WideNine

Well, for NFL clock bleeding look no further than our game against Indy or when the NFL had to close another loophole ol' cloven-hoofed Belichick was exploiting to keep the clock running during penalties: https://www.boston.com/sports/new-england-patriots/2020/05/29/bill-belichick-nfl-clock-rule-loophole Otherwise, they do sell something like that on zazzle - of course they sell something like this. Bleeding fractal wall clock lovingly designed by "DestroyingAngel"

They've blown a wad of cap too with questionable moves. I have a hard time thinking their GM is making moves in a vacuum, as I just could not see Flores being a doormat, but who knows... https://phinphanatic.com/2021/05/07/assessing-chris-griers-recent-tenure-with-the-miami-dolphins/

Agree. Cleveland stayed committed to running throughout the season. Tennessee you know your going to get a steady dose of Henry. And Baltimore is a predominantly read option run team. Running the ball effectively still works to milk the clock, keep a good defense fresh, and keep opposing offenses off the field... The rules have progressively made passing easier, but a commitment to running is not just about milking a lead at the end.

I could easily see Belichick adopt a more read option look considering what Cam can and can't do. I also remember a certain play-action pass where we completely blew the coverage that Cam dropped right in the bucket and his receiver flat-out dropped it. So he can still hit those when they are there. I am more curious if his defense moves to do less man and blitz and rather more 2-3 deep zones teams used to bottle and confuse Allen for most of the second half of the year. It has got to stick in his craw that he has owned this division for 20 years, the Bills win it once and all he hears is "the torch has been passed". There was a element of desperation in some of his spending this offseason. It was refreshing.

To be fair, I think we have over a hundred pages of posts going over what Tremaine does well and where his game needs to improve. I don't think there is one of them that says Tremaine is "junk". By TBD standards the debate about what he does well and what he struggles doing in our defensive system has been shockingly thoughtful and informative. He has room to grow and his ceiling with his physical gifts is pretty hard to ignore. How much that is worth and how much the team is willing to bet towards a long-term deal are legit topics to debate.

Having lived in both Minnesota is straight-up colder, but Buffalo gets more snow (lake effect). In the summer the bugs are ridiculous in MN because most of the state from the twin cities on up is a collection of reclaimed swamp lands. Water water everywhere and mosquitos that could screw a turkey flat-footed.

I initially thought PFF had made that a standard policy to generate hate clicks from the Bills Mafia, but came to realize they just hired idiots that also enjoyed yanking our chains. A nod to the PFF apologists that I am not knocking the value of just data collection and analytics as a practice in and of itself. I remember reading through their game 1 comments last year. Allen did have a rough outing in our Jets win with ball security and some inaccuracies. But scrolling through all their comments I came to the conclusion they were no better than most fan-boys with their bias takes and slants. https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-week-1-live-reactions-analysis-and-more Timo Riske 4:23 PM I can't wait for Bills Mafia to get mad at the Josh Allen grade, wherever this will end up

I see that Daryl Williams (who was drafted and played for the Panthers - shocker), in 2019 also played both left and right guard positions as well as tackle. Beane did pick up Anderson late in the draft, and I keep forgetting that they brought in Lamp as well to compete with Ike and Mongo. Although I do not expect their rookie tackles to get thrust into the lineup, I have to remember that they did not hesitate to play Ford early. If they get some solid early contribution from their rookie T class this year there is a lot more competition and depth at the G position than I originally thought although I still think we are thin at Center.

To be fair, one of the few Bills games I got to see in my own back yard before the fam moved was when the Bills came to MPLS and put on their classic display of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory - finding unique ways to lose. Moats had just laid the career-ending hit to Favre that knocked him out of the game and into retirement. I was with a bunch of guys from work - all Viking fans and they were all like "there goes the game". Of course, I was sticking out with my Bills gear and enjoying rubbing it in (not being that obnoxious, but clearly enjoying myself). Travaris Jackson marched out onto the field with a collective groan from the crowd. Proceeds to throw and INT for a TD in his first series out we have the lead and I am loving it. He then went on to lead them back and then take over for a 38-14 victory. Leodis seemed to be everywhere that receptions were being made (or overt pass interference calls leading to Viking scores), and if I had to live through one more SKOAL Vikings song I was going to puke. But yeah, I was dishing it out early and was not about to turn-tail and fold when the tide turned the other way. Just waved the crowd around me to bring it and did the orchestra conductor thing. Not bad fans really (I have seen worse when I lived in NJ). Mostly good natured ribbing that you get when fans are drinking and their team is winning. Like the Bills they have gone to the big show 4 times since the league formed and lost all 4 times, and they have certainly had their share of epic collapses and I am not just talking about their football dome under the weight of snow (that did happen), the latest I think with Cousins behind center when they were eliminated from the NFC playoffs by the Saints 52-33 (defense much); I used to follow them a bit more as it was hard not to living in their home town. Their history is chuck full of epic fails, even their hockey team (the MN North Stars) were the home town team for 26 seasons, with 17 playoff appearances and 2 Stanley Cup finals. They left town for Dallas and a few years later as salt in the wound won the Stanley Cup as the Dallas Stars (we know about that one) . So... as a suffering fan of Buffalo sports it was pretty easy to get along with them - but yeah this guy is a hack.

No, they have their share of cold ones

Lived in MN for a long time and there are good people and petty people. Seem to recall MPLS being in the news for all the wrong reasons, and what sparked protests and riots across the country and where does it keep happening? No high ground to be casting shade on B-Lo.

We are not talking an exact science, this is completely subjective as much as any power rankings - fun to debate. If we are just talking AFC win records projections that is another conversation and probably has more to do with strength of schedule which is not an exact science either. My thoughts are that when a team beats you more than once in a season they probably have your number. One time can be a fluke or a terrible game plan or injured key players etc...Teams may adjust strategy, get healthy, and return the favor to end up splitting (thinking more in terms of interdivisional rivalries, but playoffs are viable as we saw KC twice last year and both times they handed it to us). If you split with a team then I feel strength is a matter of overall conference record after that. If the conference records are the same the pundits can debate who is better, but as they say "any given Sunday" or in the Bill's case "Monday", "Thursday", etc... as we get more prime-time exposer. Like I said, not an equation and as others have pointed out, some teams may have subpar AFC records yet be a terrible specific matchup for your team that has a great record.

Good stuff - especially the TE breakdown. Was my beef with Knox, more than the occasional lapses in concentration and ball security as a receiver, was his "ole" lookout blocks. He also was no great shakes when called upon to block for runs. Daboll could trot Lee Smith out, but that tipped our hands towards calling a run. In the red zone it led to more than a few instances of Smith lumbering wide open into the end zone uncovered. He was downright prolific as an end zone receiving option for the first time in his career. Although it was nice to see a grinder like Smith get some love from the game plan, the ideal is to have that TE who can do both well from anywhere on the field to keep defenses guessing.

Truth, but they made good progress last year and I do not see enough roster loss or FO/coaching change to have a good justication for them losing ground. The Steelers are a shell of their former selves. Baltimore has been losing some ground, and the Bengals are the Bengals... Browns have a pretty good shot at winning their division again. The Bills backed into the playoffs, to end our drought, and have since earned our last two appearances. The Browns finally broke their post season drought (2002) last year. I won't count a team as actually "ahead" of us till they beat us and not just once. A lot comes down to matchup. If we played the Titans twice would we beat them?

It does - I worked for big ol' Bayer pharma for a spell and they are brutally honest (or dishonest as big pharma can be) as Bayer is based out of Leverkusen, Germany. Initially I thought perhaps it was just something being lost in the translation to English when working with them, but not-so-much. The good side of that equation is that I never really had to guess what they were thinking.

Truth. Without getting too deep into the Covid-19 weeds as we have a place for that. The Pfizer and Moderna RNA vaccines in particular are pretty darn solid and likely will end up having statistically fewer complications than folks would expect to see with our current yearly influenza vaccines. At this point it is rather silly not to get them, and I can envision Corona virus boosters ending up being a part of the worlds yearly vaccine regimens to head off variants down the road. A few years ago I went to the Mayo clinic for a roto-rooter checkup and had a good discussion with the primary doctor they assigned me about when the next pandemic was going to hit (we both knew it was not "if") and he agreed with me that when we vaccinate against the common anticipated strains of Influenza we basically leave the door open for the strains that are not anticipated - nature abhors a vacuum. That is why it always seems like the flu shots miss the mark on the seasonal strain that becomes most virulent. The doctor I had was pretty chill, and he said they were actually doing a lot of research around just that issue - prediction/interdiction. I also had a German doctor there that put me on a treadmill and told me, "you are fat and are going to die". Not sure if bedside manner is a focus of German medical schools. I'm Irish so I had to wise-crack back to the German doctor with, "there goes my plans for giving up beer and living forever". If that guy wanted more out of me he should not have told me to stop running on the damn thing when I got to "uncomfortable". I am sure I could've slogged out another 10 minutes or so if I had a Bear chasing me or something.

I think bored is more likely... we briefly got a pulse up for the draft and are flat-lining again. Sucks as over a decade ago I could just switch to following the Sabres, but they have been an epic dumpster fire managing to miss the post season forever. Oh well... have to wait for the paddles when OBD releases the next shocking Bills uni change, or see how much we can milk arguing about the schedule when it is officially released. Harder to wait now that we have a competitive team.

The knee-jerk reactions are funny as this is a plausible take. Folks can assume the Browns will stay in the basement forever. The same was thought about the Bills not that long ago. I thought the Browns had more balance with their run game keeping the Chiefs' defense off balance and better controlling the game flow and their defense had a better showing bottling up Mahomes than we did. They were solid down the stretch so not a shocker if they can build on that with their additions. Always a crap shoot with key injuries over the season so just get into the post season and you never know...team's can peak down the stretch. Our interior oline got ragdolled against KC and not many changes there so the gamble is that a healthy Ford back and Mongo fully healing can turn that around.... And, hoping we will run better against those defensive fronts that can drop 7 into coverage. Beane invested in our oline, but with rookies that will need to be developed and center/guard was not a priority focus of his draft rather OT and up the middle is where we struggled. I do expect more from our defense this year. The X-factor. With Star back and the infusion of youth along the defensive front.... they seem to have a lot of confidence in a healthy Dane Jackson. Enough that they said meh to drafting another DB in the 2nd.

Don't think it is an empirical measurement There are likely combine/pro day cone drills/times that can give some indication of this kind of athleticism. I have seen folks try to put a scientific spin on the term "bend", but basically I think it just refers to a player's ability to dip and get underneath and around a blocker while at the same time curving back towards the quarterback. Hard to say what Beane is referring to, he does take in the measurables, but places a high-value on what he and his scouting staff see as actual player production against competition on film.

That's a pretty full room... Obada is young with starting time and seemed to be on the up swing. Either he or Epenesa.

I thought you were going to say that Milano has to fend off less blocks from his OLB position and that may be true too. One thing I have noticed is Milano's ability to shed and maneuver through blockers on sweeps and such to get to a runner and when he gets there he is pretty good about brining a player down. Edmunds seems to have a penchant for getting more tangled up in traffic. I thought Kuechly's 20 TFL season was pretty impressive until I looked across the league and saw that there are plenty of linebackers that have hit that mark and more. Interesting to note the PFF graded Milano as superb in coverage and compared his coverage numbers to Kuechly's, but indicated he needed to tackle better. For Edmunds they kind of mirror what most of us have been saying if we just boiled it down and that blurb about Milano and Kuechly does lean towards the way McD wants the MLB position to be played. Prior to last season their take was: "If we were ranking how good players could become, Edmunds would comfortably be in the top five. He has the size. He has the explosiveness. He has truly impressive movement and change-of-direction skills for how big he is, and by all accounts, he's the kind of leader you want on your defense. However, his PFF grades of 57.0 and 59.4 in his first two NFL seasons speak to the idea that it hasn't all come together yet. Edmunds has performed well in stretches, but he has yet to put it all together for an entire season. Having just turned 22 years old in May, this upcoming season could very well be the one where he does just that. Edmunds will have to clean up the missed tackles and improve in coverage to rise toward where most slot him currently — a top-10 linebacker — on this list next season." And then we had last season and the debate continues

I have to ask why you would feel like he would have the edge from his Will position? Do you feel the scheme lends itself to freeing up Milano to make more plays than Edmunds in the middle? Milano is a playmaker and that stands out when he is on the field. Get's dinged a lot, but glad we were able to retain him. That move of keeping Milano (and others), where he has retained key players when they could have easily chased better coin helps keep any critique I have of the job Beane is doing from going overboard - which is the way things seem to go when whenever Bills fans take up sides on any topic and it gets emotional. I think it is fine to question Beane's moves, but I am not blind to the fact that he has done more good things for this team and the roster than missteps. I hope that trend continues for many years to come.

Admittedly cherry-picking impactful stats for both, and just the last 3 years they played together... Source: Pro Football-Reference Milano: Games Played: 38 FF 1 TFL 23 QB Hits 19 Scks 6 PD 19 Edmunds: Games Played: 46 FF 2 TFL 19 QB Hits 14 Scks 5.5 PD 24 Was a bit surprised at how close they were considering the number of games Milano has missed. A disturbing trend is that Edmunds best year seems to have been his rookie year and his impact stats have mostly dropped each successive year. Folks can look them up and draw their own conclusions, just pointing out the trend.

My biggest worry have been those instincts to head off plays rather than chase them down and ability to finish when Frazier turns him loose on blitzes... Will not say that he cannot turn it around, just that he needs to play better. Not going to argue with the capologists here either - not my thing. I do know that Beane has started locking in some players they feel will make up this team's core. It is always a gamble, just hope the Bills player investments pan out and they are not saddled with too much dead cap down the road.

You hit on the one thing that gives me hope for a better overall year from Edmunds - that he is healthier. Even for the dreadful KC playoff performance he had tweaked his hammy prior. I have an idea how much that can impact a player's game. Here's hoping for a healthy season from him so we are left with less questions or excuses depending on how it goes.