Pokebball

The jury is still out on most of the offense in this fan's opinion. It's better than last year but still has plenty of room for improvement. The edges on the O line have been very poor. WR separation, hands and winning those 50/50 balls is still pretty poor. Our WR aren't very physical, more of the finesse type. TEs are young and are making rookie mistakes. We needed to see the O improve over the first 1/2 dozen games - I'm encouraged. I agree with our D being a huge benefit, but I was talking our offense. The o/u was because it was Buffalo.

Allen wasn't given keys to a car with much of an engine in it either. There have certainly been improvements made this season but I don't know that the Bills offense is much more than a 5 year old, reliable, car one would give their college kid to drive.

Fly to San Diego for the weekend and catch the Wyo vs SDSU football game. Isn't that what everyone else here does?

That 20/20 hindsight is oftentimes a killer.

I don't get the difficulty in understanding this philosophy. It's there and it's valid. Spot on my man! McDermott isn't the only coach with this philosophy and it's intentional.

Actually, it wasn't clearly one or the other, which is why it's a controversy. People are seeing what they want to see. Where Wycheck and Dyson's body parts were don't matter. I think the still photo evidence is actually pretty solid. I don't understand the argument that it isn't. One of those calls that comes down to the officials judgement. Either way this was called, I don't think there's enough evidence to reverse the call on the field.

Rest my case

When does working the clock have it's place?

LOL. There's a fine line between conservative play calling and poorer execution. The % run vs pass doesn't prove your point as there are conservative run plays and conservative pass plays. But this is a tangent that I don't care to take with you. Call it whatever you want to call it. We get up, we don't score as much as easily as we did. We need that pick 6 either way.

Of course every team wants to score on every possession, but that wasn't my point. Many teams don't want to score as fast as they can. They want to use clock, tire out the opposing defense and give their own defense time to rest. Methodical drives down the field are important to winning, and of course winning is everyone's job (rather than scoring as many points as you can). Don't confuse total points scored with the number of possessions a team is given. It's not that I believe it, but rather a fact that game plans exist to limit the number of possessions an opponent gets. You limit the possessions your opponent gets, you limit the possession your offense gets.

I'm actually not as concerned as you are in regards to average points in the league. Coaching philosophies dictate that to a large degree. Slower, methodical, offenses score fewer points while giving defenses more time to rest. Pass happy, explosive offenses have their defenses on the field a hullava lot more. Of course, I've always been a disciple of defense. I enjoy 21-17 pt games more than I do 45-38 type games.

I don't think any of this is all that very surprising given all of the new talent on offense. I think the most frustrating thing for me this season have been the motion penalties on the O line. It seems every time we are already starting deep, we make it deeper. Everything changes when we go first and ten from the 15 to first and 15 from the 10. Drive killers before the drive begins.

We get up by 10 our play calling gets very, very conservative. The only way I see getting from a 10pt lead to a 17pt lead is a pick six by the defense. This will require a boat load of money put on the Dolphins. I don't see it.

While I get this, I never like depending on another team to win or lose. We take care of things ourselves and good things will come.

This is where I'm at. I love the moment but I'm going to be cautiously optimistic regarding how this year turns out. Playoff success will depend on most every position on the offensive squad. All positions will have to play better than they have so far this year.

I'm certainly not giving up. I'm as hopeful as the next guy. I agree that the Bill's success this year depends on the offense coming together and getting on the same page. With 8 new guys, that is a tall order. I hope they do and I am encouraged. I guess I'm saying I'm not going to be disappointing, like I believe some posters will be, if they don't. I want to see continued progress all across the offense, including Allen. I think the interior of the O line is pretty salty. All other aspects have to get better in order to win the division.

Very fair article and spot on in my opinion.

Let's see where we are then, at the end of this year.

This is the 5th game into year 2. I guess we both agree that he should be established by the end of year 2 and not by the 5th game then. Like I said, I said. I'll buy the beer! Man, some of these discussions sure get wonky!

Define genius

I'm not getting your point. I guess your point is that JA should be developed and performing like a veteran 5 games into this season. Help me understand our differences.

I believe this is exactly what I said.

Do you think this is a reasonable expectation for a soph QB? When JA was drafted, I thought the best path for his development was to sit for a year, then start this year with it being another development year for him, with plenty of growing pains; pains that needed to happen towards his growth into the QB we all want him to be. He's gotten tossed into the fire early with expectations beyond anything I certainly thought reasonable for his second year with the Bills. And I don't think this is only about JA. There are eight new guys around him on O and they are all learning how to play with each other. I thought we would be a good 6-8 games into the season before they became even somewhat a cohesive, collaborative, unit. I believe the Bill's O leads the league in false starts. There have been a number of plays in each of our last few games that confirm for me that they are not all on the same page yet. That is going to have to happen before we can get some more scores out of JA and the O. One of JAs strengths is his scrambling. Our WRs have to learn to extend their plays to compliment JA's scrambling and this is a deficit to our offense yet today. Case in point, Yeldon had a good chance of making that catch last week, or at a minimum preventing the interception. Our O is still adapting to the fact that JA can extend many plays with his athletic ability. Lineman, backs and WRs jobs need to be a good 5 seconds longer each snap. As all of them learn to extend their play, more good things will happen. Alternatively, we can coach JA to not extend plays. If that's were we go, I think we're giving up a significant advantage we have with him behind center. And this isn't a choice between him throwing good or bad passes. That exists whether we extend plays or not. My point here is that extending plays doesn't mean we get more bad passes out of JA. That improvement from JA needs to happen either way we go. I love the excitement and expectations. I think it's important to understand it may be too much too soon.

Getting a flag for tossing the challenge flag was kinda funny yesterday

This