CincyBillsFan

On the play before the pick 6 Jackson had two WR's wide open and he missed them. Was he under pressure - yes. But there's several top flight QB's in the NFL including Allen who likely would have had a TD pass there in spite of the pressure. Of all the shows I listened to only one so called national "expert" had the obvious response to all the Ravens need to upgrade their WR's talk: what top flight WR would want to come to the Ravens with that offense? #15 for the Ravens is a stud. With the right QB this guy would catch 100 passes for 1200 yards. Allen could only dream of a pass catching TE as good as Andrews. And could you imagine how lethal Allen's play action passes would be with the two Baltimore RB's alternating in the Bills backfield?

Reporting 101. These guys are saying that the two missed Baltimore FG's was a key reason why they lost the game. But when the other team also misses two FG's from almost the same spot on the field then it's stupid to attach any special significance to the two missed Ravens FG's. Last year we beat TN in a game in which I believe they missed 3 FG's and we didn't miss any. For that game it was reasonable to bring up the Titans missed FG's as a reason for their loss. For Saturday nights game it's excuse making which should be left to the fans not the national sports media.

I donated to Normans charity. It seems pretty cool and it's a bit different then the other charities. I would encourage others to take a look.

To be fair I intend to be every bit as obnoxious after the Bills win a Super Bowl!

For me it's not about respect but accuracy in reporting on the Bills. I couldn't care less if these guys do or don't respect the Bills. What I do care about is that they describe what's happening correctly. You can't call out the 2 missed Raven FG's without calling out the 2 missed Bills FG's. And it grates to have a so called expert on a national spots radio program claim that Allen is a "turnover machine waiting to happen" after a season in which Allen has been very careful with the ball (only 16 TO's in 18 games). Even worse was this same expert claiming that DaBold has dumbed the offense down for Allen. How can anyone say that in the face of everything we've seen out of this offense this year. And on another national radio program a guy expressed concern that if our offense didn't score more points against the Chiefs then we did against Baltimore we would be in trouble. This genius then want on to say our offense was struggling. I guess he based this on ONE GAME played in a wind tunnel. It's beyond lazy. Early in the year I cut these people some slack because you had 32 teams in the mix. But last week we only had 8 teams playing 4 games. Is it expecting to much to ask these guys to do the bare minimum in research? You know like looking at how many points the Bills scored and how many yards gained over an entire season before claiming they have a problem with the offense.

The ball that Allen threw that missed an open Diggs was definitely impacted by the wind.

Bingo. That Isola guy is a moron. How can someone who gets paid to cover the NFL use the 2 missed FG's by Baltimore as an excuse while not mentioning the two missed FG's by the Bills from almost the same distance. I've actually heard this crap multiple times from several different analysts. I get that we Bills fans can be thin skinned but all year we've been seeing this level of half a$$ed coverage. I was listening to Gotfried today on Fox Sports radio and he had some clown on that was claiming that DaBold had dumbed the Bills offense down for Allen and they give him easy throws that are the equivalent of lay ups. Are you kidding me! Did this tool even watch a Bills game? Then this same fool goes on and on that the Ravens need to upgrade their WR's for Lamar. Why? So he can miss more wide open receivers? And if we lose Sunday these ignorant cretins will be all over the airwaves saying I told you so. It's really astonishing how stupid & bush league so many of these NFL "experts" are.

Great points especially about getting the Bills into scoring position four different times. Allen also directed a nice drive early in the 4th that used up five and half minutes and got us to midfield from where we punted them down to the 10. Without a running game and the Bills unwilling to let Allen run the ball himself into the teeth of a ball punching, fumble creating Ravens D (which was a smart thing) we were always going to struggle to sustain drives once the wind kicked up. That we did sustain a few drives is pretty amazing IMO.

In some ways this may have been one of Allen's better games. Saturday night called for a game manager that could make a couple of plays on offense People outside Buffalo can't understand the limits on a passing game when it's blowing that hard out. Combine the wind with a truly top notch, ball hawking Ravens defense and you had the perfect recipe for a couple for turnovers. I think the Bills were really confident they could shut Jackson down and would only need 20 points to win the game. The only thing that would have screwed that up would have been careless Bills TO's. Allen executed the game plan exactly as McD/Frazier/Debold envisioned it.

I agree. I remember in that game we had just ripped an 8 yard run and had 2nd & 2 at the KC 45 at the two minute warning before the first half ended. On the next play we ran the ball and lost SIX YARDS! Then we didn't convert the 3rd down. I also think we were only down 13 - 10 at that point. That was also the game that Allen threw a great long pass to Diggs at the back of the end zone that he couldn't come down with. Now I know that Diggs probably catches that pass nine times out of ten. There are good reasons for us to be confident going into this game and that game is one of them.

I agree that this one feels like the 1988 game against Cincinnati. Expectations were high that year as we began gathering talent around Kelly & co but I didn't expect a trip to the conference championship. I would have been happy with an AFC East crown and trip to the playoffs that year.

Damn I've seen some terrible throws being intercepted this weekend: first Lamar, then Mayfield, then Henne and now Brees. I mean damn those were all bad throws.

And let's not forget the bad slip by Singletery on a screen pass play that probably would have gone for 15 - 20 yards during the first half missed FG drive. Those long shots put us in a great position to exploit a screen pass. And we had it set up perfectly as Singleterry just had to beat one guy on a cut back and it would have been a big gainer putting us in a first & goal. Instead he slipped down for a 2 yard gain. That was very disappointing to say the least. A TD drive at that point would have put us up 10 - 0 late in the 2nd quarter.

It's amazing how ignorant even ex-players can be when they start working NFL media. If you told me that high winds would make any throw over 20 yards a crap shoot then I would have feared the Bills losing by 10 points. By any rational consideration Warner has to understand that the Ravens were greatly aided by the gale force winds. Buffalo's win is all the more remarkable because of the winds.

I'll admit that at first I yelled at Johnson for taking the ball out of the end zone. I stopped yelling when he got to the 20 and I realized no one was in front of him! That play was so cool because it lasted so long. The final 40 yards with White leading the way could have gone on forever. It was that beautiful.

I just heard a great example of the goofy media narrative around these games. A guy on Fox sport radio was wondering how different the game would have been had the Ravens hit those two FG's. My first thought on hearing this was "yea and how different is the game if we hit our two FG's from almost the exact same spot". My second thought is "they actually pay you money to talk about the NFL on the radio? A freaking drunk Bills fan who just jumped through a flaming table could do a better job."

I get what you're saying. But wouldn't it be cheaper to get a very good RB that allows us to pound the ball during those few games where the passing attack can't handle the wind?

This game creates a real problem for the national media NFL experts. Their narrative about our defense just got flushed down the toilet and if they try to say the offense is a problem we can tell them to go find a wind tunnel and try throwing the football. The astute "experts" will note that if our offense plays like it did against the Colts and the D plays like it did against the Ravens - WATCH OUT.

There is NO downside to this win. NONE. It's beyond stupid for these oracles of doom to be negative in any way. My goodness we're 15 - 3 and playing the AFC title game.

What a game. It's so important to be able to win games this way. Some times it's the offense sometimes it's the D. This reminds me of that AFC championship game against Denver in the 1991 season. The bills had a spectacular offense but against the Broncos we won 10 - 7 and our only TD was a pick six. I'm still stunned. Oh and I believe that winning 15 games ties the franchise record for most wins in a season.

Both the NE & Chargers games were also played in very windy conditions.

It was also clear from that angle how unlucky & fluky Allen's sack & fumble was. He is literally thrown into the second tackler by the first Colt to get to him. If the 2nd guy had been blocked or was a couple of feet on either side Allen may have gotten out of that jam and passed or ran for big yardage.

Diggs was limited last week and he did fine. At this point there's no reason to risk a foot or leg injury with the WR's during practice so you go easy. My frustration with the TE's & RB's beyond their inability to be productive in the passing game, is that with the focus opposing teams have to put on our WR's they should be making some big plays. The biggest TE play of the kind I'm talking about this year was the Smith catch against NE. Allen routinely hits our RB's in space with quick throws and almost every time they get brought down by the first tackler. I've been expecting a breakout game by Knox & Singletery in the passing game every week. Saturday night would be a great time for it to happen.

But did the Bills & Allen actually struggle against the Jets? Sure it was our worst red zone game but it was our 2nd game against a division foe which are often odd: * We didn't punt in that game and had only one TO. Nine times we drove into FG range and converted 6 FG's. * Allen had over 300 yards passing and should have had at least 2 TD's to go along with that. One had Kroft falling down and the other was an inexplicable illegal lineup penalty that no can see on replay. For that stretch of games Allen's injury certainly played a role and we were also in the process of adjusting from the free wheeling offense on display through the first 4 games to the new way in which defenses were playing us. That we came out of that stretch and fired the offense back up to where it was through the first month of the season was impressive and encouraging that we can keep it going.

This worries me to. We need the RB's & TE's to step up big time or our offense is at risk of becoming one dimensional. Think about the insane quality of those Allen throws and Gabes/Diggs catches. You can't expect to get that every game if those throws are off by an inch here or there those plays aren't made. And without those plays we lose to the Colts. We need Knox to get catches and put up yards (say 6 - 80 yards) and we need a RB to make a guy miss on a short pass and gain 25 yards. Other teams routinely get that type of production out of their RB's & TE's in the passing game. We don't and I worry that this lack of production is the achilles heel of our offense.