y2zipper

2-2 I was in Oakland when Jerry Rice didn't make a catch. I was at the Jeff Fisher fake punt game at the coliseum. I was also at the Peterman game. And I was at this years Charger game.

Since the Bills are keeping McDermott, this is an obvious one to me. Got the same production with less turnovers per game and brought more balance and run game. Reducing the turnovers is how Buffalo can go from 2 seed to 1 seed next year.

I would have let McDermott go for the Bengals game, but overall this is true. Defensive continuous no shows in these playoffs games the last three years is a huge concern, especially when we're supposed to have a defensive head coach. Ownership isn't going to touch it, but at some point McDermott has to have his defense show up because it really hasn't outside of 4 years ago against Lamar. It's 32 points a game and an average QB rating of 115. Hard to win games that way. I think a consequence of playoff expansion is that I value appearances even less now. I think there's a lot of coaches that can win the AFC East with Josh Allen and win a home wildcard game.

It's a good question because with Josh Allen at QB, high seed and divisional round games should be the floor and it looks like the ceiling. We can microanalyze some of Josh's decision making at the end there but Bass has to be cut for not making that kick and McDermott has to be fired for his defense once again not even showing up. Buffalo dominated TOP because the Chiefs averaged 8 yards a play. These are the only games where the team is judged, the goal is to win super bowls, and this season is a colossal failure for the third time in a row.

Fun to see Bills Mafia take over LA. So many Bills fans here. I expected this to be tough with LA getting extra rest, road game on a short week and fire head coach bump. I will say Brady did a good job of drawing up shot plays here, but Allen missed 2 of them because of deep ball accuracy. Gameplan seemed to be to let the Bills receivers go deep vs the man to man and that was smart, but Allens gotta execute those. He threw to the wrong side of Sherfield in the first quarter and the interception to Diggs one that was underthrown and picked. Good decision, bad throws by Allen. If one of those hits, it's a different game I think. Davis will flash against teams that play this sort of man coverage, and it helped the pass catchers get open when they did today. Chargers did a good job against the run and the offensive line struggled on the road again. Where I'll give the Bills credit is they got the ones they had to have, and that was the difference. Allen converted 2 third downs on the last drive to Diggs and Shakir. Also, thank the Lord for Ed Oliver.

Makes me wonder what the home road split is for the offensive line. They've been relatively good this season, but this is the worst game that I've seen them play and I think they had some issues with communication and setting protection. Getting beat by 3 man rushes way too much today.

I think it's a difference in role. As the receiver, Diggs is allowed to be the voice of dissention when they need one. Allen is not.

The offense is scoring 20 points a game The last 5 weeks, which basically ranks around where the Chicago bears do for reference. The offense has been atrocious and that's really what the issue is with the team and why McDermott should be fired. I don't trust him to pick the next coordinator so I'd rather fire him and let somebody else do it.

I certainly think it should certainly be a hot seat year for McDermott and that's part of the reason he's calling his own defense, but I've said that from day one. He's the longest tenured coach without a Lombardi and Buffalo's only focus should be getting a super bowl while Josh Allen is here. But these determinations aren't made in week 5 or anywhere close to week 5. That's a conversation for the end of the year and after it all plays out.

Buffalo should have gone away from the run a lot earlier than they did, probably. Still a long season, but these are the types of games that will have people question the offensive coaching in Buffalo, and rightfully so.

My biggest takeaway is that September football doesn't really matter and everyone's figuring it out as they go because the preseason is boring, the regular season is longer and there are more playoff teams. It's going to take another few games to figure out where everyone is as the attrition battle plays out. I mean the Eagles, 49ers, chiefs, bills, and dolphins being excellent teams shouldn't really surprise anyone. I think Dallas, Cleveland and Baltimore are the next 3 best teams so far after that.

I agree with this. I also think part of the equation is that it's the ebb and flow of September football. I would rather see the struggle to figure it out happen now than later. The big positive so far this year is that I think the Washington and Vegas games are the types of games that last year's team would let the opponent back into. Those two games are examples of championship level stepping on the throat when you get a chance to and I hope that continues. Offensively, I do see the vision. The bills want to run a balanced attack, establish a run game and be able to adjust the personnel grouping to take advantage of matchups. Last week against the raiders the 12 set worked really really well, but this week Kincaid struggled against Washington's defensive line and got penalized twice, so they tried to switch it up and go with the 11 personnel some more. Right now the struggle I see what that is that they're not getting a whole lot of production out of Sherfield or Harty, and I hope that changes. One of those two or shakir has to be a productive receiver for this vision to work, and I hope it's simply an issue of chemistry and needing more time and that it'll gel as the season goes.

I expect them to win the super bowl next year or fire people. That's where we are now.

I would argue that the issues with the 2022 offense were more schematic and philosophical and less about talent. I agree with Greg cosell's assessment that the passing and rushing schemes aren't really coherent. That's what I hear when people say the bills don't have an offensive identity and from an eye test standpoint, it doesn't make sense to me that one play there in a spread formation and in the next play when they want to actually run the ball, suddenly there's an extra linemen and a fullback. I also didn't particularly like Buffalo's tendency to bring extra guys in against the blitz. What works better is having enough blitz recognition to go where the Blitzer is coming from and get the ball out of Josh's hands more quickly. At quarterback, Buffalo has what I refer to as the Russell Wilson problem. Josh Allen holds the ball way too long way too often. His recognition after the snap needs to get better, he needs to turn the ball over way less, and the decisions and reads have to get made much much faster. For all of the maligning that goes on with the offensive line and deservedly so, they were the fourth best team in the regular season at pass block win rate. It's a metric that determines what percentage of the time the offensive line gives the quarterback at two and a half second window to throw the ball. Buffalo's past protection group did that 67% of the time, but Buffalo didn't take advantage of it between too many long developing pass plays and a quarterback that has a tendency to hold on to the ball and gives it to the other team way too often. Against Miami and Cincinnati, Alan was over 3 seconds snap to pass. It's way too long the bills have to coach him to get that internal clock down so that he's more consistent and so his career lasts longer. From a talent standpoint, I want to get back to where the bills were in 2020 and 2021. We knew that the bread and butter formation was having three quality wide receivers to spread it out more. We know Diggs is really a good player I like Gabe Davis on the outside as a vertical threat, but they definitely have to correct the error of letting Cole Beasley go without replacing his production adequately. That could be Diggs to the slot, it could be bringing Beasley back for another and developing Shakir, it could be anything else. With the offensive line specifically, Buffalo should go get a couple of guards that can run block. Figure out what sort of running back oriented scheme you want, go get linemen who can do it, and build off that. They ranked 22nd in run blocking per win rate, struggle against light boxes they see and need to better there.

Yeah Diggs and Milano are clearly the vocal leadership guys here. At LB and WR you can have that and it's ok. Josh Allen can fall on the sword and Diggs can say what needs to be said. Creates less controversy that way.

Good post. I agree that as long as Allen is here and healthy, The Bills are going to win a bunch of games and make a bunch of playoff appearances. He's a franchise quarterback and the Bills have talent. They're due for a OL overhaul similar to what KC did, but they have talent. My issue here long term is coaching. McDermott, Dorsey and Frasier continue to get schooled from a gameplanning and play design/ scheme perspective, and Buffalo really fell victim to offensive brain drain this year and in this game. It's the reason why offensive playcallers that can maximize QBs get the head coaching jobs now. McDermott is an A+ culture guy, but you'd never see Andy Reid put out this bad of a gameplan, especially on the offensive side. Buffalo is talented enough to win a bunch of regular season games anyway, but the goal is to get a Lombardi and there's a level that Buffalo hasn't reached yet.

Knee is down before he extends. I think it's a good challenge because they'll have to respot it and take a measurement at least.

Yeah I'm not sure what Allen is trying to do there. It's double coverage and he has to get off that read.

I think that's an incredibly good challenge by Lovie. Don't know that he'll get it.

Tacklers aren't allowed to lead with their head at all.

The offense is getting better, not worse, and over the last 3 weeks has done a good job of playing the team in front of it. Against the Jets and Patriots, the scoring output was lower but against those teams it's more important to play a clean game. They scored on 50% of the drives today with all of them except for one being touchdowns, and that's essentially a league best number. It isn't the best look to score 3 times then get stopped 3 times, but if it's in a different order no one is complaining. We're getting super bowl winning caliber offensive production and Dorsey is maximizing the skillset of his franchise QB. That's the job.

There were 27 passes and 24 runs, so it's almost a 50/50 gameplan. The issue with the run game is personnel choices on the line and we've seen that a few years running it isn't old. It also isn't as effective with Bates out and Dawkins playing with an injury. It's a lot of Allen and Singletary runs because they're trying to go through the middle to attack the wide 9 of the Jets.

White definitely got in there.

Can definitely see the team going through it some with the condensed weeks and the injuries. Getting out of this 2-0 is what we look for, and games will look like this until the defense gets healthy. They have a full week then ten days, so hopefully some guys get back. I kinda see where the injury affects those sidearm throws on the RPO. A lot of those were off today but Allen can make everything when he steps up and throws over the top. The offensive line is also bad when starters go out, and that was a problem today. McKenzie looked really good today. With the defense so hurt, I can see that Buffalo likes to draft guys who can cover and then play them once they can tackle. The difference between the starters and backups is basically that the starting unit doesn't miss tackles and the backups, especially Hamlin and the linebackers not named Milano, just don't tackle well at all. Hamlin is SUCH a bad tackler especially.

That's one where they have to get more creative. The fake to the slant is one they run a lot.