Shaw66

Bottom line, Ben produced and Allen didn't.

He was 5 for 7 and a TD in the fourth quarter. He made some lights out throws. RIght. Everything just seemed off. Hence, the title.

Virgil - I'm always amused how similar the things are that we write. Again today. The stadium energy was amazing. Allen was off. Oliver was special. A couple of things: I didn't have a problem on the interference call on Wallace. He had his back turned to the ball all the way and was face guarding the receiver. His momentum continued to drive downfield, and he blocked the receiver's ability to come back for the ball. It's almost classic interference - it's a free ball, and if Wallace turns and finds the ball to make a play, it's okay. But he didn't; all he did was interfere with the receiver's ability to make a play. I think the official nearest the play couldn't see much more than the receiver's back, so he properly didn't call anything. The official trailing the play couldn't see the contact, but she could see that Wallace never made a play on the ball. I think it's often the case that when an official that far away makes the call, it's mostly a guess. In this case, she guessed right. The call I wanted to see again was the hold on White that negated his INT. On the replay, it looked to me like one of those plays where there was incidental contact, probably initiated by the receiver. White stood his ground, took the contact, then made a much better play on the ball that the receiver did. Whatever. The officials had pretty much nothing to do with the outcome.

I agree. But as you said, it was annoying. Imagine how Titan fans feel this morning.

I agree. Allen played like he did in his rookie season. Flashes of brilliance, and a lot of head scratchers. Annoyed is a great word. I'm still annoyed. McDermott always says something like "we have to get better, and that starts with me." I'm sure he said it yesterday, but I haven't listened. And it's true. My sense was that there were a lot of players out there unprepared to play.

The Bills opened the 2021 NFL season on Sunday against the Pittsburgh Steelers and well, can we get a do over? The day didn’t start well for Bills fans in Orchard Park. Traffic into Highmark Stadium was a nightmare – a one-hour drive from home to first beer was two hours or more on Sunday. The crush of fans entering the stadium was as big as on the worst of days. To their credit, the Bills knew it was coming and urged ticket holders to get there early and enter the stadium early. Everyone will know better next time. Once in the stadium, the fans were ready for a party. The stadium was amped like Monday night against the Cowboys several years ago. The noise as the offense was introduced made it impossible to hear the names of any players being announced. It got louder as Emmanuel Sanders came out of the tunnel, even louder for Beasley, louder still for Diggs, and when Allen appeared, Highmark literally rocked. Fred Jackson asked the fans, “Where would you rather be than right here, right now?” We all knew the answer. By the time Isaiah McKenzie took the opening kickoff back for 75 yards, the fans were in an absolute frenzy. Then the Bills offense went three and out, settling for a field goal. That was all we needed to know about how the game would go – a lot of noise, then nothing. I know it’s a long season, I know there will be ups and downs, I know no one wins them all. Still, is it too much to ask that the team be ready to play when the season starts? 2020 wasn’t a mirage; the Bills actually were a good team. So what happened on Sunday? Josh Allen was human, that’s what happened. He wasn’t sharp. He threw some short balls into the dirt, he missed guys deep, he threw into tight coverage where there was little or no hope. He made multiple bad cuts on designed runs. He fumbled twice. Ben Roethlisberger was the better quarterback on Sunday, consistently shrugging off tacklers to make plays, consistently throwing more accurately than Allen. Ben’s showed Allen how MVPs win games. Josh didn’t play like MVP candidate, and Brian Daboll didn’t coach like a head-coaching candidate. It’s axiomatic in the NFL that whatever worked for you last season is not going to work so well this season. Why? Because the other coaches are as smart as you are, and they aren’t going to continue to get beat by last year’s offense. The Steelers had all summer to look at film of the 2020 Bills passing game, and they didn’t waste the opportunity. The Steelers completely blanketed the Bills’ mid-range passing game; those deadly 15- to 25-yard completions that Josh dropped on defenses all last season were gone. Allen found Diggs and Sanders on out patterns that looked nice but can’t be the staple of any offense, and he found Beasley over the middle on classic short balls. Too many of those completions resulted in the receivers getting pounded by Steelers. Not much of what worked in 2020 was working in the first half on Sunday, and nothing changed in the second half. Daboll’s offense was flat on Sunday, and he didn’t know what to do about it. The Bills weren’t horrible, just not good enough to win the kind of games championship teams win. Ed Oliver was the slashing defensive tackle the Bills hoped he would be when they drafted him. Micah Hyde made tackles all over the field, and he had one spectacular pass defensed. Tre’Davious White shone. Gabriel Davis’s touchdown catch was even better than Allen’s throw. Singletary worked hard and took advantage of the holes the offensive line gave him. It was very much a field position game. Up and down the stat sheet, the Bill’s won the statistical battle, but the Bills kept giving Pittsburgh short fields, and the Steelers took advantage. McDermott’s decision to go for it on 4th and 8 instead of punting or trying the field goal gave the Steelers a short field and a field goal. Then, on fourth and one the Bills tried a modest trick play and failed – if your man can’t execute the block, don’t run the play. Pittsburgh got a short field and a touchdown. And then the blocked punt, the instant change of field position, ended the game. The Bills defense, which played well enough, needed to be a little better. At the end of the day, what bothered me most was Josh Allen’s body language when he began the final drive with a couple of incompletions. A Steelers fan behind me kept saying, “it’s not over, it’s not over,” but Allen’s body language said it was. He was lackadaisical coming back to the huddle, had a “whatever” kind of manner about him, as though he was mailing in the last few plays. Sanders had a false start, as if he didn’t care too much, either. Diggs strolled back to the line of scrimmage. Then Motor popped a couple of runs, and the Bills seemed to have a last gasp in them. Alas, Allen had no magic, and the Bills lost. It’s a long season, there will be ups and downs, no one wins them all. Still, it would have been nice if the Bills hadn’t spoiled their own party. They have plenty of work to do.

You know, I'd like to think that kind of decline shouldn't happen. I know, we always talk about the wear and tear of being a big-time running back, all those touches in high school, then Ohio State, then the pros. Then the guy just drops off the cliff. Well, I look at Singletary and the talk about the training that he did in the off-season, his approach, his focus on little aspects of his game. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the guys who lasted a long time are more serious in the off-season about their careers than maybe Zeke and some others. Derek Henry has been pounded just as much, or more, and no one's talking about him hitting a wall. I'd be interested to compare their off-season activities, their focus, their training. Zeke has 300 more pro carries, Henry 100 more college carries.

Would you swap Zeke for Motor even up? Sounds like no. I don't know, but Zeke never strikes me as a guy who's fully into the game, emotionally and intellectually. He's a bull with the ball, but he often strikes me as disengaged a lot of the rest of the time.

I had the same reaction. I was watching the confusion among defenders on some plays, the procedure penalties at critical times. Serious lack of discipline compared to McDermott. Or compared to the Bucs. And the Bucs got better as they needed to in the 4th quarter. The Cowboys looked the same as they did in the first quarter. Brady had one meaningless INT, but the turnovers were still 3-1 in Dallas's favor. 3-1 and 400 yards passing, and you still can't win the game? Their failure to get the first down on the final drive, taking a holding penalty to make the first down virtually impossible, was a tell-tale sign for a team going nowhere. One more first down and they can (1) make the field goal easier, (2) have a shot at the TD, and (3) run another minute off the clock. As it was, they left Brady with so much time to get the field goal that they threw the ball away intentionally three times, just to waste a little clock themselves. One other thing. Although he seems to have a drop problem, Cee Dee whatever has some really special skills, they have Cooper on the other side, some good looking tight ends, plus Gallup. And Zeke. I think the Bills are downright scary on offense, and with that lineup, Dallas should be, too.

Yeah, got me and 20 million others.

I thought it might be, but I was too dense to get it! Thanks

This isn't "anything." This is a better assignment (better because he will have a broader audience), with better prospects for advancement in his chosen profession.

It's simple. Print journalism is either dying or being substantially reinvented. The floodwaters are rising, and plenty of small-market hubs for journalistic activity have drowned. The journalists are looking for higher ground, and in this case higher ground means larger markets. The opportunity to cover a Boston-based team is simply a better chance for him to keep his career alive.

I just think the coming of the season changed things. Here's why: I've complained, along with plenty of others, that the Bills don't get covered properly by the national media. It's because Buffalo is a small market, and because the Bills have been so bad for so long, the average just believes the Bills are bad all the time. The press largely writes what their audience wants to hear. Because so many of the ill-informed fans around the country think the Bills are bad, the press wasn't going to write a lot of positive stuff about the Bills in the off-season. They're trying to write stuff the fans already believe, so they were writing "are the Bills for real" articles. Now that the season is here, the press has to write their preseason review articles, and the press isn't stupid. They look at last season, the teams, how they've progressed or not, and it's pretty clear the Bills are a serious contender. The fans will read the preseason review articles in any case (without regard to their anti-Bills bias), so the press is now telling the full story, so to speak. All I know is that it's like a dream, seeing all this stuff.

Someone once posted an article on the BBMB where someone studied the NFL and had pretty solid data that you can either maximize profit or maximize winning, but there weren't any teams that did both. And I think it was data from the salary cap era, so all the teams were spending more or less the same on payroll. There were some teams that were occasionally in the playoffs but hadn't won a Super Bowl, and they were the most profitable teams.

Yeah. I liked him from his press conference, but I had no idea he'd be like this. He could be on his way to being the greatest coach of all time.

I love these questions. I'd guess it's a combination of nature and nurture. One article about him a few years ago said all the way through high school he was the way his now, so it started sometime before he was 15. Maybe the first time the Bills under McDermott played the Steelers, there was an article about how he and Tomlin played together in college. Tomlin said in college he just kept wondering who this kid was who relentlessly did his very best and almost always the right thing, play after play after play. He sort of said he hated going one-on-one with McDermott, even though Tomlin apparently was the more talented athlete, because he knew he was in a fight every play. It's no accident McDermott was a wrestler.

Now, THAT's journalism. Outstanding. Good stuff in there. Thanks.

What's the multiple Forbes uses? I'd guess it's 10 or more.

Amazing what a difference it makes to be a contender. Pair the Bills with a historic NFL franchise, and all of a sudden half the country is watching.

I don't think TV market size has much, if anything, to do with how valuable a franchise. Individual teams don't share the tv revenue based on their market size. The fact that the NFL shares tv revenue among all teams is exactly what makes smaller market teams viable. It's all about brand value, as you say. In particular, it's how much revenue you can generate in your community. The Bills have among the lowest ticket prices in the league. If they raised all tickets $50 per game, they'd be in line with a lot of other teams. That's $2.5 million per game, or $20 million per season. Some of it is shared with the visiting team (I think not the suite revenue). Net to the home team on all the ticket revenue would be at least $10 million more, probably $15 if you have a lot of suite revenue. $10 million of extra net income a year increases the value of the franchise by $100 million to $200 million. The Bills aren't worth as much as the other teams because their market won't permit them to raise ticket prices that much, and their market won't support a lot of high-priced suites.

I agree with this, but I don't think I said anything that disagreed with it. I agree Kelce and Hill are better than Diggs and whoever, although Davis may turn out to be Robin to Diggs's Batman. And I agree that I would rather have Diggs and a great tight end than Diggs and a great #2. That's all true, but it's different from what I was saying, and what Logic said. In the offense that the Bills have and the offense that the Bills run, a great tight end would not add that much production. Yes, Kelce would catch more balls than Knox, but Beasley and Sanders would catch fewer. Would the net be better? Probably. Would the difference be meaningful, particularly given who it would cost to get a Kelce. Probably not. As someone said, when you have the best passing offense in the league, how much better can you expect it get by adding a player? It's nice to have a great tight end. It's nice to have a great QB. It's nice to have a great wideout. It's nice to have a great player at every position. It's nice, but it's unrealistic. You can't have it all. You have to make choices. In the Bills' case, investing in tight end talent is likely to offer a smaller return than investing in other positions. So, I can see why Beane hasn't chased after a tight end. Just like, by the way, Polian, who didn't see the need to chase after a top tight end when he had Reed, Lofton, and Beebe. Absolutely correct. Dareus wasn't personally dedicated to his craft, and the best player on the team can't be a leader if he isn't dedicated to doing his best. One reason Brady was so great was that he was the hardest working player on the Patriots, year after year after year.

Yes! Always ready for more Edmunds talk.

Favre said it. He said these guys today take better care of the ball than they did in his era.

Thanks. Good stuff, again. I never knew that. The thing about this is that you've only scratched the surface. Every team in the league knows that's what the Bills do, and I'm sure they tinker with their rout trees to try to confuse the corners and the safeties. When number 2 runs a short out and up, if Tre's bitten on the fake too much, the safety finds two guys running deep in his zone. And I'm sure there are much more sophisticated variations off that, too. When you start to think about the ways the receivers can challenge this set, you begin to understand how complicated the defensive processing is back there. The Bills four defensive backs don't get beaten very often, even though they are playing schemes that require them to make quality reads and off receivers to one another. It's an intricate dance.