CincyBillsFan

And while we're on the topic of Fitzmagic only last year we had: In weeks 1 & 2 playing for Tampa Fitz went 48 - 61 for 819 yards, 8 TD's & no INT's! The next week the magic began to wear off as Fitz threw for 411 yards & 3 TD's but also had 3 INT's and Tampa lost the game. The following week Fitztragic was back as he only threw for 126 yards! I mean no one would believe you if you created Fitz as a fictional character in a novel or movie. I mean Uncle Rico might be more believable!

And I was there the next week when the 3 - 0 Bills lost to the 0 - 3 Bengals and Fitz played poorly. They should have a special place in the HOF for Fitz. I mean has any QB played as well and as poorly as Fitz has for such a long time? It's freakish IMO. But woe to any team that plays against Fitz when he's channeling that magic.

Why not? Last year he threw a very accurate deep ball. I recall a perfectly placed 55 yard pass that went through Fosters hands in the Minnesota game. I remember another perfectly thrown 60 yard pass against NE that Foster "lost" in the sun and went right between his hands. I remember that against LA Allen completed the LONGEST pass play of the 2018 NFL season when just looking at how far it traveled in the air - which was about 64 yards. He completed a deep, perfectly placed 75 yard TD against Jacksonville and a perfectly placed deep 45 yard TD pass against Detroit. In the last game against Miami he had a 29 yard TD pass that was a deep throw because Foster caught it at the goal line. Hell Allen didn't overthrow the deep pass against Miami that Clay froze in place when a couple of steps would have made it an easy long TD catch. I also watched multiple Wyoming games where he threw beautiful deep passes. I have no idea why he's struggling to connect on the deep pass this season but there's NO reason to think he won't get over it and start hitting these deep shots. At least if you go by what he did last year.

To be fair I think the Bills defense is very good but not quite great. And it's not because they had an off game against the Dolphins. Even the most dominating D's have a couple of poor games. But yesterday was the first time this season that the Bill's D forced a TO that gave us the ball in the opponents red zone. In fact prior to that forced fumble yesterday I think the Bill's D had only forced a TO on the opponents side of the 50 one other time against Cincinnati. IMO to be a great D and not just a very good one the Bills need to force more TO's in opponents territory. They also need to create more 3 & outs when they have a team backed up against their own goal line. Forcing a punt that gives the O the ball at the opponents 45 is almost as good as a TO.

IMO Joe is spot on here. This board would be swarming with folks saying that Allen can't be a long term franchise QB completing less then 50% of his passes no matter how many yards rushing he had. Also Bills fans would be pointing out that the Defense scored 14 of those 30 points and that Seattle likely wins if they didn't have two criminally negligent turnovers for TD's. Now I happen to think that Jackson may in fact work out for Baltimore over the long run. He may be the convention busting QB of this generation. I'm being open minded here. But I have no doubt that Allen would have been crucified on 2BD if he had Jackson's passing & rushing numbers from yesterday.

I think the QB rating is the more useful number here. The Bills defense allowed the Dolphins to steal at least 3 and maybe 4 possessions from the Bills offense. In those earlier games you had a Miami offense that was constantly going 3 & out handing the ball back to the opposing offense. The two 75 yard TD drives in the first half which gobbled up 12 minutes and that epic 10 minute 73 yard drive in the 3rd are the reasons Allen didn't hit 300 yards yesterday and the Bill's O didn't get into a rhythm until late in the 3rd quarter. NONE of the other Dolphin games had their offense do that well over such a large part of the game.

Thanks for posting this. The first thing that jumps out to me when you look at the QB Rating is how much improvement you see in the Dolphins pass defense after week 1. Remember, QB rating is independent of how many passes are thrown. In the 1st game the ravens QB's had ratings of 158 & 144! That was the game Jackson was perfect throwing the ball. After that game I suspect that Flores, a former NE defensive coordinator, took a direct hand in changing a few things to improve the pass D. The result was pretty good: Brady had a rating of 124.7 and then Prescot had a rating of 91.4. Rivers got to 132.9 but then the next two guys were both rated below 100 (95.8 & 99.7). Compared to these ratings Allen's rating of 111.4 looks very solid.

And if you had swapped out Brady for Fitz a couple of weeks ago the Pats blow the Bills out. When Fitz is in his Fitzmagic groove he's one of the best QB's in the NFL for a couple of games until he switches over to Fitztragic. He's done this over & over again. Yesterday was another example of how Fitzmagic can boost a bad team.

At minimum a solid B+. When he gets more talent on the offensive side of the ball we can reevaluate. But IMO you're not paying attention if you think Daboll has a lot to work with: * I'm a big Allen supporter and think he will be a top QB in this league. But right now he is inconsistent and Daboll must create game plans that take into account Allen's rawness at this point in his career. * The O-line has been greatly improved but other then Morse at center is there another Bill's offensive lineman that you would rate as being in the top 1/3 of the NFL? * Modern NFL offenses utilize multiple TE's for all sorts of stuff. With Kroft's injury Daboll has only had ONE veteran TE and he's used mostly for blocking. The two TE's that would normally be used in the passing game are raw rookies. In fact one of them only caught FIVE passes his entire college career. This is a HUGE handicap for Daboll. With Krofts return and Knox gaining more experience I expect a lot more production out of this position. * At RB we're as equally limited as we are at TE. Gore is a future HOF war horse but he's not the guy who can take over a game. Yeldon wouldn't make most NFL teams and Singleterry the only RB with a burst of speed is a rookie who has been hurt most of the season. I've said it before show me a weaker overall backfield in the NFL. At best this is a bottom 10 backfield. * At WR the Bills have upgraded the unit from last year and it's no surprise that this is the most productive group of skill players. Brown & Beasley are reliable play makers. The early read on Duke is he may be a decent #3 and McKenzie is a nice Jack of all trades kind of player. But we still don't have a true #1 WR and the drop off from Beasley to the #3 guy has been big. Worse the fastest WR (Foster) has been hampered by injury. While we need to improve overall scoring our offensive production in the Red Zone & in Total Yardage has been top 1/3 of the league. That's good considering our overall offensive talent level. One more point. While our defense has been great this was the FIRST game in which the D forced a TO giving the ball to the O in the opponents red zone. And the O scored a TD off that. Nor have our special teams contributed points outside of FG's. This does impact the scoring stats. Take yesterday where the Ravens offense only scored 1 TD and had 3 FG's for 16 points while their D scored 14 points!

I remember that game but it wasn't at NE it was played at Rich Stadium in 1992! Okay I only vaguely remembered but I have the book Relentless which is a must have for Bills fans as it has a description and stats for EVERY Bills game played from 1960 - 1994! That year the Bills would go to their 3rd straight SB. The Pats would finish at 2 - 14 and were probably the worst team in the NFL. And this was late in the season when we were jockeying for home field advantage. Well at the Half the Pats led the Bills 7 - 0! And the Bills were booed off the field. In the 2nd half the Bills scored 16 points to win 16 - 7. Another interesting observation is that Kelly & the Bills were pissed that they had been booed. And Jim was NOT complimentary about the home fans that day. Interestingly when asked about the booing Josh Allen said something along the lines of they were playing poorly and deserved it.

This is why we fans should NEVER be allowed to judge "game film" we aren't good at it. BTW I saw what you did to. But when I saw it the ball was about 2 feet from being caught by Duke. In the NFL as soon as the QB releases the ball most of the receivers still running their routes get wide open because their cover guys stop covering them and go to the ball. I believe that was the case here. I'm glad Beasley is a bit frustrated. He's a competitor. But my guess is that he's frustrated with himself more then anything. That bobbled ball that went for 5 yards was a perfect throw that had Beasley caught it cleanly he could have made his patented reverse move and added 10 yards of YAC. Did you happen to notice when Allen didn't throw to an open Brown in the first half he got frustrated to and waved his arms? It happens.

I watched the game and the praise was over the top. To be clear I like Jackson and think he might be the guy to turn conventional NFL wisdom on it's head but lets look at the numbers. A couple of folks on 2BD have claimed that playing in Seattle against that defense is a tough assignment. I call BS: Here's how QB's have done throwing the football against Seattle in Seattle: Week 1: Andy Dalton was 35/51 for 418 yards; 2 TD's & 0 INT's. Bengals lost by 1 point. Week 3: Teddy Bridgewater was 19/27 for 177 yards; 2 TD's & 0 INT's. NO won the game. Week 4: G. Goff was 29/49 for 395 yards; 1 TD & 1 INT. LA lost by 1 point. So can we all agree that throwing the football in Seattle isn't the challenge it used to be? Now today Jackson was 9/20 for 143 yards; 0 TD & 0 INT. The difference maker was that Jackson ran the ball 14 times for 116 yards and a TD! BTW, in this game the Raven's offense scored 3 FG's & 1 TD. They had 2 defensive TD's. If Allen had these types of stats and he showed last year that he could match Jackson running the football, much of the football media would be in an uproar.

10/11 = 90.9%. Of course anything under 95% is struggling! Oh and check out the official NFL site which has Allen's fourth quarter QB rating after today's game as 139.6! That's almost perfect and every one of those 4th quarters were in close, contested games.

And don't forget his amazing performances in the 4th quarter. According to the NFL's official site after today Allen now has a QB rating of 139.6 in the 4th quarter this season! That's close to perfection and every one of those 4th quarters was in a closely contested game. Allen's play in the 4th quarter demonstrates that he's clutch and that sooner rather then later the gaudy stats will follow. But first things first, lets keep getting wins.

Okay if you don't like that comparison how about this one against the very bad Pittsburgh Defense: The Ravens beat Pitt 26 - 23 in OT and Jackson was: Passing: 19 - 28 for 161 yards, 1 TD & 3 INT. Rushing: 14 carries for 70 yards. Had the run that out the ravens in position to kick the game winning FG.

This is a great point. I watched that game and Jackson was a big part of the Ravens win as were two defensive TD's. Both Jackson & Allen are winning games in an unconventional manner. I'm with you in thinking Jackson's way is not sustainable. But who knows. Conventional wisdom is only wisdom until it isn't. Both young QB's are in different ways CLUTCH & PLAY MAKERS.

Bingo on this last point. The D had a rare bad game. But those long drives we let Miami execute probably cost us 2 - 3 extra offensive possessions. Against this Miami team we all expected a lot more 3 & outs. I think we had only one.

He had a couple of nice blocks on decent Gore runs. I don't think he was targeted with a pass. Folks need to be patient here. Both Singleterry & Kroft didn't do much today because they were rusty after missing a fair amount of time to injury. I expect that both players will have bigger impacts starting next week.

We're not good enough to get to a Super Bowl right now. If we win 10 games and make the playoffs as a wildcard that's great progress. We're in an excellent CAP situation for next year and our key young players are making real progress. next year and the years after are when this team has the potential to be a Super Bowl contender in the AFC.

I'm expecting we'll play a lot better against the Eagles. That seems to be the MO of this team.

Fantasy, freaking, Football.

A "game manager" doesn't take his team on a 98 yard drive to take the lead in the 4th quarter. I don't think we have the horses to gain 300 yards through the air. I watch a lot of NFL games and though we've improved our skill positions from last year how anyone can look at our current stable of RB's, TE's & WR's and think we should be regularly gaining 300 yards passing is beyond me. I believe that in the 2nd half of the season guys like Knox, Singleterry and Kroft will step up and we may see more explosiveness in the passing game. But right now we aren't built for 300 yard passing games. I also believe that 300 yard passing games are overrated. I see a lot of guys put up 300+ passing yards while losing the game. My guess is Allen's first 300 yard game may come in one in which we're down 3 TD's late and he puts up 150 cheap yards against prevent defenses. What sets Allen apart is his clutch play in the 4th quarter in contested games. He is clutch which is far more valuable then a 300 yard game. In time he will learn to play like this for a whole game and then if we need him to throw for 350 yards he will.

And the Dolphins showed life in an early season game against Dallas. In that game, played at Dallas and with Rosen at QB, Miami was only down 10 - 6 at half. I think today we got the best game Miami can play. And with Fitz at the helm and playing well, we were in real danger of getting upset. That we didn't is impressive IMO. A good team would find a way to win this game no matter how poorly they played and no matter how well Miami played. And we won so I'm believing we are a good team.

And you think they could beat a Rosen QBed Dolphins team? It would be over by half time and it would be ugly for any college football team.

You haven't watched much Clemson football this year have you? Their QB is struggling and has thrown way to many INT's. He would probably throw 3 picks in the first half against the Fish. And Rosen behind an NFL line, even a depleted sucky one, would carve Clemson AND Alabama AND Ohio State up. If the pros were motivated, which means the winner gets $250,000 for each player and the loser gets nothing, the Fish beat any college football team by at least 7 TD's.