Shaw66

This puts it pretty well. Bills are good, but no one's pickin em to win the Super Bowl. The Bills are still in "prove it" mode.

Hey, I also like these arguments. Herbert's not on my list because it's too early, but I agree he has the potential. And I really agree about the fact that Allen's top 10 on all the lists, so maybe that means that collectively he's in the top five. I thought about that. But I think that the simplest and best measure of QB effectiveness is passer rating, and he's 9th there, which supports my conclusion about him. I think he, just like the Bills, is a year away, but that they both still have the potential to make more progress this season. Carr was extraordinary last night. Just great. Raiders win if his receivers weren't allergic to footballs.

These are great arguments. Thanks. You may be right about this. I just took a look at Football Outsiders. This is the time of year when their analysis starts to make sense, in my mind. They have the Bills at middle of the road, including strength of schedule, so they would argue with you. But they aren't infallible.

No. Barely describes where he is on the list. "Solidly" to p 10 would suggest he's in the middle. "Barely" suggests he's in the bottom of the top 10. That's objective, not subjective.

I think this is the point - not simply run or stop the run, but in general, they don't yet look like a team that can make the deep playoff run. But, as I said, what the Bills have going for them is the process. I don't think we've seen their best football yet.

I thought people would react to the Josh Allen comment. First, my post was from the point of view of the stats. That's what I said at the outset. Look at the stats. Yards, 6th. Yards per attempt, 8th. TDs 8th. INTs, about 10th. Rating, 9th. That's why I said barely top 10. If you're talking about the future, about the QB I want to have for the next ten years, Allen's in my top 5, maybe actually in my top two, with Mahomes. Allen is going to be phenomenal. But if you're talking about the present, he isn't quite there yet. Rivers, for example, showed again yesterday how good the really good field generals can be, and even though Rivers can't hold a candle to Allen in terms of physical talent, running the team is what sets apart the great from the good QBs. Rodgers, Rivers, Ben, Brees, Mahomes all have that. Josh has made great strides in three years, and as I've always said, he needs another year or two. When he's a great a field general, the only guys who will be able to play with him will be the guys with great arms. That's Mahomes and maybe Watson.

Nice analysis. I agree. I've been a Wallace fan for over a year. What I like is that he just doesn't make mistakes. Corner is a position where by definition you are going to lose your battles more than you win them - passing offenses are too sophisticated and too effective to expect that corners are going to make plays all the time. 70% completion rates are common. What's important for corners is to avoid making mistakes. Stay with your guy, make the tackle, don't take penalties, support the run defense. Levi's good at all that. As for Norman, I thought he was better than you say. I was really pleased that he was willing to play within McDermott's system (which shouldn't have been a surprise, given their history). I think he's a better talent than Levi, and I think the Bills will be in really good shape at corner if they can get him back. I don't know who will play on that side, but the Bills will have great depth, and a lot of talent to put on the field when they go to the dime.

I've let myself get so excited about the Bills' recent success that I stopped paying attention to the measurables. I looked this morning. The data make it pretty clear that the Bills still have some growing to do. Look at the standings (and ignore the NFC East). The Bills have a decent record, like most of the other division leaders, but they are behind the very best teams. The Bills are just barely above .500 in points for/points against, worst among all the division leaders. Go to the team stats. When you look collectively at yards per game offense, points per game offense, yards per game defense, points per game defense, this is a middling team. The Bills pass pretty well and defend the pass pretty well, and the Bills aren't very good running or stopping the run. The Bills don't come to mind when you think of physically tough teams like Tennessee, Baltimore, Pittsburgh. The Bills' quarterback is barely top 10. There just isn't much of anything that says the Bills are one of the best teams. Still, I'm optimistic. I'm optimistic because what the Bills have is a process where they continue to get better. I wrote earlier this season about McDermott's mid-season slump. I think it's real. I think the Bills get better from week to week for 17 weeks, focusing on all parts of their game. Other teams focus more narrowly, like maybe Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Arizona - by focusing narrowly, they get better faster, but they plateau. I think in that regard the Bills operate like the Patriots have operated. I think the Bills will continue to win, and I think that may even put up some wins that will surprise some people. It will happen because we haven't seen the best of 2020 Bills yet - they're built to peak in December. Although I'm optimistic, it's clear that the Bills still are a little short of talent. They don't have a dominant defensive line player, and they don't have a stud linebacker. They don't have an explosive (either in terms of speed or power) running back. Bottom line, I don't know where the Bills will finish, but I like how they build and attack the season. They keep getting better, which makes them a threat to win every game.

FITZMAGIC!!!!!!!

Agony.

Ball security is so important. Gordon holds onto the ball the game is over.

Great move by Flores. Broncos need to respond.

Too conservative. Broncos need to attack. Go conservative like that you're signaling you're afraid. Uh oh. Fitz.

It really doesn't matter, but I don't think you're correct about this. Jordan Palmer is a football player, not a writer. So when he said Allen had bad mechanical happens, it's quite possible that's just poor word choice. A football player is less likely to make distinctions in his language that capture the difference between "bad habits" and no habits. I didn't see Allen doing anything wrong consistently wrong. I never saw a QB whose mechanics were bad. Every throw was unique. He didn't do the same thing wrong every time. A habit is something that you do the same every time a situation arises, and that wasn't Allen. Rolling left, for example, sometimes he threw a pass that only a half dozen NFL QBs throw, sometimes he was a disaster. That's not a bad habit; that's just a situation that requires awareness and consistency.

Thurm - I want to add something that makes sense in the way Buddo was just talking about it. I agree that Allen wasn't consistently accurate early on. There were multiple throws that left you scratching your head, wondering why he threw it like THAT! He needed to get consistently accurate. The problem was not that he had mechanical flaws that had to be corrected; the problem was that he more or less didn't have any habits. That is, he had to learn to just dial it back a bit. What Beane and McDermott and their organization figured out is that Allen was kind of a wild mustang that hadn't been tamed yet. They didn't have to break a bunch of bad habits. They just had to teach some habits, period. They saw that Allen really wanted to be tamed, so they didn't see the risk.

Bud - This is really description of why he was "inaccurate" (by whatever standard). All the scouts knew about his arm. The question was exactly what you say - could he learn to dial it up and down, in all different ways. Just as you say. And just as you say, it was Beane, among all the GMs ahead of him at #12, who figured out that Allen had it in him to do that learning. Thanks.

Yeah, watch for it. He's not doing as much now as earlier in the season, when those 15-18 yard deep crossers were open all day. He has such arm strength and such good mechanics throwing the ball that he doesn't need to get his body into throws nearly as much as most other QBs. So it is literally like throwing darts for him - just a flick and the ball flies on a line. He's very accurate on those throws. I think as soon as Allen - or any QB, really, needs to put his body into the throw to get the necessary velocity, he's introducing more variables in the throw, which means it's easier to be off a little here or there, mechanically. Throwing darts is elbow and wrist. Throwing footballs at max distance is legs, hips, torso, shoulders, elbow and wrist. Unlike almost any other QB, Allen can throw 15-yard sideline passes with his elbow and wrist.

I disagree with the OP and agree with others who say you take the time out. I think you want your defense as ready as they can be to win the game, just like coaches often call time out just before an onside kick attempt. Be sure your team is ready. Trying to guess whether the opponent is disorganized, confused, flustered or whatever is junior high school stuff. And I have one other, different reaction. McDermott is in this for the long run. Like Belichick, he expects his team to get better year after year, for everyone to learn and progress. McDermott believes that is true as much, or more, for himself as for everyone else. He studies his decisions, analyzes them, and revises his coaching philosophy as he goes. As a result, he will be a better coach five years from now than he is now, just like Billy Donovan became a better coach. If McDermott's analysis after the Cards game, or after similar end game situations in the next few years, concludes that he should have trusted his players and not called the timeout, then that's what he will do in the future. If he made the wrong decision on Sunday, and I don't think he did, he'll make the right decision in similar situations later in his career.

I don't think he stinks. A little less so this season, but last season he's was fabulous in the pass defense. Covers so much ground. You could see QBs staying away from the middle of the field, because he was always a threat to be in the passing lane. So there's that. Against the run he's been okay to horrible. I think he's still learning to stay off of blocks. I think he needs to wait longer before he closes, but I'm not expert. He's begun to tackle with more authority. And I think maybe more than anyone else, he's the guy who needs Star in the middle. Star occupies a lineman or two every play. Without Star, guards or a center always seem to be roaming free, looking for Tremaine. He was in on a lot of tackles yesterday, and he was a big part of containing Murray.

Okay. The punt, for sure. The INTs happen in any game. I guess I agree that they're major mistakes, but if they're major mistakes, the Cards had two turnovers, too, so major mistakes in the takeaway category were even. I don't count those as things that changed the game. There was no major mistake on the final play. The pass rush was good, could have contained Murray better, but it forced him into a difficult throw. He made a great throw under pressure. The DBs did what they were supposed to do - White was with his man and the safeties closed beautifully on one of the most dangerous receivers in the game. He made the play, the Bills didn't, but those aren't mistakes. Michael Jordan missed 26 game-winning shots. Those aren't mistakes, either.

Can he play defensive tackle?

Gunner - I don't get this. What major mistakes? There's a difference between major mistakes, and ordinary mistakes that have large consequences. Penalties are ordinary mistakes, but every once in a while a penalty is a game changer. I thought the the Bills played pretty well, but made some mistakes. Same could be said about Arizona. The two Allen INTs and the fumble probably are major mistakes, but even those are routine events in a football game. The Bills did have one horrible string of penalties, but I don't think that's a major mistake - that's just a lot of penalties coming together. You want the team to play tentatively after they've gotten two penalties in a row. I don't think the Bills lost because of mistakes. They lost because they can't run the ball and they can't stop the run. Those aren't mistakes - that's poor coaching, poor talent, or a combination of both. That's coaches and players presumably doing their best, but their best isn't enough to get the job done. What are the major mistakes you're thinking of?

You dont have to defend Beane to me. In his job, he makes a lot of decisions, and I do t expect that he will get them all correct. That's impossible. He just missed on the middle of th D line. I thought Harry would be fine behind Star, and he might have been. But it turned out that without Star, Harry couldn't do what was needed.

No, he didn't know. But he knew he needed a second guy, and I thi k mostly he was thinking Philips would be that guy. He did a lot of work on the D line, but he didn't get a true backup for Star.

I've been thinking something for weeks, and this is as good a place as any to post it. After Henry stiff armed Norman, Henry went out of bounds. The momentum created by the stiff arm forced him out of bounds. So Norman actually made the tackle on that play.