Avisan

Poyer got pretty blatantly blocked in the back there

Hilarious AND a fantastic reminder of how great Gladys Knight is. What a legend.

This board dramatically underrates Rousseau because he's not a sack monster, ignoring that expected sack monsters don't make it out of the first 15 picks. Dude is a beast against the run and does all the dirty work while being an adequate sack guy. He's an extremely solid pick for his draft slot.

I love Mack Hollins. Wish we had kept him, and think it was a mistake not to re-sign him for what NE offered. That being said, the talent level is higher this year-- the execution isn't. Largely that falls on coaching imo, but drop-offs in effort and/or comfort among players will do that, too. God, do I miss Mack though. Amazing locker room guy, and a fantastic example of making a career out of doing the dirty work.

There isn't a drop in receiving talent surrounding Allen relative to last year. If anything, it was better when factoring in a relatively healthy Kincaid up until now.

I blame him. If he were putting in full effort he could be a nightmare to play against. Last season pre-injury he was blocking like a monster and calling some endzone shots etc. A big physical guy can be tough to line up against even if he isn't a separator if he beats the heck out of you on every run rep and forces you to be on his hip on every single pass play. He could be very valuable and productive while he works on his route-running. Instead we have this.

He didn't get a giant contract. Elite pass rushers get over double what he makes. He's our best-rated D-limeman almost every week because he excels at the dirty work.

Rousseau is legit a good player and worth the money, he grades out consistently well every week. Just isn't an elite pass rusher, and those guys make WAY more money at his age.

It's hilarious to me that people argue that a year where we lost in the divisional round was closer to a SB than last year, where we narrowly lost a the AFCCG in which the refs were actively screwing us over on spots repeatedly.

The two are inextricably linked, though? Josh taking up an extra ~18% more of the cap than he did on his rookie deal impacts which other pieces can be added to the team. When we make an "all-in" move like the Von Miller signing, it really hurts us when an injury derails that move in part because 20% of our cap is already dedicated to Josh. If we went all-in on a true elite receiver, for example, that's a 40+ mil/year cap hit. An injury to that player would make fielding an elite team really difficult, especially if it cost us draft capital to acquire them. It's a balancing act.

Welcome to being a competitive team. We pay Allen close to 20% of our cap space, and Beane tries to make the roster as good as possible each season without truly mortgaging the future. We're always going to be right up against the cap, because if we aren't, we're not trying hard enough.

Man, awful break for the kid. He looked like he had real promise. Football is a brutal sport.

We gotta stop defining games we win by TD+ as "barely won" on this board. Hail Marys have a very low success rate, and surviving two of them is going to happen 95+% of the time. Other teams are often going to have chances to not just roll over and die, that's just how the league is.

He was fine? A couple of good catches and some great blocks. Key role player in a top 5 offense is not an "embarrassment", even if it's less than what we hoped for at this point

Y'all need therapy, my god You'd think this game was a blowout so far

If fan polls on TBD ever influence how a OBD employee seriously feels about their job performance, that person needs to be fired immediately

He literally doesn't even think about "us", as well he shouldn't

Yeah, the goalposts do seem to shift constantly. Posters want Allen paid obviously, also a top O-line, and big-name receivers, AND an elite defense (since when our defense is merely average it's a travesty), and also we need to draft elite talents while drafting in the last 8 picks of the round every year, or trade for them with similarly devalued draft picks, etc. Like the one coherent criticism you can make of this team is that it favors consistency via mid-range contracts to maintain depth and continuity vs. cap-managed peaks and troughs to boost odds in specific "all-in" years.

Using this play is such a farce. Allen did not "hang in the pocket", he felt pressure immediately and lost his throwing platform against zone with a shadow on Coleman. The defense was able to keep receivers in front of them with 3v5 coverage and no threat of an Allen scramble, and at no point was Allen able to get into a position where a receiver could slip open and be spotted and delivered to by Allen. Allen may have been definitionally within the pocket but he's focused on evading the rush for ~3 of those 4.35 seconds, the play is already broken at that point. Good defensive playcall and excellent execution, even an elite receiver doesn't help us here unless Josh releases the ball immediately after the snap.

All solid observations. I do want to note-- he has to learn to be comfortable in the pocket to maintain his status as an elite QB into his 30s. It needs to become his game. When Manning makes remarks about Josh needing to learn how to play "boring football", it's because it's the only way to stay elite as your body slows down from age and mileage in the NFL. Feel the pocket, make plays within it, and step up through the gaps in the rush to hit players like he did to Hawes, week in and week out. It's the only way to stay elite.

Vrabel is a good coach. McDermott is a good coach. The idea that Vrabel >>> McDermott is really bizarre, we kicked ourselves in the nads repeatedly vs. the Patriots and still only lost by three points. People put Allen on an insane pedestal where the assumption is that he is always the best QB in a given game and it's only bad coaching that ever holds back his performance. Allen is elite and thoroughly earned his MVP award, but he's absolutely mortal and doesn't have the non-physical mastery of the game that Brees/Manning/Brady did. And vs. the Patriots he was not the best QB on the field that day. And we lost by three. This fanbase is embarrassingly fatalistic sometimes. Sports has ups and downs. If it didn't, it would be boring and nobody would pay attention.

Bruh Allen is not a true deep ball merchant, he really struggles with touch and placement down the sideline He can hit the deep middle with the best of them but outside the numbers he's iffy

Got to sit down and watch the game tonight-- on this play Allen is no longer looking downfield after like 1.5s and the defense is in zone w/ a man on Coleman. The DL has both pressure and contain on Allen so the secondary doesn't have to worry about the possibility of Allen running, and Allen isn't able to get anywhere close to a viable throwing position so none of the receivers are able to slip into the open. No clue what you would expect receivers to do on this one, the play is already broken by the time they would be coming out of their breaks etc. and everyone is moving accordingly.

By the numbers Groot has had a very good season, his game log stats aren't eye-popping but he's a very effective overall player. In the trenches, only elite pass rushers ever really have eye-popping stats.

Is it a massive failure? They've been a garbage team for a few seasons accumulating high draft picks. They have a cupcake schedule, a currently high-performing QB, and a good coaching staff. If we drop the division to them this year, meh, it happens. If we get consistently overtaken and/or start missing the playoffs, sure, you can talk "failure". It's pure entitlement to think no other divisional team is allowed to catch up, though.