BigDingus

And this is what happens when the offense is rarely a threat to do anything all game. 1 TD and a handful of FG's is just asking to let them back in the game

And fumble fingers strikes again...

We're still in full control of the outcome of this game. Offense needs to step up, and there won't be a problem.

"Ball should come out of his hand quick here." ....Holds on to ball & takes sack. Why does this always happen in the redzone? :/

This is a hard game to predict. When you actually look at how Allen has played, especially recently, it's hard to imagine him leading a team to a post season victory. But when you consider the Texans & their inconsistencies and injuries, I can see our defense keeping us in it long enough for us to eventually come up with something offensively. I really don't even feel confident enough to make a prediction one way or another yet. Have to watch more on Houston.

I definitely agree with you that there's more than just the opening drive of a game, the entire body of work throughout the game matters (it's why I don't care much for the hyped 4th quarter passer rating stuff when the rest of the game nothing happens). At the same time, look how close so many of our games are. If we were more of a threat to score on our opening drive we'd not only set up our defense in a better position from there on out, we'd have more breathing room for the offense to figure itself out while it meanders around for long stretches (as they do on occasion). One more TD against some of these teams could do wonders, and it should be easiest right out of the gate. I think McDermott & Daboll need to really hunker down & analyze why what they've been doing is so completely ineffective. Just ONE TD? And against the Redskins? C'mon...we're better than that.

When reading ESPN's game preview, it ended on a note about Josh's slow starts and the team's inability to score out of the gate. In explaining why Allen is still getting the start, they say: "One reason McDermott isn't sitting Allen entirely is to see if his young quarterback can shake a season-long trend of slow starts. Allen has twice over the past month acknowledged experiencing early-game jitters, including a 24-17 loss at New England last week. The Bills have scored a touchdown once, in a 24-9 win over Washington on Nov. 3, and added four field goals on their opening drives this season. Otherwise, they've punted seven times, turned the ball over twice and also had one end on downs." * * * So all together our opening drives have resulted in points 5 times, and the other 10 times we've either turned it over or punted. I knew it was pretty bad, but didn't realize it was THIS bad. Even though I'm not a Daboll hater in any way, this is where I think he deserves more of the blame than Allen does. As we all know, the opening drive is scripted, and many teams put together some of their best drives in the first 2 sequences. I don't have the stats in front of me, but in previous years, I remember being pretty confident in our ability to move the ball & put up points on the opening drive, just not so much anything afterwards. I could be wrong, but our scripted drives used to feel so much more productive. This issue also presents itself coming out of the half, as the offense has been slow to non-existent in 3rd many games this season. Again, my feeling is this has to do with coaching, and both McDermott & Daboll are doing something wrong when game planning & making adjustments. Thoughts? I know Allen has had trouble sometimes missing open receivers, but if there's any point where the spotlight can be shined clearly on coaching, I firmly believe it's the opening drives & coming out of halftime. I'm not sure starting Allen in this game is really going to change anything this late in the season.

I'm going to preface what I'm about to say as "I DO NOT HATE JOSH ALLEN." Also, THIS IS NOT A CRUSADE AGAINST ALLEN, nor do I hope Allen fails. I'm rebutting your points, because as they stand, they're not much of points at all if we're going off logic, context and a COMPLETE PICTURE. I WANT ALLEN TO SUCCEED, DESPERATELY. You do realize the position he plays right? Please, tell me the team with a QB who started all games this season who isn't responsible for the large majority of their team's TD's this year... And when you are at short & goal, gee, I wonder if a QB run is easier for a big dude like Josh than handing it off? You're right, what a juggernaut this 24th ranked offense is. We're the 5th ranked rushing offense, but only the 24th offense overall. Hmmm, that leaves one area, I forget what it is, that might be dragging us down..... Can't remember....Oh yeah, PASSING! And who passes the ball? The QB again! Crazy, I know. We're the 27th ranked passing offense... CAREER YEAR everyone, can't get much better than this! Oh wait, Tyrod lead a similar ranked offense his first year....28th ranked passing offense, 1st ranked rushing offense, and 13th ranked offense overall. You know who had career years that year? Sammy Watkins had 1000+ yards & 9 TD's, and Robert Woods, Chris Hogan & Charles Clay averaged 510 yards a piece & 3 TD's. Tyrod even had almost 600 yards rushing, more than Allen, though less TD's (because we had LeSean McCoy, Karlos Williams & Mike Gillislee scoring plenty). Guess we had greatness back then too right? Tyrod NEVER stalled our offense.... Nope. Cherry Picking stats to fit your narrative is fun, but in reality you can't manifest a person into something greater just by wishing & hoping hard enough. Imagine how great their years would be if they were hit on even a quarter of the wide open passes that were missed, or all those times the defense set us up in AMAZING field position only for us to come away with nothing passing the ball... Or they were even looked at on their route instead of the QB forcing it to the first read. Weird, but it's possible this team could be WAAAAAY better. So what's his passer rating in quarters 1-3? I seem to remember there's 45 minutes outside of the 4th quarter that the team has to play which the defense is carrying and keeping it within range. How can you get a 4th quarter comeback unless you're LOSING in the 4th quarter? Is that a good sign that we were losing so many games to bad teams all the way until the very end? And please, tell me which of those 4th quarter comebacks you were most impressed by: Additionally, what other QB has to be graded by just a single quarter's stats in order to argue their value? How about the COMPLETE picture, where he's ranked 22nd out of 32 QB's in passer rating overall (just 2 spots ahead of Sam Darnold who apparently is garbage according to this board)? Want to factor in QBR, which actually should help given his overall work including rushing & rushing TD's? Oh...he's actually ranked 24th out of 32 QB's in that category... Hmm, maybe there's a last 2 minutes of the 4th quarter QBR you can find to argue how great he is instead of giving the complete picture? The amazing Jets (reminder, we were scoreless all game until then....but I guess that part of the game is forgotten), the 1-14 Bengals, the 4-11 Dolphins who were 0-6 at the time (and at home!)? Or is the the Steelers game, where we were down a whopping 7 to 10 against a 3rd string QB until the 4th quarter, than squeaked out a 17-10 victory? Again, seeing how we had a total of SEVEN POINTS and were still in the game shows that perhaps it was the defense, not the QB, that was responsible for even giving our sorry offense a chance to win at all! * * * TL;DR - So go ahead, don't take it serious, but it's all serious issues that warrant concern. Go ahead & dismiss the facts, that's a symptom of 2019 logic right there anyway. Don't like the facts? Make up your own! Or just take offense to everything that doesn't lineup with the way you want things to be, all so your narrative can fit.

And, did you actually read the content of the thread? What was wrong with my questioning? Please, do explain. Why aren't you pulling up all the Bills fans who said AFTER they saw both Allen & Mahomes play full year that they'd still take Allen? Or the all the Allen is an MVP candidate threads? Oh that's right, because you obviously aren't interested in logical conversation, and want an echo chamber to regurgitate what you already want to hear. But then again, you were a huge Tyrod fan too, sooo....

Yeah...plenty of teams have shown that's not how the league works, not even close. And one of the top guys? He hasn't even proven to be a consistent starter, let alone a franchise guy. Not one true franchise QB consistently plays like he does. Find me the one other franchise QB that cannot throw for 300 yards even once. You'll say it's not important, but it's a result of being a successful QB more often than not, and it's a bar franchise QB's hit quite often (as opposed to absolutely never). Franchise QB's also don't consistently disappear for large stretches of games, and just like last year, Allen holds onto the ball longer than any QB in the entire league, just as he has the worst accuracy when throwing the ball 20 yards+ in the air in the league for the 2nd straight season. He's still a sub-60% passer, and still takes too many sacks that are his fault. Franchise QB's need to be able to shoulder the offensive burden and for an entire game when the defense or run game isn't there. They need to be able to put fear into a team's defense, not inspire confidence in opposing defenses that they can play tight man to man and stack the box every game. If an opponent's biggest and only real worry is how to contain runs," that's not a great sign...especially since defenses have figured out how to contain him better (last year he ran for 120 more yards on 20 less carries & 3 less games while running for only 1 less TD. What more does he have to demonstrate? Quite a lot actually. Being able to win games that the defense isn't completely dominating or overcompensating for your weaknesses would be one thing... Or being able to completely dominate the league's worst teams instead of barely skating by with come from behind victories? Hit wide open WR's more frequently... We would've won the Baltimore game if he didn't miss so many targets that had their man flat out beat in the 1st half. Those 2 nice passes he threw against the Pats last week? Yeah, he should've had several of those against Baltimore. And being able to identify open targets by progressing through his reads (which to be fair, he sometimes manages to do pretty well), hang on to the ball better (just because he only lost a handful of fumbles, we've been EXTREMELY fortunate considering the sheer volume of fumbles he's actually had!) and not stalling out drives the moment we stop rushing the ball. Also, being able to take advantage of the turnovers & great field position the defense constantly sets us up with would makes us 100x more dangerous. Instead, we frequently go 3 & out or barely manage field goals, rarely punishing opponents for turnovers. There's a LOT I'd like to still see, so hopefully I can be one of those fans that isn't biting my nails, heart racing every drive not sure if he's going to make some game killing mistake, waste a drive or barely avoid a sack & run for a 1st down. I want to sit down & know that whatever my team does, win or lose, the QB isn't dragging everybody else's great performance down. You never feel that way watching a Chiefs or Ravens game. If the games are close, you can almost feel that it's just a matter of time before their offenses figure it out & put up more points. The Bills on the other hand, you're more likely to see them do nothing right out of half time, and maybe at some point they'll wake up in the 4th, get a few drives extended by penalties & maybe make it interesting.

On 13 of 26 passing.... That means he averaged 15 yard per completion, and did nothing with the other half of his opportunities. If that's considered some kind of amazing performance, I guess the standards here are so insanely low that anything will please us, even losses to hated rivals that we had opportunity after opportunity to win (in both games). I'm not worried about it because it's clear this is who Josh has always been. Figure why not just enjoy the winning record while we have it. I'm sure tons of people will be satisfied with a playoff loss where Josh misses open WR's all game too, as long as he throws 50% & the score is close in said loss. Hopefully sometime this offseason something begins to click with him and the game slows down. A 3rd straight year of similar play, only now against better opponents, will really highlight these problems even worse. Of course, plenty of fans will be happy with that either way. Only after we fire several OC's, re-replace all the linemen, spend big money on WR's and finally drop McDermott, will we have to finally come around to who else might be to blame.

That's the stupidest mindset anyone above 10 years old could have. You don't have to experience or do something in order to understand what happened. You know we have an entire core study in schools across the world about this, it's called "History." Oddly enough, people who never lived through something, weren't there, and are analyzing it in retrospect are somehow able to understand things that happened! Crazy right? Similarly, with a whole 2 years of playing football under my belt, can see when someone sucks at their position in that very sport, even if I am not an All-Pro talent or Super Bowl winning coach. I know, truly shocking.

I know you're not being rude, unfair or mean, but you're going to get attacked for this. All year, it's anyone but Josh who's the problem. Whether it's Daboll (most popular scapegoat, as the OC always is), the O-line, the run game, kicking, the defense, WR's, McDermott, drafting, etc. it's ALWAYS going to be anyone but Josh's fault for the majority of people on here. Everyone loves his attitude, effort, and leadership so much that they're willing to overlook all major issues and overcompensate by being hyper critical on everyone else. And on the flip side, when we win, the threads and comments everywhere are flooded with "Great job Josh!" or "Allen is the franchise!" or "Game ball Allen!" even when he goes long stretches of doing nothing but miss wide open receivers, take bad sad sacks that either kill drives or straight up knock us out of scoring range, etc. and it was the defense that dominated the opponent & even gave us a chance to win in the first place. But under those videos and articles, you still just see people giving Josh Allen all the credit in the world, no matter how many turnovers, no matter how many sacks, or how poor is accuracy or stats were. If we won, it's Josh Allen that deserves the praise. He can go 12/25 for 139 yards 1 TD, 1 INT and be called "best QB since Jim Kelly!" even though the defense had multiple turnovers, sacks, and completely controlled an entire game. Sorry, I've rarely seen people just try so hard to will a QB to success, hoping that if they wish hard enough it'll just manifest into reality. All the while, those same people will find ways to dismiss or discredit QB's we passed over in favor of Allen (Mahomes, Watson, Jackson), trying to diminish their accomplishments, explain away their success, or outright say they're overrated, simply to try & overcompensate for Allen's on-field play. The s*** thing is I don't hate the guy at all, and think he's a mid-tier QB that can be a decent starter on teams that are carried by an elite defense. I just don't think he's shown the kind of growth needed to ever be in the category of "franchise" QB. He can look and talk like one all he wants, but on-field play is what matters.

This thread is going to look really humiliating for some people in a few weeks after our first playoff game. If you really think Josh Allen is going to rise to the occasion & start playing at a level he's not once shown he's capable of against good teams, your optimism has moved onto straight blindness. Just like in college, just like last year, he's showing when up against good teams he plays miserably. Even against bad teams he only plays "just good enough." There have been 2 games this year where he looked in control from start to finish, the 2nd Dolphins game (and which analyst is going to take that a serious sign of his skill?) and against Dallas when there was still an illusion they might be good. Every other time we're only in games because of a dominant defense. "Franchise" guys are supposed to do a LOT more. I mean he's nowhere near the QB's we passed over for him (Mahomes, Watson, Jackson), and at this rate it'd take years for him to approach that level. And they're right about how Baltimore played him. Just send the team rushing, leave people wide open and he'll still miss. He can't make reads fast enough, he holds onto the ball longer than anyone in the league, fumbles a lot, takes bad sacks often, and is more consistent on missing wide open targets than anyone I've seen. All that said, he CAN grow into something better, but how long will that take? He plays almost identical to the way he did last season. And just like last season, his best stretch of play was when we closed out 2018 with the weakest remaining schedule in the NFL, and coincidentally, Josh looked better! Shocking!

Allen was playing terribly inconsistent, they tried to get Singletary going, but he was fumbling, and every time Josh dropped back, it looked like he didn't know what to do...even with plenty of time. Yes, Daboll responded to poor execution by going conservative. People always seem to ignore that OC's call games based on what the players themselves have shown they're capable of executing. You can't just magically make the players catch balls, make the right reads, hit the right holes, pass and run block, not turn the ball over, etc. Allen had 25 attempts which is what he should be around. Singletary had 21 attempts, which is exactly what fans have been wanting and whining about forever. But when your QB only hits on 50% of those passes, it shows he's wildly inconsistent. There were many times the offense stalled out the exact moment we started calling passes again. McDermott & Daboll knew what type of grindy game this was and called plays accordingly. Look at Pitts last 8 or 9 games and see how close they were. And when it was all over, the Bills are the only team to beat Pittsburgh by a TD at home this year. And aside from the Browns, nobody beat them by a TD since Ben went down.

Ok. Just because he's the QB, Allen doesn't have to be nominated for game ball each week... White was undeniably the MVP that game, though yes, the entire defense was stellar. The offense did just enough, but nobody on that unit deserves a game ball for barely doing their jobs.

This defense man... If our offense wasnt so embarrassing, this team would be dominant.

It's amazing how little this team does off turnovers. I know we were trying to run out the clock, but it's incredible.

Tell us again, who was complaining about the b defense?

And the DEFENSE comes through AGAIN! F*** it, give em all extensions!

If Daboll called that play on 3rd and 1, fans would go insane and blame him if Josh overthrew the open WR.

At this point, don't be surprised to see more Frank Gore. You may hate him getting stuffed, but fumbling here would be a killer.

Yeah, his 13 completions and 25 attempts really show it's the coaches holding him back... ?

Aaaaand thank you for going through your reads Allen! THAT is what good QB's do. More of that please.

Redzone problems once again.