Shaw66

Thanks. That's interesting. Not many rookies learn that stuff in college, in part because it isn't very often that even have a defender around them. In the NFL, playing the ball should be second nature; the best play the man, too. It kills me when I see a guy on a deep route, behind the defender, who doesn't come back to high point the ball and/or create the INT.

Hey, Gunner, I only have a vague recollection of that play, but I thought it was on Allen, who didn't see the underneath guy. Do you think Allen saw him and was supposed to throw it because Davis was expected to make a better play on the ball? I get what you're saying about Davis, but it looked to me like a ball Allen shouldn't have thrown.

Jackie, Joe, Jimbo, and Josh. The Four Horsemen of Jockalypse!

I think this is wrong. After their first quarter explosion against the Bucs, the Chiefs had a lot of trouble moving the ball and scoring. They had three punts in the second half, including two three and outs. The average point total for the Super Bowl winner is under 29 points. Only three winners went over 40. That's not a point explosion. And you're wrong about the effect of going conservative. When you go conservative, ball control, run the clock, yes, you reduce the score. But reducing the score has one very important effect, which is that it also reduces the size of the lead in the fourth quarter. If you outscore me 4 to 3, late in a high-scoring game I'm down 40-30. In a low-scoring game I'm down 20-15. Keeping the score low is a time-honored way to stay in games, and being in the game at the end is what coaches want.

Yeah, many of us, me included, tend to forget about that benefit of running the ball. At it's heart, football is about defeating your opponent in hand-to-hand combat, and that combat happens at the line of scrimmage. If win that battle, you usually win the game. If you lose, you usually lose. Still, most Super Bowl winners have great QBs, pass the ball really well, and don't dominate with their run games. Jim Brown, Jim Taylor, Franco Harris - those were the days when you count on winning by wearing out the opponent. The 49ers tried to do it last season; the Ravens, too. It's a tougher way to win these. So, I get what you're saying, and I don't disagree. You have to be able to run. But you don't have to be able to pound the ball down the opponents' throats. The reality is that the effective short passing game the Pats ran and that Mahomes runs so well, when added to a decent running game, is enough to control the ball.

There really are two different things going on when we talk about stuff like this. You're right, of course, that the game was close. You could tell it was close by the emotions you were feeling late in the third quarter. It was closer than any of us liked. But the reason we talk about whether the game was close is because we're trying to talk about whether the team is good, and how good. One measure of how good the team is whether and to what extent it controlled the game. The OP suggests that some fans think that their team isn't good because the game was close. Whether the game was close or not, the Bills controlled the play for most of the game. By that measure, the Bills are a good team. The fact that the game got close is a fact, but it doesn't mean that the Bills are not a good team.

When Belichick was in his fifth season as a head coach (25-35), was he on anyone's list as the best in the NFL? Payton was 25-23 after three years. Tomlin inherited a team built by Bill Cowher, a team that won a Super Bowl a year before Tomlin took over. Reid was 27-21 after three seasons. McDermott was 25-23 after three seasons, and now he's 33-26. What's the problem? Coaches grow and develop.

Fine with me. It was a bang-bang play. I just think in terms of QB decision making, that was a bad decision. It would be interesting to know what Allen he thinks. He knows what effect the hit had on the accuracy of throw. If he's asked publicly, he'll just say he didn't throw it well enough. He'll take the blame. But the truth may be, and knows the truth, exactly what you say - that if that finger hadn't fallen on his arm, he completes that pass.

Sure, but you rarely lose your kicker on Saturday. You lose him on Sunday, when he gets injured. How many kickers have been lost to COVID this year? How many to injury?

Right. He's supposed to have the presence of mind in that situation to throw it out of bounds. Now, the problem is that if he's throwing a split second earlier, heis job is to throw it and get the ball deeper and toward the sideline where only Diggs can get it, and if he's throwing a split second later, he should just be taking the sack. We're asking the QB to make those distinctions - not easy, but that's what Allen's job is.

Thanks. Another pin to stick in Lynn. I'm telling you, there is no way at this point in the season that a McDermott team or a Belichick team miscommunicates on that audible. Everyone is prepared, everyone does his job.

I agree with this, but not because I think McDermott is a run-first coach, or anything like it. As I discussed above, McDermott wants his team to be able to play any kind of football - run this week, pass next. The team obviously knows how to pass, although it always can improve. The team needs work running. I think part of Daboll's job every week is to figure out to the Bills can run on the opponent. Little by little they've been getting better, mostly because they keep coming back to it. Having said that, the Seattle game shows that they aren't going to run just for the sake of running - if they think they can win the game by passing all day, they'll do it. I do think that an important part of this philosophy is to that McDermott wants to force the opponent to prepare for everything. He wants the film to send a message - "If we can find a way, we'll run on you. If we can find a way, we'll pass on you. You deal with it."

I think this making excuses for Allen. I've watch the replay several times, and yes the defender got a finger or possibly two fingers on Allen's arm, but it's very hard to imagine that the force of that finger made the ball fall two yards short of where it needed to be. Allen threw the ball under extreme duress to a double covered receiver. That's a bad decision, all day, every day. His priority at that point is to throw the ball someplace where only his receiver can touch it, and if he can't find a place where only his receiver can touch it, throw it where NO ONE can touch it.

I think you say it well, and I think it's more of a crapshoot. I think the whole point of McDermott's system is to identify the kind of person - the work ethic, the commitment, the selflessness - etc. is necessary to succeed at the job he's being asked to do. Yes, he has to meet some minimum physical standards, but if he's God awful slow, he's not going to be you cornerback. But once you meet the raw physicality minimums, that McDermott wants you to be the right kind of person. What McBeane did (that Cleveland, the Giants, maybe the Jets, and the Broncos didn't) was figure out that Allen was the right kind of person. It was a bonus that his raw physicality was off the charts. I don't think it was luck. The opposite is true, also, as you say. If you're the right package at QB, you still have to land in a place that will nurture you properly. How you need to be nurtured varies from QB to QB. I feel really bad for Darnold. As a rookie, I thought he and Allen were indistinguishable, and I thought they both had bright futures. From day one, however, Darnold has lived in a dysfunctional environment, and Allen has had mentors building his skills. Here we are, one and a half seasons beyond their rookie seasons, and the difference in their capabilities couldn't be more apparent. I think that's in part due to who the two guys are, but I think most of the disparity is caused by the environment created by the owner, GM, HC, and OC.

That's very true. But it's a vicious cycle. The fans like hearing about the stars, so the announcers keep saying nice things about the stars, so as not to alienate the fans. That's why players like Allen seemingly burst onto the scene - the announcers are too busy building up the reputations of creaking old stars rather than building the reputations of the new stars. Mahomes is the exception. Tua's gotten hype way beyond anything that makes sense. As I said earlier, why are we still talking about Brady in such glowing terms, when Herbert, with worse coaching and worse receivers, is way, way outshining Brady? Why? Because the announcers know who the fans tune in for.

When it happened I thought it was close, but then I realized they stopped him. No one signaled first down, right? So what you say is correct - how could Lynn not be verifying with someone that they got the first down. I mean, he knows that from a sideline vantage point it's pretty tough to see exactly what happened, so he should be asking all the time. In some ways, thinking he got the first down without being sure is worse than knowing it was fourth down and deciding to go for it. Going for it is just a bad decision; not knowing the game situation is fundamentally unsound.

Ooh, I hadn't noticed that. If the oline pass blocked, it means it was an audible. THAT's what Lynn was arguing with the officials about? He thought they'd gotten the first down? Did anyone signal a first down or ask that the sticks be moved? Why would have thought they got the first down?

I thought Nantz did some of it too. At one point they had a long dialog about how hard it is to adjust to different style of offense, to develop communication with receivers, etc., when you don't have all the off-season training opportunities, blah, blah, blah. Well, if all of that makes it really difficult to be successful in the first year, why have you, CBS, and every other media outlet hyped the guy like he is going to tear up the leak. It was pure excuse-making for the fact that Brady, great as he was, needs to play in the system the Pats developed, a system that played to his considerable strengths. Justin Herbert didn't have any of those off-season training opportunities, either, he'd never seen an NFL defense until he replaced Tyrod Taylor, AND he doesn't have Evans, Godwin, Antonio Brown and Gronk, yet he's far outplaying Brady at QB. Why doesn't Romo say that?

There always are 6 or 10 or 12 kickers with NFL experience (some game experience, but at least significant practice experience) bagging groceries somewhere, staying in shape and practicing their kicking. When your kicker goes down, you just go sign one of those guys. I don't see the need to keep kickers on the practice squad. Practice squad players are essentially free agents - they can leave any time to take a roster spot elsewhere. If the Bills have a kicker on their practice squad and almost any NFL team offers him a contract to be on the active roster, he's going. If the Bills don't have one and they need a kicker, a kicker on someone else's practice squad would take the job in a heartbeat.

That's an interesting point. I actually was pleased to seem drive his shoulder into a couple of ball carriers yesterday, but in general I think you're correct about this. If you watch good safeties, and this has been true from George Saimes to Jim Leonhard to Micah Hyde, they give up yards when they tackle because they're the last line of defense - they'd rather be sure to take the guy down and give up the yards than to try to save the yards and miss the tackle, giving up a score. Edmunds tackles more like a safety; he doesn't seem to be looking to stop a ball carrier dead in his tracks, let alone punish him. Sooner or later, I have to stop cutting the guy slack for being young, but I do think that continues to make a difference. I suspect, I hope, he's still in the process of learning to play the position AND the process of building body mass. I also think he was slowed by the injury earlier this season - yesterday he looked like a different guy. He was playing with more abandon. Finally, as some of us talked about last week, Edmunds may be the guy who misses Star the most. What makes Edmunds special is his speed and quickness, and what limits him is his strength. When a 290-pound offensive lineman can get his hands on Edmunds, his strengths tend to be neutralized by his weakness. Keeping those linemen off Edmunds is much more important that keeping them off a prototypical monster MLB; the monster MLB can handle the lineman. Edmunds isn't that kind of guy - it's almost as if Edmunds is a safety playing in the middle. He can do great things, but his teammates have to protect him a little.

Big deal? Maybe not, but not insignificant. The problem with Monday games, unlike Sunday afternoon games, is that you don't get the night of the game to decompress. Play on Sunday, unwind on Sunday night, rest on Monday, then use Tuesday through Saturday to get ready for Sunday. Play on Monday night, and all of Tuesday is lost to unwinding. So you get Wednesday through Saturday to prepare. So the Dolphins truly get at least two days extra prep time, as well as two extra days to recover from minor injuries. It's unfortunate, but COVID is creating difficult situations for some teams. It's just luck.

Well, I thought Lynn could have managed the clock better than he did. There was only one way to win the game at that point, and that was to put points on the board and try an onside kick. In retrospect, at some point in that last drive he should have spiked the ball and kicked the field goal. That kind of creative clock management is something a coach needs to master. As I've said elsewhere, not taking the field goal in the third quarter was a huge mistake. Still, I agree, he's likely to get fired, and it's unfortunate. I think he's a talented guy, and the team is just coming together. Unless you've been a total disaster, I think HCs are entitled to a little more sympathy in this COVID season. The HC's job every season is to figure out how to win games, but if they can't figure out how to win during COVID, I wouldn't hold it against them. Finally, I think the sneak was a called play. I think the shift from shotgun to under center followed by a quick snap was designed to cause a moment of indecision that would make it easier for the interior oline to push the Bills off the goal line. The Bills are just unusually tough in that situation.

Everything McD and Daboll say comes back to a simple, over-arching objective - to be a good football team, the Bills need to be able to play all styles. They need to be able to attack everywhere on the field, with the run and with the pass. They've obviously struggled running this season, and I think that as they develop each game plan from week to week they're looking for ways to win the game, obviously, but also for ways to succeed running the ball. They need to be able to run, and they need to put a good running game on film to force future defenses to respect the run. So, I'd guess that the Bills looked at this game as one of those opportunities. They were facing a decent but not dominant run defense, and they didn't have John Brown to help attack a pretty good pass defense. To his credit, Daboll saw enough in the first half to keep attacking with the run, and the success that Singletary and Moss had was a significant factor in controlling the game. Also, this was the first opportunity to get the newly configured interior offensive line playing together in the run game, with Morse and Feliciano and Winters playing together. I went back and looked at some video of the play. It's possible his arm was hit, but Allen's throwing motion wasn't upset by any contact on his arm. He was backpedaling, about to be hit by two defenders, and he floated a ball into double coverage. In a game where you're supposed to be protecting a lead, it was the wrong decision.

Muppy - I've kind of been rooting for Lynn, because of *****-storm he went through in Buffalo when the Bills asked him to step in for Rex at the end of the season. I've wanted him to have some success. As I said in my write, I think the Chargers are one of the better 3-7 teams you'll see in the NFL. Now that he has a QB, I kind of hope Lynn survives. Still, I have a general dislike for owners who abandon their fan-base, so I don't mind having piled onto the Chargers' crappola of a season.

Oh, that's interesting. I didn't know that, but he did miss the PAT early in the game. But still, it was a 43-yard kick. McDermott's approach is to expect your players to do the job they've been asked to do. What is the kicker on the team for if you aren't going to use him to kick field goals? Even if Lynn has doubts about his kicker, he also has to be thinking (because he's watched the film from this season and earlier) that the Bills are particularly tough on goal-line stand type running plays. The Bills have stopped a lot of them. Lynn should have been asking himself "What's easier, getting a yard against this defense or kicking the field goal?" Given the Bills defense, I'd say that even with a struggling kicker, the field goal looks good me. After all, getting the first down doesn't mean you're going to get the touchdown. It wasn't fourth and goal from the one.