Shaw66

Thanks. Those are good points. But don't you think that the look on Josh's face is different? His behavior? I kept watching him at the line of scrimmage. Standing a step behind the center, looking over the defense. When he changed plays, he knew what he wanted, and he communicated calmly with his teammates. You could see him glance up the play clock to be sure he was still good. He looks like a guy who has a job to do and who knows how to do it. Same thing in the pocket post-snap. What I really like is his judgment about staying in or bailing out. Several times on Sunday I was thinking "get out," and he'd stay. He'd slip a tackle, side step, whatever, make the throw, and sometimes take a hit. What he was doing was waiting for something he knew would happen, for a receiver to clear a zone, make a cut, whatever, and he was also determining whether he had time to wait. He knows how to do that now, how to make those judgments. He gives me a general sense of being under control.

Thanks for the data and the comments. I didn't know how often they had 6-7 DBs on the field - this tells us. More importantly, I think, is your comments about what happened when Belichick did that. What happened is that Allen looked at it and said "I got this." He really looked calm all the way through. I go back to the Davis the drop - Josh was completely plugged in on that play. People have commented in the past about the look on Josh's face in the fourth quarter of the playoff game. It's a look we had seen before, a look that said "Whoa, all of a sudden this isn't fun and games. This is serious, and I'm not sure I'm ready." Well, so far this season, that look is gone. This season, he's ready.

Not laugh-out-loud funny, but funny in the sense that McBeane knew exactly what they were doing, and so much of the rest of the world, including people in the Giants' and Browns' front offices, and the media, didn't. I mean, if you put together a 2019-2020 Josh Allen highlight film, or better, all-22, would anyone in his right mind take Mayfield over Allen or Barkley over Allen? The simple fact is Beane knows what he's doing. Isn't always right, but understanding who Allen was puts him way ahead of the average GM. It was no less brilliant than Andy Reid trading up for Mahomes. Reid knew what he had.

"At Buffalo's facility in Orchard Park, the GM headed downsairs to the media room, all fired up. 'The looks on some of their faces, I'll never forget it," says Beane. 'It was like I had just screwed everything up.' 'Listen,' he promised, ' you're going to love him.'"

He showed that strength again Sunday. I don't remember exactly what happened, but Allen had taken a short drop and drifted to his left a bit. Some defensive lineman broke through and Allen just held him off with his arm until Allen could move away from him. He's just an over-sized athlete. Plays with the agility and finesse of a guy four inches shorter and 40 pound lighter. He's a linebacker playing like a quarterback. One thing the article said is that Allen studies Rodgers. He calls Rodgers the most physically gifted QB he's ever seen.

I'm surprised at this at all. We haven't seen it here much this year, but if you think back, think about all the times people argued that QBs don't improve their accuracy. All the times that people argued that QBs make their biggest jump from year one to year two, and if you aren't doing it by year two, you're done. Now all we're getting is people arguing that if the guy isn't winning Super Bowls in his first three years, he isn't worth a mega-deal. The simple truth is, and always was, that it takes QBs multiple years, - three, four, five years, sometimes more, to master what's going on on the field and to manage the game, especially the passing game properly. These stats show that Allen is on that path. Allen's potential was obvious in year one. His improvement was obvious in year two. His competence is what we're seeing now. His greatness is still ahead of him.

Oh, yeah, he wasn't sacked. He threw it away. Yes, the face-mask play.

It's monthly. I stopped getting it years ago, but they still do some serious writing.

Yeah, isn't that great?! As I said, I also loved the description of the face-mask sack. It sounds like a description of a comic book superhero storming though super-villains.

Thanks. A friend of mine scanned the pages and emailed it, so I don't know what issue it is.

I didn't see anything posted here about the article about Josh Allen in Sports Illustrated. It doesn't seem to be available at their website; I think you have to have the print version to see it. I think it was in last week's SI, or possibly the week before. It's a full-fledged SI feature about him, starting with a great description of the face-mask sack he took against the Rams before winning the game. It's a really positive article, describing how awesome he is physically and how much progress he's made working with Palmer each off-season. Also a funny comment from Beane about preparing to face the press after they drafted Allen. If you can get your hands on it, it's worth the read. Serious, positive national attention.

Gotta say I don't use "haters" much. When I used it here, I certainly wasn't intending to include anyone who criticizes Tremaine. It was more of an "if the shoe fits, wear it" kind of comment.

YEeh, it looked like Zimmer was embarrassed to be singled out, but then he knew it was his job to accept the love from his teammates. Quite nice.

The Bills' objective is not to race to the top with a good QB and then implode. The objective is to be good for a long time. The objective is to have a Brady, a Manning, a Brees, a Rodgers, and then to build around him. The objective is to be a threat to win every year, not just to have a good QB and throw a bunch of talent together really fast to win, then let the good QB go because you don't want to pay him. The model you describe is nice, but McBeane have been very clear that they are not building that way. They are expecting their team to get better, year after year, and then to be on top for many years.

I'll tell you a story you can add to your arsenal: My son went to Tufts, outside of Boston. He had a friend who wrote sports for the Tufts Daily newspaper. The kid went to a Tufts-Wesleyan game, at Tufts. Saturday afternoon. The kid see Belichick sitting alone in the stands - it must have been the Pats bye week. (Belichick went to Wesleyan.) So the kid sits next to Belichick, introduces himself as a reporter for the Daily. Silence. Asks Bill a question. Silence. Another question. Silence. Belichick didn't have the decency to give the kid the time of day. It was classic Belichick. Not very likable. On the other hand, here's some evidence of what a geek he is. Belichick wasn't a very good football player. I don't think he ever started a game at Wesleyan, which is mediocre D-III football. He also played lacrosse. He may not have been very good, but he fell in love with games and strategy and teaching. So a few years ago, when his daughter became the women's lacrosse coach at Wesleyan, he would show up when he had a free afternoon and be sort of an assistant coach to his daughter. This is a guy who lives football 24-7, and when he has a day off, he finds a place to go coach. He's just different from most of us.

I think it's happening around the league. Teams are playing more zone to keep the play in front of them, especially if the QB can run. Playing man against teams like the Bills is deadly, because you get beat once in a while, and you give Allen some big opportunities to run. Against the zone, if you want anything that is at least a little bit downfield, you need the whole pass pattern to play out before you can throw. Receivers have to run their routes so that the zone reshapes itself in response to threats, and then receivers have to run to the openings created in the zone by the reshaping. It takes time. Allen seemed to do an excellent job waiting for the opportunities to arise.

Nice job, VIrg. A lot of good things you put up this week, especially that opening about Division games. I wanted to comment on two points. First, Allen. I think it's funny that there's no one posting today about Allen being a project, a waste, not good enough, anything. The fact of the matter is that Allen played an excellent game. He was in command of the offense, and nothing much that the defense through at him seemed to trouble him. He's really growing up as a field general, and that's bad news for the rest of the league. As for Belichick, I couldn't disagree much more. Belichick isn't really a cheater. He's just an amoral guy who pushes the envelope. He studies the rules and tries to find ways to gain an advantage playing within the rules. He's a guy with an incredible love for football and fascination for the nuances of the game. He has great appreciation for the talents of the best players on the field, whether they are on his team or the other team. And he has demonstrated an ability above all others who ever have coached to find ways to win games. He is all about winning. Belichick is very much like Nick Saban, and each of them is equally dislikable in terms of a public personality. They both are quite like Geno Auriemma, who is disliked by many for the same reasons. Gregg Popovich is the only guy I can think of who seems to be their equal in terms of mastery of the game but who someone manages to continue to be a likable gentleman. Even Popovich has often been a difficult man to interview. I had no problem with Belichick taking the timeouts. Who knows what's going to happen? Call the timeouts and require the Bills to execute the simplest play in football correctly a couple of times. Maybe someone will have a brain fart and the ball will come free. Who knows? As for the onside kick, I think Belichick misjudged the extent to which his team was taking over the game. There was no need to risk giving the Bills the short field, because the Bills were not going to be able to stop the Pats for the rest of the game. He out-thought himself. I've seen this comment a few times. I think it completely misperceives what happened. Meyers wasn't the target. Whoever wasn't guarded by White was the target. Put White on Meyers and the target shifts.

Thanks, Kidd. You asked the right question. There are two distinct reactions to each game, and I think the two reactions are both relevant. One reaction is to whether the Bills put up a W or an L. That's very important, it's what McDermott and all other coaches and players are focused on. I didn't see any postgame, locker room video, but I am sure there was a lot of excitement in the locker room. Wins are BIG, all the time. Wins can't be overlooked. Getting to 6-2 was very important for the season. Critical, even. The other reaction is a reaction to how the team played, what it looked like, what we learned. Those reactions all relate to what we can expect from the team in the coming weeks. That is why there's been a lot of negative reaction on this forum yesterday and today. For some it's a reaction based simply on just barely eking out a win against a team that hasn't done much this season, and the inference that that means the Bills won't be able to beat the good teams coming up on their schedule. For others, it's a reaction based on aspects of the team - how well the run game worked, how well the Bills defense played, etc. In my view, the best teams in the league should be viewing the Bills right now as a beatable good team. By that I mean the Bills are always dangerous and shouldn't be taken lightly, but they have weaknesses that can be exploited to beat them. The weaknesses focus primarily on the lines - the offensive line isn't dominating in the run and is only okay in pass protection, the defensive line can't stop the run effectively and can't generate serious pass rush without one two blitzers coming, too. That makes the Bills suspect. However, McDermott's process is to build throughout the season, and his objective is to have no serious weaknesses as we get to December. If McDermott and the coaches do well in the coming weeks, the Bills will put up a couple of wins that cause the league to sit up and take notice. If they don't, or if the talent simply isn't good enough to play at the level the coaches demand, the Bills will fall back into the pack and be viewed as a team that flashed early and then faded. In other words, if you want to know if the Bills are a good team, ask me in a month. If I had to guess where they'll be in a month, I'd guess not as good as we'd like. I'll be happy with 2-2 in the next four games.

You're being too literal. When people use "hate" as I did, it doesn't mean hate in the sense of hatred. I agree, there are very few people here who actually hate Edmunds. When someone says there's hate on this message board, that means to me that there is a negative reaction to that player's contribution to the team that usually is more negative that is warranted. There was a lot of hate here last season for Star,. Fair amount of hate here this year for Barkley as a backup. In that sense, there's been a lot of hate for Edmunds this season. He isn't performing as well as people hoped/expected, and you see people posting that if he doesn't do this or that, he should be cut or traded or something. There's plenty to critique in his play, for sure, and I've been doing that pretty regularly for most of the season.

Pretty tough to go 6-2 while being completely outcoached every week. The best talent in the AFC East is 4-0 in the AFC East. Imagine how good that record would be if the Bills had good coaching.

As a young kicker in the league, first you have to survive. You survive by making the kicks you should kick. Over the last few years we've seen multiple young kickers in the NFL, choke when faced with the kick that won the game yesterday. Guys who missed badly, guys who missed close, guys who snuck the ball just inside the upright, guys who missed extra points - which is essentially what Bass's FG was. The first step in making it in the league is calmly making the kick you have to make to win that game. That is exactly what Bass did yesterday. It was high-pressure kick in a high-stakes game, into a tough wind. Bass made it look routine. I give him a lot of credit for that. That's a step that every team wants their young kicker to take. By contrast, Bojorquez has been in the league for years now, and every punt is still an adventure. I thought it was time last year to look for a new punter; I still think so.

True. I thought about that a little watching that game. But you have to think about what the scheme is the Bills are trying to play. Somebody dumping on Edmunds posted the replay of Newton's fumble and complained about how Edmunds let himself get taken out of the play. When you watch the replay, you see that Edmunds is being driven downfield by two blockers, at least one of whom is a lineman, and I think the other was too. Linebackers make plays in the running game by staying clean and running freely to the ball. That happens only when their defensive lineman occupy the offensive line. When the Pats can afford to get two offensive linemen downfield to block Edmunds, your defensive lineman have to make plays (which, it turns out, Zimmer did). Put another way, if Milano and Edmunds were playing behind Mack and Nicks, the Bills defense would be crushing it. And, as I said, I think it all starts with a guy who can play the 1-tech and absorb blockers. Then Oliver is better, and the DEs are better, too.

Yeah, I've learned to listen more to your take on things. Seriously. And it wasn't even about coming off injury. It's whether he's physically and psychologically suited for the position. It requires extreme dedication to the game, without any real glory. Last Thursday night, some interior lineman made a good play that Fox highlighted in a replay. Talking about what it takes to fight like that against really big men, play after play, Troy Aikman said something like "that's a life that I truly don't understand." I thought that was remarkable. Here was a guy who played that game for 20 years, side by side with and dependent on the success of those linemen, and Aikman was saying that he truly didn't understand what it would be like to battle like that, over and over. It was beyond a compliment; Aikman was in awe of the toughness and will power of those guys. I'm not Phillips has what it takes and, as you say, it was a big risk to assume that he did, and it was a bigger risk after Star sat out.

Wow. I didn't remember that Thurman had only 15 carries. To be honest, I never thought Marv was a great coach. Inspirational, but not a great coach. So, I'm not surprised he didn't adjust. (It's always bothered me that when asked sometime after that game whether he should have done more to get his players up for the game, more psychology ready for the game, he said something like "they're professionals; they get themselves ready for the game." Parcells must have laughed his ass off when he heard that - Parcells always was in his players' heads, and that's why he got results. McDermott is WAY into his players' heads.) As we know now, Belichick has always been about taking away what you do best. In the Super Bowl, he took away the deep ball and Reed. He pounded Reed all day. The Bills didn't respond. McDermott and Daboll are a different breed.

That's well said. I wasn't trying to say that Star's a, well, star. Just that his impact on the game wasn't appreciated last season, and we're seeing it this season. People within the Bills organization defended Star last year, saying he had the impact the Bills wanted and needed in the middle. There's no glamor in playing that position well - the only glamor is if you happen to be a total stud at that position. Star wasn't the total stud; he's just a guy who can play the position in a solid, non-glamorous way. You're right. The relative weakness of Phillips and Zimmer in that spot is the real problem. Not Star's greatness. Last spring Beane should have shored up the position better, and once Star opted out, Beane should have gotten someone better into the building. Maybe there was no one to be had - I don't know.