SoTier

In previous years, the Bills lacked a good short yardage running game that could enable them to move the sticks on 3rd or 4th and 1 or score a TD from the 3 yard line. Allen was the only player who was consistently successful running in short yardage situations. Now, the Bills have 3 RBs who can pick up that 2 yards on third down or score a TD from the 5. That's priceless in the playoffs when all the teams are solid in all phases.

McDermott, Babich, and Brady outcoached Reid, Spagnulo, and Nagy on Sunday. The defense held Mahomes to 198 yards passing plus they intercepted him twice, sacked him twice I think but pressured him a lot more. They did that by maintaining their rush lanes and keeping Mahomes in the pocket. The offense couldn't run a lot between the twenties, but Cook ran for 2 TDs in goal to go situations. Receivers didn't drop many passes, and Cooper's two were both slick. I'll take it, especially against the Chiefs.

Hollins is one of those unsung but very useful players every team needs. I wonder where all the posters who were whining about the Bills signing him have gone.

Fans be fans. At least the Chiefs fans have a real basis for their expectations, quite unlike the fans of a certain NJ-based team who spun Super Bowl dreams based on the acquisition of an old QB and some old OLers.

KC's D is really tough against the run, so I wasn't surprised that the running game didn't do much. OTOH, they did a good job in the red zone, and that translates into more TDs than FGs. On Cook's second TD, they opened a huge hole for him straight to the EZ.

I don't think that's what most fans in this thread are doing at all. I think that the OP was a bit over the top with his choice of the word "irrefutable" but he or she never went beyond claiming that with a healthy defense the Bills would have beaten KC in last year's playoffs. If beating the reigning SB champions and ending their 15 game winning streak while extending their own winning streak isn't a reason for happy Bills fans to spin SB fantasies, what would be, especially since the Bills are 9-2 themselves and almost guaranteed a home playoff game? If you can't embrace optimism for the Bills' chances, that's okay, but what's the point of complaining about others enjoying themselves?

The worst thing that happened to the Giants wasn't winning a playoff game. It was Daniel Jones' playing well enough to look like he could become a decent NFL starting QB. Were both Schoen and Daboll fooled or did ownership make the decision to keep him over their objections? Maybe everyone on the Giants brain trust mistakenly supported keeping Jones. I think if both Schoen and Daboll are retained, it would be an indicator that ownership had had significant input into keeping him.

What does it matter if fans get excited over a win over the Chiefs in November and speculate that maybe things would have been different in previous years if the team had been healthy ... and why do you fear that???

Nobody is rewriting history. In the 2023 divisional round, they lost to a KC team that got back key players from injury for the game because of a missed FG in the closing seconds despite fielding a so undermanned defense that they had to start a MLB called out of retirement -- and that MLB had been a marginal player even in his prime. As for Mahomes not being at his best yesterday, well, maybe that was because of the Bills defense. The Bills pass rush continually pressured Mahomes. He threw INTs on his first and last passes of the game because of that pressure -- and the Bills' determined efforts to keep him in the pocket -- a defense led by Bernard. Oh, yeah, and the Bills put up 30 points on the vaunted Chiefs defense that hadn't given up more than 28 points in nine games with an offensive unit missing OLer Brown, WR Coleman, and TE Kincaid. Yesterday, the Bills were better prepared and better coached than the Chiefs, and they were the better team. If the Bills come into the playoffs with a reasonably healthy roster, they are certainly capable of turning Mahomes and Company into a pumpkin.

A Jest loss makes even a Bills loss feel a little better --- and a Jest loss after the Bills smack the Chiefs is heavenly!!!! They've had a lot of injuries to key players on both sides of the ball, and their backups don't seem to step up as well as the backups on some other talented teams -- like the backups for the Bills and Chiefs. I don't pretend to have a solid idea of why that is, however.

The Bears scored their first offensive TD in about 3 games.

Lions score again. The Jests just got their first first down ... in the last minute of the first half!

Puka Nacua caught a TD pass but he's really in pain on the side line.

The Bills Stillers WC game last year probably cost the Bills the divisional game ... they lost 2 or 3 defenders in that game IIRC. I think he's a lot like Gabe Davis ... he's looks great when he catches the ball but he drops the ball more than you'd like.

Jests held the Colts to a FG. Lions are mauling the Jags.

Stillers. They're my favorite team after the Bills. He's missed 2 in today's game.

Did you do a poll to support your claim that "most" define "a dynasty has to include 3 Super Bowl wins within a 4-7 yr span"? A dynasty in sports is simply a team that dominates for a prolonged period of time. What constitutes "domination" and "prolong period of time" is open to discussion. Is winning a championship a requirement? Yes. Is winning multiple Super Bowls within a specified time period a a requirement? I'm not sure. Is a team that strings together 3 Super Bowl wins in 5 years but fails to make the playoffs for a decade before and after its SB run a "dynasty" while a team that wins a Super Bowl ever 3 years over 10 years with playoff wins in all of those non-SB seasons isn't? I can't accept having a short, arbitrary time limit on SB wins, primarily because of the NFL's win-or-go home playoff format subjects teams to so much randomness. I don't disagree that dynasties remain rare. I think that creating a dynasty is infinitely more complicated in today's free agency/salary cap era than in the past, but not impossible. The Pats and Chiefs have demonstrated that. OTOH, there's no guarantee that another team will take up the torch from either of those two teams. I think that the actual talent levels between the best and worst teams isn't very large today because of FA and the salary cap. I've seen estimates of the differences being like 15%. The real differences are in the quality of the FO management and the coaching staff. To create a dynasty, a team has to put together the right combination of management, coaching, and players, and that's really, really hard to do when promising talents are being plucked from the FOs and coaching staffs of winning teams at the same time as the player rosters are in continually flux because of FA and salary cap considerations.

I think the old saw, "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear", applies to Daboll and Jones. Some guys have it, and some guys don't. The best QB coach ever couldn't make Jones a decent NFL starter. That Daboll got Jones to look like a "reasonable facsimile" of a good NFL QB is amazing given Jones lack of talent.

Lighten up, guys! GFMB is simply entertainment: 90% fluff.

It's his job. He's an actor turned sports "personality".

IIRC the Giants picking Jones caused a lot of questions at the time he was drafted. I think he had some connection to Eli and possibly to the Mara family, and some analysts believed that connection resulted in his selection.

Jests fans and the NY media have been spinning Super Bowl dreams based on total fantasy since they won their SB back in 1969.

Why do you hate Shadeur so much that you'd consign him to certain failure with the Jests?

Seriously, dude. If Bishop were even close to playing the position as well as Hamlin, he would be playing at least occasionally. Instead, he's riding the pine except for ST. You may not value regular season wins or playoff seedings but I guarantee that that's not McDermott's -- nor any NFL HC -- mindset. Deal with it.

Hopefully, KC will use up its quota of good bounces soon. There is no difficult decision for Pegula to make. He's not firing McDermott, and few if any season ticket holders are going to demand that he do that. Many season ticket holders have decades of attending Bills games when winning seasons were few and far between and the Bills even getting to the playoffs seemed pipe dreams. For long time fans who remember Hank Bullough, Dick Jauron and Rex Ryan, McDermott is untouchable, especially this season when the consensus was that the Bills were going to "take a step back" because of so many roster losses. The Lions are owned by the Ford family (of the Ford automobile fortune). The Lions' problems were never related to how the Fords' wealth stacked up to many of the new billionaire owners. In 2020, Sheila Ford Hamp took control of the team from her mother, Martha Firestone Ford, and brought in the new administration and philosophy. She apparently got it right the first time out.