DCOrange

Eventually he’ll stop taking all our scorers off the floor at the same time and starting mixing our talent around a bit and that will help but it just isn’t a very talented bunch to begin with.

Another hideous performance. I’ll never understand the people that thought this might be a top 25 team. There just isn’t much talent here and the talent we have doesn’t fit together to form a team.

Swider eventually knocking down the shots we know he usually makes should improve things a lot, but at the end of the day, this team has too many uncorrectable issues to be more than a bubble team IMO. Three years in and Girard still folds against ball pressure and he’s our only ball handler (outside of Torrence who is pretty much unplayable right now). Benny being a complete liability on the offensive end so far has really hurt our upside.

Yes he made it.

I’m hopeful but a part of me wonders if he and Devin Hester split “special teams” votes so that neither one gets in this year.

It doesn’t matter if they actually lead to points for this metric. It matters if they lead to expected points (i.e. how likely a team is to score as a result of the INT). A pick 6 on first down at the goal line would be the worst possible play in this system since it’s essentially a guaranteed 14 point swing. So again, pretty much every Allen INT either took points off the board for us or handed points to the other team (the fact that opponents routinely shot themselves in the foot after the fact doesn’t matter). That is not normal QB play as evidenced by the fact that he’s nearly the worst in the league in this regard. You can argue it’s just bad luck and we’re talking about 10 or so INTs so it’s probably not a meaningful sample size to extrapolate from, but nobody is extrapolating anyways. They’re just saying he’s been nearly the worst in the league in terms of EPA subtracted from his INTs and saying if that improves, it’ll help the team.

It’s specifically the expected points added (and subtracted) via INTs. So throwing an INT when you’re about to score is bad, but throwing an INT that puts the other team in position to score is also bad. In the week 2 blowout against Miami, he got intercepted at our own 25 yard line, instantly putting Miami in scoring position. The INT against Houston gave them the ball at our 11 or 12 yard line. Same deal with the one against Tennessee. His first pick against Jacksonville took at least a field goal if not TD off the board and the 2nd put Jacksonville in field goal range. The INT against the Jets put them in field goal range (though not a gimme at that distance). I don’t think the stats were updated through the Colts game, but if they were, one of his INTs was returned into FG range. Long story short, the only “meaningless” INT he’s had this season in terms of expected points added was his first INT against Indy. All of the others have either taken points off the board for us or almost surely handed points to the other team.

I think that's mostly just fodder for the press. Beane wanted to improve the pass rush because everyone wants a good pass rush and ours was not good.

I do feel like Allen has just been off target more often than he was a year ago, but one flaw in the completion % above expected metric is that you don't really know if it's the QB or the WR. For example, ESPN was running with a graphic showing the comp % above expected in the preseason for the rookie QBs and how Trey Lance was at like -20% or something absurdly low like that (obviously dealing with small sample sizes in the preseason, but I digress). But the biggest factor in that was that his WRs were dropping around 20% of his passes. I can't verify SportRadar's numbers as I believe that's some sort of premium subscription, but those "on-target percentages" that PFF and apparently SportRadar produce are probably better gauges of a QB's accuracy. I'm not sure what limitations there are with SportRadar but I couldn't help but notice that the author chose to cite their number specifically for passes to Diggs while citing a lower quality number for the overall passing; I wonder if SportRadar just doesn't have overall numbers or if the overall numbers wouldn't match the author's argument. At any rate, it was a nice breakdown in that article and certainly gives you a few things to keep an eye on moving forwards. We've pretty much been the least injured team in the league, and by some metrics, are literally the least injured.

He's talking about Australia Rules Football. It isn't soccer. It's where a lot of punters come from nowadays. It's an awesome sport.

If by "true draft busts" we mean it in the sense that you wasted a pick on a guy that should never ever start, it's hard to really point to anything honestly. If we're talking from the broader sense of guys that are disappointments/improper use of resources for where they were drafted (some of these are admittedly stretches): Phillips - maybe due to injury though Edmunds - gave up a lot for a LB that has been unremarkable up until this season IMO Ford - this is a given Singletary - this is a given Knox - was pretty much terrible until this season Epenesa - showed some nice flashes early in the season but is once again buried on the bench Moss - just hasn't done much Basham - just hasn't done much (obviously very early with him though) I think from the broader sense, Edmunds and Basham can be argued the other way (some people have been very high on Edmunds from Day 1 and it's obviously very early for Basham), but the others have obviously been disappointments the majority of their time here.

I mean, it's an objective fact lol. Knox, Edmunds, Star, and Brown have missed a couple games and that's pretty much it. Another way to look at it can be found on Spotrac, where they track the % of a team's salary cap tied up in players on reserve lists. https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/injured-reserve/ Buffalo is #31 out of 32 with $5 million worth of players on reserve. The Chiefs are dead last at $4.4 mil while the average team (excluding Buffalo) has $22.5 mil on reserve (Denver is #1 at $40.8 mil). Buffalo is almost always near the bottom of the league in terms of salary wasting away on reserve lists; be it weirdly good luck or something our medical team does, we're pretty much always significantly healthier than our opponents.

The run game hasn't really regressed, at least not in any meaningful way from last year. Singletary's numbers are up across the board this season. Moss' YPC is lower but his DVOA is up. Our rushing stats as a team are up across the board as well. Allen's numbers are down pretty much across the board: TD%, INT%, YPG, YPA, NY/A, QBR, passer rating, etc. Everything is at least slightly trending down compared to last year despite a much easier slate of games this year. Is it as simple as Allen playing worse? Maybe a little bit, but there's plenty of blame to go around and even if he is playing a bit worse than he did a year ago, he certainly isn't our weakness or anything. Fact of the matter is, we rely on our QB moreso than most teams in the league, so any slight regression in his play will be felt more than a lot of other teams would.

The line about the Bills ranking 1st in the league in success rate on man runs vs. near the bottom of the league on zone runs was interesting to me. Also chuckled at the line about teams trying to turn Allen into a pocket passer. Any time there's discussion of a QB struggling, you'll almost always find that line.

Oh I saw it. Scary stuff. Outside of Edwards and Girard, it seemed as if the rest of the players were deliberately trying to avoid getting rebounds. And with Edwards, he just doesn't know how to catch the ball well so there were a lot of instances where Colgate's guards and big man were able to just take the ball out of his hands to get another possession. Benny had a really nice finish at the rim that showed off his athleticism, but outside of that, he was a total liability on the offensive end of the floor. Symir continues to show that we probably need Girard to give us a good 35 minutes every game; Symir can't shoot and can't finish at the rim. Colgate was pretty much double teaming anyone they wanted by abandoning Symir whenever he was in the game and the only way he was able to score was to rebound his own misses. Swider got in foul trouble and his shooting slump has continued, but I think he was mostly fine and seems like it's just a matter of time before his shots start dropping again. Girard was once again great. Buddy was pretty much his usual self (not the NCAA Tournament version of himself, but just the pretty good version). We eventually tried to play Jimmy at C due to Edwards/Ansalem's struggles and it didn't help in any way; he's just too soft to play in the middle of the zone. I suspect this team will still be pretty solid this year, but the C play and backup PG minutes will likely decide if we're just a bubble team again or something more.

Ultimately, he's a RB and therefore expendable. But, regarding the bolded, he's currently 5th in the league in tackles avoided per attempt and tied for 17th in total tackles avoided per PFF. Also slightly above average in terms of yards after contact per attempt.

This response nails it IMO. Mac is playing well right now. People are treating it like it's a hot take to say he's playing better than Brady did his first year with the Patriots when it shouldn't be. But that doesn't mean he'll follow the same development arc that Brady did. At any rate, New England is going to be a tough out with their defense, run game, and competent QB play and Mac has been more than competent at times this season.

I agree with the first sentence. I think saying Edmunds is completely expendable might be doing a disservice to him, but I do tend to think he was overrated up until this season when he's taken a pretty significant step forwards. Having said that, we probably can't afford everyone and I think we can probably get by letting him leave. I expect Beane to lock him up though.

Very promising start, especially from Girard who is finally playing like the shooter that he was billed as coming out of high school. I'll be more of a believer when we start doing it against better teams, but I think any reasonable person would be very happy with the start we've had so far. I don't know when I'll get around to really doing my deep dives on the incoming recruits, but now that they've signed their letters of intent, I'll probably start trying to dive in when I have time.

Eh, Tampa is obviously having some serious injury issues. Fully healthy, I think they’re the team to beat but they might just not get there this year. Rams and Cards are both beatable.

The truth is there is no real tiger this year. Buffalo is arguably the rightful favorites right now, but there isn’t a team that looks like your usual contender IMO.

I feel like the Chargers could be a sleeper destination. Good team, good location, good QB, and thin at WR.

I tend to think he'll clear waivers and be able to negotiate with a new team freely, but I guess we'll see soon enough.

I feel like an idiot for asking, why is he subject to waivers? The rule at least used to be you were only subject to waivers in your first few years in the League. Did they change the rule recently? Edit: I see this was answered.

He should arguably be suspended for the Covid violations, not for being dishonest with the press. The NFL's Covid policy states that first-time offenders are subject to a $14k fine and further violations are subject to being fined their full salary and suspensions. He's been violating the policy every week, so if the NFL actually cared about applying their own policies, he'd be potentially up for suspension.