Shaw66

I've always liked him. Hardworking, good route runner, good hands, good after the catch. Dont really know, but he seems to have the work ethic McD wants. I like Brown and Beasley, but Green is a full notch above either. Pats would love him. I suppose we can wish.

That may be true, too. Now that I've seen the replay, I have to say I think it's essentially all on Josh. One, perhaps for GG's reason. But more importantly, the unwritten rule is that the QB has to be very careful throwing late over the middle. This play is just another example of why that's the rule. There's a lot of stuff going in the middle, and Josh threw it into a spot that obviously could be reached by a defender as easily as by one of his teammates. That's a no-no throwing over the middle late. If he wants to throw it in there, he has to throw so that only one person, his teammate, can reach the ball. He didn't do that. Yes, it's a head scratcher that Yeldon stopped. But maybe not. Beasley's man drops off Beasley and starts to play Josh as a runner, leaving a big hole in the middle. Beasley has his back turned but sees the hole eventually. Yeldon probably saw it too, and he could have decided to stop so that he did lead his man into a position where his man could defend the throw to Beasley. Yes, maybe Beasley could have or should have done something different, too. All that needs work. But the Bills had the ball and only one player was responsible for where the ball went. Josh had it in his hands. It was a bad play by Josh. Not as bad as I first thought, but it was a bad play.

That's why I wrote about the "New Bills." This is different from anything we've seen in Buffalo.

Really? I don't know the trade deadline rules. When do you think this might happen. Do you have any educated guesses about whom the Bills might acquire?

I wasn't dumping on Knox so much as commenting on McD's system. We all know how Belichick sits people when they fumble. McD is doing it too. Produce or move on.

Right. Somebody has to ask Knox if he remembers a guy named Zay who used to play for the Bills. This is where McD tests Knox. You want to be a Bill? You make the plays. It's that simple. McD doesn't ask them to do anything they can't do; he asks them to be excellent at what they can do. If he can't catch balls consistently, he won't be a Bill.

There will be more offense next year.

I guess we should get used to it. Good players who aren't needed get converted into draft picks. Beane wants those picks.

That's a good point. I remember it was thinking that in one game the pass protection was a lot better than previous weeks, and the Bills' pass rush on D also was better.

As in next season, when the Bills are 4 and 11, McD is about to get fired, and I'll be asking where I can get a procectomy!

The Colts were even better at it last night against the Chiefs than the Bills. The Colts were downright masterful running the ball.

I think your take on this is backward, although we agree about what we expect over time - a passing game that attacks the entire field. Where we disagree is on what the Bills are trying to do. It isn't that they want to go deep and teams are taking it away, forcing the Bills to go short. The Bills WANT to go short. They said it all during the off season, that they had to get Allen focused on the short passing game. That wasn't because teams were taking away the deep ball; the Bills had a lot of success throwing deep in the second half of the season. Instead, I think it's a point of view that the Bills have, that they haven't said, but I'm pretty sure it's what they think. It's borrowed in some way from the Pats and other successful offenses. The point of view is that they want every play to be a positive play, and if it can't be positive, at least not negative. But first and foremost, if at all possible, make it positive. So throwing the ball 20 yards downfield, let alone 40, is not a preferred play for the Bills, because the completion percentage on deeper balls is 50% or less, and because you can get those balls intercepted more easily. 50% means half the plays are not positive, and that's not what they want. They want every play to be positive. So throw five and eight yard passes, because you can complete 80% of those, and because they're less likely to be intercepted. Eventually, when you get very good at that game, the defenses start packing it in because you're killing them with nickels and dimes. When they back it in, the percentage on the 20 to 40 yard passes goes way up, because you get more one on ones, more favorable matchups, less blitzing (because the blitzes don't get home on the short passing game and the lbs are more useful trying to clog the passing lanes) etc. The difference in our view is that I don't think the Bills have been forced into the short game. They believe as a matter of football philosophy that you have to be good at the short passing game to make the rest of the passing game work well. Allen has all the tools. He has to learn more about the defenses, and he has to develop a little better judgment. Once that happens, and it's happening week by week, the whole field will be available to him, and he will be one of the great ones. It's coming. It's fun to watch it coming. Right. The most important point is Allen. He's still a bit of loose cannon, and a turnover in that situation could have been devastating. It's true, 45 seconds and three time outs, other teams go for it. But most teams don't go for it. You know which teams go for it. The ones that have Brady, Rodgers, Brees, Rivers, Mahomes. Sure, I want my team's QB to be on that list, but so far in his career he hasn't been good enough to allow his coaches to trust him. The time is coming, but it isn't here yet.

Who won't?

I know that's what you want, but it isnt smart football.

Close game, you don't wan't to jeopardize a half time lead, you're getting the ball to open the third, and you don't completely trust your young QB. Two years from now, it will be different.

Right. When he got knocked out of the Pats game, did ANYONE think it was worth that risk to get the first down? The smart play is to avoid the hit every time. Every time. There is on exception, and that is if the play is your last play in the game, and you need the play to win the game. Then you go for the end zone. Other than that, get down, live for another play.

A couple of points. First, since people always say this stuff, I'll always respond. There are very few receivers who regularly get separation. Most of the players in the league who get open get open because they are running the route that attacks the weakness in the defense. Any average NFL receiver gets open when he's in the right route, and that's how offenses attack defenses. Teams are lucky if they have one guy who can regularly beat defenders one on one. I doubt any teams have two. You actually prove my point. You say separation is an issue and then you say Duke was "so open." Duke got that separation because the defense left is defender one on one, and in the middle of the field that's impossible to defender. The defender has to guess to have a chance. Any of the Bills' receivers would have gotten open on that route. Allen complete something around 70% of his passes. He didn't do that throwing the ball into tight windows. He was throwing to guys who were open. That's separation, and what the Bills are getting is about as much as you can expect in the NFL. Finally, as I said, I have process-itis. Part of the disease is that you understand that things go wrong on every play. Penalties called, penalties not called. Missed blocks or tackles. And things go wrong over the course of the game. Momentum shifts. There are ups and downs, ebbs and flows. Yes, it's important to identify them and work to correct those things that are correctable. but you're going to have those things in every game. There are no perfect games. That's why I rarely get into discussions about play calling. The OC calls 70 plays a game; there's no way he's going to call the best play 70 times in a row. It just doesn't happen. Some of the success of a play call depends on what the defense called. So when people complain about this play call or that play ball having been bad, I just move on. And it's the same with penalties. It's easy to say "can't take penalties on 3rd and 2." Do you think the coaches and players don't know that? But this is 11 men each trying to several things perfectly in two or three seconds, while 11 other men try to stop them from doing it. Mistakes are going to happen in an environment like that. What do you want them to do to, only take penalties on 3rd and 22?

finn - I have reactions to both of these excellent comments. Ball control offense. That is clearly what the Bills are playing. They want to run, and they want an excellent short passing game. But I think that's just what they're running now, because it's at the core of good football. Good football is what McDermott is all about, and you can't have a good football team if you don't regularly control the football. It shows up in time of possession, it shows up in third down stats. If you control the ball you're always in the game, and McDermott wants always to be able to control the ball. But I think Daboll and McDermott will take anything that they can. They don't have great deep threats and they don't have a great offensive line, so they aren't going to focus on a big-time, explosive offense. As the protection improves, and when the next piece (a serious deep threat) arrives, the offense will open up. They know what they have in Allen, but just like the offense as a whole, the QB has to learn to run a ball control offense before they work seriously on his obvious abilities as a big-play thrower. In other words, all in good time. Allen is going to be throwing footballs in Buffalo for the next 15 years, and there's plenty of time for him to take advantage of all his skills. I've been saying all along next year will be his true break out year, and three years from now he will be a recognized star in the league. He's just too good. As for Bates, I actually have wondered about that. I don't think either Beane or McDermott worry about looking foolish. If Bates already is a starting caliber tackle, they look brilliant, not foolish, for having acquired an undrafted rookie who is a quality starter. Ford is unlikely to be a bust - there's nothing foolish about having the right side of your line be Ford and Bates for the next five years. McDermott's message is always clear - it's a competition, and the guys who perform the best play. I don't think they waited on Duke because they wanted to give Zay every chance. They waited on him because for some reasons that I don't know he wasn't ready. After all, they didn't wait on Bates - they didn't stick him on the practice squad. They just make decisions about the best 53. And Duke not being ready showed up yesterday. He had a procedure penalty. Multiple plays someone had to tell him where to go. Maybe he's just been slow learning all the complexity that they expect him to have.

WOW!!! On the money! Duke is a Fred Jackson story. Yes, let's hope ten years from now we're talking about Duke like we talk about Fred.

I agree. He has a big leg but little finesse. He doesn't consistently control the ball to do what he wants. No coffin corner kicks, few balls downed inside the 10. All he seems to be able to do is kick it hard or not so hard. A lot of the punters in the league are better.

Bold is an interesting point. Allen for sure, but many other young guys too. Oliver, Milano , Edmunds, Ford, Bates, Singletary, Wallace, Duke. These guys and the team are not as good as they are going to be.

I don't know about analytics, but I don't think it's as simple as some posters say. There is an offensive game plan. It's developed by Daboll, but it's certainly approved by McDermott. Daboll doesn't create it in a vacuum. That game plan obviously was based on the notion that the Bills could throw the ball effectively against the Titans. So, sure, we'd like to see the clock running on that second last drive, but the Bills thought they could complete passes, and if they'd completed any, the clock WOULD have been running. It's a head in the sand approach to say we're just going to run it three times to keep the clock running and then punt. That's really conservative with five or six minutes left in the game.

We're running parallel conversations in two threads! There are different kinds of INTs. Bad bounces, 50-50 balls, great defensive plays. And bad decisions. Today clearly was a bad decision. I mean, he has to see that he can't put the ball in there.

Funny, I responded to you in Virgil's thread. I agree. Obviously, you don't want him to throw that pick, but the Bills won, all QBs throw picks, and that's how they learn.

This, plus a 2-1 TD-INT ratio is okay. That WAS a bad throw, but I continue to say that young QBs have to make those throws to learn when they can make them and when they can't. When you make one of those throws and it doesn't cost you the game, then all's good.