Shaw66

I think Brown on Saturday was two things. One was playing hurt, just like Beas and everyone else on the team. Everyone is dinged to a greater or lesser degree at this time of year. He wanted to be on the field, he was cleared by the medical team, and the coaches wanted to get out of him what they could. I think the other reason he played was the Bills were looking ahead. They probably were thinking that they want him in the lineup and effective as soon as they can get him there and that it might take him a game to get back up to speed. During the regular season you might sit him until he's completely healthy, then work him back into the lineup. In the playoffs you don't have that luxury. So the thought was, I think, to get him some game time (turns out it was a lot of game time) to get his sea legs back, then to rest and treat him during the weak to get him back closer to full strength.

Just went back and looked at it. It was pretty cool. He might have slowed down a lot, caused a collision and got the PI call. He could have kept going and reached back. He didn't do either. He (not saying I could, or anyone normal person, but) he could see that the defender wasn't going to be able get to it. So he decelerated to make the catch as easy as possible. Incredible on-field playmaking.

Taylor had runs of 10 and 8 on their first touchdown drive. Beyond that, it's not like it was garbage time when the big runs happened. There was no garbage time. The Colts have a QB who NEVER runs. The running backs went for 163 yards on 30 carries. No team in the league gave up, on average, 163 yards per game. The Titans have an average rushing defense. They had three games this season when they gave up more than 163 yards. Three. Don't try to tell us the Colts did rip the Bills on the ground.

And how is Jackson not in the discussion ahead of Tannehill?

Thanks. That's interesting. I probably overstated it and implied that Poyer did it to get the opportunity to force the turnover. Your explanation was probably the thought process. Yes, it may be coaching, and that's a good point, but it's nevertheless evidence of really high-level football thinking, instantly assessing the situation and reacting in the right way. And if it's coaching, it means the Bills are teaching, as I think they are, very high level football thinking. Thanks for pointing that out. As for Bass, I don't buy that. You can't afford to have a low-percentage place-kicker. He needs to be dead-on on the routine kicks. If he isn't accurate, it doesn't matter how much leg you have. Bills drafted him because they knew he had a big leg and had identified the characteristics they thought were key in terms of developing into a high-percentage kicker. (By the way, that's EXACtlY what they did in the case of Josh Allen - big arm, and the character that they thought was key in terms of developing.)

I agree. Titans and Ravens are tough, and their style matches up against the Bills nicely. Plus, one of these teams could beat the Chiefs. Go Steelers.

Thanks for this. I almost jumped out of my chair when I saw that play. I just wrote to a friend of mine about that throw. I said Allen is throwing Bob Gibson fastballs with a fifth grade schoolgirl throwing motion.

I have club seats. I had a 10:30 slot to buy club seats, an 11 am slot if I wanted regular seats. I'm out of state and misunderstood the rules about out of state travel, so I didn't buy last week. This time I read the fine print and realized I don't have to quarantine before the game, so I bought two. The rules seem to say that they go by season ticket seniority. Doesn't mean that the most senior season ticket holder is at the top of the list EVERY week? I'd think the fair way to do it would be that once you buy tickets for one game, you go to the bottom of the list for the next game. Doesn't seem like the Bills are doing that - the rules seem to be that it's a new auction every week, and the most senior season ticket holders are on top.

I saw it this way, too. In an absolutely perfect world, Allen would have recognized that his position was 100% hopeless and thrown the ball away. He has such extraordinary physical abilities that he'd recognized, he could have thrown the ball somewhere. But one major aspect of Allen's greatness is his ability to evade the first tackle, because getting away from the first tackler often results in Allen making a big throw or a big run. That is, part of his greatness is that he DOESN'T bail on plays when most other quarterbacks should - he's able to make plays when other quarterbacks can't. So, yeah, in hindsight, we can say that Allen should have thrown the ball away, but taking that sack is the price, the small price, the Bills pay for having a QB who does such marvelous things. Having said that, I would like to know what the Bills coaches are saying internally about that play after reviewing the film. The question we can't answer is whether PRESNAP Allen should have seen something and been prepared for what happened or changed the play or the blocking assignments. Maybe there was something for Allen to have seen to prepare him better for what actually happened. It that's true, well, that's just one more learning experience. Another part of Allen's greatness is that if he DID miss something, he isn't likely to miss it next time.

Excellent. Thanks for clearing this up. What it means is that I could sell my playoff tickets to anyone in the world that I choose, but I have to give one of them my Bills account login and password. The Bills account is run through Ticketmaster, so giving a stranger my Bills account login and password is giving them my Ticketmaster login and password. And at least for me and probably for many people, the Bills and/or Ticketmaster have my credit card information. So giving a stranger my login and password would be a pretty stupid thing to do, just to have the opportunity to scalp a couple of tickets.

I don't think that's correct, but I don't know. My reading of the rules suggested that one of the people at the gate must be the season ticket account holder. If it were otherwise, then that would mean that the account holder could sell his ticket to someone else, and that is clearly against the rules.

I think it is the case. It does say no transferring tickets. Maybe there are people working at One Bills Drive now - I would try to call them. Seems to me if there's a situation like someone has four season tickets in her name and goes to regular season games with her husband and two kids, and if she wants just two playoff tickets for her husband and a child, she ought to be able to do that. But the rules suggest otherwise. If you buy a pod (2 or 4 seats), you get one seat and you designate who gets the others. You can't designate the entire pod to other people.

Is that what happened? It looked that way to me, too. Someone didn't know what was supposed to happen.

This is a great point. You could see it on TV, too. He was hurting, but there was no way he wasn't going to play. In fact, Diggs is dinged too, although to a lesser extent. The fact is that a lot of pro football players are like that this time of season. It takes guts to play this game. Thanks for pointing this out.

This is an excellent point. THe comparison is exactly right. Ball control was the key in both games to the opponents' strategy. Very enlightening comparison. It reminds me of something I (we?) saw several weeks ago. I don't remember if it was said about the Bills or some other team with a big offense. Someone said that the job of the defense on a team like the Bills is to get the ball back to the offense as soon as possible, literally by any means possible. That means play aggressive defense, and take chances. The worst think that can happen is that the opponents will score a touchdown, but that at least means that the offense gets the ball again, quickly, and that's the objective. Said more bluntly, there's an argument to be made that Josh Allen is the best football player on the planet, and if you keep the football in his hands you'll win. (Lebron's coaches have always struggled with the fact that he loves passing - it's great to share the ball and all, but the coaches have always told Lebron to score more - passing puts the game in the hands of less talented players. This is similar - let Josh play.) The best strategy to beat the Bills is to hold the ball for 40 minutes, like the Giants did. That means the best defensive strategy is to play high-risk, high-reward defense. Stick 8 guys on the line of scrimmage and say to RIvers "we're coming. We're not going to let you run the ball, and we're going to pound you in the pocket. Pound you. If your receiver can get a step on our guy in single coverage and you can hit him in stride as one of our defenders is planting you in the ground, good for you. Send your defense back out onto the field and let's see how that goes."

Oooh.. I need yo dif that. Thanks.

The Bills won their first playoff game in 25 years Saturday, beating the Colts 27-24. It wasn’t always pretty, but it was effective. Win and move on. The game was all about Josh Allen. He outgunned Philip Rivers in the passing game, and he led the Bills in rushing. In all, Allen accounted for 354 of the Bills 397 yards of offensive production. Allen was his usual spectacular self. Trailing 3-0 early in the game, he led the Bills on an eight-play, 85 yard drive. Along the way, he made multiple big throws, including a 37-yard flick-of-the-wrist bullet to Stefon Diggs. Maybe Aaron Rodgers makes that throw – no one else. And then, on second and goal from the three, on a cleverly designed run pass option draw play, Allen picked and probed along the line, looking for a seam to run through to the end zone. Finding nothing, Allen backed off. Off balance and on his way to the gound, Allen somehow delivered a wobbling, floating football to a wide open Dawson Knox for the touchdown. One key to the play was the offensive line not pushing downfield, as they would have on a straight running play, and avoiding a flag for having players illegally down field. The other key was having a 6’5”, 240 pound athletic competitor with the ball in his hands. Allen was at it again late in the half. After Frank Reich mysteriously passed up a chip shot field goal to extend the lead to 13-7 and instead watched his team get stuffed by the Bills defense, Allen took the Bills on a 96-yard drive, highlighted by two really special sideline passes to Gabriel Davis, one for 37 yards to the right and the other for 19 yards to the left. Davis tapped his toes so close to the line that both were reviewed, but there was not enough evidence in either case to overturn the completion calls. Inside the red zone, Brian Daboll relied on Allen to run the ball in for the touchdown. In the second half, Allen had a beautiful 35-yard TD strike to Diggs. The Diggs TD was one of twelve consecutive completions from Allen. Simply put, it was Allen left, Allen right, Allen up the middle all afternoon. He ran, he threw, he led the team. Yes, he threw a near-interception, he took a tough sack, and he fumbled; no matter. Allen was THE star. 26 for 35, 324 yards and two TDs passing, 54 yards and a TD rushing. That’s what the Bills need from their quarterback in the playoffs, and that’s what they got. The Bills needed all of Allen’s heroics, because Reich had a good game plan and Philip Rivers executed it nearly flawlessly. The Colts’ running game gashed the Bills all afternoon, including late in the game when the Colts repeatedly and relentlessly marched downfield for scores. In the fourth quarter, the Bills defense looked gassed, and the Colts kept coming. The Colts’ last gasp started with two and a half minutes left in the game; they needed a field goal to force overtime, a TD to win. The Colts managed to move the ball on that final drive, converting two fourth down plays along the way. On the second, Poyer made a spectacular, heady play, forcing a fumble that Tre’Davious White recovered. The officials ruled the receiver down by contact, but it was clear that the receiver went down without contact. Poyer intentionally didn’t touch the receiver until he got up to head downfield, at which point Poyer made the tackle and stripped the ball. The refs missed it live and inexplicably, on replay. No matter – the Bills kept the Colts out of field goal range, and Micah Hyde stopped the Hail Mary pass on the final play, his third defended pass on a day when he made plenty of plays. For the first time in a couple of months, the Bills defense seemed disorganized from time to time. There was more than the usual pre-snap checking among defenders, repositioning themselves, trying to get ready. Some misunderstanding between Milano and White and maybe others allowed a Colts tight end to run unchecked into the end zone, where Rivers found him for an easy score. In the immortal words of Dick Jauron, the Bills have some things to clean up. Tyler Bass provided the margin of victory in the middle of the 4th quarter, when he drilled a clutch 54-yard field goal into the wind. Drafting Bass to replace Stephen Hauschka is looking like a great move. There’s no doubt – teams have to learn to win in the playoffs. In 2018 the Biills were just glad to be there. In 2020, with a young and inexperienced QB, they stumbled at the end of the game and lost. The Bills have built on those experiences; they weren’t in total control of the Colts game, but they won and they learned again. The Division championship game is the next step. GO BILLS!!! The Rockpile Review is written to share the passion we have for the Buffalo Bills. That passion was born in the Rockpile; its parents were everyday people of western New York who translated their dedication to a full day’s hard work and simple pleasures into love for a pro football team.

It's funny that this is all so new that we get excited every time something like this happens. Actually, I'm already getting used to it - I saw the title of the thread, and I thought "oh, cool, another award." I'm already coming to expect things like this.

Right. What he's saying is "you can't blame me for not seeing this coming, because his improvement is just so unbelievable." Well, the only reason it's unbelievable is because you weren't paying attention to what was happening. If you'd been paying attention, it would have seemed so unbelievable.

Sorry, but I think this is wrong. Before the season started, I said - and I was not alone - that Allen probably would be a top 10-15 QB and possibly top 10. I said that sometime by his fifth season, and maybe earlier, he'd be recognized as one of the top QBs in the league. I'm not saying this to say how talented I am - as I said, other people saw this, too. All you had to do was watch the parade of great, great plays he made in his first two seasons, the almost unbelievable throws, throws that were as good as the best we see from Rodgers, watch his improvement, watch his leadership, and listen to what his coaches and teammates were saying about him. It wasn't an absolute certainty that he would become a star, but it seemed pretty likely. In fact, all you had to was watch Allen's first season in Buffalo. In May following his first season, I wrote this about him: It's incredible to watch, for sure, but that doesn't mean people didn't see it coming.

Pretty cool article. Thanks. However, I think the author continues to miss the point. The question is why did so many people, including the author "miss" on Josh when looking at the draft? The answer is NOT they didn't see that he actually could improve his accuracy. That's a cop out. He gets Jordan Palmer to talk about these little details in Allen's mechanics, and then implies that, well, it was okay for him to have missed on Allen, because who knew that he actually could improve that much by changing his mechanics. That's BS. The scouts knew there was nothing major wrong with Allen's mechanics. That's why so many people said he had the highest ceiling in the draft class. He had the best arm, the best speed (other than Jackson), the best size. The scouts knew that in shorts, the guy could hit any target, anywhere on the field, better than any other candidate. That's why he was projected as the number 1 overall pick heading into his final college season. So if the author had been paying attention to what was known at the time, he would have known that accuracy was not Allen's problem. Allen's problem, as so many people said, was that he was "raw." What they meant like that varied - some just meant that he played like a wild man, untamed. Others meant he hadn't had the training that a guy like Josh Rosen had - he hadn't had it high school, he hadn't had it in clinics, he hadn't had it in college. What that meant was that he was pretty far behind Darnold and Rosen and Mayfield, and even Jackson, in terms of his development as a QB. That's why he had a low completion percentage, not because his mechanics were a mess. What the author missed during the draft, and frankly what every team that drafted ahead of the Bills missed, was the one thing that Beane and McDermott value the most - football character. They could see Allen's ceiling, just like everyone else could see it; what McBeane wanted to know, and what they found out before the draft, was that Allen was an intense competitor, that he was smart, that he wanted to learn and get better, and that his teammates loved him. In other words, what they found out was that his head and his heart were ready to take control of the exceptional physical talents he had. That's what the author and so many other people missed. Most of the fans missed it, too, because most of us failed to understand that McBeane were looking at the most important criteria while we were watching video of his throws, and most of us had no way evaluate his football character. All I know is that the day I saw him throw that TD pass to Ray-Ray in that preseason game his rookie season, I was convinced. Any guy who could see that opening AND had the ability to put the ball into that opening was the guy I wanted on the field.

Thanks to Turk for posting that. It's really interesting to watch. Allen's voice has some urgency - the tone says "hey! listen up! change! change!" Then he sets McKenzie in motion, but McKenzie doesn't understand, it seems, what Allen wants, so Allen puts him right there in the slot on the left, right in front of the DB who's going to be blitzing. Allen saw it all and made sure everyone got ready. All of that leading to the perfect execution by Brown and Allen. Marvelous. Thanks.

Everything is a great story this season. Amazing that they have a guy with this kind of motivation in that position.

Simms really understands football, but he talks about it like he's your buddy having a couple of beers at the local watering hole. It's always fun to listen to.

You know, being a good QB is about having the right physical tools, the mental tools, and the coaching. I'm not a big fan of Tua and I always thought Tannehill had the physical tools. In hindsight, Tannehill's last three seasons in Miami were under Gase, and we've now seen how Darnold fared in two seasons under Gase. If the Dolphins had had the right head coach to begin with, Tannehill would be the Dolphins starter and Tua would be someplace else.