transplantbillsfan

Yeah exactly. We can play the "if if if if..." "then then then then..." game in absolutely every way possible and all we want, but very simply, in that game the Bills had a 2 score lead before you can really even make an argument that our talent was exposed in any way. And then the coach put Gore in there and called a run up the middle with 30 seconds left in the 1st half, wasted a down asking Josh to spike it on 2nd down... bringing the clock down to just 15 seconds. You can argue talent on that 3rd down pass to Duke that he didn't come down with, but the simple fact is that Allen and the offense should have had 5 or 6 meaningful plays on offense rather than 1. Tackling is a problem, obviously. But again, is that really talent or coaching? You think Milano and Edmunds and Oliver and Hyde and so on on Defense lack talent? Really??? It couldn't be that they're not getting enough fundamental reps during the week? What's the excuse for not going for it with 4th and 4 on the 40 but going for it on 4th and 27 on the 42 and attributing it to wanting to be aggressive? What's the excuse for losing the defensive aggressiveness of the 1st half in favor of what resembled the dreaded prevent defense all too often? Sure, all of this is cherry picking as you insinuate. The problem is that coaches have the benefit of being on the sidelines and are especially responsible for what happens between the snaps and plays that are called when the ball is snapped, among other things. Buffalo should upgrade their talent, but this team yesterday had the talent for that specific game. They may not have the 4 or 5 Elite players you say are necessary for Championship teams--then again, who were those 4 or 5 Elite players last year on the Patriots? Or the year before on the Eagles? Or the year before on the Falcons team that lost that 28 point lead?--but as far as Bills vs Texans, it seems pretty obvious the Bills had the talent to win, but the coaches bungled it up.

And I still disagree with that ratio. Gore on the field is obviously a talent problem, but it was a coaching decision to have Gore on so many of those critical (and stupid) runs rather than Motor, including that end of 1st half debacle. Duke Williams on the field over Beasley is a talent discrepancy, though I think the question all season should have been why Foster was active and Duke wasn't. Plus, why wasn't it just Duke over McKenzie rather than Duke over Beasley, who absolutely should have been on the field? Tyler Kroft as a TE who gets more targets than Dawson Knox is a talent AND coaching problem. Having the ball on the opposing 40 with a 4th and 4 early in the 3rd quarter up by only 13 and NOT either going for it (and in today's NFL, that's what teams do more often than not) or kicking the 57 yard FG and then later going for it on 4th and 27 IN THE SAME SPOT and attributing it to "wanting to be aggressive" is coaching lunacy and hypocrisy. Again, McDermott probably keeps his job for years because I think he's a good regular season coach and we can make multiple playoffs with him. But in one and done scenarios, I don't think he has it. And that realization really sucks. I hope he gets better, along with talent on the team, which should ho without saying.

Allen will get better this offseason. I feel confident in that. Beane will also upgrade the OL, which it needs, and get Allen a WR, which he needs. I can at least enjoy the playoffs now with Brady and the Patriots out.

I told @GunnerBill this earlier in the week: I don't think any of us are missing McDermott's strategy, we just think it's a bad one in today's NFL. Today's NFL is built around the offense. The rules themselves favor the offense. In-game playcalling should never change unless it absolutely has to because either it's not working (clearly not the case based on our 1st half) or you've fallen seriously behind (which we didn't). On top of that, it's probably a bad idea to veer away from things that have worked for your offense recently, and with that I'm talking about the no-huddle we'd been using with Daboll talking into Allen's headset about coverage and what he saw as long as he could. I fear that McDermott isn't ideal for the new NFL. He's good enough that he'll keep his job I think. But his coaching mentality and approach is always going to leave open the risk of good opposing QBs doing exactly what Watson did yesterday. And by the way, I call total BS that 3 scores is the benchmark for McDermott. I think 3 scores with a half to go would be almost acceptable as a benchmark. Almost. However, McDermott wasn't playing for a 3 score lead. If he were, he wouldn't have run Gore up the middle on 1st down to end the 1st half with 30 seconds left on the Texans 23 up by 10. He would have allowed Allen to use those 30 seconds to get off 5 or 6 good plays to try to score a TD and THEN be up by 3 scores. Instead, he coached like a weeny, wasted 2 downs, was almost bailed out by a great pass to the EZ that Duke couldn't come down with, we kick the FG and go into the half up by just 2 scores against one of the best QB/WR combos in the NFL. Honestly the more I think about this game, the more it irritates me. Allen made a bunch of mistakes and has a lot to work on this offseason. But the thing about Allen is he's not stubborn. He knows he made critical mistakes and you can expect he'll grind this offseason to fix them so he comes back better for 2020. I feel like McDermott is too unaware and/or stubborn to realize that he has work to do with his gameday coaching and maybe needs to reevaluate his whole approach to the game. I want a perennial winner year in and year out. McDermott's coaching doesn't set us up for that because he will always leave windows open for the other team to get back into it. It was almost shameful the was after the game yesterday McDermott seemed to put the onus of the loss on Josh when he said something about Josh trying to do too much--which he did, but probably because McDermott's coaching approach forced him into it--rather than holding himself personally accountable. Here's to hoping everyone gets better this offseason.

That was sickening. Absolutely sickening

The guy was pretty much staring Ford in the face when he blocked him. Ridiculous call. Oh well. Price we pay for being Bills fans. Maybe with the changing of the guard in the NFL with the demise of Marsha and the hoody some calls will start going our way. There was also a blatant delay of game somewhere in there the refs completely whiffed on.

Snippet from an article by Fairburn in The Athletic: https://theathletic.com/1509902/2020/01/05/a-lot-of-pain-in-that-locker-room-josh-allen-sean-mcdermott-let-down-bills-in-collapse-against-texans?source=shared-article At the end of the first half, coming out of a timeout, the Bills had the ball at the Houston 23 with 30 seconds to play and one timeout in their pocket. Rather than going for the Texans’ collective jugular, McDermott played for the field goal. In the third quarter, with the ball at the Texans 42-yard line, the Bills punted on fourth-and-4. Again, playing not to lose. But then, coming out of the two-minute warning in the fourth quarter, the Bills faced fourth-and-27 from Houston’s 42-yard line, down by three and with all three timeouts. McDermott inexplicably decided to go for it. “We wanted to be aggressive,” McDermott said. That was a hell of a time to cave to that desire. It was one of many ways in which McDermott outsmarted himself. Duke Williams, who didn’t make the active roster out of camp and was active for just four games in the regular season, played more snaps than Beasley, who had two 100-yard games in his last four. Frank Gore touched the ball eight times, some in critical situations, despite Devin Singletary racking up 133 yards from scrimmage. Tre’Davious White was too often left alone on DeAndre Hopkins, who had six catches for 90 yards in the second half and caught all four of his targets for 70 yards against White in the second half.

Drops? He had several? I know that EZ pass was a great pass by Allen but a very difficult catch. I wish Duke were in there all year. He clearly gave Allen another weapon he didn't have with Foster in there. I don't really think he'll be on the team next year though.

God man! Just reflecting back on that sequence at the end of the 1st half irritates the heck outta me!!! Ball just outside of the red zone at the 23 with 30 seconds left in the half with the clock stopped after driving pretty much the entire length of the field and you hand it to Gore up the middle??? Seriously?!?!?! And then Allen is forced to waste another play by spiking it? 15 seconds and 2 plays wasted in a 30 second range where we had plenty of time to potentially score a TD.

Article makes a lot of valid points. Another question: what happened to the no-huddle the team was running so much in order to have Daboll talking into Allen's headset about what he saw as long as he could? We grabbed the lead and went into a shell. It's McDermott's coaching philosophy. Everyone likes to counter with our 4th down aggressiveness, but I don't think it's really a bold decision to go for it on 4th and short with our QB. I hope the whole "play fearless" mantra comes into play next season and for seasons to come as we work to become the new Kings of the AFC East... because at least Marsha lost today.

Don't sleep on Carlos Hyde. He's the exact type of runner we struggle against. I hope our defense can fix its run issues.

Dude are you a friggin Bills fan? What a loser.

I finally watched this. Thanks for posting it. The most interesting part of that video was the breakdown of what Allen did against the Zero blitz when we were running the mesh concept to get Earl Thomas to move and throw the ball to Knox, who of course drops it. Man. Between just that missed TD to McKenzie on a great pass and that poor route running by John Brown on the last play, we were just an inch away from winning that Ravens game.

I expect at least one deep shot to Duke today and I expect Allen to give him a fighting chance to catch it. Yes, Duke is not a burner. But he's evidently a good enough route runner to get open down the field as we saw last week from those 2 deep passes. Today is going to be interesting. I'm excited and nervous.

Word. If he's active, he'll also be a fairly significant part of the gameplan.

Wish I could share your optimism. I've been a Bills fan for too damn long. If I don't have permanent emotional scarring, it'll at least take a few years to heal it.

Interesting... good eyes.

It's really not that difficult to figure out what's a throwaway vs what's a straight up miss if you're watching the plays.

Yep. That's not the 32nd he currently ranks in completion percentage. Pretty massive jump. And I would say he falls very much within the standard deviation of accuracy for good NFL QBs in that range. Remember, accuracy and completion percentage in particular is not the Olympics; you don't have to be #1, you just have to be in a certain range overall. Allen had a higher on target percentage than Brady, Wentz, Goff, Stafford and Mayfield, among others, was 0.2% lower than Kyler Murray and 1.5% lower than Aaron Rodgers. The difference of 10 spots between him at 21 and Russell Wilson at 11 is a mere 3%, which is interesting considering Wilson's completion percentage was 7.3% higher than him. So if you're one of those people who believe where you're ranked in the NFL in terms of accuracy is what's most important, then obviously Allen being 21st out of 32 means he's not very good--though clearly he's a lot better than that 32nd in completion percentage would indicate. But like I said, accuracy is not the Olympics.

Not a bad game to play here. Let's try adjusted completion percentage for Allen taking away both drops (22 was the number before the Jets game) and Throwaways (25) http://stats.washingtonpost.com/fb/tmleaders.asp?range=NFL&rank=232&type=Receiving https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2019/passing_advanced.htm?sr&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=Share&utm_campaign=ShareTool#ks_passing_detailed_accuracy Adjusted Completion percentage = 69% Actually... just look at this reference for advanced passing stats with regard to accuracy... pretty interesting: Highest drop percentage by 1 % (which is a lot) 3 spikes (tied for 4th most) 10 batted passes (13th most) Okay. Adding the batted passes and spikes, Allen's accuracy percentage (and we still haven't looked at passes that weren't dropped but may have been catchable but were well defended or the WR wasn't looking or whatever...): Adjusted Completion percentage = 71.8%

I think that jives with what we've seen. He's certainly improved his short to intermediate passing immensely. For whatever reason, he struggles a bit throwing to the right side of the field.

https://theathletic.com/1505120/2020/01/02/nfl-wild-card-picks-against-the-spread-and-five-favorite-prop-bets?source=shared-article The Bills’ offense has actually been better on the road (12th in DVOA) than at home (31st) this season.

Some poster somewhere on here had a great analogy over the last few weeks debunking the "trend argument" like the one brought up here. These may be the trends over the last half century, but they aren't determinitive for this team. Just like life expectancy. Just because life expectancy for an American Male is whatever it is right now (79 years??), that doesn't mean that's my life expectancy. This trend argument is the type of thing a bettor in Vegas can use when putting money down on teams he hasn't watched. We, however, have watched this football team play. I just don't know how anyone watching this team this year believes that the Bills--as a whole team... not just Josh--played better or even as good at New Era as they did on the road.

Already established the defenses Allen faced at home were very much similar to the defenses he played on the road. 2 top 5 defenses at home. 2 top 5 defenses on the road. 4 top 10 defenses at home. 4 top 10 defenses on the road. What are the other factors?

Then what factors on the list would you put above it? Clearly you think there are many. Then why was he pretty consistently accurate on the road? His completion percentage on the road vs at home is strikingly better.