Nextmanup

They also had no problem canceling Colin Kaepernick, whose career was literally cancelled/destroyed by the NFL to send a message to players not to get political. It's just a question of what the underlying fact pattern is, I guess, among these people. There's no well thought out underlying principle involved at all. LOL

After a lovely run of being able to watch our games on TV, I'm back to the internet this week. That pair of games on Saturday interests me as much as anything going on all week, minus the Bills game of course.

No, you're not the only one who has suggested converting Dahlin. He had a good offensive night last night, but his defensive hockey IQ remains pathetically low. He's been around long enough now, too. He has zero chance to ever be anything close to a Norris Trophy candidate. Not that kind of player at all. He's a bust, considering he was the No. 1 overall pick.

My complaint with the fake punt was not so much the play design, but the timing of the whole thing in general. I can't believe we thought it would fool anyone, and it came after NOT making several calls in critical moments, which didn't make sense to me. I.E., we passed over the chance to gain an advantage through risk several times AND THEN tried the fake punt. This is yet another black mark on McDermott's rather bad in-game management. In close games against good teams, this stuff matters!

If anything, the data should tell you, OP, that your emotionally-driven, subjective "take" on the team is wrong, not the data! And yet you don't seem to get that. The largest and perhaps ONLY group of people around the football world who are convinced the Bills sucks are BILLS FANS RIGHT NOW. That should tell you something. Fans with a reason to remain objective and rational still think we have a shot at the SB. That's because we do. We DO have to get it going here a bit, but we can totally do that.

That's one way to interpret the data. Another would be to suggest that Josh doesn't often throw long enough to get coverage calls in his favor, or when he does, he doesn't throw accurately enough for the defender to have to take a penalty. There's a TON of potential stuff going on in a simple statistic like that. Don't draw a quick conclusion.

Comparing McDermott, or any Bills coach, to a long list of past Bills coaches is foolish. Almost all of our coaches over a period of decades were jokes who had no chance of success. Past Bills coaches are not the standard to go by; the best HC in the league is. Can McDermott be improved relative to what is out there around the league? That's the question.

If you think about it, the idea of a "football guy" managing in-game decision making is ridiculous, no head coach in the league should be doing any of it, and in 10 years no HC in the league will be doing any of it. But for now, we get McDermott making calls from his "gut" on the spur of the moment and thinking that's how you manage a football game. The irony is that RIGHT NOW there is a substantial competitive advantage to be gained by doing it the right way, b/c almost no one is. 10 years from now when everyone does it the right way, it won't help nearly as much, b/c the advantage will be gone. The advantage is here and now, for teams smart enough to switch over to the "new" way of doing things.

Can we give this crap a rest? We are built exactly the way we were built last year, and that was good enough to get us 2 home playoff wins in January and a berth in the AFC championship game. The team doesn't need to be rebuilt wholesale, FFS.

Solid road win in Winnipeg. UPL continues to impress. 2 goals from Dahlin; Skinner scores; solid night all the way around.

It is? A list that fans "respect" the most? Where is that written and/or how did you come up with that, other than just by writing it? I always assumed the wall is place to acknowledge the best players in team history, and OJ most definitely that. I think I would place him #1 on the all time list of best Buffalo Bills. Only player who comes close in the consideration is Bruce Smith, but OJ beats him out IMO. Can't change history.

This is the type of thing that a lot of people get really fired up about. I'm not one of those people. I voted "leave him on the wall". He's there b/c of what he did on a football field, and that hasn't changed.

I have thought going with the college 15 yard rule was a good idea for many years now. Giving the ball at the spot of the foul is often a gigantic penalty, and you're not sure the player would have caught the ball in the absence of the foul anyway! How about having a 2 tier type of penalty. If PI is "egregious" it's the spot of the foul. I.E., the DB was horribly beaten and tackled the WR to avoid a huge completion. If not, it's 15 yards. It would still require the official to exercise subjective discretion (which is a terrible idea) but it might be a sound approach overall.

Of course this is the right call in that spot and it's what you have to do to beat Brady. In their Super Bowl against NE, Philly played like that all night and the won the game. But it would almost be impossible to envision Sean McDermott ever making a call like this in a game. It's just not who he is, and he doesn't understand the proper way to be thinking about in-game decisions, along with most coaching staffs around the league.

I don't think we are the only team that has to do it; I think both teams make adjustments in every game. They should, unless everything is going so well they feel there is no need to make an adjustment, but that seems unlikely.

Anyone going to IKEA soon? Grab some pencils and mail them to OBD. Maybe they can use them.

I would dedicate more resources to the offensive line before I would dedicate them to CB2. Making the offense hum should be the first, second, and third most important jobs of the team. Our passing game is what directly translates to wins more than anything else, BY FAR. Josh will be a much better passer when his OL is much better. There are entire games, or large parts of games now, where Josh has real trouble consistently finding anyone to throw too, and it's largely because he doesn't have enough time. His passing stats suffer, and the game becomes a real challenge, and often a loss. When the OL has a great day and Josh is comfortable all day long, we sometimes win by 30. Having said that, once the OL is fully addressed, I do agree that stopping the other team's ability to pass is the second most important factor that translates directly to wins and losses...and the most important position for that is DB, not "edge rusher" or anyone else. I.E., maximum resources should go to OL, receivers (if needed; we are good there now), and then DBs, in that order. Of course, we'll probably draft a DT with our first pick, as we've now done more than once. LOL

The game is way over-regulated and over-officiated now. The review system is much too complex, time consuming, and rarely arrives at the "Correct" call anymore than the old eyeball test of a referee on field. The fix that I would LOVE to see is to eliminate the entire review/challenge system entirely. Maybe with the exception that a panel of reviewers review all scoring plays (but nothing else) and the review is done off-site. There is NO reasons why refs at a particular game should ever be doing any reviewing themselves. That's totally mickey mouse.

Here's an idea: maybe Josh will be OK and play on Sunday. Why not wait to see how it pays out?

I never felt like actually winning the SB was a viable goal for this season. Even before this season turned into this season (and current record) it felt like we are still a work in progress. I do think we will "barely sneak into the playoffs" but that's quite OK. It's about what we do once there. Let's say we are the #7 seed....we will be the #7 seed that NO ONE wants to play. Because no one will know when we snap into form and throw 30+ on the board.

Not only that, but he makes them with a little miniature golf scorecard pencil on what appears to be a blank mailing envelope! I love that...it's how I do things myself. Not a lot of tech going on in my life. Funny how a pencil and an envelope can take down the best teams in football. It's all about what you are writing down on the envelope. (Not the right pencil or paper from my comments, but how many times have you seen BB doing this on the sideline during the game?)

Only at a Bills forum would the guy who takes down BB, Tom Brady, and the "Cheatriots" not once, but TWICE in the BIGGEST GAME OF THEM ALL be mocked as somehow being "no good." If only we had such losers quarterbacking our teams! Those 2 teams and years are just a couple examples of a team getting hot at the right time and going on a short run. Keep in mind winning a Super Bowl is not that hard IMO...massively easier than winning a Stanley Cup, for example. You don't need to be playing excellent football every other night for a month and a half, while avoiding the injury bug, to get to where you are going. Win a few games and you are in the big dance...once there, focus, and get it done. Sure the Bills can go on a run, maybe starting this week...or even with the 2nd half of the Tampa game! In fact, I can see that now. In about 3 weeks, people are going to say "Since that second half of the game in Tampa, this Bills team has been different." Let's go!

I think we win that game, assuming normal cold winter weather, but nothing weird. Also assuming Josh Allen plays full game and is pretty much fully healthy.

We are our own worst enemy, not the league.

Maybe, if you think we will have bad weather and that will hinder Mahomes more than Josh. But there hasn't been a home field advantage in the NFL for 3 years now. There's no correlation between playing at home and winning.