elijah

Just finished going back and watching the all-22 and figured I’d share some of the things I came away with. I’m sure I’m not the only one here that watches the all-22 so throw your own takes in here as well.. FIRST HALF: - OFFENSE - Get Cody Ford off the damn field, or atleast slide him inside too guard. He’s clearly not one of the best five offensive lineman on this team, so if we’re going too to force snaps down his throat then atleast move him to guard where we can hide him as a liability. He’s too slow to hang with the speed of the pass rushers at this level. - Daboll has to recognize the pressure the Patriots are bringing, recognize our offensive line is strong at run blocking and transfer over to the power game. Let Josh build up slowly. This won’t be a problem against every team, but when you’re playing the Bill Belichick led Patriots, you’ve got too expect this. I’ve been impressed throughout the season on Josh’s ability to play in the five wide set, but Belichick was abusing our offensive line and bringing all sorts of pressure. Early in the game we were getting beat repeatedly in our pass blocking, Daboll could’ve spared Josh the awful first half he had had Daboll seen to transfer to a heavy set running game. - Josh, already a deer in headlights, got suffocated by the patriots pass rush and he got suffocated fast and early. - Frank still has it. He’s got to continue to get fed the ball. Singletary would’ve been a nice change of pace for the offense this week. - RPO was working very well for us. Brown and Beasley were able to get the separation they needed on the slants. - Josh looked bad. He was inaccurate, he was running when there was no pressure, he was forcing passes and his footwork was hectic. That’s all true. What isn’t true are the sky is falling hot takes saying that it’s time to move on and he’s made no progress as a player. It was a rough start to the game, Belichick brought all sorts of pressure and confused a young second year quarterback with one of the best defenses of the decade. That’s going too happen, Josh is still growing. It was a rough first half, but he’ll be fine. - The biggest concern I have with Josh Allen right now is his ability to connect on the deep ball. Everything else i believe was a product of Belichick and poor offensive line play and it just spiraled from there. The deep ball however has been a consistent issue for Josh this year, rather than just a one game thing. The bonehead decisions are also a problem, but he’s still young and I believe they’ve been happening at a decreasing rate and there’s been improvements so I’m letting them slide for now. - It’s no coincidence that the best two drives of the first half, the last two drives with the field goal and the missed field goal, happened to correlate with better pass blocking and a more accurate and composed Josh Allen. All three of those elements are tied together and will be all season. DEFENSE - The first quarter was the best quarter of football the defensive line has played all season. - Ed Oliver made a difference and made a difference fast. - Secondary was playing phenomenal in man coverage. - Micah had an unusual blunder for himself on a third down on the touchdown drive for the Pats. He got caught watching Brady too much and sank to the middle of the field leaving James White open in his zone. - Tremaine Edmunds was shedding blocks better and finally playing with a more aggressive pursuit of the ball. - Tackling is a problem for this defense and it has been all year. One of their only problems, but one that can’t be overlooked and needs to be fixed. The few times that the Patriots actually drove the field on us are easily accredited to poor arm tackles and missed tackles - aside from a Micah Hyde blunder mentioned above, and the Tre White DPI on 4th down. There were quite a few times that our players got outwilled and ran through. Very strong game from the D, but it wasn’t all perfect for the defense. - Blocked punt is just pure awful. Clearly and obviously outnumbered in the pressure they’re bringing. Our gunners were uncovered and they just brought the house. It was ugly. SECOND HALF - OFFENSE - Much more efficient game plan to start the half. Quick passes put less pressure on the offensive line, combined with Belichick oddly backing off a little bit with the pressure that was working before. - TJ Yeldon seemed to really emphasize ball security in his increased playing time. - We need to settle down on Zay Jones. I was at the game live and I allowed the crowd to get too me and found myself falling into all of the hate suddenly for the first time. Zay really didn’t do much wrong in this game and he fell victim to a lot of bad throws coming his way. Zay can still be a productive third receiver and a part of this team down the stretch. However, that being said, I also think it’s time to give up on the hope that he’ll ever live to his second round status or match the talent of fellow classmates like JuJu or Cooper Kupp. Zay isn’t a dead beat like many portray him on this team, but he doesn’t play with second round talent either. - Josh was finding himself and settling into a groove right when he got hurt. The offensive line started holding up a little better and he began to feel more comfortable in the pocket. A quicker gameplan and a change of pace with TJ Yeldon we’re helping Josh play a better game after the half. I don’t know if I would be confident enough to say that we win that game with Josh playing all the way through, but I know I wouldn’t have been surprised. His footwork got more comfortable in the second, his accuracy improved and he looked more poised. We’ve seen Josh lead a comeback once or twice before as well. - Matt Barkley left A LOT of passes on that field. I have confidence to win with him, especially with the right gameplan and this defense, but he’s not the world beating, cinderella story, backup QB that a lot of fans think we have. - The fumble late in the 4th quarter from Barkley was a strip sack from Van Noy, Cody Ford’s assignment. Get Ford off the football field. - DEFENSE - After a phenomenal first half, Tre Edmunds somehow managed to step uo his game even more in the second. Edmunds was an absolute freak on the field. He was covering ground fast and hitting holes hard, making incredible fundamental tackles one after another. He was playing with power and aggression and the game finally seemed to slow down for him. - For whatever it’s worth, up by 6 with 4 minutes left and no timeouts for the Bills, the Patriots threw the ball twice in a three down set rather than running the clock down. FINAL THOUGHTS AND TAKEWAYS Some of these may be a bit redundant of things I may have touched on above but this is what I came away with after watching the all-22. - Get Cody Ford off of the field. There’s no reason for Ford to be on the field, especially at right tackle. He’s an absolute liability and he has no business trying to keep up with speed rushers around the edge. Pitiful performance. Let him develop in practice, but he has no reason to be on the field during a game as of right now. - TJ Yeldon, with or without Devin Singletary, needs more snaps in the passing game. He was a strong change of pace for us in the second half and made quite a few big plays. It was a shame that he had a few fumble against the Bengals, but he’s better than that and he’s a real weapon in the passing game. - Tremaine Edmunds is a star in the making. End of story. No ifs, ands or buts, Edmunds will be great one day and he certainly was on Sunday. - Josh Allen had a horrible first half. He had no composure and we saw him revert to bad habits. Terrible footwork, poor accuracy, running at the first sense of pressure and worst of all, he had no poise. It was a tail of two halves though, and I’m not sure he deserves the amount of doubt he’s getting. The amount of criticism? That’s a different story, he played an awful game and need to be held accountable. The amount of doubt? Certainly not. With a better game plan and stronger pass blocking, Allen was slowly starting to pull it together in the second half. He was starting to get the ball out faster and get it out with accuracy. I’m not sure he completes the comeback, but we had a better chance with him on the field than without him. The sky isn’t falling. One bad half doesn’t need to ruin what’s otherwise been an impressive amount of development from the rest of his season. However, I am truly concerned about the deep accuracy. - This defense is top 3 in the NFL. The pass rush took a huge step forward and the secondary played lights out. Ed Oliver truly made his presence felt that game and so did Tremaine Edmunds. - Believe it or not, the Patriots struggled with us. Brady was inconsistent and made throws that he normally doesn’t make. The rush defense held their backfield intact. Daboll made successful adjustments at halftime that were working very well until Allen got hurt. This team is fine, and this team is legitimate. It was a poor showing against the best time in the NFL, and even with that poor showing, they still struggled against us. - I have confidence in Matt Barkley as a game manager. We can win with him if our defense is stout and our gameplan is strong. I think the best way to support Barkley is something very similar to what we saw in the Steelers game last night. Give him lots of protection with very fast and short throws and let everyone else on the field do the work. He’s not as strong of a backup as a lot of people seem to think he is. He had a lot of inaccurate throws in his time on the field.

Crowd not loud enough is just absurd. Being at the game, that was the loudest crowd I’ve ever been in in that stadium. Even when we were down 13-0 the crowd still didn’t get quiet.

I headed to the stadium around 12:20 coming from the RV lot, stopped to grab a little food and drink, and made it to my seats just before kickoff. Busier game I would imagine, if that’s possible, I would head in from the tailgate sometime between 12-12:15 EDIT: Also be sure to account for the mobile tickets only. Since everyone was trying to load them at the gate, I foolishly didn’t load ahead of time and had to wait about 4 or 5 minutes next to the ticket scanner for them too load.

I have zero clue what to do offensively against this team. You open us Josh, and Belichick is going to have a heyday against him. You try and run the ball and Brady is going too outscore you, thankfully I’m not a coach. However, defensively there’s two or three things I want to see. First, while we’re not a heavy blitzing team, I think you need to constantly be sending pressure up the middle. Bring stunts, twists, disguised linebacker blitz’s, and bring them often. I think we should constantly be bringing two or three players through the A gaps. Second, this is part of the disguised blitzes. We’ve seen McDermott and Frazier like to drop our defensive line into coverage from time to time. I think we need a lot of that this game. Every time we bring a linebacker on a blitz, drop back one of our defensive lineman into coverage. It’s not going to confuse Brady, but if we do it well enough it’ll atleast throw him off of his rhythm a little. Third, only one solo high safety. Keep everyone else on the defense within ~7-8 yards of the line of scrimmage and play the game like it’s a red zone defense all game. Brady isn’t slowing down, but if anything is, it’s the strength in his arm. We have a pro bowl safety in Micah Hyde, let him roam the field lined up 15-20 yards off the ball every play and hope he takes care of the deep threat. The last time the Patriots played us, they won by running the ball right at us, right down our throat. They beat the rest of the league with their quick passing game. Play high intensity, fast defense and play to the sticks on every down. If they beat us by long shots in a different style game than their usual, then so be it. But we know how they succeed and we know how they win, now we got to sell out to stop it.

One of my few peeves of Brandon Beane was the amount of injury risk we took this year in free agency. Normally Beane was adding players with a clean injury slate but this offseason adding John Brown, Mitch Morse and Tyler Kroft among others was a little surprising too me. That being said, Kroft is the only one to miss regular season time thus far and the rest are all performing pretty well and helping the team out. Can’t criticize too much when it’s turning out this well.

I didn’t know that you couldn’t bring in water. Kind of hilariously ironic with all of the other attempts to tune down the drinking.

If I can take away character concerns, it has to be Tyreek Hill. That speed on the edge with Josh Allen’s cannon ? But reality is reality and the character of Tyreek Hill is questionable, so give me Khalil Mack. The offense will continue to grow on its own, give this defense Khalil Mack and it’s an all-decade defense. Would also take Zeke into consideration, the play action that he would open up for Josh Allen would be incredible.

I don’t understand how people think every player that hits the trade block would be a fit for us. Doesn’t fit the culture or process that McD preaches, and our primary defense is a zone coverage defense. Ramsey wants out of jacksonville because they play too much zone.

Baker had a tough outing tonight, helping Josh’s case here

I understand the sentiment but I’m going too have to disagree, I’m not ready to put Josh above them just yet. Rivers may not look good but he’s looked good for the past 14 years, we can’t win put Josh ahead of him just yet after two weeks. Baker may be ready to implode, but he hasn’t imploded yet and until he does, he’s unfortunately better than Josh. This is coming from someone who was vehemently against Baker on draft day. And Watson finding a way to come up short, while he isn’t winning every game he plays in, he just led an amazing comeback drive in 2 plays that he would’ve won if not for Brees on the other side of the ball, and he’s 12-6 since his rookie season. Also not a huge Watson guy, but he’s doing better than Josh as of right now.

You’re already ready to put Josh ahead of Rivers, Baker and Watson? I’m not saying you’re wrong, and I really want too do the same, but I just can’t justify it for myself. What’s your reasoning?

Between Big Ben being out for the season and seeing someone on the board say that Josh Allen was a top 3 QB in the AFC, it got me thinking where does Josh rank in the AFC? Being that six teams make the playoffs, being a top six quarterback is what is ringing important to me (in this moment, obviously you’ll want better as his career goes on). After ranking the quarterback’s, I find Josh sitting just outside of the top 6, and that’s even with a little Buffalo bias in ranking them. TIER ONE - Elite 1. Mahomes, 2. Brady TIER TWO - Franchise Starters 3. Rivers, 4. Baker, 5. Watson TIER THREE - Jury’s Out 6. Lamar, 7. Josh, 8. Dalton, 9. Carr, 10. Mariota, 11. Darnold, 12. Flacco TIER FOUR - ??? 13. Brissett, 14. Minshew, 15. Rudolph, 16. Rosen The five in the top two tiers are undeniably better than Josh Allen right now. As per the year’s end, who knows, a poor year from Baker and Watson and real progression from Josh could slide him ahead of them two. But to call him a top five quarterback in the AFC isn’t much more than crazy talk right now. But the real question, is it reasonable to rank Josh above the quarterback’s that I have him above? Would you put him above Lamar Jackson? There’s arguments to be made to put Derek Carr and Andy Dalton above Josh Allen, but with his first two performances this year Josh is making himself a case. While he’s not making pin-point, Drew Brees level throws, Josh has taken a major step forward in his passing game and that shouldn’t be debated. There’s some off-target throws like the deep pass to Brown and the across endzone throw to Zay Jones, but there’s also incredible throws like the two dimes that he made on the run. He had a rough game against the Jets with his turnovers, but I’ve albeit attributed that too bad ball luck. He was leading drives in those games and he was throwing with much improved short accuracy. The balls aren’t perfect, but he’s doing a great job of putting them within the receivers catch radius and at the end of the day that’s all you need to do. It goes much much further than that too. One thing that he’s had since returning from the injury last year is his composure and control of the game. He’s been a baller if nothing else. He goes into the game determined to win and often times it seems he’s playing his best ball in the fourth quarter. Then you’ve got to consider the fact that the athleticism too his game no longer seems to be sporadic. Last year Allen would run too early against the pressure or just look too run before keeping his eyes downfield. This year it really seems like he’s taken care of his athleticism and is only running when necessary. His pocket movement has been phenomenal, and he has kept his eyes downfield looking to make plays. The checkdowns are a huge improvement from last year. I find myself murmuring good play under my breath multiple times a game when no one’s open and Josh simply throws it out of bounds or at his receivers feet instead of making a bonehead decision - which he still does by the way, the ill-fated passes are still a part of his game even though he is making progress. With the upgrade in talent around Allen and his progression, I think by the end of the year you may be able to easily call him a top six quarterback in the AFC, but where do you have him at right now?

This year is a touch early too cut Star and we’d still incur a good bit of dead cap. However if his snaps continue to decline and he becomes blatantly useless, the Bills can cut him at the conclusion of the 2020 season (next year) and only bring on $5.2M in dead cap and void the last two years of his contract. Looking a little far into the future right now, but this scenario would not surprise me one bit as of right now.

Great topic very interesting, I wonder how it compares to the rest of the league.

Yards per pass sent out a good tweet about it. He said with the Dolphins on a full out tank, a week one victory would essentially mean we have to go 7-6 throughout the rest of the season to make the playoffs because of two surefire wins against the Dolphins. It makes sense and I think it’s a good point, but hard to just count wins like that.

I think it also gains value in the fact that it’s a poll dedicated to one single question based on the wins rather than being spread out through multiple threads. You can open this and see a true consensus rather than guessing at it based on the tone in a few different threads, one maybe with a more pessimistic outlook and another with a more optimistic outlook. There’s also a lot of members on the board that tend to surf and don’t add posts all too often that could simply vote in this and add a little more voice than they usually do. Just trying to to get a more complete look at what the board thinks.

Wow we made it 4 posts before the “use the search function!” or “IT’S RIGHT ON THE 7TH PAGE HAVEN’T YOU STALKED THE BOARD YET!” brigade. Maybe it has been discussed, but now here’s a poll dedicated specifically to the topic at a time where we’ll have the best understanding of the team until the regular season. People’s opinions can change since they last discussed it, I don’t see the harm in this getting it’s own thread and poll right now.

The meaningful preseason games are over - hopefully the injuries that come with them too - and it seems that the Clowney to Buffalo talk was just smoke from smaller sources all along. That being said, we should all have a feel for most of the final 53 and should certainly have a feel for the more important components of the final 53. How are we feeling with a week and a half to go until the regular season? Personally, I’m looking at the 8-8 to 9-7 category. I think we’re going to be a very strong playoff contender that impresses across the league but just can’t pull it off in the end. A stout defense that helps the offense pull off multiple 2+ possession wins, but a progressing offense that isn’t just quite there yet and sees us drop a fair share of very close games. We’ve made a lot of additions in the off-season, but it was a lot of average. It’s an average team all around the board, they could see a playoff appearance if McDermott continues to grow in what I think has already been an impressive coaching career or if Josh takes a big step forward. However at the end of the day I see us falling just short but having a strong enough season to leave a lot of optimism heading into 2020 as a team seen as a true breakout candidate. What say Two Bills Drive?

I don’t see Shady returning to elite form, but I think the improved offensive line will help him bounce back to around 800 rushing yards and 6 rushing touchdowns on about 4 per carry. While he doesn’t have the top end speed, he still displayed the agility that he makes his living on last year. Including receiving yards makes this easy to vote over. For rushing only, over/under 750 makes sense for the number.

I would love to add Trent to the offensive line but I don’t think McBeane see a spot for Williams. It’s early in training camp, but seems to me that they believe in Dawkins and Ford as our offensive tackles. It would be very easy to slide Ford to guard and insert Nsehke at right tackle, but they haven’t even tinkered with the idea yet and this speaks to me. I like the idea idea and would do it myself, but bottom line it seems that Ford and Dawkins are the offensive tackles this year and they may be all but set on that. If McBeane believe in Ford and Dawkins then there’s no reason to waste a future third or fourth round pick on Williams. We’ve got a new regime and new scouts now, those later picks have more value to us than they used too.

I live about 5 minutes from the stadium. I’m genuinely shocked by this thread with how few people are from Buffalo. Not in a negative way, just didn’t realize how spread out the members are.

I’m surprised by this take. In my opinion, Chris Brown is the best local media talent that Buffalo has and the only one that I could ever see making it to a national level. The rest of the Bills Beat reporters are stuck in amateur hour. Pretty large gap between Brown and the rest in my eyes. Brown is the the only one to handle things with a professional tone and a front office type of outlook. Unfortunately the rest of the media are either cynical fans that need to move on to another job for their own happiness, or overly optimistic guys that don’t seem to understand the true in’s and out’s of the sport.

Of all the “insert player that’s expendable because of injury/cap/competition,” players that are about to start popping up over the next few months, this may be one of, if not my favorite. The very early and unbacked best offensive line or top 10 offensive line talk in the league would start to show some actual potential.

In regards to this and the poll, with the prices listed in the OP, I would be fond of both Clowney and Rudolph. However, with what I think it would take to acquire Clowney — atleast a 1st and a 3rd — I’d rather trust what seems to be a revamped scouting department with that capital than part with the draft picks. However, that’s not to say I would be disappointed if we went out and traded for Clowney, I would buy into the excitement. I just personally as a GM would not advocate that trade.

I would think the compensation for Clowney would have to be greater than this. For comparison sake, Frank Clark just got the Seahawks a 1st, 2nd and swap of 3rds. I would think that Clowney would be atleast as valuable as Clark if not more valuable.