Shaw66

That's the best measure of how badly the Bills played those final two plays in regulation.

Thanks. I just looked it up - you're right. Clock doesn't start until the kick is touched by the receiving team. It a free kick is covered by the receiving team, the clock doesn't start. So they had to do exactly what you said. And I think if you're the receiving team, the return man is told to go down immediately wherever he is, even if he's deep. Given all that, it's a tough kick to execute. If you kick it too hard, receiving team will let it bounce until it gets to the end zone. If you kick it too short, you've given up valuable yards. That's why Sean Payton said that in that situation, with a young kicker, he might actually have called for the kick into the end zone. Take the touchback and don't risk your kicker screwing up. Think about it this way: If your kicker rolls it through the end zone, you're no better off than if you'd just kicked it deep in the first place. You're hoping he can force a recovery inside the 25, but if he fails you could be looking at Mahomes on the 35 or 40. Essentially, Payton said the benefit of pinning them inside the 25 isn't worth the risk that you might give Mahomes a short field. Some people here said that they DID huddle up on the sideline. The problem apparently was that Bass was practicing at the net and wasn't in the huddle.

Well, I don't know if anyone knows what happened, anyone outside the organization. But what you say sounds plausible. While Farwell was organizing the kickoff team (or not), McD and Frazier were talking about the defense. Maybe they were caught flat-footed and didn't react. Or maybe they DID react, and they just called bad plays for the situation. I've never understood how the clock works on kickoffs. The clock doesn't start when the kicker strikes the ball, and if it's a touchback, it never starts. If the return man catches the ball in the air on the field of play, the clock starts. If he catches it in the end zone, I assume it starts only when he runs out of the end zone. Does it start when the ball hits the ground in the field of play, so that on a squib quick it starts with the first bounce? It's a live ball then, so I suppose that's when it would have started. Unless the Chief's had a Touchdown Throwback or something similar called, I assume what the return man is told to do is cover the ball and fall on the ground immediately, giving himself up to stop the clock. So, on almost any squib quick you should be able to run at least three seconds off - a couple of bounces, the guy catches it and goes down. And if you get a good bounce, it could be five or six seconds. And if the guy misplays it, maybe even more. Does someone know if that analysis is correct? So, a decent squib kick would have run three seconds, and if everything else would have gone exactly the same, the clock would have been at zero by the time Kelce caught the ball, went down and called time out. Is that right?

It's not his job. He made the call; it's the special teams coordinator's job to execute. McDermott can't be talking to individual players every time a big play is coming up. McDermott's job was to make the call, and presumably he did. Then his job was to talk to Frazier about what they were going to do on defense. So, while someone wasn't doing his job, talking to Bass, McDermott was doing his. It was squarely on Farwell, and it cost him his job.

I Just popped into this thread, and I read only the first few posts and a few on the last page. As someone said, sample size is too small to reach any conclusions, but I think generally you're onto something. 16 games was too long for the players, and I think this one game worse. I used to think that the regular season had two parts - the first 6-8 weeks while teams were trying to figure out who they were, what worked, what didn't work, and then a sprint to the finish. Then the playoffs. This season it almost seemed like there were three parts. The first 6-8, then a 4-5 week coasting period, then 4-7 weeks of trying to rev it up and sprint to the finish. Lots of teams were flat in mid-season after hot starts, particularly the Rams and Chargers, but their were others. The Bills didn't start firing on all cylinders until the last month. The season has a bit of the feel of the NBA season (and probably NHL, but I don't follow it), where players are coasting through the season - playing hard, for sure, but not with real killer instinct. It all felt a little bit off. And, as you say, the worst part of it is that the #1 seeds came out wrong (in terms of the best teams getting the seeds) and the best teams had challenging roads to the championship game and Super Bowl. Like someone said, this Super Bowl had the feel of good Sunday night game from week 7, not the world championship. The reason it felt that way was because the best teams weren't there. It was difficult to promote the game - who's getting excited about these Rams and these Bengals?, and the quality of the play suffered because, well, they weren't the best teams.

Wow. Gotta say, however, that one reason the Bengals lost was that Burrow's pocket awareness was pretty bad all night. He needed to be bailing out of there much more quickly, and he paid time after time. That final play may not have been one of those - Donald sprung free in a sneaky fashion and surprised Burrow, but even so, the pocket was collapsing pretty quickly. Allen and Mahomes wouldn't have taken so many sacks. Oh, great. Pretty clear to me.

Yes, this is exactly the right point. One of the reasons the Bills lost to the Chiefs last year in the Conference Championship game was that the Chiefs played remarkably physically against the Bills' receivers. There were a lot of plays that were clear penalties based on how those plays were called in the regular season. The officials know, however, that the players are amped and are going to play the game with more intensity than during the regular season, and they know that if they call the game the way they call the regular season, there will be flags all game long. They know they can't do that, so they dial it back. It happens in the playoffs every season. So, here we had a game where the officials dialed it back from the beginning, expecting playoff-level intensity, and (I'm just speculating here, but it's the way it looked to me) the defensive backs never really raised the intensity of their play over the regular season level. You had fairly normal plays in the defensive backfield, and similarly fairly normal plays on the line of scrimmage (so far as holding is concerned), but you had the officials thinking "I'm not calling the ticky tack stuff." The result was practically no penalties being called. Then, for whatever reason, late in the game it was as though the officials said, "well, if you're going to play like it's the regular season, we're going to call it like the regular season." The real point, as you've said, is that the fans don't like those calls at the end of the game, and it's also very difficult for the players to have the standards change with five minutes left. also By the way, I also thought the officials got hyper-technical on the clock stoppages in the Bengals' last drive. There were two plays, maybe in a row, where the receiver caught the ball and almost immediately went out of bounds. On both plays, the official didn't stop the clock. I don't know exactly how the rule is written, but during the season, the officials only refused to stop the clock if the receiver was clearly giving up yardage to get out of bounds. Both of the plays last night, if the receiver gave it yardage it was truly negligible, and it wasn't even clear that he was giving up yardage at all. The first time, the Bengals didn't say anything, and the clock ran down below a minute. The second time, they were forced to take a time out, and Burrow was looking around as if to say, "why isn't the clock stopping?" It was just another example of how the officiating got hyper-technical at the end of the game. It didn't affect the outcome, of course, but it's also curious that these hyper-technical calls disproportionately went against the Bengals.

I put no stock in minor differences. If I'm 4th and you're 11th, fine. But #1 and absolute middle of the pack is not a mirage. Maybe their line gets better pressure than the Bills line, but the sack numbers suggest that the Bills got more coverage sacks, and they would have gotten coverage sacks against Stafford, because the Rams had no receivers other than Kupp. The difference between Kupp and the rest of his teammates in the receiver/tight end room and Tyreek Hill and his mates is almost laughable. You're right - no way to know. But you can't be statistically the best defense in the league with smoke and mirrors. Opposing coaches are too good to let you get away with that.

The fundamental rule for all officials is if you don't see it, don't call it. They are in fact trained NOT to call the face mask when they see the head turn, because although it PROBABLY turned because the defender pulled the face mask, you simply don't know. You have to see the hand on the face mask to make the call. As for the hold, I thought that it had all the indicia of a hold except for one important characteristic, which is that it didn't any way (so far as I could see) impede the receiver from running his route. He made his cut and kept running. Yes, the hands were in a position that looked like a hold, but the receiver never seemed to exert any energy to overcome the fact that the defender had hands on him. Defenders have hands on receivers all the time, and there's no call made. Having said that, I will readily admit that it looked like it may have been a hold in real-time, so I can't get too upset about it. And, as someone else said, although it's not the objective, the two most questionable calls (one a non-call) of the game evened out. Each was critical to a scoring drive, and one went each way. I don't think the officials determined the outcome of the game.

I don't see how you can think that. The Bills were first in the league in yards allowed and first in points allowed. The Bengals were 18th and 17th. This narrative that the Bills defense is somehow hopelessly leaky is wrong. The Bengals were better against the run than the Bills, but they were hopeless against passing all season. If the Rams hadn't lost Woods, Higby, and Beckham, the Bengals would have been in deep trouble throughout the game. The Bengals gave up 100+ yards per game rushing over the season and gave up 42 to the Rams, which means the Rams' running attack was really feeble. No reason to believe the Bills couldn't have held Akers in check. Bills and Bengals had the same number of sacks over the season, and there's no reason to believe the Bills wouldn't have done a better job shutting down the Rams passing attack.

Yeah, you and Rico nailed it. 4th best against 4th best. And QBs who may be good, but whose reps are not shining brightly. Stafford now has a Lombardi to go with some great career numbers, but his performance last night certainly was not memorable. On the other hand, of all this griping I've been doing is a fan's perspective. If Stafford never wins anything else, he always will have this win and his ring, and there's no doubt that he deserves it. The Bengals all hurt today, and the Rams all are celebrating, and they couldn't care less that their Super Bowl wasn't the best ever played.

Yeah. I didn't comment on the officiating, but I agree. The face mask didn't bother me, because it happened so fast, just as the ball was about to arrive, that I can understand the refs missing it. I didn't see it live; I had to see the replay to realize what had happened. Missed calls happen in every game, and they don't bother me unless they are obvious. Frankly, I'm not so sure Ramsey would have made a play on the ball if it hadn't happened. So, I was okay that they missed it, even though it turned out to be a huge play. But the officials got it completely backward, waiting to the end to throw the flags. The end of games is when you have to let them play, because otherwise the flags help determine the outcome. The holding call was really bad. I think it was just a bad call, but it was the kind of call that causes people to wonder whether there's some motivation other than just keeping everyone within the rules. For example, from a business point of view, in which city would the NFL rather have excitement about the home team, Los Angeles or Cincinnati? LA, of course. The League's been struggling for two decades to build interest in the NFL in LA. (They're paying a big part of an eight-figure settlement to St. Louis for taking the Rams precisely because they wanted to rebuild a presence in LA.). What better way to do that than to have the Rams win the Super Bowl on their homefield? I don't buy conspiracy theories, but it's at least an unfortunate coincidence that the officials made a phantom holding call to put the Rams in position to win the game.

These are all good points. I've been saying for two weeks that Donald made the late play to force the INT against SF, and he made the two plays to end the game. Good for him. I didn't like the game because there was no flow, and no continuing excellence. Guys delivered, and then they didn't. It just didn't have the look or feel of two excellent teams going at it. But all of what you say is correct. And, to the Rams credit, it's very much a last-man standing kind of tournament. It's about finding a way to win and advance, and the Rams did that.

Over the last few weeks watching the Bengals I kept thinking they were over-coached. Mixon is an outstanding back, and yet reflexively they put Perine in the game because, well, I guess because the gave him the job "third-down back." Over those weeks, all I saw was that Perine was consistently bad running the ball. He doesn't have Mixon's power or ability to identify holes. Maybe he's a better receiver, and maybe he's a better blocker. If so, in that situation in the Super Bowl, maybe they ought to go to his strengths instead of his weaknesses. Contrast that 3rd and 1 call with the Kupp sweep on fourth and one. Rams had a play a they knew they could make work. Bengals just tried a play.

I was disappointed in the game. It seemed like an ordinary regular season game with a lot of Hoopla added. First, neither team looked or felt to me like one of the best teams in the league. Now, that reaction may be all subjective - neither franchise has been dominant in recent years, the Bengals happened to come on late, and the Rams recently recovered from a pretty ugly stretch. People generally thought, I think, that the Bills and the Chiefs were the class of the league, along with the Bucs and the Pack. All of those teams faded. Neither team had been promoted as one of the powers in the league. Neither team had a winning tradition, like the Pats, Pack, Steelers, or even Cowboys (although they haven't won for a long time). These were just two NFL teams playing a game. Second, neither team had a marquee QB. Burrow may be on his way, and Stafford may actually show that he's a winner (I'll give him credit - he was tough on the final drive, for sure), but we're used to Mannings and Rodgers and Brady and Mahomes in the Super Bowl. And, even despite the final drive, neither QB really lit it up. I agree that Stafford made a poor throw on the INT over the middle. And on the winning drive, he missed a throw badly in the back of the end zone. If the linebacker underneath was in position to make a play on a flat throw, then wait a split second longer as his receiver crossed the end zone and hit the guy wide open in the corner. Instead, he threw it over the receiver's head, with no touch at all. Not what a top QB does. Burrow was better, but not really stellar, either. He repeatedly took sacks when he needed to get out of the pocket, and he missed some easy throws. Third, the coaching seemed weak. Nobody seemed to have answers, except as Collinsworth pointed out, the Rams figured out how reposition their defensive line to create one-on-one opportunities for Donald and Miller. With two weeks to prepare, the offenses should have been better prepared to attack. Gotta cut the Rams some slack - they lose Woods in midseason, then their tight end two weeks ago, then Beckham in the first half. Their receiving corps was hurting. Jefferson was a big disappointment - he needed to show up, and he couldn't. Yes, it was close at the end, and that made it exciting, but Michaels and Collinsworth kept trying to make us believe it was a great game. It wasn't. It was a couple of teams struggling to make plays and unable to do so. Of course, part of that was because the Bengals' run defense was extraordinary, slowing down the Rams, who like to run. And another part of it was that the Bengals pass protection was beyond shaky, making it difficult for the Bengals to run the passing offense they like. But the Rams knew the Bengals would try to stop the run and didn't have good answers in the passing game, and the Bengals knew about their oline problems and didn't have a quality short passing game to attack with. Congratulations to the Rams - they won the tournament, and that's not an easy thing to do. But boo to the Chiefs for keeping the Bills out of the game, and boo to the Bengals for keeping the Chiefs out. If either the Bills or Chiefs had been there, either they would have won, cementing their claim to being a true top team, or the Rams would have beaten them. If the Rams had beaten one of those teams, the win would have meant more, instead of win over a paper tiger.

I'm generally not one to bash people, but it's not give this post a thumbs up.

Yeah, I know it's easy to say that, but are you telling me you've been right about about every QB who's about change teams? Frankly, I'm still not sold on Stafford.

I definitely like Wentz as a backup, but I doubt he'd take it as a long-term gig. And I don't care about Rodgers. He'll be done soon, if not already.

It just demonstrates how difficult the QB decisions are. Colts go all in on Wentz, Rams go all in on Stafford. One will be looking for a job in a few weeks, the other is playing in the Super Bowl today.

Right, like the Bills are going to fire one of the most successful young coaches in the league. It's silly to spout this deliver-or-else stuff. Aren't you watching? Can't you see how good this team has become? Can't you see how it's directly related to McDermott? Can't you see how much the Pegulas love the guy? McDermott's going nowhere, at least not until he has two or three seasons under .500.

I generally agree with this. Look, it's all anecdotal evidence, so it's hard to say your examples really prove anything. The defense has been good to excellent and gotten some big stops. In fact, in the Texans game they got a great stop to get the ball back for Allen and the offense to tie the game and send it to overtime. But in general, I agree. It's a bend-don't-break defensive philosophy, and that's a philosophy that's built on the idea that if your AVERAGES are good, then over the long run you'll be well served by the defense. Well, that's nice and all that, but when it gets down to crunch time in the playoffs, no one cares about the long run - we care about right now. I keep remembering how the Rams-49ers playoff game ended - Jimmy G threw a desperation stupid pass that was intercepted. Why? Because Aaron Donald was in his face. If your system is built on eight defensive linemen putting up good averages over the season, you probably don't have an Aaron Donald who can make a play for you. I think the defensive philosophy has to change. I think they have to take more risks.

I agree. He's only promoting from within when it makes sense. But that's why I was pleased with Dorsey - McD wants to do it, and its good to see that he liked Dorsey enough to do it.

I have only one reaction to Dorsey getting the job, and that's "Good." McDermott's system, his plan, his - okay - process is to promote from within. That's the plan because he wants each new season to take off from the last. He wants continuity, so that he doesn't have to teach basics every season. That's why Beane says they plug holes in free agency, but they build through the draft - the draft is where you get players for the long term. So, when they promoted Dorsey, it means the system is working. They had a guy in-house whom they've seen, evaluated, and who they think can do the job (they didn't give him the job just because he's been there - he got it because he's grown into it). Now, does that mean Dorsey will be good at the job? No, not necessarily. But it's the way McDermott wants the system to work, and the system produced a quality candidate for the OC job. That's a good thing.

Cincy - I just dropped in here and haven't read much of this thread, but you're saying the right things. You have to pay big bucks when you have the right QB; it's death to pay big bucks to the wrong QB. Where I disagree is that I'm not ready to put Murray in the Jackson-Mayfield-Prescott category. I don't know where to put him. I watch Murray and I see the same things I saw in Allen in his first couple of seasons - ability to make plays and to make all the throws. Great arm and accuracy. Willingness to learn and be a field leader. I see football intelligence when I watch Murray. He's not just a running quarterback, not by a long shot. Has he blossomed like Allen? No. But I think he still may. I see a guy who could be a lot like Mahomes, or like Brees. Sean Payton would still be the coach in New Orleans if Murray was the QB there. I think Murray is a tough call if you need a QB and you're willing to open your check book. Five years from now will he have been a great investment, like Brees, or a franchise-limiting luxury, like Cousins?

Every team is trying to improve in all kinds of areas every year. I think cherry picking one stat is pointless. The Bills were fifth in total yards and third in total points. If they weren't low in YAC, they would have been low in some other stat. There can be all kinds of explanations why the Bills offense generates less YAC. I don't really care about it if my team is leading the league, more or less, in scoring. Gabriel Davis caught four touchdowns against the Chiefs. On three of them he had zero yards after catch. Do I care? Yes, I agree, all things remaining the same, if the Bills had two yards more after the catch, they'd have the greatest passing attack in the league, maybe in league history. Defenses will evolve next season, as they always do. The test, as always, is for the offense to evolve, too, and still be one of the most feared offenses in the league. If they do that with yards after catch, great. If they do by increasing yards per attempt and DECREASING yards after catch, great. If they do it by throwing 65 touchdowns and have NEGATIVE yards after catch, I'm fine with that, too. It's just a stat that tells something about how the offense is working. It isn't determinative of a great passing attack.