Shaw66

Thats a good point. Interesting to see how they will do with otrrer injuries that will come. Survived Milano and Edmunds just okay.

She's a little weak in the running game.

Wait until Allen gets good!

You won't be saying this in November and December. The defense will be fine then, and Hyde will be a key.

Yes, I do. He already made one last week. And the catch on the sideline yesterday was not unlike the one Duke dropped in the playoffs.

I think I post someplace else about this comment. Brett Favre wishes he had Josh's physical talent. Brett had to muscle up, get his whole body into it to throw those what-are-you-thinking lightning bolts. Josh just looks, things maybe he'll give it a shot and - BOOM! - the ball's shot out of a cannon. I know, you're talking about the gunslinger, I'm-going-in-guns-blazing-and-I'm-coming-out-alive mentality - Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven, and more and more, we're seeing that's who Josh is. But he's so much more.

His catch up the left sideline was amazing. Tough angle to turn on the ball, and yet the instant the ball hit his hands, it stopped moving. Instantly. That's a special skill. Davis looks like the guy we hoped Duke would be.

Actually, I think it was Total Recall.

Another excellent point.

Obviously, we're all getting ahead of ourselves, but what you say is correct. Allen is threatening the game - he's showing people that he can play QB at a level no one has ever seen. As for the Favre comparison, yes, he has the attitude and moxie that Favre had. But ask Favre, drunk or sober, about Allen, and I'm sure he'd say, "Man, I wish I had that arm and body." Allen can do stuff that Favre could only dream about.

I think that's exactly right. Everything about the replay confirmed that Kroft caught it first and then it became a shared possession. The rule is completely clear about the outcome in that situation. However, simply because the call on the field was interception (and I'm completely baffled how anyone in real time thought that was interception), the boys in New York just said "well, I can't prove it wasn't an interception on the replay, so the play will stand." As I said, why the NFL would think that's a good way to review calls, I don't know.

I simply don't understand how they could not reverse it. Only thing I could think is that the league has decided that they aren't overturning the call on the field unless it is completely and obviously wrong. But that play even met that standard. There was no video evidence whatsoever that the defender had clear possession at any time, and there was clear video evidence that Kroft did and that the defender went after the ball after Kroft's catch. I suppose the analysis is this: Ruling on the field is interception. That means that some official saw the defender with clear possession of the ball. There was no video evidence that that was incorrect - their bodies were locked together and we couldn't see the ball, so it's theoretically possible that in mid-air the defender actually took it from Kroft. Since there was no video evidence of Kroft actually taking the ball to the ground, or the two of them taking the ball to the ground simultaneously, the ruling on the field stands. That's ridiculous, of course, because it was clear (1) that Kroft caught it, (2) the defender went after the ball as Kroft was putting it away, and (3) the defender couldn't possibly have taken the ball away because the ball and their arms were all instantly pinned together with no movement of anyone's arms or shoulders. When they hit the ground and we first could see the ball again, it was still possessed by both. It's simply amazing that the NFL has so much trouble getting this stuff correct.

That's true. But I thought the analysis the broadcast expert - some retired ref, was on the money. The corner engaged Davis within the first five yards and Davis just kept running his route. In that situation, it's the corner's job to disengage before five yards or it's an illegal contact penalty. It's a continuing penalty until he does disengage, and if the ball is in the air before he disengages, it turns into pass interference. That's how they call it. When you understand that, you can see that the call was clearly correct. If the corner had backed off at five yards, Davis would have been able to make his cut properly and it would have been a touchdown. What was so good about Davis's play was that he just kept running his route hard. The corner couldn't back pedal fast enough to disengage - what the corner had to was move out of the way, giving Davis either the inside or the outside. It sucks for defensive backs, but that's effectively what the rule require. If you imagine the corner giving Davis the inside, it's easy to see the touchdown. If you imagine him giving Davis the outside, then when Davis cut for the ball he would have run right into the defender and it would have been pass interference. The only way the defender possibly could have defended it was to guess the ball ws going inside and break ahead of Davis, so he became a receiver with inside position. But that would have been purely guessing, because the route could have been, maybe was, and option route. So if the defender had disengage early and guessed inside, Davis cuts out and catches an easy throw from Josh. Davis made it all possible by running the route hard.

I gotta add a postscript. I meant to include this in my column, but I forgot. My wife and I were watching the game. This season, I've been jotting notes on my computer as the game goes along, and my wife usually is looking at stuff on her tablet, half-paying attention to the game. Sometime a few minutes after the non-interception interception, my wife said "listen to this," and started reading something she'd found she thought was interesting. I asked her to stop, because it already was obvious that the game was getting pretty intense. I couldn't be distracted. I think that made her realize the game was getting interesting, so she began paying more attention, too. We sat there for the rest of the game, just taking it in, groaning as the Rams came back, hoping somehow someone would step up to save the day. My notes were saying things like "total meltdown." Then the game ended - did I mention the Bills won? - and we sat there in stunned silence. I was having trouble processing everything that had just happened. The my wife said "that was a like a horror movie." And I realized she was right. Every horrible thing that could happen to the Bills was happening (short of having their heads sliced off by a machete-wielding crazed Jack Nicholson with a maniacal smile), and in the end the good guy walks away, hugs his girlfriend, smiling and saying "well, let's not do that again." A horror movie - disaster, disaster, disaster, happy ending.

Thanks for this analysis. Just watching it, it was obviously an awesome, un-quarterback-like play, but breaking it down with stills shows just how amazing it was. Allen is unique, and everyone is starting to see it.

That's great!!! Fabulous job.

King has his pluses and minuses, as we all do. But he is a good writer, tells a good story, gets his facts right, and gets good material from others, like the stuff from Romo about Josh. What gripes me, and this is just personal, is that so many people are talking about this big jump Allen has made and how all the off-season work transformed him. I think that's a false narrative. Like Romo said, he didn't tell Allen much of anything at all. And like Palmer said, they just worked on a little things. What gripes is that people write like what's happening to Allen is some great surprise. It was perfectly obvious that Allen was on his way to near the top 10 of the passer list - not obvious that he'd be a premier QB, and he hasn't shown that yet - but obvious that he was not going to stay mired around #20 or worse. Why was it obvious: (1) physical talent, (2) work ethic, (3) brains, and (4) leadership. That all was on display his rookie season. Before the end of the rookie season it was clear that McDermott and Beane had identified in Allen all of the necessary ingredients to success before they drafted him. They said it the night they drafted him, and we all could see it his rookie season. Now, everyone's saying how great he is and talking about what a big jump he's made, when what that really means is that they didn't see in Allen what has been there to see for two years, so it feels like a surprise to them. What it really means is that their analysis of who's good is based on stats and wins and nothing much else. People who were watching and thinking, like Chris Simms, saw it earlier. The most interesting comment I've seen about Allen was in some column someone posted last week where the writer said that the league is waking up to the fact that Josh Allen can do things on a football field that no one else can. He's a talent on a whole different level. I hadn't thought about it that way, but I think yesterday's game showed it. That play he got called for the face mask? He's a monster. What other QB in the league stands up to an assault like that (completely legal assault) and fights back like that? He was getting chased and knocked around back there on a lot of plays, and he stayed upright longer than any QB has a right to expect. That quality makes him different - BIg Ben was like that, but Allen is better than Ben was in terms of just being too big and tough to handle. But what's really special about Allen, what makes him unique, is his arm strength, and I do think that this is where the tinkering with his mechanics has helped. Allen's arm strength is so great that he threw the ball any way he wanted and it pretty much always got to where he wanted it to go, but he didn't have the accuracy he wanted. What seems to have happened is that he's focused on getting his body positioned so that he can get good hip and shoulder rotation. He doesn't really need the rotation, he's so strong, and on several throws yesterday you could see that if he got to the right position, he didn't rotate a lot, but having that mechanical discipline gets his arm to the right place, and his accuracy has improved. What we're seeing now is that Allen can identify a crosser 18-20 yards down field and almost instantly release a dart with accuracy, because he doesn't need a full throwing motion to do it. Guys like Rodgers and Mahomes have a quick release and a decent arm, so they make some similar throws, but Allen now can release the ball just as quickly and throw it with clearly more pace. And those deep crossers to the sideline, like the throw to Davis yesterday (yes, it could have been a better throw, but it was darn good), by getting his hips and shoulders even partially set Allen now can just flip the ball down there, give it plenty of air and drop into tight windows. There simply isn't a QB in the league who can match him physically. As I said, Ben earlier in his career. Vick wasn't as strong but was a better pure runner, and he had an arm nearly as good as Allen's. Point is, athletically, Allen is a rare talent. What's happening, what's been happening now for three seasons, is that Allen's other characteristics - his brains, his work ethic and his leadership skills, are driving his performance. So we see glimpses for a half of what is going to become more and more regular - a QB who just slices and dices defenses. A QB who has every answer in his head and who has a body that can deliver. I've said all along that he's likely to really hit his stride around his fifth season - that's when he'll really be processing the game in his head, when he'll see much more than he's seeing now, when he'll be running into trouble less, seeing the best target more often. We're just seeing the beginning of Allen's greatness.

I agree. It's too early to know what the offense is going to bring at you, so your defense often is not well prepared for what hits them. By November, what teams are doing on offense has become clear, and defenses are prepared.

Thanks. Nice to hear.

Simple. Couldn't believe the call wasn't reversed.

I saw it the same way. Troubling. He rarely hits people with authority.

I think the offenses all around the league are ahead of the defenses. Jalen Ramsey looked like an idiot on one TD pass. The OCs know how to attack the defenses right now. Give it a few more weeks, it's going to get tougher to pass. For the Bills, too. These are important games to win, before the season turns into the usual November December dogfights.

This is a really interesting point. That's an amazing point. It's true. It doesn't matter what the situation, the Bills always seem to have an answer.

That's an interesting comment. I didn't notice they were doing that. I thought it looked like Allen had been told to stay in the pocket. I thought there were several plays where in previous weeks he would have escaped earlier and made a play on the run, either passing or carrying the ball. But maybe you're right, maybe he just couldn't see how to escape.

I think you're exactly right. It was an impressive effort. He created the penalty. Playing hard makes all the difference.