SoTier

Ekeler is feared to have a torn Achilles per NFLN stream. He'll have a MRI today to confirm it.

Agree. I don't know if Harbaugh lost confidence in his offense or if he had too much confidence in his defense. Maybe his choice to punt was just a knee-jerk reaction. The Ravens, ie, Henry, were running at will over the Bills defense. Lamar escaped the Bills pass rush at least twice for big yardage plus some other shorter runs. It was highly unlikely that the Bills defense could have stopped Henry or even Lamar from getting three yards. OTOH, the Ravens D was struggling and needed help from a bad spot to stop Allen. Moreover, even if the Ravens failed to make the first down, they could have run the clock down to less than a minute with no time outs. Giving Allen -- and most top NFL QBs -- more than a minute to take their team down the field for a potential game winning kick is asking to lose because you're counting on the kicker to miss. It happens regularly when good teams face this situation. As it was, even without time outs, the Bills moved downfield so fast that they had time to kneel twice before kicking the game winner.

I always found people who actually live/lived in the city to generally be really nice. It's the Long Islanders who tend to give New Yorkers a bad name. Too many act like they're better than everyone else simply because they live near NYC ... especially when they decide to go to college Upstate.

That was my first thought when I read he seemed ok at practice yesterday. Been there, done that.

I don't either. They really didn't seem to do much to improve their weaknesses, simply standing pat on both sides of the ball unless their rookies play like HOFers early on. Their OL will likely get Burrow injured sooner or later. He took a beating from the Browns.

The Ravens defense gave up 41 points, blowing a 13 point lead with < 5 minutes to play. Obviously, they didn't play all that well; they just looked better doing it for most of the game, like this was figure skating or something. While Allen lead the 4th quarter charge, the Bills D started to come around in the fourth quarter, too.

If McDaniel gets axed during/after the Miami game, that might not be true. If the Fins play as poorly as they did in the opener, they very well may have a new HC before Thursday.

The Jests are annoying pests rather than true rivals, primarily because except for the years under Parcells in the late 1990s and then Ryan for a couple of seasons, they've been pretty pathetic for pretty much the last four decades. As others have posted, their fans OTOH, are easy to hate.

No, it didn't. The original thread was about QB rating. A second thread about QBR was also created, and then the two were merged, so posters are discussing QB rating, QBR, and both. What QB stats can't measure is what are frequently called "intangibles", the special abilities that some QBs have that separate them from equally and, sometimes, even more talented, QBs. Josh Allen has always had leadership and will-to-win in spades, even in his rookie season when he wasn't a particularly great passer.

It's hard for younger people today to imagine how easy it was to travel back and forth between Canada and the US back then. We took crossing an international border without a second thought. A bunch of us would go to Ft Erie a couple of times a month for Chinese food at Happy Jack's, which is still on Niagara Blvd a half century later BTW. People went for gas. They went to play bingo. They went camping at Sherkston. Some Buffalonians owned cottages around Ft Erie and along Lake Erie towards Crystal Beach. School kids went on field trips to the attractions in Niagara Falls, ON or to the Toronto Zoo or the Ontario Science Center. Kids from the West Side of Buffalo would ride their bikes across the Peace Bridge to fish. A friend and I went on a vacation in the Thousand Islands/Adirondaks back in the 1970s, and we drove across a totally unguarded/unmanned border crossing somewhere between Massena (we stopped to see the locks) and Plattsburgh. There was a little building like a toll booth with a couple windows and a door and a sign that said something like "Welcome to Quebec/Bienvenue Quebec". Not a soul around but us, so we went through.

What I find really awesome -- and ironic -- is that both of these QBs came out of the same draft class, and that 2 QB-needy teams passed on Allen and 3 or more QB-needy teams passed on Lamar. Most drafts don't produce even 1 great QB. Outstanding franchise QBs come along maybe every third draft or so, although most drafts do product one or two good starting QBs. I think that the 2018 QB draft is going to come close to the legendary 1983 draft that produced 3 HOFers (Elway, Kelly, Marino) plus a couple of other solid starters. Allen and Lamar are future HOFers, and Baker and even Darnold have become quality starters. For a long time, I thought that the 2004 QB class was 2nd best with Eli, Rivers, and Roethlisberger likely future HOFers, too, but none of these three were ever close to Allen and Lamar. What Allen and Lamar have done and do on the field is simply beyond what even the greats of 1983 ever did. They've changed the game with some help from their nemesis, Mahomes (QB class of 2017). Teams are now looking for great passers who can also run like RBs first rather than dismissing them. While the era of the QB who ran only under duress was fading away for couple of decades, Allen and Lamar made them extinct. Tom Brady was probably the last of the great QBs who rarely ran. Allen has also put to lie the belief that QBs cannot become more accurate passers as pros. In that respect, he's a little better than Lamar IMO because he had to overcome so much more from a mechanics standpoint as well as learning to master his own emotions on the field.

Some people don't let facts influence their agendas. Teams change alot from one season to the next. Starters don't play much in preseason. Both offenses and defenses play vanilla schemes. The coaching staffs make their Week 1 plans as best they can based mostly on last season's performances. That's a recipe for poor play on one or both sides of the ball, which is what we saw from both the Bills and the Ravens on Sunday night ... and the Jests and Steelers among others. Don't you know that McDermott is so bad at everything that even McDaniel is better ... he just doesn't have the right QB? /sarcasm off

Over on TheGangGreen.com, many Jests fans are expecting their boys to get steamrolled by the Bills: TheGangGreen

Only in your very special universe, not in the real world.

Somebody upthread wrote that he thought the Bills were in the Ravens' heads. I don't think that it's the Bills in the Ravens' heads; it's the Ravens in their own heads, including Harbaugh's. In critical games against good teams, especially in the playoffs, the Ravens seem to be their own worst enemy. Lamar fumbles and/or throws interceptions. Reliable veteran receivers drop what should be easy catches. Henry, who hardly ever fumbles, fumbles. Harbaugh, who's actually a great coach, makes questionable play calls that give their opponents second or even third chances.

This is how I look at it, too. Two things to keep in mind about week 1 defenses: NFL defenses are tailored to specific opponents but in Week 1 defenses are working off last season's offenses, which may have changed significantly with changes in coaching and personnel. Most NFL teams play their starters relatively few snaps in pre-season, so veteran defenders don't play too much, and starting units may hardly play together at all. Years ago, it was always said that the defenses tended to be ahead of the offenses early in the season. I think this has reversed in modern NFL because the defenses are so much more sophisticated than they were even a decade ago that it takes defenses more playing time to get up to speed than they get in preseason. I also don't think that the Bills are going to face a tougher offense than the Ravens' this regular season. The Ravens can easily have the best running game in the NFL paired with a top five passing game led by a QB who can also run like a RB. Even teams like the Eagles don't present quite the challenge of the Ravens. If the Bills defense fails against a team like the Jests, then it's time to start worrying, but this week, enjoy the win.

Wide Right. Music City Miracle. 13 Seconds.

Colts up 16-0 over Fish. Giants got stopped on 4th and goal but get new downs with a defensive penalty.

Bryce Young certainly improved after his benching last season, so it's very possible for him to make another big jump this season, too. I think the Panthers needed to improve their defense, and if they've done that, they could be in the mix to make the playoffs if Tampa stumbles.

Why the hate for Shedeur Sanders? Did he ask for all the media speculation about him going #1 in the draft? I think he's dealt with the reality very well. Hate on his dad if you've got to hate. If the coaching staff and FO listen to fans, then they deserve to be fired.

If you feel this way, why do you bother posting on TSW, Nostradamus? I think this game's implication for the Bills is that it sets the Chiefs behind all the other contenders in the AFC and in the AFCW in particular. The Chiefs are going to be hurting for the next 5-6 weeks at WR because of Rice's suspension and Worthy's injury. Poor OL play hampered the Chiefs' passing game last year, and even if they've added some young talent, it's going to take time for the youngsters to get their feet. The Chiefs next two opponents are the Eagles and Ravens. They could start 0-3, and only 4 teams (about 2.5%-2.7%) have made the playoffs after starting 0-3 since 1990. Since 1990, 25% of teams starting 1-2 have made the playoffs. If the Broncos and/or Chargers can capitalize on KC's early weaknesses and tough schedule, the Chiefs could be down 2 games to one or both before the halfway mark of the season. That might be enough to put them scrambling for a WC slot rather than for the division. Wild card teams can't get home field unless they face another WC team.

I'm going to enjoy watching Red Zone today. Steelers vs Jests is Rodgers vs Fields in Met Life. I have NFL Gameday Morning on. They are really trying to talk up Fields. IMO, the only reason anybody cares about Fields is because he was such a high draft pick. Mariucci (I think) was talking about how Fields has improved every year. Unfortunately, that improvement hasn't been significant enough to make Fields a good QB. It's likely to be raining during at least the first half which I think favors Pitt. I think the Stillers win because they're simply a better team than the J-E-S-T-S. I'm most interested in Fishies vs Colts at Lucas Oil, Titans vs Broncos in Mile High and Giants vs Commanders in Northwest in Landover. I want to see how Sam Darnold and Geno Smith look with new teams, and get a look at JJ McCarthy. Cleveland's DL vs Cinci's OL seems likely to determine the Brownies' fate in this game. If Garrett and Co can get after Burrow, they have a chance. Last year that Bengals' OL was pretty shaky, and they didn't do much to improve it. Especially with the game in Met Life!

So, maybe Tyreek would have gone in the 3rd or 4th round. Worthy isn't another Tyreek. He's just a small fast WR. The problems the Chiefs had with their OL probably limited their ability to throw downfield as much any lack of downfield threats, so I think that probably affected Worthy's yards per catch. Mahomes frequently didn't have time to let long downfield plays develop. That crappy OL play really bit the Chiefs in the arse in the SB because the Eagles D didn't give Mahomes to hit short passes until the game was out of reach.

Tyreek was a fifth round pick. Day three is where small but fast guys tend to go. Big but fast guys are much harder to find, which is why they tend to go Day 1 or Day2. If Mahomes had had better protection last February, the Chiefs might have had their "threepeat" but they didn't, and all of Worthy's fancy SB stats were meaningless.

They didn't have "the luxury of drafting a player with a limited skillset" in the first round. They needed another every down WR plus a better OT than they had as well some youth on their DL. They were desperate to add another speed demon like Tyreek, so they were willing to overlook Worthy's negatives to get that speed.