HappyDays

Look at our remaining schedule and then look at theirs. I think at this point it's likely they finish with the same record or better than ours, and probably a better conference record which gives them the h2h over us.

I don't think this loss matters at all. I still expect the Bengals to finish with an equal or better record than us. So if the Texans finish higher in the standings we are competing with the Steelers, Chargers, and Browns for the last wildcard spot.

Even though I like watching the Bengals lose, Texans winning is worse for our wildcard chances IMO. Very good chance they finish ahead of us now.

Again, I hope people are paying attention. Burrow throws two awful picks and misses a wide open TD throw from the 10. But his RB scores a TD, his defense gets an INT, and his 3rd WR ends up wide open and gets like 50 yards after the catch. Suddenly his team is in position to win the game.

Burrow has been garbage the entire 4th quarter. Two bad picks and a missed TD throw to a wide open WR. I hope people are watching this game with the same eye that they watch the Bills.

Oof big rookie mistake from Stroud there.

I'm sorry but even if true that is not enough to account for the difference between their defensive performance and ours. Also what makes you say Stingley is that good? FWIW Benford and Jackson are both rated higher than him by PFF.

Every single time the red zone channel has shown a big Browns defensive play or 3rd/4th down stop, there is a flag on the Browns defense. I'm not exaggerating. It's happened literally every time I've seen that game.

Who do the Texans have on defense? The Seahawks? They managed to stop the Bengals from moving the ball up and down the field.

Watching the Texans game, they give Stroud a moving pocket and they're scheming wide open throws to WR3s. They create open rushing lanes for Singletary. Bobby Slowik is moving up my preferred head coach list. Learned under Kyle Shanahan and now leading an offense that produces well above its talent level. He has CJ Stroud playing confident and fearle

No he wasn't?

He's their backup RB. Pierce is out today so he's getting full time starter snaps.

We have called shotgun goalline runs 500% more often 🤣

When players like Moss, Singletary, and Teller go on to play much better for other coaching staffs, that isn't on Beane.

Texans just used Singletary as a 1st read on a pass play which became an 11 yard gain and then ran him around the edge for an easy TD. Every time the Bills don't play on Sunday I'm reminded of what great coaching looks like.

No IMO. Texans are a wildcard threat and we've already lost a tiebreaker to the Bengals so we want them to win out.

Difference is their defense has now forced 4 consecutive 3 and outs, and their RB1 has 89 rushing yards. The Texans aren't as talented as us even with our injuries, it just doesn't make any sense.

Already at 89 yards with 10 minutes left in the 3rd quarter. And by the way I still think Singletary is just a fine RB. Scheme and blocking are making it happen.

Josh Dobbs is one of the best stories in football right now. Really fun to watch.

I can't believe I'm saying this but the Texans are a wildcard threat for us. Their remaining opponents: Cardinals Jaguars Broncos Jets Titans Browns Titans Colts

DEVIN SINGLETARY already has 59 yards rushing against the Bengals. Who here can name most of the players on the Texans OL without looking it up?

Injuries have obviously been an issue on defense, but so has coaching. That is undeniable. We didn't give up 29 points to the worst starting offense in football because Matt Milano is on IR, it was because of awful game planning and play calling. Other defenses are able to be better than a bottom 5 defense without a roster full of superstars. The Chiefs lost Nick Bolton at LB, they have no edge rushers to write home about, and they managed to hold the Dolphins to 14 points and score a TD, which is even better than what we did against the Dolphins when our defense was fully healthy. And the Chiefs offense didn't exactly put them in good positions throughout that game. So yeah the Chiefs and Bengals injury luck on defense has been better, but the coaching discrepancy between us and them is even larger.

The stats shown at the beginning are an indicator of bad defense and special teams. Like 5th best in TDs per drive since week 5, but only 18th in total points over that time span, that is clearly a time of possession stat. As Brett Kollmann points out, field position is another huge issue. Our offense has a middling run game and only one elite pass catcher, and it's being asked to execute perfectly on long drives with very few opportunities for explosive plays. That is not a recipe for success. Good analysis of the run game schematic issues too. @HoofHearted pointed out that 2 of our 8 called runs versus Cincy featured a schematic flaw that literally drew the defender to the spot where they made the tackle. And unfortunately I don't think the myriad of factors causing these issues are fixable at this point in the season. Pretty much our only chance of sustained success against decent teams right now is everyone on offense executing perfectly throughout the game, and that is just not a realistic ask.

What do you think causes this? I imagine that reading if it's man or zone is usually pretty simple, especially for Josh Allen who's been in the league for 6 years now. Did Lou Anarumo disguise that snap well? Did Allen just misread the coverage, or maybe had the play wrong in his head? Curious what your opinion is on this. Yeah the script has definitely flipped. When we had Diggs, Beasley, and Brown in their prime we were unstoppable against man. But Allen had trouble diagnosing zone defenses at that time, especially zone blitzes IIRC. Now he's figured out zone but we don't have the personnel or the schematic genius to beat man. Maybe someday we'll put it all together and finally see the best possible version of Josh Allen...

So I get what you're saying that there is no inherent schematic advantage there. But if you look at his 2023 splits... https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/A/AlleJo02/splits/2023/ ...he is performing much better in play action. -127.3 passer rating and a 1.7% sack percentage in play action -93.3 passer rating and a 4.5% sack percentage in non play action. So something is going on there. I notice that his under center passer rating is 130.7 and his shotgun passer rating is 93.8. I would guess most of our play action comes from under center. So maybe it isn't about play action at all, maybe that's just a correlative positive stat to under center passing? One theory I have had is that Allen is more in rhythm and comfortable throwing the ball in play action and/or from under center. It might not be a schematic advantage at all, but is it possible that Allen for whatever reason simply peforms better when going through that mechanics cycle?