Shaw66

We're just coming into town from Heathrow. Will crash for a while and be out later.

You're right. All season ticket holders got was a chance to participate in an online sale a couple days before sales began to general public. A limited number of tickets. When I went online, there over 100,000 people ahead of me, so it obviously wasnt just season ticket holders. Somehow, I still got a chance, but they have some weird credit card rules and I timed out without getting anything. It was awful. There were NO tickets reserved strictly for season ticket holders.

We're about to leave for the airport, arrive Heatrow tomorrow morning. Are you and Gunner both meeting us there and taking us to our hotel? Or just one of you? 🤣 Thanks to you both for all your contributions to this thread. BritBill posted this a few days ago. He told it was all he knew but there may other info. Hey guys, a little info for you: Hi everyone! Welcome to both our British and American Bills families as they arrive in London for the game! This is an event for any Bills fans who didn't / couldn't purchase tickets to the Fitzrovia Belle for the Saturday and Sunday Bills parties. Feel free to share this event with family and friends. We're looking forward to turning Tottenham Court Road blue! The plan: Please arrive OUTSIDE of the Fitzerovia Belle Pub in Central London at 6PM on SATURDAY, OCT. 7TH and between 7-9PM SUNDAY, OCT. 8TH. On both dates, the PRIMARY sponsored pub for Bills Stragglers will be TCR BAR (183 Tottenham Ct Rd., W1T 7PE). The OVERFLOW bars will be THE COURT (108a Tottenham Ct Rd., W1T 5AA), and THE CARPENTERS ARMS (SAT ONLY) (68-70 Whitfield St., W1T 4EY). All three bars have outdoor terraces. On SUNDAY, we are setting up a pub for the stragglers to meet up before the game. Please keep your eyes peeled here, in Stragglers WhatsApp, and on FB for updates on this. Speaking of WhatsApp - if you wish to join the Stragglers WhatsApp group, follow: https://chat.whatsapp.com/LsDQkstGpIl8hgm5pafNSV It goes without saying, but please be respectful of London, its local pubs, and of each other. We are a reflection of Bills fans in the UK and abroad, so violence and other forms of mental, physical, or emotional abuse will result in the individual being asked to leave. Keep each other safe and have fun! GO BILLS!

I don't think so. They'll stick to their plan, and I doubt this week was the plan.

Butkus was amazing. The Bears drafted Dick Butkus and Gale Sayers in the first round of the same draft! Hard to imagine any team having a better first round, ever. Butkus was quoted in Sports Illustrated as saying, "If I was smart, I'd be a doctor. But I ain't, so I'm a football player." After football, he had a semi-successful career as a celebrity, doing ads and personal appearances. I think it was another Sports Illustrated story about him that said he did an appearance one time, and the promoter didn't pay him at the appearance. After a little time, Butkus called him, and the guy said, "Yeah, I'll get it to you." Another call, another brush off. One day Butkus walked into the guy's office, unannounced, walked behind his desk, grabbed the guy by the neck, stood him up, and walked him outside. Butkus made him get into a car, and they drove to the guy's bank, where Butkus made the guy take the money out of the bank that Butkus owned. He was his own collection agency, and when Butkus said it was time to get paid, you knew it was time!

Yes. That was a big play. The points were nice, but avoiding the miss was really big.

One thing McBeane said and they've done is improve the roster every year. Impressive.

Of course. But that doesn't mean it isn't meaningful. If there were a perfect way to rate qbs, someone would have invented it. Passer rating is an amalgam of stats. It's better than any one of its constituent stats. Better than yards or TDs or INT ratio pr any of them. .

It wasn't just invented. It's older than QBR, and nobody explains what QBR is, either. Others have given you an explanation, and if you follow the link, you can learn more. Warning: it's complicated. Essentially what they do is compare every teams at every position against every other team at every position, including comparisons for down and distance, and try to figure out which teams are best. Who passes best, second best, etc. Who's best on third and short and who isn't. At this time of year, they're still using a lot of last season's data, so the numbers aren't great. But once we get to November, it's all current season data, and it really seems to be pretty accurate. In other words, the best teams come out on top of the rankings. There are rankings for offense, defense, special teams, oline, dline, passing, running. Having the sixth best DVOA since they started doing this is pretty heady stuff. Bills have been near the top of the DVOA lists for the past few years.

Yes, game managers may rate higher than some would like, but the fact that they may be advantaged somewhat by the formula, it still isn't enough to put them on top of any lists. Career passer rating - top 20, goes like this: 1Patrick Mahomes105.02017-2023kan 2Aaron Rodgers103.62005-20232TM 3Deshaun Watson101.52017-20232TM 4Russell Wilson100.32012-20232TM 5Drew Brees98.72001-20202TM 6Jimmy Garoppolo98.62014-20233TM 7Kirk Cousins98.02012-20232TM 8Dak Prescott97.72016-2023dal 9Joe Burrow97.62020-2023cin 10Tom Brady97.22000-20222TM Lamar Jackson97.22018-2023rav 12Tony Romo97.12004-2016dal 13Justin Herbert96.92020-2023sdg 14Steve Young+96.81985-19992TM 15Peyton Manning+96.51998-20152TM 16Philip Rivers95.22004-20202TM 17Kurt Warner+93.71998-20093TM 18Matt Ryan93.62008-20222TM 19Ben Roethlisberger93.52004-2021pit 20Josh Jimmy G and Kirk G might be accused of being game managers, but that's about it on the list. The list is littered with Hall of Famers, which suggests that the passer rating is a pretty good measure of who's good.

I think the pendulum is definitely swinging. One sign is how the running game is becoming important in many offenses. Why? Because defenses are having more success stopping the pass. Defensive coaches are now doing what McDermott has been doing for years - trying to figure out how to stop the pass, and still have guys on the field who can stand up to the run. And there are so many physically talented defenders, it's becoming doable. Another sign is that defenses are now absolutely blowing up offenses that just aren't that good. Sure, bad offenses always have lost, but the Giants and the Patriots this weekend were embarrassing on offense. They were overwhelmed by the defenses they faced, just crushed. I've said before that I think the NFL probably already is in the process of figuring out what to do to the rules to reinvigorate the offenses. My personal favorite is to loosen up, again, the offensive holding rules in some way, so that there are fewer holding calls. Offensive holding is a known drive-killer, and killing fewer drives should lead to more scoring.

You know, I know that's the rule these days, but I simply never have gotten comfortable with it. The way I do it is perfectly acceptable, according to the style book I refer to. Which style book is that? The one in my head.

I agree with this, but it isn't an answer. Elam has, in all probability, some better physical skills than Jackson and Benford. That's why he was a high pick. So, what is it that makes him so clearly worse at the job than the three who are ahead of him? The OP asked for actual information, not opinion, but there is no actual information. McDermott didn't hold a press conference to explain why Elam isn't active. We're about to find out. When he wasn't active, there wasn't much pressure on Elam to improve. But if he goes active, he's going to have 42 teammates telling him he needs to make the plays. Frankly, I'm expecting him to rise to the challenge.

Well, I don't understand it, and it's based on someone's subjective judgment of how important some stats are relevant to others, but in the end it works. It doesn't really matter that the maximum score is arbitrary and capped, because no one is putting up the maximum score for a season. (Passer rating isn't all that useful as a one-game stat.) What matters is that at the end of the season, the passer ratings actually do have the best throwers on top and the worst on the bottom, and it does that. That is, the ratings correlate with our understanding of of who's best and who isn't.

I don't agree, but that's an interesting view of it. I mean, there has been a steady increase in talent on the roster since McBeane arrived. Every year, a lot of people around here would agree that the roster is the best the Bills have had. Receiving corps keeps getting better, offensive line has gotten progressively better, d line too. Running backs. So, yes, I think it's true that Allen has great personnel now. Try to imagined Allen in his second season surrounded by this talent. You're saying that Allen would have been as good as he's been in the last few weeks. I don't buy it, but it does make sense. I've always thought the Chiefs and Reid were exactly the right place for Mahomes, and that there were other places where Mahomes might have succeeded. Would he have succeeded in Buffalo, with McDermott in his first year? Part of what Mahomes had was a collection of good skill position guys. I don't remember who they had, but Reid already was running a solid offense. So, yeah, I get it.

I think spying Allen has worked in the past. Teams were forced to spy in order to try to keep Josh from running all over the field. I think teams can't spy the new Josh nearly as effectively. Josh is running less, so the spy is a wasted defender. He's just a guy playing a one-man zone in the short middle and isn't very helpful defending the pass. He won't follow receivers crossing through the middle, which will create opportunities. It's really very simple. Josh Allen is a football player who can throw better than almost any quarterback who's ever played. He isn't Michael Vick or Lamar Jackson, but he is a faster and more powerful runner than just about every other quarterback who's ever played. He's playing in an organization full of players and coaches who are fierce and determined competitors. If he's running an effective offense, Allen's presence on the field is almost like having a twelfth man on the field.

Thanks for these interesting comments. As for Davis, I'm fine and have been. I think a #2 is a guy who takes advantage of mismatches created by the offense. I think that's exactly what his touchdown catch was - a clever play design that forced a defender into a decision, maybe just instantaneously confused the guy, whatever. The point is, he let Davis run free, and Davis made a very nice catch. Uncontested, but that's what you expect your #2 to do - get the ball when he isn't contested. Nice if he's more than that, but what we saw from him yesterday was enough for me. But we've beaten that dead horse for months now. I'm really glad that you focused on the fact that everyone was making plays. I agree about each of the plays you mentioned, and there are plenty more. Look at the defense: Groot was seriously engaged throughout the game, and Milano. The entire defensive line was getting great push - they all understood that on the snap, they were going to power straight to Tua. It's like each of them decided he was going to win, every time. The various replays people have posted showing Bernard and Hyde and Milano talking regularly pre-snap. They knew their assignments, they knew what they were looking at across the line. They were all tuned in. I worry that it was playoff football for the Bills - that it was such a must-win game that it's not sustainable. I don't think it is; I think they're just learning what it takes. I think it wasn't just Josh that showed he understood what it would take to win; I think we saw a team full of guys who decided that they were going to play at another level. I wrote somewhere, before the season began, that I think the Bills have a new kind of focus since the playoff loss to the Bengals. I think they've made up their minds, individually and as a team, that they're going to do what it takes to win every game, including postseason games. They are going to play every game with the intensity and focus that the game requires. Somehow, they stumbled badly out of the gate, but the last three weeks they've looked like a team on a mission. Against the Dolphins, I think they learned that they can focus, they can be intense, and that they can win any game. Diggs was celebrating on the sideline with his teammates, but it wasn't jumping-up-and-down overcome with happiness, like it was some kind of upset. He looked like he was talking to his teammates, telling them, "See, we can do this. This is what it takes." The perfect game against the Patriots was amazing - it was perfect. But the Dolphins game was something different; that game yesterday was a statement about what the Bills can be, it was a statement made by the players to the Dolphins, but most importantly to themselves.

The thing is, Virgil, that the league always is the same: 4 or 5 good teams, 2 or 3 really bad ones, and 25 teams struggling to get over .500. But the hype gets worse and worse. Watch any preseason game, listen to the local announcers, and they're saying what we used to say: if this guy and if that guy and if this comes together. If, if, if. I mean, Rodgers is great, but he's only one guy. Their offense was still a mess, bringing in Packer retreads so he had someone to throw to. The only point of the first half of the season is to unmask all the pretenders.

I bought a jet-ski.

YAC is one of those stats that create a lot of discussion but not a lot of insight. I've always thought that, but now it's pretty clear. Bills were a lousy YAC team, right? Well, yesterday, when Josh reduced his air yards, YAC went way up. Bills are currently 10th in the league in YAC. Yes, some receivers are naturally better at YAC than others, but as a team stat, it depends a lot on where your QB is throwing the ball. Hit your running back on the run, like Allen hit Cook yesterday, and you get lots of YAC. More completions means more YAC.

You're missing the point. I'll admit, I like the "look at us" aspect, but that's not why I do it. I do it to send a message the player and the player's family that I'm a Bills fan standing with them. Standing with Josh, standing with Damar, standing with Tre. They don't need me, of course, but it means a lot to people to know that other people care.

Thanks, Hap. That is exactly what I've been saying. I love the reference to "bottled lightning." That's what Allen is. And what I particularly like is that after Solak describes the new Allen, short balls, easy passes, he goes to say "And then, when the defense finally covers all the routes and gets pressure on the quarterback, the cork pops out of the bottle, and the lightning runs free. You've finally stopped the Bills offense, only to unleash the most most dangerous player on its roster: Allen doing whatever he wants to do." I think Solak is right on the money here. Beane and McDermott have built a starting roster of 21 guys who probably are the best 21 any team puts on the field. The 22nd guy is Allen, who makes magic like no one else.

I'm in. Thanks.

I was at that one. Don't remember any of it!

Thanks. I did that twice; I found it once before I published, didn't see the other one. I was writing while I was watching the Jets last night. I was disappointed that they didn't get it done last night.