Shaw66

Yes, as a lot of people are saying, the Bills got better QB play than they've seen, but I don't think that's all of it. Take one example - receivers getting separation. The Bills have no - zero - receivers who can consistently get separation. Watch Amari Cooper last night, an exquisite combination of speed, strength and downright hard work changing direction - he gets separation. There are 10-15 guys in the league who do that, and the Bills don't have one of them. They get separation on scheme - catch the in tight man-to-man with single coverage on Foster, and he can get a step going deep. So can Ray-Ray McCloud, so why haven't we seen him get deep like Foster yesterday? What happened to Zay Jones? Open all over the field yesterday. Yes, Barkley did a nice job knowing where the open man was going to be and an equally nice job delivering the ball, but we just weren't seeing guys open like that in prior weeks. And what about the pass protection? It's been getting better, week by week, for a month now. Apparently Teller got more playing time yesterday, and people liked what they saw. But it wasn't one guy. Across the line yesterday, guys were holding their ground, staying with their man, keeping the defense off Barkley. I think this team responded again to adversity in much the same way they did last season, came out with a renewed commitment, and we saw it on the field. The important question is why is it necessary to renew commitment? Is it, as some suggest, just an emotional response to being led by a QB who actually knows what he's doing? It's nice to think so, but they responded last season with no change at QB. We have to see them play like this against someone other than the Jets.

Here's the thing about Benjamin: He simply isn't a great athlete. He's a big, tall guy with decent enough foot speed to have been a serious threat in college and, when everything goes right, to be a decent wideout in the NFL. He isn't athletic enough or tough enough to be a good #1 receiver, but when things are going right, he can be useful. The 2018 Bills need him to be a legit number 1 guy, and he's showing, week after week, that he can't be that guy.

“What Is It With This Team?” I had business in Florida last week and missed a chance to see the Bills and the Jets in the Meadowlands. Given how the season’s been going for the two teams, Fort Lauderdale seemed like the better option. Who’s not picking the beach over Matt Barkley? Sunday turned out to be a good day to be in New Jersey. I had to settle for lunch at Slackers in Fort Lauderdale, watching the Bills go up 24-0 before heading to the airport. (Slackers, by the way, is a great place to watch games – TVs everywhere, typical pub food. It’s a Packers bar, and there’s great memorabilia all over.) What is it with the Bills? How can they be so bad one week, and so good the next? Yes, Sunday it was the Jets, and the Jets look to be genuinely awful. Last Sunday, the Bills didn’t deserve to be on the field with the Bears, and the week before that they could do nothing against the Patriots. Maybe there’s just THAT much difference between the good and the bad teams. But that can’t be it, can’t be all of it. The Bills were flatter than flat at home against the Bears, and they were world beaters a week later on the road. It’s the same kind of emotional ups and downs this team displayed last season. Is it a characteristic of Sean McDermott teams? What else was different this week? Matt Barkley. Prior to Sunday, Barkley had started six games in the NFL, and he had a career passer rating of 63.7. Sunday he was 15-25 and two touchdowns for a passer rating over 117. He had the game of his career. When have we last seen a Buffalo QB so effective? So what changed for Matt Barkley? Was it Brian Daboll? McDermott? Or was it glue on Robert Foster’s hands when in earlier games Foster’s hands were slathered in 10W-30? Zay Jones continued emergence? Or was it just the Jets? How does everything change in a week? Holes for McCoy. Time for the quarterback to throw. Receivers open. Penalties under control. Special teams making plays. Had to be the Jets. Had to be the Jets are just that bad, or they’re tanking. Still, the Bills played well-executed NFL football on Sunday, something they seemed incapable of a month ago. They showed, as they have for the past few weeks, that they have an offensive line to build on, instead of one to dismantle totally. They showed the solid, disciplined defense we’ve seen most of the season. Let the quarterback controversy begin. Allen will be ready to go after the bye, but did Barkley just win the job? Does Barkley get to start until he returns to the form he showed in previous seasons? Is there a QB competition in the offing for training camp next season? I’d think the Bills would be, should be, all in on Allen. But can the Bills really turn their backs on the quarterbacking Barkley showed on Sunday? It’s an unusual season, to be sure. Wins over two pretty good, playoff-contending teams, a near win on the road against a third, a blowout win over a bad Jets team, and a few other glimpses of some good football, combined with several absolutely horrible showings and record-setting offensive futility. A different QB every week. Logic says the Bills should be all about losing this season, positioning themselves for the best possible rookie talent in the 2019 draft. But winning is so much more fun than losing. The Dolphins twice, the Jets again, the Jags and the Lions. The Patriots are the only winning team left on the Bills’ schedule. Bizarre as it sounds, the NFL’s laughingstock could end the season 8-8. Or 3-13. A week off, and then the roller coaster ride resumes. GO BILLS!!! The Rockpile Review is written to share the passion we have for the Buffalo Bills. That passion was born in the Rockpile; its parents were everyday people of western New York who translated their dedication to a full day’s hard work and simple pleasures into love for a pro football team.

There's a bit of truth in what you say, if your qb is in his 19th year starting in your system, like Brady and Rodgers and Brees and Ryan. Those guys don't need the reps. Young guys and guys new to the systemost need the reps. Nothing you can do about injuries.

I really like Beane. Straight shooter. No nonsense. Still, whether he knows what he's doing is another question.

Fine with me. Except I'm getting old.

You and I don't get a vote.

I want to believe, but 2018 (not 2017) give me serious pause. I think there's more or less no chance that there will be a GM or HC change before the end of the 2019 season.

To get back to the original point, assuming Allen becomes what we hope, can this GM and HC shape a winning team around him?

Obviously, none of us knows. But I'm encouraged. As you say, the team looks better when he plays.

No guarantees, but I predict that when Allen comes back we're going to be wondering how come Benjamin and Jones and the other receivers all of a sudden got better.

That's what I see. And as I've said, I like that he's had a few weeks off to decompress and now will be able to come back and get a few more weeks of on-field experience. It wasn't by design but it's almost a perfect way to go through a qb's rookie season.

Frankly, I think the accuracy claims are overblown and maybe even imaginary. First, an accuracy problem is part of the conventional wisdom that followed Allen out of college. I don't think it was very well supported by the evidence then. Second, I don't see the accuracy problems when I watch him. I DO see him having some touch and delivery issues on short balls. He hasn't yet figured out how to dial down velocity without underthrowing some balls. I'll admit that I don't know for a fact that he can solve that problem, but it looks to me like he can. Third, I've seen him deliver a lot of remarkably accurate throws. He may have a problem with CONSISTENCY, in that he doesn't make accurate throws often enough. Fourth, I've seen him do so many positive things, including with his legs, that whatever accuracy problems I've seen do not seem to be fatal or even near-fatal in terms of his ability to be a good quarterback in the NFL. We all get hung up by what we see from the greats. We tend to think Allen can't make it because he doesn't have Brees-type accuracy. Well, Elway didn't have Brees-like accuracy, but he an Allen-like arm. Every QB is different, every QB combines different characteristics. If the entire basket of characteristics is, collectively, enough to succeed, great, the guy succeeds. If it isn't enough, he doesn't. My point really is that when I look at the basket of skills Allen has shown us so far, I don't see anything or things that are so bad that I don't think he can make it. I like what I see.

That play was incredible. Beyond that, I don't see the guy making bad decisions. Yes, he isn't seeing all of the opportunities downfield, and I hope and expect that will improve. But he isn't getting fooled by what he is seeing. I haven't seen him making decisions like Peterman's pick-six in Houston or like Anderson's pick-six against the Patriots. And he IS making some good decisions and he has the physical skill to deliver, as he did on the throw to Benjamin that you're talking about. He has the ability and uses it to get out of the pocket. He's shown that he's already pretty good at deciding WHEN to get out of the pocket. He keeps looking downfield, and he seems to have a pretty good idea of where he's going to find receivers as the patterns break down. That, too, he should get better at. And he has the arm to deliver the ball to where it needs to be. Consider, for example, the play against the Bears where Peterman scramble left, saw Benjamin open, had to stop scrambling, set his feet and then throw. In the meantime, Benjamin had to move, so he broke deep and was open in the end zone. Peterman floated the ball to him and Benjamin was hung out to dry. Could have caught it, but I don't blame him for dropping it. He was crushed. I thought immediately about what Allen would have done on that play. He would have completed the pass. Either he doesn't have to stop and get set, he just flips it out there like Aaron Rodgers would have. Benjamin would have caught the ball at the 20, first down, keep playing. OR, Benjamin would have broken for the end zone, Allen would have gotten set and delivered a bullet to Benjamin, who would have caught the ball and the ref's two arms would have signalled touchdown before any defender could get there to hit him. Allen has the tools, and he's been learning the things he needs to learn.

I think that if you put Josh Allen on the Chiefs he plays like Mahomes. That coach and that talent create an entirely different environment for the QB. Question is when will Allen see talent and a coach like that in Buffalo?

I agree about Houston. I'm high on Allen. I think he sees the field pretty well for a rookie. Maybe to put a finer point on it, I think he sees the risks pretty well for a rookie. I don't think he sees all the opportunities yet. But I think he sees the risks, and I don't think he throws a pick six to lose the game. And I agree with those who suggested that his injury may have been a blessing in disguise. He's seen the field, and now he's had a break to study, to consolidate what he knows and add to it by watching film and watching things go wrong with the other two QBs. He hasn't had the pressure of game prep. Now he will get to come back, but his new knowledge to work for a few weeks, then get the off season to consolidate and grow some more. Then a full set of OTAs and training camp as the starter. It's better than what Darnold and Mayfield are going through, just grinding through week after week with failures piling up and no time to step back, take a breath and get recharged. But as we've been discussing in these posts, he's the only hope. If he can't put it together for next season, along with some decent offensive coaching, we're going to be back to wash, rinse, repeat.

I think it's a little of both - they were making roster changes to continue to move out contracts of guys that didn't fit, and they've also been surprised. During the off-season McDermott said something like "we're going to get worse before we get better." He clearly said it in connection with expectations of some that the Bills would make the playoffs again this season. He didn't explain why, but he'd already lost Wood and I think he knew he was losing Richie. So I don't think McBeane are surprised that they're losing more than winning. I think they're surprised they aren't around .500 and surprised they're getting blown out. I would guess they expected Miller/DuCasse to take a bigger step forward the right tackle solution to be better. They probably also thought that between Groy and Bodine, they would be okay at center. I think the line's actually been stepping up in pass protection lately; it's the run game that is horrible. I think they expected the wideouts to progress as you suggested (and I think they have). And they expected they'd be better at QB. I think Benjamin's return to form and Jones's progress are masked by the fact that the QBs are doing nothing for them. And it's at QB that McBeane deserve the most criticism. Allen looked like he might save their bacon, but then he got injured. In retrospect, Beane taking the only QB left after the free agent QB musical chairs was a mistake. The mistake was compounded, badly, by assuming they could do with McCarron altogether. That happened because, for the second season in a row, McDermott badly misjudged Peterman's ability to get the job done. As I said in a post up above, the one thing that may save next season is Allen. Give him the last five games this season to build on what he's learned playing and watching. Bring in some appropriate help on the line and at receiver, keep McCoy and Ivory (deal with them the following year). A good QB can make a big difference. Give him decent protection and get the run game going, and this could all look different. Of course, the other question is whether Daboll has any idea how to build a modern offense. I simply have no answer there.

As I've been saying all year, I think coaching is more important talent, so I'm generally on board with you. However, the one position where a talent upgrade can make a real difference is quarterback. I want to see Allen sit this week and return after bye. Let's see how much better the offense gets with him back there. I think you and I might be surprised. As an example, imagine how much better the offense would have looked with Fitzpatrick instead of Anderson and Peterman. Fitz ain't a star, but he knows how to play the position. So, I'm waiting.

Right, on both counts. What Bucky and Dully never understood is how far out of bounds their behavior was, both in terms of quality journalism and human decency. They're now reaping what they sowed. Still, it's petty. The Pegulas essentially ran them out of the News, which the News didn't have the stones to do on their own. That should be enough.

Maybe I need to dial it all back a bit, as I said to Deek. I just looked at Football Outsiders, curious about where the Bills defense ranks. According to Football Outsiders, the Bills have the second best defense in the league. That made me interested in who is first. Turns out the Bears are first. And that is another explanation for why the Bills were dismantled on Sunday. Not only to the put the worst offense in the league on the field, but they were up against the best defense. Nine points against the Bears is a moral victory for the Bills offense.

Wow! That puts it all together in one place. Thanks. Your comment about free agents not being interested in Buffalo is telling. Watching stats decline. Not that he was here on McBeane's watch, but after his first two seasons in the league TO had only season below 1000 yards when he played in 16 games, and that one season was in Buffalo. Well, Deek, this is a very good point and maybe I should calm down. However, the things I point out in my post still bother me. They have less to do with who the QB than whether the team is prepared to play in the modern NFL.

I liked Gailey. When he left, he said he'd coached in a lot of cities and the Bills were the only one of his former teams he'd always root for. Quality guy. As for your analysis, I think you make fair points. People complain about the Bills talent, and it certainly isn't top-end talent, but most of the talent on the field is marginal NFL talent. There are very few guys who don't deserve to be playing somewhere in the league.

I'd like to think it was cooperative decision making. I'd like to think, because it's the only justification that makes even a little bit of sense, that they thought they had enough talent on board on the offensive line to make it through the season. Wrong judgment, but at least that would be consistent with their desire to build through the draft. I'd guess that McD convinced Beane that Peterman was for real, and together they decided in that case they didn't need a backup. There simply is no question than McDermott has consistently mis-evaluated the level of Peterman's ability. But even if what I'm guessing went on is true, it's pretty obvious that those were the wrong decisions. Losing your two best offensive linemen and trading away another (Glenn), together with drafting a QB and a bunch of defensive players clearly was not the correct formula. None of that causes me to change my fundamental point: whoever the 53 are, they've been poorly coached.

Whenever I take a step back and look at what's happening, I'm amazed. This is a remarkably bad team. It defies logic. How can you have a defense that good and get blown out that badly, over and over again? How can scoring a touchdown be as rare as an unassisted triple play? How can a team supposedly based on discipline and organization have all those penalties? How can your talented rookie quarterback be hoping that he'll wake up tomorrow and discover that it's all been a dream and he actually was drafted by the Saints? I do feel sorry for Nate. I don't generally subscribe to the theory that playing a QB too soon is a career can ruin him, but I can't see how he'll ever be confident enough in his game to realize his future, which was to be a decent journeyman backup. I give him a lot of credit for having the courage to even throw the ball.

I think half of the coaches in the league, given the Bills in July, would not have put up the string of ugly losses that we're witnessing. I don't know if the Bills would be winning, but they wouldn't be the laughingstock of the league. Half of the coaches in the league would have told Beane to cut Peterman and keep McCarron.