Logic

Agreed. Have we worn those yet this year? If not, maybe week 18 against the Pats? I can't remember a year in recent history where we didn't wear them at least once.

This might end up being the third "Game of the Year" that the Bills play in this season.

Thanks for this stat. A positive evolution for this team, no doubt about it. I forget who originally said it on Twitter, but I find it very true: The only team that has really convincingly beaten the Buffalo Bills this season is the Bills themselves. All three games they lost were due to boneheaded errors. It can be reasonably argued that they were in position to win -- and should've won -- all three games, but for the self-inflicted wounds that cost them the victories. Not one opponent this year, not one single opponent, has straight up outclassed the Bills and been the undeniably better team. Three losses by a combined eight points, and all three are games they arguably should have won. On the one hand, if they CONTINUE to make these mistakes and self-inflicted errors in the playoffs, they're not gonna win a title. On the other hand, it seems like the Bills' "A game" is better than any other teams' "A game".

OK OK ! We get it!

I have a theory. It's probably nuts, but here goes... By and large, prime time matchups tend to be against strong opponents, and 1pm games seem to be against weaker competition. There are exceptions, obviously, but this is generally true. When Josh is going against prime competition, he brings his "A game" more often than not. When he's going against weaker competition, he sometimes plays down to the competition. He sometimes appears not to have the same level of intensity or effectiveness against weaker opponents. He's like a cat, toying with a piece of prey that he knows he could kill at any time. He makes more dumb mistakes and doesn't always have that "eye of the tiger" thing going on. This is what it felt like against the Browns and Bears this season, for instance. Meanwhile, when the primetime lights are on and the stakes are high, more often than not, he's locked in. He's Good Josh. He's "run over you and get up laughing" Josh. He's Inevitable Josh. Ok, go ahead and roast me and my dumb theory.

One who has been on 10 different teams in in his NFL career and is sick of moving around? One whose wife cried tears of joy when he re-signed with Buffalo? One who says he loves Brady and Dorsey and that Allen is his best friend and that he loves coming to work every day? One who, at this stage in his life, ultimately values happiness and living situation over extra money? Look, you may be right. Or not. Guess we'll never know.

I'm just saying...if that is your contention, then Barkley must be lying.

Barkley claims in the article that he had a few offers. Could be lying, of course, but it seems sort of a silly thing to lie about.

Whoops. My mistake. Mods, please merge if desired.

I try not to post too much from pay articles, but this was too good not to share: Allen was golfing in Newport, Calif., with his old pal Barkley, who had been his backup in 2018, 2019 and 2020, when Bills general manager Brandon Beane called. He asked his quarterback if he could give Miller a call because the Bills were trying to recruit the pass rusher to come to Buffalo. Allen has said that he thinks he and Beane have the best QB-GM relationship in football, so he knew he could use this favor to strike a deal. “I’m like, alright, well, I need you to sign Matt,” Allen said. “And he said, okay I’ll see what I can do.” Together from their golf cart, Allen and Barkley held up their end of the bargain (though at the time, Barkley had no idea Allen had mentioned him to Beane). “I think Von has a couple numbers, so we were trying to figure out which one to call,” Barkley said. “We kept getting a dead ringtone.” When they finally got to him, Barkley says Allen also sent Miller a three-line text that read: Zach Wilson Tua Tagovailoa Mac Jones “You get to play these guys six times a year,” Barkley said. “Have at it. Why would you not want to come? I don’t know if that sold him or not, but it was a heavy pitch.”

Cool article on The Athletic (yes, behind a paywall) today about the Bills QB room by the excellent Kalyn Kahler. Long article, so there's good stuff in there that I won't post here, but certainly an enjoyable read overall. https://theathletic.com/4015953/2022/12/27/bills-quarterback-room-josh-allen-case-keenum-matt-barkley/ ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — Matt Barkley stood in front of his locker, scrolling through photos on his phone. He searched for a specific video he took at a Buffalo Bills offensive install earlier this season. “It might not be safe for work,” he warned, squinting at his screen. “I might have put it in a secure folder.” When the Bills’ third-string QB finally found the video he was looking for, he wisely decided not to turn around his phone to show it. Instead, he laughed as he relived the moment. “I knew it was coming,” Barkley said. “Guys were laughing, it’s fun when you have cohesiveness and guys that are willing to laugh at that. Let alone Case (Keenum) who is willing to go through with it.” Go through with what? The mysterious NSFW video that Barkley recorded on his phone that day in September was the result of an outlandish bet made in the Bills’ QB room in the name of protecting Josh Allen. During Buffalo’s Week 1 game, Keenum, the backup, and Barkley noticed a moment when they thought Allen should have slid to protect himself. Allen is famously nonchalant about his reckless playing style to the point where his veteran backups have felt the need to intervene. “I am probably putting Case through a nice roller coaster of emotion,” Allen said. “He’s probably grabbing his helmet like, ‘Oh s—, do I need to go in or not?’” “I play football,” Allen shrugged. “It happens sometimes.” Knowing that Allen is also recklessly competitive, Keenum offered up a challenge. “I might have incentivized him a little bit if he would slide during a game,” Keenum said. “It was not a monetarily incentivized thing. It was more something that I would do …” Sure enough, in Week 3 at Miami, Allen slid feet-first without being touched on an 8-yard scramble in the fourth quarter. He ran forward through a hole in the Dolphins’ defense, jerked left on a stick move and then slid forward well before two defenders closed in. “Allegedly,” Keenum said, “I may or may not have told him I would wear only a jockstrap to one of our walkthroughs if he slid in a game feet first with nobody around him.” “Ahhh, phew, trying to jog my memory here,” Allen said, when asked about this bet in December. He scratched his head and stared up at the ceiling. “I can neither confirm nor deny those allegations. I’m sure some of the receivers and the running backs might have something different to say about that, but I don’t really remember that.” The Bills hold their Wednesday installs in their weight room so they can walk through each play as they learn it. Receiver Isaiah McKenzie said he was walking into the weight room with a fully-clothed Keenum when the quarterback told him he had to use the bathroom. “Tell (offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey) I will be right there,’ Keenum told McKenzie. When Keenum reappeared, he was wearing only a jockstrap. “We was all staring at his cheeks,” McKenzie said. Running back Taiwan Jones still busted up laughing when asked about this moment. “I’m sorry,” he said, covering his mouth with his hands to stifle his giggles. “He just casually walked past everybody.” “I was like, what the hell is going on? “Bare butt cheeks,” said fullback Reggie Gilliam. “Exactly how you could picture it,” said quarterbacks coach Joe Brady. “I don’t know if you want to picture that.” The non-quarterbacks at the install had no earthly idea what was going on. Some cheered, some asked questions, and some didn’t even bother, because, as McKenzie put it, “We all know that quarterback room is a little odd, so they do a lot of odd things.” Odd isn’t the first word Keenum would use to describe this room. Instead, he chose “best,” meaning the best quarterback room he’s ever been in, and for a quarterback in his 11th NFL season and seventh NFL club, that statement carries a certain weight. Most quarterbacks won’t pick a favorite QB room if you ask them to. They’re uncomfortable judging different teammates or teams and even the retired ones still don’t want to piss off anyone. “I normally don’t rank them like that,” Keenum says. “I normally say one of the best, but this is incredible.” ........................................................ A QB room is a delicate, almost sacred place. A successful one requires just the right combination of personalities and ability levels. Unlike other position groups, there is only one player in the room who can actually play. The backups, whether there are two or three, have to be good enough to win games, but not so good that they threaten the starter’s job. Introduce the wrong personality into a QB room and face the consequences of a ruined season or an alienated starter. “When you have a young QB who is a star and you have older guys around him to help him, there’s no weird competition or animosity, or guys thinking of taking his job or anything,” Barkley says. Allen is 26, and Barkley and Keenum are 32 and 34. Both the older guys have arrived at the point in their careers where they are at peace as backup quarterbacks. They know the franchise quarterback contract isn’t coming. Keenum self-identifies as a journeyman now, and after the 2019 season as Denver’s starter didn’t go the way he hoped, he’s realistic and satisfied with his current role. “I started my career with one college offer,” Keenum says. “And I’m sitting here in year 11 and we’ve got a pretty stinkin’ good football team and it’s fun to be a part of. And I love playing football, love playing quarterback. I love the camaraderie of the QB room, the mesh that happens there.” Barkley’s team history reads as long as a CVS receipt: PHI ARZ CHI SF ARZ CIN BUF TEN CAR ATL BUF Keenum’s: HOU SL HOU SL MIN DEN WAS CLE BUF Between the two of them, they’ve played for 14 NFL teams, not including Buffalo. “I can trust them because they’ve seen it all,” Allen said. “They’ve been around so many different offenses and they have seen so many defenses that whatever they say, I believe in it.” In 2018, Allen sprained his elbow and wound up missing four games. After two of those games, backup Derek Anderson was sidelined with a concussion. So the Bills brought in Barkley, and he wound up starting the last of those four games after Nathan Peterman bombed in the third game. Barkley shocked everybody and beat the Jets 41-10 in his first start in two years. He’d only been with the team for two weeks, so after the game, he made sure to find Allen. “I was like, look dude, I’m not here to take your job,” Barkley said. “I am here to win, if I have to. I will play, I love playing. I think just letting him know that I recognize this is your team, just put him at ease.” “A lot of teams don’t really have that in the QB room, and it can create some tension.” “Yeah, this is uncommon,” Keenum said. “There are probably more like that (with tension) than not. It’s a hard position to play, it’s the hardest in all of sports. Everybody in the building is dependent on the QB. And the QB is dependent on everybody in the building at the same time. I have not had it like this very often at all, and it’s very nice when it is like this.”

I don't know, man... I read on the Dolphins forum that the Dolphins are "Better than Buffalo now and going forward". Here, see for yourself! https://finheaven.com/threads/we-are-better-team-than-buffalo-now-and-going-forward.376281/ We are better Team than Buffalo now and going forward. 1. This is year one for Mike as a Coach and he already ahead of Sean Mc Dermott 2. Our Dline and pass rush barring major injuries is going to be elite. Chubb will come along and Phillips is going to be a Probowler 3. Tua and thw WR units are only going to get better in this system 4. Wilson and Monstert are going to be a major running attack combo that even our coach can not ignore. 5. Defense will not have the rash of injuries to secondary like this year. 6. Josh Allen is going to wear his body down as he keeps running and abusing it. 7. If Buffalo does not get to the Superbowl this year they will drop off. 8. We will find a way to get everyone paid by letting Gesicki and Jones walk and over restructring. 9. We were one game out of the division even with our QB out 3.5 games 10. Tua can play in the snow and heat.

If that's what the guys call him, then that's what he's called. Same with Rick Bates. If anyone's still being protective of or precious about the name because it belonged to a quarterback from 30 years ago, I say....lighten up. It's just a word. Jimbo. Himbo. Late For Dinner. As long as he puts up 99 and a TD per game, I don't care WHAT you call him!

If they played as awful as you describe, then it sure is amazing they managed to win by 22.

Thank you both for the replies. I guess maybe I'm still thinking of how it was the last time I did it regularly, a few years back. The pop-ups, dropped feeds, buffering, or the possibility that the stream could be discovered at any time and taken down was all too much of a risk for me. Watching Bills games is one of my great joys, and I just didn't want to risk having to spend all day monkeying with the website trying to get the stream to re-load or what have you. And if it dropped altogether and I missed the game...man, that would be a Sunday ruiner. On the other hand, $250 per year is a lot of coin to spend on NFL Gamepass, so if several people tell me the other streams have improved and are pretty reliable these days, I'm willing to give it a shot. I think I'll check out the Bears and Pats games that way and see how it goes as a test run for next year.

Do any of the "free" options consistently work throughout the entire stream, though? No freezing, no excessive buffering, that kind of nonsense? I'm legitimately asking, because I've been paying for NFL Gamepass for the past few years to ensure that I get high video quality and that the game actually works and doesn't have all sorts of tech hiccups. In your experience, are the free streams actually GOOD?

First I'll say that I think the video was quite fair. I'm not always a fan of Warner's analysis, and I'm usually among the camp that senses a bit of a subtle dislike of Josh on his part. This video was not one of those instances, though, in my opinion. My main takeaway is that all season long we've been saying "players aren't making plays for Josh!" and "he has to do it all himself!" and "Dorsey needs to draw up better plays", and while there is some truth to all of those things, I'm starting to see more and more that it's not the whole truth. There are times -- some shown in this video, some seen in other cutups and analysis, some recently brought up by Isaiah McKenzie on Tyler Dunne's show -- where guys ARE open. Where plays ARE well designed. Where Josh is refusing to take the gimmes and the layups and is instead making life harder on himself. Some of this will never go away. To some extent, looking for the biggest play and the biggest possible gain on every down is just who Josh is. It is, in part, what makes him so dangerous and so unique. On the other hand, Josh has been at his best throughout his career when he's willing to take what the defense gives him, to take the throws to the flats and the quick hitches and slants, and then hit the big plays when defenses start to creep up. There are times, like the strip sack against Miami, where not taking a 4 yard gain resulted in a turnover or other negative play that greatly impacted the game in a bad way for the Bills. This video and some others recently have me more encouraged about Ken Dorsey, for one thing. There are still times that his play design (or the execution of the design by the players) is sloppy. For instance, we see two receivers end up in the same spot far too often. But I think that, by and large, there are open guys on most plays, and Josh -- for whatever reason -- is either failing to see them or refusing to throw to them. I'm also encouraged that the supporting cast is a bit better than what we've all been screaming all season. My hope is that the offense has a bit of momentum from the Dolphins win and that Josh is now fully healed (he said today his elbow feels better than it has in a long time) and that the hiccups of a new OC are starting to get ironed out, and that things improve from here on out. The biggest way to make that happen is for Josh to start taking the layups. So, as much as it pains me to say it, Kurt Warner is right!

I haven't had the pleasure of trying it, but it looks like it's an American Brown Ale? Based on the notes about it on Untappd, sounds like its perfect for this time of year.

Labatt's, Budweiser, Molson, Coors....🤢 It's all corn syrup beer. It all tastes like moose piss. Support your local microbrewery! Drink beer that tastes like beer!

I totally hear what you're saying. Looks like Harris did pretty well living up to those expectations, though. After a statistical dip in his second year, he posted 6 straight seasons of at least 1,000 rushing yards. He scored at least 10 touchdowns in four of those six years. He made 9 straight Pro Bowls (!) and was a key part of four Super Bowl winning teams. Quite the career.

Dolphins week usually means two things: Bills victory, and an AFC Offensive Player of the Week award for Josh Allen.

Just looked it up. Apparently, yes, the play happened in Franco's rookie season. 22 years old.

Thanks for the post. I was a bit dubious about Rousseau ever being more than a plus edge setter who chips in 3-5 sacks a year. So far, I'm very pleasantly surprised. I think having Von Miller in his ear has been a tremendous help. It's also important to remember that this is just his third year EVER playing defensive end, at any level of football. Pretty remarkable. As far as Boogies goes...Creed Humphrey looked like the better pick then, and it definitely looks like the better pick now. I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt at the time because pass rusher is such a premium position and was such a big need, and because Mitch Morse was still just 29 years old. Knowing what we know now, though, about the Bills' continued interior o-line struggles, Morse's latest concussion, and Boogie's ineffectiveness, it sure would've been nice to have an All-Pro lineman with that pick instead of a guy who -- at least so far -- looks like he doesn't belong in the NFL.

I, for one, am incredibly glad that the Dolphins flat out refuse to use Mike Gesicki. With all of the attention those speedy receivers draw over the top, can you imagine how much that dude could dominate the middle in that offense? My goodness. Instead, because he doesn't "fit the system" and isn't a good blocker, they just don't use him at all. A criminal waste of talent. I hope Gesicki goes somewhere else next year and balls out. Way too talented a player to be wasting away on Miami's bench.

It's alphabetical by first name... Unless you were just being a wiseguy. Sarcasm is hard to decipher in typed form. EPA is "expected points added". Just think of it as a measure of success in a particular situation. The higher the EPA, the better. In this chart, above average EPAs are shades of blue. Below average EPAs are shades of red. Josh has an above average EPA against every major type of coverage a defense can play. The chart also tells us that he is most successful against Cover 2, Cover 3, and Cover 0 (all out blitz) defenses.