Logic

The Bills are winning this weekend. It's happening. Have faith. There it is. Now you can enjoy the rest of your week, stress free.

Very, very sad. The three match series the Briscoes just completed against FTR is one of the best three match series in the history of wrestling. Just heartbreaking news. 38 years old! Ugh. RIP Jamin.

Any time I hear "Rob Gronkowski", my brain thinks immediately about how we drafted Torell Troup one pick ahead of him.

There may be something to this, actually. Dezmon Patmon is 6'4, 220. Tee Higgins is 6'4, 218. So at least in his case, I could see it being a "scout team" thing to give looks to our DBs against a big bodied WR. Cortez Broughton also appears to be a DT, not a WR, as the post above suggests. Maybe his addition is a sign that Jordan Phillips' injury is ongoing and they want another body at the position, just in case.

Personally, I think it's more about next year than this year. I think it's Beane trying to get a jump on some other teams in signing guys to the practice squad that they'd like to take to camp. I could be wrong. I don't know how all the reserve/future signings work, how they tie into the practice squad, etc. But I can only surmise that it's about next year, because they certainly aren't counting on Cortez Broughton or Dezmon Paton to meaningfully contribute in these playoffs, even on special teams.

All I can think of when I hear the words "slightly awkward obituary" is the time on Curb Your Enthusiasm when they ask Larry to write an obituary about a "Beloved Aunt", and he, um...makes a typo 😳

You may be right. Part of me wonders if Josh being amazing, in and of itself, is really enough to get the offense to 2nd in PPG. For instance, Joe Burrow and Justin Herbert are pretty excellent, and both have comparable (or in Burrow's case, superior) supporting offensive personnel, and yet the Bills scored 2.6 PPG more than the Bengals and 5.4 PPG more than the Chargers. How? Why? Is Josh just THAT much better than those guys? Maybe the answer is "yes". Or maybe Dorsey's play calling is better than many Bills fans give it credit for. I have often had a hard time this season figuring out how much credit and blame to assign to Allen and how much credit and blame to assign to Dorsey (or, for that matter, the receivers and o-line) in any given week. It often feels like a "chicken or the egg" situation. Like when Josh makes a bad decision and throws a pick, did he do so because the gameplan was poor and guys weren't getting open and so he tried to force something that wasn't there? Maybe, but then I go back and re-watch the play in question, and there's often an open checkdown option underneath that Josh ignores. But then I ALSO don't know how Josh is coached/instructed on any given play, or what his reads are. As fans, without knowing how the play was called or what Josh's progressions were, it's hard to know sometimes. But again, ultimately, you may be right. I won't pretend to know definitively.

I'm not really sure what "backup" you want me to provide for the statement "both the OC and QB are fallible humans who sometimes make mistakes, and it's okay to point that out". I would think such a statement would receive universal agreement, unless one's position is that either Josh Allen or Ken Dorsey are, in fact, infallible and never make mistakes.

If he joins a team next year that has a strong defense and running game -- The Titans, say -- I could see him Peyton Manning-ing his way to championship contention.

Sometimes Josh Allen deserves criticism. Sometimes Ken Dorsey deserves criticism. Anyone who is only ever willing to criticize ONE of these guys is wrong. ALL of the fault and blame for failed plays or dormant stretches of offense do not belong to one or the other. Both mess up sometimes. That's the truth. Any time someone points out a mistake that Josh makes, it shouldn't elicit a mob with pitchforks. He's an excellent quarterback and we all love him, but he doesn't turn water into wine. The hero worship really gets out of hand sometimes. Likewise, Ken Dorsey has coordinated an offense that, overall, has been successful this season, as the #2 PPG and #2 DVOA rankings illustrate. Still, pointing out his instances of poor decision making or poor play calling should not elicit accusations of being a "negative Nancy". Criticism is okay. No one is perfect. Not Josh, Not Dorsey. It's okay for fans to point out times where they mess up.

I agree that Cincy will do what they do best, and so will we. People make a lot of the idea of copying other teams' effective gameplans in the NFL, but it's not that simple. Each roster's strengths, weaknesses, personnel specifics, and coaching tendencies play a big part. It's not as easy as "just do what the Dolphins did!". Likewise, I don't see the Bills doing what the Ravens did against Cincy. We're each gonna "dance with what brung us" (yes I know "brung" is not a word). Offensively, if the run is working, I hope they just keep running! Ever since the Bills became a pretty good rushing offense, I've seen a frustrating trend: The run will be working really well, they'll rip off two straight 6 yard+ runs....and then they'll just throw it five straight times. I get that you don't want to take the ball out of Josh Allen's hands too much. However, if an opposing defense is not showing that they can stop your run game, KEEP RUNNING!

For a thread titled "We're on to Cincinnati", well.... We sure don't seem to be.

With Tre White having rounded into form, Taron Johnson playing well after occasional mid-season hiccups, and Kaiir Elam making some game changing plays yesterday -- not to mention Benford being healthy and Dane Jackson having been cleared to return to yesterday's game if needed -- one could argue that the cornerback room is in the best place it's been all season. The Bills will need every bit of that cornerback talent to get past the Bengals, whose WR trio is as good as any in the league.

Still this:

The only team that has beaten the Bills all year is the Bills. Dolphins Jets Vikings None of those teams caused us to lose those games. Self inflicted wounds caused us to lose all three. Had we lost yesterday, what would've been the cause? More self inflicted wounds. If the Bills can avoid beating THEMSELVES, they'll win the Lombardi.

Crazy:

If I had to pick one? Kaiir. Made the interception that stopped the bleeding and let us re-take the lead. Made the game sealing stop on 4th and 6. Rookie earned his stripes yesterday. If he's healthy, I want to see him in the starting lineup going forward.

Your responses in this thread all show that you haven't read much of what I've had to say around these parts. I've been a constant defender of Dorsey and of the offense as a whole. I don't want him fired, I don't want wholesale changes, I simply acknowledge the reality that they go through stretches during games where they make life harder on themselves with dumb mistakes. Conceding that they're a very good offense and a very good team and statistically productive does NOT mean that you have to pretend that they never struggle during a game. Putting your hands over your eyes whenever the offense makes boneheaded plays that ultimately make games more difficult for the Bills than they need to be, and then just pointing to stats and saying "LA LA LA THEY NEVER MESS UP" is ignoring reality. If you honestly feel like the offense played a perfect game yesterday, didn't make any mistakes, and that any and all criticism of portions of the offensive performance is unwarranted, then we're done here. We can just agree to disagree. It's fine.

If turning the ball over three times and allowing a vastly inferior opponent to hang around and almost getting eliminated from the playoffs in a historic upset doesn't constitute "struggling" but only "high variance due to scheme", then the scheme is a big problem, and we have vastly different definitions of what "struggling" means.

McDaniel is a poor and confusing speaker. The things he says are often long and rambling and senseless. He gets credit as a boy genius, but he seems a bit like a buffoon to me. Maybe it's a Rain Man situation. I don't know. I just know that I'm often left scratching my head after he speaks.

No they're not. Here's a number for you: 31 points. That's how many points the Dolphins scored. Why? Not because off offensive prowess on their part. Their absolutely awful offense, led by their absolutely awful third string QB, scored 31 points. Why? How? It was largely because the Bills offense turned the ball over to them THREE times. That happened. That was real life. A positive final outcome or scoring output does not mean that the offense did not struggle for stretches of the game.

There seem to be four equally loud and insistent camps of Bills fans right now, and none of them have it completely right. Camp 1: Any and all offensive struggles are Ken Dorsey's fault. He stinks. Camp 2: Any and all offensive struggles are Josh Allen's fault. He's too careless. Camp 3: Any and all offensive struggles are the fault of the receivers and the offensive line. Camp 3: Everything is fine. I love the Bills. If you criticize any aspect of their play or gameplan after a win, you're just being a Negative Nancy. Each of the camps is somewhat right, but it's not as simple as any of the three camps are saying. Some of the offensive struggles ARE due to occasionally unimaginative or disjointed play calling or play design by Ken Dorsey. Some of the offensive struggles ARE due to Josh Allen's wrecklessness or disregard for situational football. Some of the offensive struggles ARE due to dropped passes and blown protections. Some combination of adapting to a first year play caller's offense, Josh's impatience and fearlessness, and miscues by skill players and linemen are leading to stretches of ineffective offensive football. We can all see it. At times, it keeps inferior teams in games, when the Bills should realistically be blowing them out. Despite this, the Bills still ARE winning games. They've won eight straight. They're in the divisional round of the playoffs with a 14-3 record and the #2 offense and #2 defense in football. Dorsey and Allen and the skill players and linemen all deserve some share of the blame when things go poorly. Dorsey and Allen and the skill players and linemen all deserve some share of the credit when things go well. It IS okay to critique different aspects of the team AND still be happy they won and concede that they are, overall, very good at playing football. I am very happy that the Bills are so good and that they won a playoff game yesterday. I also think they'll need better performances by all of the above mentioned entities in order to win a Lombardi, and that in a game as complex as football, rarely are things as simple as many fans want to make it seem by picking their favorite scapegoat and assigning all blame to them. Enjoy the ride, celebrate the wins, critique what deserves to be critiqued. On to Cincinnati.