matchup between two heavyweights that we all just watched, and that just really sucks. I want football to be about football, not about this stupid crap. Of course the problem is that the NFL has no reason to care. The controversy actually drives engagement so to them it's a good thing. I don't think anyone is fixing games, it is just human error that the NFL is actually incentivized to let continue. Sure they could easily put a chip in the ball but the drama of those moments would be lost and that's a lot more valuable to them than a 100% accurate outcome.

This is where I'm at. Funny enough i was in this thread just minutes before the game arguing with a couple people about how I thought Kincaid had been mediocre this year (I didn't realize at the time I was foreshadowing disaster). I was told that his low catch percentage isn't his fault, that Allen needs to throw him better passes or Brady needs to get him more involved. Well here on the final play of the game we see all of the reasons why he wasn't getting involved this season - he failed to get himself to the spot of the throw, he failed to position his body properly, and finally he failed to make the catch. He was drafted in part of because of his elite hands but he had 3 drops over two playoff games (one of which was incorrectly called a catch against Denver). I'm putting him in the Gabe Davis bucket of players I'll never trust again. Not without sustained consistently good play and even then I'll need to see him do it in a big moment before I'll fully buy in.

I mean he doesn't even need to dive. It literally is a punt. The catch attempt is bad but his positioning is even worse. He does everything wrong here.

I just rewatched it for the first time and I'm in shock at how easy the catch was. I didn't realize it in real time. This is basically a punt and the catch is going to be uncontested. All he needs to do is track a lob pass and make the soft catch. Instead he inexplicably dives and it bounces off his arms. Massive choke job. Unbelievable. This was a play that could have gone down in legend. The first clip they show on Allen's Hall of Fame induction video. Instead it's something that only tortured Bills fans will remember.

It isn't the best statistically but it is the best situationally and that is all because of Spags. 4th down game on the line and we call pretty much the exact same play we ran on 4th down against them in the regular season. What does Spags do? He says this time I'm throwing two unexpected blitzers into that hole where Allen beat me last time. Now Allen can't beat him all on his own, he has to rely on his pass catcher who inevitably drops the ball because that's what Allen's teammates do to him every single year. Spags forced our hand with his play call and we choked. That defensive play isn't about players, it's about coaching.

It was not a desperation prayer. He read the defense and knew Kincaid would be open on the deep hook route because KC had vacated that entire area of the field in an all out blitz. It was an elite QB putting the team on his back in a critical moment with an incredible read and throw - and I believe Allen and Mahomes are the only two players in the NFL capable of making that throw in that moment. Unfortunately it is lost to history because Kincaid choked. Same old story.

Two years in a row now! The offense couldn't close the deal. With Allen at QB that can't happen. The game effectively ended today with a drop. Last year's may have as well although not as definitively.

Okay. And then next year in January when our offense has the ball in its hands with a chance to go beat KC, all of those players are sitting on the bench and like Nelson Agholor is the target on 4th and 7. I don't know. Personally I'd rather Elam start at CB2 than watch that scenario play out. And yes I understand just how bad Elam is. I really just don't care anymore. The next chapter is already 99% written and it's eerily similar to the last few chapters. How it ends is up to Beane's decisions this offseason.

Yeah that is who I meant. So one DL beat them, and one defensive game plan beat them. All the other elite DL players they've encountered over their playoff runs and none of it has mattered. I really don't think that's the path to glory. The path is give your elite QB the weapons to steamroll them.

Go big and sign Tee Higgins. Or trade for Metcalf if Seattle has realized they are in purgatory with Geno Smith. And then take one of those 1st or 2nd round WRs, and then another one in rounds 3-5. Even if those moves blow up all their other free agency and draft plans I think that is the only chance we have of getting over the hump.

Because Andy Reid and Mahomes are too good. Exactly one DL has beaten them in the playoffs. In fact the Bengals beat them by intentionally only rushing 3. They've faced some monster DLs over the years and none of it has mattered. You beat them by scoring 40 and leaving no doubt at the end.

That's why I said over invest. We used our past two 1st round picks on pass catchers. That's a half measure and neither of them have lived up to their draft value yet. I want to go full bore this time around. Just see what happens if we go almost over the top on that side of the ball. What have we got to lose? The other strategy isn't working. Two years in a row the offense had the ball with a chance to win and couldn't close the deal.

I'm willing to see how he develops but we can't count on it, that is for sure. The only guy signed on for next year that we can really count on is Shakir and he is a complementary piece, not a focal point. They need a focal point, ideally two.

Right. It needs to be 40. All the investments we've made on defense, and the two weakest versions of KC's offense still move the ball at will against us in the playoffs. Nothing is going to change on that side of the ball. We're playing whack a mole trying to fix one area of the defense while another falls off. Forget it, make just enough investments to field a competent defense. Everything else goes into building a 40 point offense.