HappyDays

Take it for what it's worth, but as far as I know this is a legitimate account.

Jalen Hurts, AJ Brown, and Jordan Mailata, in that order, are more valuable than Barkley in that offense. I might put Davonta Smith ahead of him too. "Valuable" isn't about how good the player is relative to his peers, it's about how much a drop off to a replacement level player would impact the team. I'm not saying Barkley hasn't been outstanding this year or that he isn't important to that offense. He just plays an inherently devalued position. Maybe the MVP voters will give it to him, it's not like there's any kind of thought put into that process, but by the pure definition of MVP no RB should come close to that conversation.

C'mon man. The Giants are in the position they're in because they haven't got the QB right. Not because they didn't re-sign a 4.1 YPC RB. James Cook has had a higher YPC than that every year of his career and the Bills would be crazy to re-sign him at the end of his rookie deal. Barkley was a luxury piece for an offense that already had ridiculous talent in place. He is the OPOY for sure, no question. He is not in the top 20 of MVP. He isn't even the MVP of his own offense.

I just don't agree with that at all. I think we are conflating "team" with "roster." The Chiefs were not the best roster in the playoffs last year. They were however far and away the best team. I will for sure take our 2024 team over our 2021 team. We have a lot more ways to win now than we did then. Back then it was nothing but the Allen fireworks show. Anything short of 300+ passing yards was a guaranteed loss against a quality opponent. We couldn't run the ball, the pass protection wasn't as stout, we had a complete lack of playmaking at MLB, our starting outside CBs were depth players in Levi Wallace and Dane Jackson (after Tre's injury obviously). We had some flash but we had a lot of fundamental weaknesses that showed up down the stretch and in the divisional round. I genuinely feel that we have less weaknesses now. We have more playmakers on both sides of the ball which means we're less dependent on perfect execution on every play. Less missed tackles, less drops, less turnovers. What we've lost in explosive offense we've more than made up for by reducing mistakes. The offense and defense are supporting each other, playing complementary football. The infusion of youth across the roster is paying off in spades. On the whole I just think our current team is a lot more fundamentally sound and cohesive as an overall unit than it has been ever before in the Allen era. We'll see if that means anything when the playoffs come around.

The attention AJ Brown and Davonta Smith command opens up Barkley's rushing. You have the relationship backwards. It isn't the 90s. I'm surprised this is even a debate right now. Respectfully, you're on your own on this one.

That's not how it works. You don't take away all his rushing yards, you have to estimate how many rushing yards above replacement level he has earned. And then you have to determine if those extra rushing yards earned purely by Barkley's own skills are worth any additional wins. As a point of comparison, Barkley this year is at 6.2 YPC. D'Andre Swift last year in the same offense was at 4.6 YPC. So yes Barkley represents a clear improvement, but the impact of an extra 1.6 YPC is not equivalent to the impact of an average QB versus an elite QB. Not even close. As for how many extra wins that additional YPC leads to, maybe 1 over the course of a season? 2 at most? Barkley himself is evidence of what I'm saying. In his previous three seasons in a crappy Giants offense he averaged 4.1 YPC - worse than what Swift did in the Eagles offense last year. A non-QB should never be the MVP.

My standards haven't come down at all. I still think the floor of calling this year a success is reaching the Super Bowl. If we lose in the divisional it will indeed be same old McBeane. I just mean my feelings about the team now are better than they have been in past years around this time. And maybe part of that is the seeming weaknesses of other AFC contenders. 2020 was fun but the Chiefs were clearly ahead of us and I knew it. 2021 we had a ton of issues down the stretch including the infamous Jags/Urban Meyer loss. 2022 Von was out for the season and the good vibes went in the toilet soon after. Last year was nailbiter after nailbiter through basically the entire 2nd half of the season. This year feels different than all that. But who knows, maybe tomorrow the locker room will catch fire and the entire roster will suffer 3rd degree burns. I've seen it all.

Well that's why it's not the Best Player award, it's the Most Valuable Player award. A QB should and will always win. Because if you take Barkley off the Eagles they probably still have the same number of wins, but if you take Allen off the Bills we probably have like 4 wins. Barkley will win OPOY which is what he deserves.

You know I've been willing to be critical of this regime. However I will say this year genuinely does feel different. Part of it is the record for sure. I am very much a "you are who your record says you are" kind of fan. Putting all the analytics aside, we're 9-2 for the first time ever under this regime. That's meaningful. We're 3-1 in games decided by one score (personally I would also classify the Chiefs game as a close game win, in the spirit of the term, and put us at 4-1 in that scenario). That's markedly improved from recent years. I know the common belief is that one score games are coin flips and that the record in those games isn't indicative of anything. I don't agree with that. I believe some teams have the structure and fortitude necessary to pull those games out more than others. Our team this year appears to have that makeup. I'm not going to discount analytics but they don't tell the whole story. The Chiefs rank 7th in DVOA yet I'm sure you would agree they are the Super Bowl favorite until proven otherwise. The reason for that is what I described above - they have the uncanny ability to pull out close games. I think a lot of games come down to 5% of the snaps. Analytics can tell you how a team compares in their performance over an entire game, but DVOA does not properly account for high leverage moments at critical junctures in a game. That 5% is not properly weighted in the data. The Bills and Chiefs have both been making winning plays in that 5%. That to me is more indicative of championship potential than whatever difference exists between them and other teams over the course of an entire game. What stands out to me is that we are finding multiple ways to win. Offense, defense, and special teams have all had a turn in creating blowouts or pulling out close wins. I'm more impressed with the defense than I have been in recent years. I recognize the analytics say that prior year defenses were better, but this defense creates plays in a way that I'm not used to seeing. We have at least one takeaway in every game this year. We got pressure on Mahomes like we never have before. We're making stops on 3rd and 4th down. The numbers might not show it but it feels different to me. On offense I feel the same. We have shown an ability to win in multiple ways. Again, I'm sure the 2020 numbers for example are better, but explosive passing offenses like that are mostly a relic of the near past. We have enough variety in our personnel that we can genuinely beat defenses any way they want to play us, and that has not been the case ever in the Josh Allen era. Also part of me thinks (hopes) that our injury luck may have been reversed this year. In the past we had seemingly nonstop injuries pop up in late December and January. This year all of the injuries are getting out of the way by the end of November. Of course we still have to see what our injury report looks like in a month, but again it just feels different to me. So I know a lot of this is just my feelings/eye test and I don't have the numbers to back any of it up. I will still worry about our coaching staff's ability to execute in high leverage moments in playoff games until they prove otherwise. But the results so far to me do not feel like more of the same. As of this moment I feel more optimistic now about the Bills Super Bowl chances than I ever have at this time of year in the Josh Allen era. If you don't, I get it.

Lets your own team know the same. Makes it easier to guys to make business decisions with Derrick Henry steaming towards them.

They're trying to create a downfield passing offense with Joshua Palmer. That ain't it.

He's done nothing wrong tonight though. Made big play after big play. His team just continually lets him down.

Honestly I feel bad for Herbert. I've commented a lot over the years about Allen's supporting cast, but no one's been given less to work with than him.

Aw Tre. He's on roller skates trying to cut out there.

What in the world did that ref see that made him think that wasn't a TD?

The Chargers have a good slot WR and JAGs outside. Not a hard passing offense to stop.

That's the problem, they don't have downfield passing weapons.

They do an unbelievable job of getting big linemen squared up against smaller defensive players. Then you get people trying to arm tackle Derrick Henry which hasn't been possible since he came out the womb.

Meh. They have a lack of skill position talent which creates a pretty hard ceiling. If you can score 24+ against them you're probably fine.

Yeah that is still the book on Lamar - force him to throw outside. Easier said than done because this offense has a lot of ways to beat you unlike previous years.

That's fair but Baltimore has the tiebreaker over Denver. I find it unlikely that they will end up with less wins than Denver but it's certainly possible.

I don't know, if Purdy was guaranteed to not play we might be favored by 9.5.

I'm still assuming KC is the #1 seed. So we want Baltimore to enter the playoffs as a wildcard. That makes it likely they play KC in the divisional round which is the dream scenario. We could have something like Denver in the wildcard and Pittsburgh in the divisional... That's as easy a path as you can get en route to the AFCCG likely in KC.

The best run defense is a dominating offense. Our two worst run defense games happened because we couldn't keep pace with Baltimore or pull away from Miami. Against Seattle and Indy we made the run defense a non-factor. The goal is to sell out to stop CMC early, get up by two scores as quickly as possible, and dare Purdy to beat you with his arm. The 49ers defense stinks this year and we will seemingly have our entire complement of weapons fully healthy so that strategy should be viable.

Good! Give me Brock Purdy throwing in the elements. Freezing rain would be even better.