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I'll try to avoid some game specific complaints for you NewEra. The bills have a great team in a league of some of the best athletes in the world. They are not lucking into wins and they will be favored in most games for up foreseeable future. The old adage "it's hard to win in the NFL" is entirely true. To win it all in a single elimination format you need great players, a great team, good coaching, and a bit of luck. Some of the best teams the NFL has had never won a Superbowl. A reasonable expectation as a fan is to have a shot every year. For most teams this means making it to the championship game and seeing what happens. We had the misfortune of the AFC championship happening in week 2 of the playoffs this year. I enjoyed watching and following the Bills more this season than at any point in my life. The early 90's we're fun, but as a kid you didn't appreciate the game in the same way. I'm with the players. Disappointed because they had a great team this year and had a good shot. I'd take all the same players and coaches next year with no changes if it were possible to ignore aging and contract situations. No team has 53 players that are All-stars at their position. If you look at the team as a whole you try to get to a "net sum" that's greater than the competition. We're there. The specifics of this season or game have several areas where we could have been better. We'll pick up some there and get new weaknesses somewhere else. Prepare yourself for it so it's not so traumatic for you. Prepare yourself for some roster and coaching turnover. And last, prepare yourself for several years of awesome football with us in the top tier of teams.

In Buffalo it seemed like Hackett was a problem, was pulled up to NFL by marrone, and should go back to college. By the time the rumor mill told us inner workings in Buf after marrone left and he did what he did in Jacksonville it seemed like he might not have been the problem for us at all. The ringing endorsements coming out of GB essentially ensured that he'd get a chance. Also, did anyone else not know that he was on the offensive coaching staff for the Bills for 2 years in 08-09 before Marrone ever got here?

Given McD's response on the kick and execution I wouldn't be surprised that he wanted to kick it differently. It didn't look the like execution was Bass, hence it making sense that somewhere between McD and Bass was a communication problem. The rest seems to be pure speculation.

Working to keep Haack off the field. Seeing if we can go with no punter next year and open up a spot for duke

"a buffalo barrage"

I tried to check the pats GameDay thread but their site is not playoff ready

Exactly. I like and agree with the ranking on here as long as it is treated as "draft efficiency of individual picks". As was previously stated, the team/environment specific impact on AV should be minimized in the long run leading to this being a good metric. This leaves you with JGM's chart giving a good assesment of draft efficiency. Ultimately, this really is more an evaluation of college scouting performance than any team building aspect of the GM job. The definition of "drafting well" will vary to most people, but I think it's important to draft effeciently (BPA) balanced with strategically (did you put together a complete squad). Meaning that the best drafter doesn't need to be at the top of this chart, but likely in the top half. The other missing piece in this is that draft picks can be used as trade collateral. It's hard to imagine an easy way of comparing the use of a 5th round pick to acquire a rookie 4 year (JAG) starter vs trading a 5th round pick for an impact veteran that you get 3 good years out of. However, an evaluation of usage of draft capital would ideally try to capture this.

I think the challenge with evaluating this for some people is they expect that drafting well = winning and drafting poorly = losing. Chicago may draft above average but do a poor job in FA and with coaching. Or they may draft well at the individual level but do not draft strategically in a way that moves the team forward (the old position of need vs BPA argument). This seems to be a good metric used in combination with other ways of evaluating a GM's performance, but not necessarily perfect in a vacuum.

About to take flight. Enjoy the rest of the game guys. Looking forward to a landing filled with notifications of bills scores.

9 or 10 quarters with no punts? Anyone know the record?

Assuming we win we play the pats (if they lose) or the winner of raiders/lac (if pats win)

It seems wierd, but I'm fine playing the pats at home. The raiders/chargers could turn it into a shootout that we could lose. I don't see the pats hanging with us unless there is 50+ mph gusts, and even then it looks like we found out how to use motor and 17 in a run heavy game. Go phins.

I feel pretty good about them against the saints, given their quarterback situation. Titans are obviously a bit more of a challenge, but they have a good shot. I wouldn't go as far as calling them winning the next 2, but to think that they'll be playing NE for the playoffs in week 18 seems feasible.

Assuming they have the same record the pats miss the playoffs in every scenario (bc this would imply MIA went 2-0 head to head). Wild card tiebreakers still use division tiebreakers if in same division. Even in the case of 3 or more teams, it still applies division tie breakers first. Source: https://www.nfl.com/standings/tie-breaking-procedures

Agree that it is just an opinion, but at least he actually watches the plays and has some basis. Many of the opinions you find online (specifically a board like this) are off the cuff judgements that view a player out of context on a limited number of plays. A great example of how a fan could mis analyze a play is the run example in the video that highlights Milano and Edmunds complementing each other. In real time I felt like it was another play where Edmunds was credited for another late tackle just chasing the play. After reviewing the camera angles provided here you can see that on that play Edmunds exhibited textbook gap integrity (he rightly skipped the chance to shoot the gap here) and showed outstanding hustle getting to the play after he forced it outside. Regardless of an individual's prior football expertise, an attempt at an unbiased all 22 analysis is far better than I can do in real time and it's much appreciated when people post it here.

It probably had nothing to do with the pressure we had on Newton forcing a bad throw.

NE is playing a base nickel right now and the results looking similar/worse than our performance against colts. Interesting to see what adjustments BB tries to counter with.

That wasn't a drop. Little behind him after the wind moved it and defender knocked it out. Chill guys

I was conflicted on point 3. Cleveland winning would be good to try and math out a path to the #1 seed. However, in terms of playoff probability Baltimore beating browns and bengals gives us a better overall playoff probability. I'm not scared of us playing BAL in the playoffs, even if we have to go there, so I eventually settled on a BAL win being better to knock off CLE.

We currently have better division record than pats. We can win division if we split with them and have same number of losses elsewhere. We can even lose to pats and TB if they lose to Indy it will be the next game w pats that decides the division. I think we are the better team and should win next week, but if we do lose in a well played game it's not like the world is ending.

I didn't see any of this game. Was his 25% completion as bad as it looks on paper?

That was great patience and vision by Allen waiting for Morse to make the hole

45-20 with a def or st touchdown

The run defense in nickel has been decent this year. Coaches underestimates how much the loss of star and Edmunds would mean to our nickel effectiveness.

Picking up some tickets for next week. Anyone have info on the tailgate or sections for the best fans in the world? Same lot near the mall?