Shaw66

I agree, Baltimore is in a tough position, but it's of their own doing. It's like they've left Baltimore on a road trip, intending to drive to Buffalo, but put themselves on the road to Atlanta. Now that they realize that they're on the wrong road, what do they do? Keep going to Atlanta? Staying with Jackson is saying "well, he can't take us where we want to go, but he's taking us to a pretty good place, so let's keep going." They may like Atlanta; it's a nice city. But if that isn't where they want to go, who cares if it's a nice city?

I agree about that. In fact, I think this is probably Barkley's last year - Fromm will be the backup unless they bring in a better veteran than Barkley. But if Allen goes down, even Barkley can come in and run the entire playbook (except for the occasional Allen designed run). He may not execute as well as Allen, but the OC can call all the plays in the playbook and know that his team at least will be able to run the plays with some hope that they will work. That isn't true for Jackson. When Jackson goes down, a lot of the playbook goes down with him. The defense no longer has to worry about the option running game and no longer has to worry about RPOs, because Jackson's replacement simply is not a threat on those plays. Jackson's replacement might be able to run a more normal NFL offense, but the team doesn't practice a normal offense, so whatever skills the backup has in that regard will be wasted.

I think this is generally correct. I think winning a championship is really difficult, because to do that they'd have to beat four good defenses in a row, and I think their style of play is too one-dimensional to be able to do that. Their prospects would be better if he learned to be a good (not necessarily great) pocket passer, but I doubt that's going to happen. There's not much evidence that he's improving in that regard. For example, some of his deep balls light were downright ugly. If I'm the coach and GM, however, I'd be moving on from Lamar sooner rather than later. First, the object is to win the Super Bowl, and if we're correct in what we're saying, he's not a high probability guy to win a Super Bowl. Second, as we saw last night, it's essentially impossible to have a backup QB, because the offense is designed around a guy who is truly irreplaceable. Getting RGIII was a good idea, but even he is nothing like the threat that Jackson is. Barkley can run the Bills offense if Allen goes down; nobody can run the Ravens' offense.

Now we're off the subject, but Romo really is annoying a lot of the time. He's just a cheerleader, and as the game gets tighter, he gets more tongue tied. Sometimes when he's supposed to be talking, he actually asks Nantz to take over for him. But, when Romo is telling us what the quarterback sees, in real time, it's incredible. The QB is at the line of scrimmage and he's looking at the defense and he KNOWS where the play should go, what the QB should be looking at, and he's telling us. It's quite good when he does that.

Why do people think the Browns have a good defense? Because that's what the announcers say on TV. I've been focusing more on what they say during the games, and I feel stupid that I didn't recognize it before. Everyone's great. Mayfield's great. Garrett is great. Chubb is great. Hunt is great. Landry is great. Their tight end is great. Their defense is great. It's not just the Browns; it's everyone. Jalen Hurts became a great leader, overnight. Why do they do this? Because the announcers spend all their time promoting the product they're selling - football. If they tell us all these teams and players are bad, we believe it and won't watch. A few weeks ago I stopped listening and just watched the Bears and Vikings. They were more or less horrible. But if you listened to the announcers, Dalvin Cook was great and Cousins was great and Trubisky was on the cusp of greatness and on and on. I was watching last night, and I don't know exactly how it is teams stop Jackson, but I know that the Bills will do a lot better stopping him than the Browns did. I don't know how to stop Mayfield, but I know the Bills will do a lot better stopping him than the Ravens did. I mean, there's a reason teams want their QB throwing from the pocket. Mayfield apparently can't, so every third play he rolls out. I know it's easier to stop a guy rolling out than stopping a guy who can do it from the pocket. But don't worry. They're all great.

I'm an old man. I'm not sitting at the keyboard after an 8 pm game. It's already past my bedtime.

Well, maybe not quite the end.

As you'll see, we've been having a little discussion about that drive. You probably read the OP and then just commented, so you hadn't seen it. The principal reason I didn't mention that drive, as good as it was, was that I thought the game turned late in the third quarter. The game wasn't over then, but the play sort of reverted to ordinary play, not the intense, grind-it-out game we saw earlier. For one thing, for reasons that I didn't understand, the Bills stopped blitzing. It may have been that when Pittsburgh fell behind, they went to more spread formations, which forced the Bills out of the tight defensive formations they were blitzing from. Whatever the reason, the instense smash-mouth play changed, and that intensity was what I was writing about. But that's just an excuse. It's, true, the Bills played, as they always do, right to the final whistle, heads up, intense, and focused. That drive was great.

Bado - You've said a lot in this post and others that is true. Still, I think you're missing the bigger picture. On pass D, for whatLever reasons, earlier this season he simply wasn't in the play as well as he had been in the past. He was getting beat. As you say, even earlier, when he was with his man, he wasn't very good at actually defending the pass - it generally was a completion and a tackle. Similarly, he seems to get close to a lot more INTs than he actually makes. But I think you misperceive all of that, because the fact is that he's around the play in the pass defense a lot more than the average MLB. He drops better and he gets wide better than the average MLB. Just being around the play, he tends to be disruptive. If nothing else, he's going to tend to cause the QB to look elsewhere. After all, the league leaders in passes defensed only get 20, and the really good corners, like Tre, only get half of that, because teams won't throw at him. So I think you're criticiaing Edmunds for not making plays that we shouldn't expect him to make. Still, I agree that he needs to learn to play the ball in the air better. As for the run game, he isn't and never will be a thumper. He's improved a lot lately in staying clear of the wash and in getting into the correct gap. If he's doing that and even slowing the runner, he's doing his job - not as well as you'd like, but doing it. Put it all together, and Edmunds has to do more if he's going to have a Hall of Fame career. But if he's going to be a solid performer in the middle of a good defense, he's already not far off. Man, I wish people would read this and learn from it. I've been saying this for years. Thanks.

Yes, this, too. While I write, I keep referring to the play-by-play. I kept notincing that drive at the end of the game. Among all the other things the Bills did well, they also drained the life out of any Steelers' hopes. Collinsworth called it Steeler-like, how the Bills running game came alive when they needed to run clock. Moss, by the way, was pretty impressive in that drive. Great determination, run after run. And that's not to take anything away from Singletary, who was really tough in the face of the relentless Steeler D earlier in the game.

You know, I have noticed how high he kicks it, but I hadn't put it together with the excellent kick coverage. That's a really good point. And it may also explain why the Bills were so quick to move on from Hauschka - they may have realized that Bass was going to be worth 30 or 40 yards of field position every game, even though they might have to suffer through some rookie inconsistency. Thanks for pointing that out.

Perfect! McDermott is the lead dog on the team. And Tomlin has been the Steelers' lead dog for a long time. Two tough, tough guys. I love the quote from Tomlin that they made a big deal about last year and mentioned only briefly last night. Tomlin was a senior on offense at William and Mary and McD was a sophomore on defense, I think. Tomlin said something about how he knew he was in a fight whenever he had to go head-to-head with McDermott. Well, he was in a fight last night.

Yeah, it was a bad play by Allen. He thought he had the first down, but he didn't. At that point it didn't matter, but you know that's just one more lesson learned.

The Rockpile Review – by Shaw66 “Tough” The Bills beat the Steelers, 26-15, Sunday night in Orchard Park. It wasn’t pretty. It was a slugfest. It was playoff football. The Bills and the Steelers are two of the best teams in the NFL, at the top of their divisions in the AFC, and on their way to the playoffs. A win was important to both teams, for the division race and for playoff seeding. A win was important, too, because a game like this, a late-season matchup with a team you may face in the playoffs, often is a dogfight. It’s time to establish psychological seeding as well as playoff seeding. It’s a chance to look a quality opponent in the eye and say “I’m the big dog here.” The Bills came out of the game bloody, but there’s no question they are the big dog. The Bills are tough. The Bills and Steelers snarled and growled, clawed and snapped at each other for most of the first half. Neither gave much ground. It was supreme football toughness. First downs were really hard to get, and when the ball was in the air, it was as likely to be a punt as a forward pass. It was a nasty, give-no-ground fight. The Steelers made the first big play, hitting Josh Allen as he released a pass and intercepting. The Bills responded forcing a three and out. The Steelers made another play, forcing a Dawson Knox fumble (gotta be better kid, this is playoff football) and this time putting together a three-play, thirty-yard drive for a touchdown on the 11th possession of the first half. First blood. A couple of punts, and then the Bills responded with a field goal. The biggest gain on the drive came on a close roughing the passer penalty. Everything else was dinking and dunking, mostly throws to Beasley and Diggs. The Bills had clawed back into the game. Ben Roethlisberger, the quintessential big dog, knew it was time to take charge of the game, to put up a drive and touchdown before the end of the half. Two passes and a penalty got the Steelers close to midfield. When Ben threw slightly behind JuJu Smith-Schuster, Taron Johnson pounced, snatching the ball away and sprinting to the end zone. Tyler Bass missed the extra point, but it didn’t matter. The Bills, not the Steelers, had taken charge. The Steelers were wounded. After halftime, the Bills mercilessly drove for two consecutive touchdowns and forced two three-and-outs. The drives weren’t pretty – the Bills fought for yards on every play. Allen and Diggs led the fight. It was the middle of the third quarter. There was still some football to play, but that was just football. The dogfight was over. If there were any questions at all among football fans around the country, there are no questions now. The Buffalo Bills are for real. And if that wasn’t enough to make Bills fans happy, there’s also this: The win mathematically eliminated the New England Patriots from the AFC East race. Two dogs with one stone! In a couple of weeks, the Bills will play another more-or-less meaningless late-season game in Foxboro, but this time it will be the Patriots licking their season-long wounds. You win a dogfight by being tough. Who was tough? 1. The offensive line. Those guys were getting beaten up, badly, for most of the first half. They were getting pushed into the offensive backfield. They were unable to move the Steelers off the line of scrimmage. They were in trouble. But they fought, they regrouped, and in the second half they took control of the line and game. Tough. Toughest of all may have been Daryl Williams, who held up all night, sometimes with help, against TJ Watt, the Steelers’ sackmeister. 2. Josh Allen. Pressured and pounded from the start, Allen could have squealed and limped way into the darkness. Instead, he took the beating and stood in, always looking downfield and delivering completion after completion during the two third-quarter drives that put the game away. It was fun watching Allen bomb away last week against the 49ers, but his game against the Steelers showed he’s an NFL winner. One of Allen’s best plays will be forgotten in all of the other highlights. The Steelers had managed a touchdown and two-point conversion to make it a one-score game early in the fourth quarter. The Bills needed a drive and a score. After one first down, Allen threw incomplete deep to Davis. It was a low probability throw at a bad time. On second and ten, under pressure Allen threw incomplete to Moss. Now it was third and ten, and the Steelers were threatening to take the ball back and take charge. Pressured once more, Allen hit McKenzie on the run over the middle, and McKenzie made the run after catch to get the first down. Seven plays later, Bass’s field goal iced the game. 3. Diggs and Beasley. Diggs had the better numbers, but both of them are scrappers. Play after play they come back for more. 4. Andre Roberts. He’s no ballerina wanna-be, tiptoeing around field. He’s all “gimme the ball, gimme a seam and get out of my way!” He wanted every yard he could get. Toughness is contagious; tough players feed off tough players around them. Roberts is tough, and his teammates see it. 5. Special teams are tough. Kickoff and punt coverage has been solid all season, but the last few games they’ve cranked up the intensity. It’s a big mistake to take kickoffs out of the end zone against the Bills. 6. The Bills defense is some special kind of tough. Their stats won’t be great this season, because they gave up a lot of yards and points early in the season, but game by game this defense has been coming together to become one nasty unit. There isn’t a star – not a JJ or a TJ or a Bosa or a Honey Badger. Just eleven guys doing their jobs. The announcers made a big deal about Smith-Schuster plowing into Edmunds, but the real point was that Edmunds was in position and made the tackle. Then he got up and did it again. The Bills defense is like that – not pretty, not spectacular, but they make the tackle and come back for the next play. You have to be good to get yards against the Bills, and then you have to be good again, and again. The Bills give you nothing. It’s quintessential toughness. One play it’s White on a delayed blitz and knocking down a pass. Then it’s Poyer on a blitz and making a tackle. Then it’s Hughes chasing down a ball carrier. Then it’s Milano, then Klein. The whole defensive line kept collapsing the pocket and pressuring Ben. Play after play, relentless toughness. Not just play after play. It’s game after game. Everyone in the league knows it now. You might beat the Bills, but it isn’t going to be easy. The Bills are tough. On to Denver. 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.

And it's the same problem all GMs, at least GMs of good teams, have. Good teams are always making decisions that result in some good players leaving their team. How do you think Hyde and Poyer ended up in Buffalo? Precisely because their former teams were looking at the cap, the contracts of their players, and the needs of the team. They decided that they could make their team better by letting the guy go and getting a couple of cheaper, younger players in their place than they could by keeping the guy. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. Beane's actually talked about this. He and McDermott have said they want to keep all their good players. They wanted to keep Philips and Lawson. The realities of running a football team are that you can't afford to keep all the guys you want to keep, because then you won't have enough money left over to fill the rest of the positions. So you make decisions. They aren't easy decisions, and you don't make them all correctly. Coach and GM talk about it. I'm sure McDermott told Beane whether he thought he could survive the loss of Philips and Lawson. I'm sure he's telling Beane whether keeping Milano is mandatory or just nice if you can find a way to do it. That's all part of the job they have to do. Beane absolutely has a plan, and the plan changes weekly. The plan changed when the doctors told Eric Wood he had to retire. The plan changes when the Eagles call and ask if you're interested in LeSean McCoy. (Yes, I know those weren't Beane calls.) The plan changeswhen you can get a Diggs. The point is it's not just about what talent you bring in; it's necessarily also about what talent you let go. Sometimes you have to let talent go that you'd like to keep. And you don't always get it right.

I'll chime in, because I was going to write something similar. I don't study posters, so I don't presume to have a full take on their personalities or whatever. I don't remember what most posters have said from week to week. However, after a while, when I get the sense that a poster regularly posts knee-jerk negative, I put them on my ignore list. I've never ignored Bado, although I will admit that the thought has crossed my mind a few times. Why don't I ignore him? Because as you said, "He is here to talk about the Buffalo Bills which are his passion. While doing so, he bestows knowledge, insights, history, and well thought opinions about football which are often not that easy to obtain." I think he's too negative, and he has an edge to what he says, but the fact remains that although I often don't agree with him, he knows what he's talking about. I often choose not to respond to him, because things often turn into a tussle rather than just a conversation, but that's okay. All of that is okay, because he knows what he's talking about and he can justify his opinions.

It's funny how people misread things. Nobody's talking about lower expectations. I have the same high expectations everyone else has. The conversation was about whether Beane and or McDermott will be failing in their jobs, will they be on the hot seat of some sort, if they lose the first playoff game this season. I don't think they will be, for the reasons I stated: First playoff appearance was unexpected, a gift, and accomplished with left-over players, not with the roster McBeane built. Last year was a game they could have won, but it also was a bunch of young players with very little playoff experience, especially a young QB. It looked very much like a team new to the playoffs. So we come to this year. The Bills won't have either of those excuses this season. But as I said, there are lots of reasons a team can lose a playoff game. Whenever two good teams play, regular season or playoffs, the outcome of the game often is not determined by which team is better. Like the Bills and Arizona. That game could easily have been a win, not a loss, and it came down to their stars making a great play. Yes, the Bills could have stopped that play, but when the game comes down to one play, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. This season's playoffs will be the first time the Bills will be sending a seasoned team to the playoffs. That just means they have a 50-50 chance of winning, more or less. The previous two playoff appearances don't count for much. Maybe the Bills win, maybe they lose, but either way, it just means McBeane lost a game, not that there's something fundamentally wrong. Now, if the Bills get blown out in the first round, then there are some serious questions to be answered.

wasn't me. I don't know what this discussion is about.

Yeah, I will be disappointed. I said when they got Diggs that Beane signaled that they were ready to be a team that contests for championships. What I said above was that a first round loss isn't reason to question leadership. There are a lot of reasons you can lose one game.

Sorry I may have misconstrued your comment about cheap qb and peak roster. But McBeane have always been pretty clear that they didn't think this was the peak roster time. That's still a few years away. They're still building. They're building though the draft, and they've only had three drafts together. They're not done.

If they lose in the first round of the playoffs this year, I'm not too worried, yet. The first time around, they were fortunate to be in the playoffs at all. I didn't expect a win. Last year was for all intents and purposes their first playoff visit with this team. (2017 was holdovers.) They actually played pretty well, but together some great play at the end of the game, but they weren't good enough to win. Allen played like a rookie. That game was for learning lessons. So if they lose in the first game this year, I'll think that's two in a row, and this will be the first year that will be a true disappointment that they didn't move on. So for me, it won't be time to ask questions.

There's no question that the Super Bowl is the objective. I'm with you there. McBeane have stated that the objective is multiple Super Bowls. Where I believe you and I have differed before on this subject is that McBeane want sustained long-term success. They didn't want to get to the Super Bowl fast; they wanted to build a team that stays on top for a long time. They don't subscribe to your theory about getting a cheap quarterback (good QB on a rookie contract) racing to the top, then starting over. (Neither, by the way, do the Saints, the Packers, the Steelers, the Patriots, or the Chiefs.) It's all well and good if you have a different team-building philosophy, but it would be simpler if you just said that, rather than constantly suggesting that what McBeane have done is wrong. It's demonstrably NOT wrong. Maybe different from some other way they might have gone, but not wrong, at least not yet. If they have a competitive team for the next five years and win a Super Bowl along the way, they've been very successful.

I saw this last night, but was too tired to respond. McDermott and Beane took over a largely dysfunctional team. If a completely different scenario had taken place but the Bills ended up in the same place as they are right now, if they had done the things right that you say they did wrong and the team was 9-3 with some guy who is the new franchise QB, if they had lost twice in the playoffs, you would be pointing out OTHER things that McDermott and Beane did wrong. All you're doing is pointing out the things you think they did wrong. All you're doing is saying that anyone could have gotten the things right that they got right. The only scenario where you'd have no complaints is if the Bills were undefeated since the time McBeane took over. Maybe then you'd be signing Billy Buffalo is a bad mascot. Yes, there are things that could have been done differently, and there are things that could have been done better. But getting everything right is not real world. In the real world, mistakes happen, and success is relative. At this point, the Bills are an unqualified success The day after the 2016 season ended, Bills fans would overwhelmingly had said, "Yes. Give me THAT," if you would have offered them: Three out of four winning seasons. Two playoff appearances in three years. Franchise QB rated in the top 10 and MVP candidate. 8-3 in current season, consistently in top 5 in power ratings. Every fan, including you, would have taken that. To consistently talk as though McBeane aren't doing their jobs very, very well says something about you, not about the Bills.

I wasn't trying to be harsh. I like your point about Saleh's relative youth - it's a point I make all the time - these guys improve with age. They improve a lot. Belichick was a great defensive coordinator, but I have no doubt that he's much better know than when he beat the Bills in the Super Bowl with the Giants. Part of it is that, as I've said often, I think this game is very much about coaching and not so much about talent. The difference in total talent around the league just isn't that great. I think Belichick has been proving that for years. Last night they posted an incredible collection of stats about Patriots receivers. All of the receivers drafted by the Pats since 2010 (about ten receivers) have, combined, something like 114 career receptions. Their drafting of wideouts has been abysmal, and their free agent signings of receivers hasn't been much better. Other than Moss, those efforts have included Antonio Brown (failed), Ocho Cinco (failed), Chris Hogan, etc. And yet, in those ten years, the Pats won three Super Bowls. How can they possibly win Super Bowls with zero talent? Well, they had a good QB, the perfect guy for the system, and they had Welker and Edelman and Gronk, but I believe they won the Super Bowls because of coaching. Look at the Bills' offensive line. As far as I'm concerned, those guys are journeymen - they're not Hall of Famers, they aren't even first-team Pro Bowl guys. What they are is good NFL-level talent well coached. When one of them goes down, there's good NFL talent to replace them - not quite as talented, but pretty close. My point was that Belichick will take his mediocre talent and he will find a way to stop the opponents' best. Whatever it takes, he will take the best out of the game. Saleh apparently didn't do that. Listening to the players say "we knew what was coming," and then recognizing that they couldn't stop it certainly gives the impression that Saleh's response was simply to say "we're going to do what we do." Belichick and McDermott have a different response. Their response is "we're going to do something different." Now, maybe that's what Saleh did, too, but I doubt it. Maybe it's just that he's young and has to learn to be more creative. I don't know. What I do know is that with very mediocre talent, Belichick will NOT let the Bills throw the ball like that against the Pats. He'll do SOMETHING.

What I meant is that they gave up trying other solutions. Rush 3, heck, rush 2 guys and blanket Diggs and Beasley with receivers. I don't know what actually goes on when the coaches talk about this, but my point was that I get the sense that Belichick declares, absolutely, that the opponent is not going to beat him with their best guy. He does whatever is necessary to stop the best guy. So rush two guys and double Diggs and Scripps all day if you have, absolutely dare the Bills to run or to throw all day to Knox. As people have been talking about it here, my sense is that Saleh said to himself, "I can't play man, so I'll play zone, and if they beat my zone, there's nothing I can do." McDermott says, "If they're going to beat my zone, what can I do to stop that?" And, for sure, sometimes your talent is just so much better than theirs that there's nothing they can do. I'm not sure that was the case on Sunday.