SCBills

Floyd and Oliver look as healthy/quick as they have all year. It doesn’t go as noticed as the obvious loss of players to injury, but this DL has been playing banged up for a while. If they are starting to finally heal up.. that’s a big deal. Epenesa continues to play well. Bills finally stopped forcing Von and are giving Shaq more reps (which he deserves based on his play) Joseph not only solves 1T but also allows Phillips to go back to the role he’s suited for, instead of getting worn down pretending to be a 1T. Lots of reasons this DL could be primed for a strong run now. If only Rousseau and Von could move past their injury limitations, we’d potentially have the best DL in the league right now.

That seems like a catastrophic failure on our part if we can’t beat the Pats at home, Chargers on a neutral field, 1/3 of Philly, KC, Dallas and then a potential win and in game against Miami. Still feels gross to know that this only gets us a, what… 66%ish chance of making it? Just go 6-1 and prove you deserve to be the contender you were thought of and lock in a playoff spot without the shenanigans.

I’m not at all in the mood to root for the type of help we’ll need to get in at 10-7, even though there are plausible paths. We need to go 6-1 down the stretch, and as you allude to.. if we can’t get 2/3 against Philly, KC, Dallas, then whats the point of making the playoffs over getting the type of pick that could get us our future WR1 in this Draft? OTOH, Allen could catch fire like he did in ‘21. If the Bills take 2/3 against these next 3 opponents, then yea… we’re all going to be desperately hoping they can take care of business against the Chargers, Pats and Dolphins to make sure they get to 11-6 and likely a safe playoff spot.

Yea.. last week was a really good first test for Brady because this Jets Defense has been elite all season .. even when their Offense repeatedly lets them down. This week will be the test for our new Defense. One that consists of Douglas and Joseph being up to speed and the tinkering around at LB looking to be settling on some solid ground. Seems we’re now on the watch for Jackson and Johnson. Jackson hurts depth, and it is what it is, but I really hope Johnson can go, so we can truly get a look at whether this Defense can be relied upon down the stretch, Philly and beyond.

I don’t necessarily think the Texans schedule is easy for them. They have the Jags, Broncos and Browns. Titans are bad, but they play them twice in three weeks. Jets beating the Fins on Friday would be massive, not only for the division, but with Atlanta coming up for them after.. they may be on a two game streak with the QB change and back in the playoff race when Houston travels to NY. The Steelers Offense is so bad, and their Defense is so good, that they could win every game or lose every game left on their schedule. Most likely they will be rock fights decided by a few points late. Broncos can help us out these next two weeks, but then they themselves are sitting at 7-5 with tie-breakers over us. Might be time to just root for Cleveland, given they only have 3 losses, and concede a playoff spot to them as they have the Broncos and Texans left on their schedule that we may end up hoping they win.

And we get them without Goedert. We assume they will be able to run at will on us, but with Linval Joseph in the mix, more Shaq Lawson (now that we’ve pulled back on Von) and the way Tyrel Dodson has been playing .. are we sure that will be the case?

I think the Bills need to go 6-1 to get in, but there are paths (hypothetically) at 5-2. I just posted who the Steelers could take 4 L’s from .. and when you have one of the worst offenses in football, no game is guaranteed. Texans, if they play like they have all season, will make the playoffs. If Stroud hits a rookie wall and/or starts getting figured out, they could fall off… fast. Browns are looking good, but have a rookie backup… If Cleveland loses to Denver this week, they could be a candidate to start dropping some games … and then we can root for that, while also being worried about a 6-5 Denver that we might want to get to 7-5 over the Texans before facing the Chargers and Lions.

Steelers have 4 losses and I could easily see them losing to Arizona, splitting with Cinci and then dropping Seattle and Bal to end the season. Texans, also 4 losses. It’s trickier to find 4 more losses, but they are a young team that could hit the skids and no one would be surprised. Browns have 3 losses, but when their QB is a rookie backup, who knows. On the flip side… I’d throw the Broncos in the mix too … which gets tricky because they play some of the above teams…and the way Russ looks, they could make a run. Obviously they are yet another team we’d lose tie-breakers to.

Lots of libertarians are pro-life. Just like lots of libertarians believe murder should be illegal…

Front 4, we’ll see… We have Von, Rousseau, Jonathan and Oliver under contract next year. Id expect them to bring back Lawson and Phillips for cheap again. Epenesa is pretty close to where I’d offer a long term contract. Outside of them, we’ll see what they do with Floyd and Jones. Id love to bring back Floyd but I think cap-wise we have to bank that fully recovered Von is next years Floyd. Jones is another question mark. Love him, but might make more sense to draft a 1T on Day 2 to pair with Oliver. At some point, our cap doesn’t allow us to bring back guys like Floyd and Jones on one, maybe two year deals. Epenesa could be backloaded in to a 3 or 4 year deal.

Im one of them. Hate this team against the Bengals, and specifically Joe Burrow with those WR’s & Lou Anarumo. Jalen Hurts is not Joe Burrow and they don’t have Anarumo, who’s proven he can confuse us and out-coach (Dorsey). The reason, imo, that Burrow has success against Allen & Mahomes is that he has the best DC to go up against elite QB’s in the NFL and he’s willing to do, all game, what Allen & Mahomes have to forced, against their will, to do… take what’s there. Philly is not Cinci and I have reason for optimism based on how we looked against the Jets with Brady .. along with Joseph/Douglas looking like they “may” make a difference in getting our defense back to a level that we can somewhat count on.

Stuff like this doesn’t do much to dissuade the notion that Jews hold outsized influence in certain areas. We saw this with Kyrie and Kanye last year.

The “Eagles so scary” crowd are simply going off their record and how they looked last year.

If he wants to play for cheap and earn a new contract elsewhere after the season, beat Philly this week and sell him on a bye week to get up to speed and start next to Bernard on a Super Bowl contender.

I took Allen out of the equation because Beane basically earns 10 mulligans by drafting an elite QB. Outside Allen, I went “average” heading into this season. Now I view his drafts as “good”. Still have some frustrations with how long some guys take to develop and we could really have used more investment at WR, but to have a young core now of Bernard, Benford, Kincaid, Shakir, Cook, Brown and Torrence on rookie contracts for next year is where we need to be year in/year out to stay a contender. My other criticism was his lack of drafting elite players .. lots of very good players .. but Kincaid & Oliver look to be alleviating that concern.

Im starting to agree. I was on board with him getting snaps just so we can hopefully get 80% Von by the playoffs … but now we actually have to focus on making the playoffs. And, at the very minimum, Von cannot take any snaps away from Floyd, Epenesa or Rousseau. I can see the hope that one of these games it clicks and the snaps he takes from Shaq prove to be worthwhile, but we cannot have the Von rush that dips completely out of the screen allowing Hurts/Mahomes to simply scamper for 10-15 yards on 3rd and 6+ over these next two games.

Seeing a lot of tweets with data backing up that this defense of ours, (with Joseph/Douglas) is much better than we give them credit for. Linval Joseph should be big for us this game as we need to slow down the Philly run game. Our pass rush needs to show up, but also need to be disciplined. We can’t have ends just rushing 20 yards out of the play leaving massive holes for Hurts to take off through. (Same will go for the Chiefs game). I like Douglas/Benford against their WR’s. Both are big/physical corners that can body up AJ Brown. The loss of Goedert is big for them. Devonta Smith’s speed and their screen game are what I’d say we need to be aware of on defense. On Offense, keep Allen upright. I believe him when he cathartically yells “I’m ****ing back!” during the Jets game. If he has time, Philly’s back seven can’t hang with Diggs, Kincaid, Shakir and Davis. I’d also leverage Cook & Johnson in the receiving game out of the backfield on their linebackers quite a bit. The Eagles are good and their home field advantage is strong, but they’re not as dominant as their 9-1 record indicates … and the Bills are way better than their 6-5 record. We have the better QB. It’s time for that to make a difference.

WR’s with drops tend to stay dropping passes. Gabe Davis right here as our own. Chiefs signed, traded for and drafted some guys with historical drop patterns.

I’ll take my chances with Allen, a good OL, Diggs, Kincaid & Cook etc against Hurts with his group and Mahomes/Kelce and co. Our DL needs to bring the heat and have a plan for the QB scrambles.

If Kelce isn’t prime Kelce, we do have better weapons than them given the emergence of Kincaid. Kelce has just been so good that it didn’t really matter until now, when it seems age is catching up to him a bit.

Everytime I watch KC play, this is when refs get involved. every. time.

I honestly wouldn’t even play Von if he’s just going to run 25 yards behind the QB every snap he plays.

For Philly in a clock burn situation, that’s actually elite time management