VW82

Yes no one player can account for it. In fact it's been so many players that luck has to be a big part of it. How is it that we've been so good at picking defensive players over the last three years and then all of a sudden a huge percentage of those same players suck all at once? This is not a scheme issue. We're not scheming to get blown off the LOS by 2-3 yards every few plays. If anything our opponent specific game plans have been excellent. I mentioned the KC game. We gave up a million rushing yards but kept that game within reach by taking the ball out the hands of the best player in the league, and would have had a chance to win it had we stopped one of those late 3rd and longs. If you're arguing that we should have pre-emptively traded Hughes or Hyde I don't see how that makes us better. If this is just about Edmunds and Oliver and Epenesa then that's a discussion worth having. Like, I don't know if McD had Epenesa lose too much weight or how that evolved. Beane deserves a big share of the blame. Big guys like Star don't grow on trees but you can't go into a season without one. And Daboll has done a wonderful job imo. Today we controlled the ball and the clock and kept our crappy defense off the field so they didn't have as many chances to lose us the game.

I assume most fans are probably fine with the state of the offense and this is really just about the defense. Maybe I've just forgotten but where were all the off season threads predicting doom and gloom for our defense? If it's such a horrible roster devoid of talent we must have all seen it coming right? I agree McBeane deserve criticism for how this has played out but I doubt anyone saw this level of drop off coming. It's still too early to call Edmunds and Oliver busts.

I've now read through most of this thread and still can't find a coherent argument why the coaching was bad. Let's see. We can't stop anyone regardless of how we scheme. Case and point: we load up the box vs. Tenn and get destroyed in coverage and then we flood the secondary vs. KC and give up 300 yards on the ground. What do you do when your defense can't get off the field? Control the clock. We had 38 rushing attempts today and a bunch of clock killing drives. We rotated all our DL guys through and they all got blown off the LOS. What exactly are we supposed to do? Bills had strong defenses the last three years and an anemic offense, so we we use draft, trade, and FA to fix the offense. Clearly we need to upgrade some spots in our front seven but anyone who claims they knew we'd go from top 3 to bottom 3 just because we didn't replace Star is full of it.

Hughes coming to life was a good sign. We're still getting blown off the line though and it's leading to clock killing drives like the one Jets had mid first into the second where we turned them over on downs. It puts too much pressure on the offense to score.

Pats gave up almost 470 yards at home today. Looking forward to the Josh revenge game. Bet he gets up for that one.

Yes it was a ground forced fumble but I'm kind of past litigating each one when the ball comes out multiple times in a game. At some point he has to do a better job hanging on. I don't mind taking the shot one on one in the EZ either. As you said it wasn't a great throw. He had some other throws in the first half that weren't great either and we only scored 3 points. I thought he'd come out a little better than that vs a bad team after the last two games but he picked it up in the 2nd half.

I agree but the almost fumble on the series before was a little lucky and so were the dropped picks.

C+ He was much better in the second half despite some questionable red zone play. The first half he had one fumble, an almost fumble, and two dropped INTs. Not great given the opponent and after the last two weeks.

Ugly win but maybe this will lead to some confidence for the defense.

He has more than enough "weapons" to be successful and the line isn't bad at pass blocking. Josh is still at the bottom of the league in time to throw at over three seconds, only ahead of Baker. He's only being pressured on 15% of drop backs, down from 23% last year. He still needs to work on his recognition in addition to accuracy. This group gets open for him though it'd be nice if we could hang on to the ball.

We tried loading up the box and blitzing last week and couldn't get home once. We just benched two of our regulars to send a message. This isn't about the coaching.

Yes we are struggling. As I pointed out in another post we got gashed last week using a completely different (and also defensible) game plan. It looks like we might need to overhaul some position groups. Hopefully the guys who are hurt start getting unhurt.

You don't get to top 5 by being secretly terrible.

Fair enough but if we'd gone that route like we did last week and got smoked on the scoreboard the same way I guarantee they'd have faced more criticism for it. Not that they should be letting that dictate their game plan but this one was defendable given the opponent. Wish we had some defensive play makers that inspired our coaches to want to take more chances.

is the best Bills coach in over 20 years.

D+ Way too many mistakes throughout the game. He had like 50 passing yards going into the 4th quarter. That's four good games and two bad ones. Not time to panic.

It wasn't our strength tonight. McD kept the game close and we actually had a chance near the end if we'd have just stopped one of those 3rd and longs. Would you have preferred putting our guys on an island again? I liked that we protected our corners vs. Mahomes. It's too bad that we get no rush and can't tackle.

Let's see. We successfully took the ball out of the hands of the best player in the league daring them to run (and they did, and it sucked). As a result, we held them to 13 points at the half and only 26 for the game. When our QB came out playing like crap, we adjusted and started using a bunch of runs and read options which got us back in the game. We just got outclassed and beat at our own game, that's it. Our front 6 aren't good enough.

Yeah this is year one Josh. Weather or no weather he's not nearly good enough today.

Like the change in game plan by Daboll. Tough conditions and Josh doesn't look like he has it today so we lean on run game and read option. This will at least keep our defense off the field and chew some clock.

It's days like today where I'm glad we took a chance with Bass. That kick looked like it would've been good from 60.

I find this type of narrative-based thread to be a little frustrating. The first INT was mostly on Roberts even though the pass wasn't great. It was maybe 90/10 to the receiver if we're going to assign blame. The INT that went off Beasley's hands last year was also a poorly placed throw but it also had no touch even though Cole was only 15 feet away. That one was more like 60/40 on Allen. There seems to be this narrative that Allen has mostly been the same guy the whole time and all that's changed is his help, and so all the criticism from year one and two of his actual play was misplaced. This ignores the considerable changes and improvements Allen's made to his game this year. Outside of the Titans game, he's showing better accuracy, throwing with more anticipation, more consistency, etc. Why are we robbing Allen of that credit? He deserves it! I'm not going to pretend like there weren't a bunch of critics out there who were going out of their way to find evidence of bad play to match their pre-existing opinions. But let's also not pretend like Allen wasn't giving them a lot of ammunition just like he's now giving Bills Mafia a lot ammunition to say he's legitimately good. /rant

Singletary isn't anything special but our Oline was put together to pass block. You don't sign Mitch if you're trying to be a good running team. We could really use Feliciano back in the line up. That guy was really stout.

I'd be wary of any major weight loss this year due to covid. Maybe it was planned, maybe it wasn't. Maybe he was just looking out for his own health.

I thought this way coming into the season but last night's game notwithstanding he's improved too much as a passer to go back to that, especially against zone defenses like the Titans played. Having said that, if his accuracy continues to regress I might change my tune. Hopefully it was just one bad game.