Nextmanup

He's talking about a video game franchise...which is really quite good and has an enormous following. FALLOUT

Perhaps this is not so much a step back year as last year was an "artificial jump forward" year in terms of how fans perceive the accomplishments of the team. We could have EASILY lost our first playoff game last year to Indianapolis. Had we done that, would this year seem like a major regression? We got on a bit of a roll last year in the playoffs when it mattered, until we ran into a buzz saw named Kansas City. Is this team worse? Or was last year's team not really that good?

My complaint with his many of his challenges over the years (including last night) is that he makes strategic errors in terms of when to challenge and when not to. For example, he loves to challenge where the ball is placed on a tackle where it's impossible to say where the ball should go and the refs have already decided on where to put it....and then McD will challenge. Calls of that nature are simply NOT GOING TO BE OVERTURNED, yet no one on McD's staff seems to understand that and they end up pissing away a TO. They need to get SMARTER with it. I also feel McDermott is making some of these calls himself on the spur of the moment, which is definitely NOT HOW IT SHOULD BE DONE. They should have a rigorously established procedure involving people not named McDermott and it should move like clockwork in a short amount of time to make decisions, possibly consulting tables or a computer simulator as well. I don't think these guys are anywhere near that level of sophistication. 🤭

This was discussed at length this morning on the Howard and Jeremy show. They think those 2 guys DO NOT GET ALONG and disagree regarding fundamental strategy. The idea being McDermott is still defensively oriented but Daboll wants to air it out and take chances. What do people think about them? Are they on the same page? Is this a problem?

That was heavily mentioned in the game thread as it was unfolding. It's just one of many things that fall under the umbrella of "terrible coaching" from last night. Just fundamentally WRONG strategy.

New England is limited in what they can do. There are many teams in this league who can pull away and leave them for dead, and NE won't be able to respond. Hell, we could have and should have done that last night, but our entire game plan was horrific and Josh didn't have a solid game, in part b/c the OL was lousy yet again and NE has a decent DL. All we had to do was get a TD or 2 earlier and make BB come out of his turtle shell...and they would have struggled to do that. NE isn't going anywhere this year.

That's how I feel about NYC "Yankee fan" type accents. To each his own.

Listening to Hour 1 of Howard and Jeremy Show from this morning on GR-55. Howard really blasting McDermott for "coaching afraid" and it's pretty entertaining. "This coaching staff is apparently afraid to try and win football games." LOL

I think it will be a shootout no matter what. Take the "over". I'd be surprised if it's a low scoring affair.

Biggest issue was our QB didn't throw the ball to the wide open receiver on multiple plays when we needed it most.

You forgot about Josh consistently missing wide open receivers, especially near the end of the game, when it mattered most and would have changed the outcome of the game. Of course a part of that was the breakdowns in the offensive line causing Josh to panic. EXECUTION. That's what it ALWAYS comes down to.

The run game, like the offensive line and lots of other things, isn't going to get fixed this season. It's going to take at least one off-season to fix that stuff.

Pretty sure they are not going to build a dome, for various political and economic reasons. Has nothing to do with "bad football on Monday night" though.

Josh panicked and failed to see wide open receivers on a number of key, late-game plays that would have altered the outcome of the game. And posters here instead talk of "losing the locker room" and "not tough enough" to explain the loss. Their belief system won't allow the hero, Josh, to be fallible.

PFF has this cowboy as their 27th overall prospect for the draft. We could maybe get a guy like this. 27. DI JORDAN DAVIS, GEORGIA The single most physically imposing defender in college football. At 6-foot-7, 360 pounds, he’s an immovable block along the defensive line. That may be all you get, though, as he’s managed all of eight pressures this season. OK, only 8 pressures all year. That's fine. Let him consume at least 2 OLmen and make a wall over the "A" gaps that can't be moved. That's all he needs to do to be very effective at the NFL level.

I wonder if we could end up with any of these guys.....they will probably all be gone when we pick! DAMN! 8. Tyler Linderbaum, C, Iowa (6-3, 290 pounds) Linderbaum is a strong, athletic and relentless interior blocker. He has the intelligence and natural run blocking skills to be a decade-long fixture in the NFL. 11. Ikem Ekwonu, G, NC State (6-4, 320 pounds) Ekwonu has shot up boards showing his strong and powerful run blocking with the required nasty streak to push around and strike fear into his defensive line assignments. 15. Charles Cross, OT, Mississippi State (6-5, 310 pounds) Cross has a powerful upper body, strong hands and a mean and nasty aspect to his blocking. He could still develop his agility and footwork to raise his game.

Alas, if "ifs" and "buts" were candy and nuts, we'd all have a merry Christmas!

You don't need to "use the run to set up the pass" man. That's old fashioned "football lore". Our problem is we are built around an aggressive passing attack, but it's not as good as we think. Our OL is terrible, and Josh couldn't find WIDE OPEN RECEIVERS when he had to! If he had done that, we win that game, easily.

The OP is kind of stating the obvious, but I agree. Look at the names up and down the defensive line who don't really bring much to the party every game. There are a lot of guys there that should be contributing more than they are. It's been a disaster. Look at Edmunds. They should be calling his name every couple of plays with everyone saying "wow, what a baller" but he's nothing CLOSE to that type of guy, and should be replaced for an upgrade ASAP. Josh couldn't find WIDE OPEN receivers last night when we needed to make plays. The OL is trash; you could replace all 5 guys and no one would complain. Morse should be the foundation of the whole thing and he is a very mediocre center. Our RBs are extremely mediocre, and they do no one thing extremely well. They should probably all be replaced. We can all go on with this....

You can focus on a variety of specifics and had they been different, so to might have the outcome. Our coaching overall was terrible; the play calling was quite bad; the defense was a sieve all night long... ...and Josh couldn't find wide open receivers and throw the ball to them when he had to. Pure and simple. He was getting pressured and if he isn't well protected back there, he panics a bit, goes squirrelly, and has trouble finding someone to throw to. This is nothing new. 99 out of 100 fans at this forum won't talk about that, though, b/c Josh is supposed to be the hero.

BB isn't Einstein for Christ's sake. You offer the rationalizations of a loser. It was obvious what to do and not to do last night. McDermott played scared and defensively, b/c that is who he is by nature. He did not play bold and aggressively, like Philadelphia did in their SB against NE a few years ago...which is why Philly won that game. They played to win, took chances, were aggressive....and it paid off. I don't ever recall a Bills game being coached like that against NE.

I was saying all day and all game to THROW THE BALL and RUN JOSH. Those are the 2 things that we do well and what have given us all our success. Yes, we threw the ball 30 times on a bad night, but look at all those sacrificial run plays that went nowhere, all night long. We should have thrown 50 times, scored a couple TDs, and forced New England to come out of their shell and catch up. That's when Mac would have thrown an Int and it would have started to go off the rails for New England. ALAS, our coaching staff isn't smart enough to gain the initiative and keep it against a guy like Belichick.

And the real prize the IJN was seeking...our 4 carriers stationed at Pearl...were "out to sea on maneuvers." Coincidence? Luck? Timing? Or more?!

And that is entirely possible. But historically speaking, when it all turns to doom and gloom and almost all hope is lost, they usually win unexpectedly and pull you right back in. And so the pain of being a Bills fan rejuvenates itself. In this way, I would not be surprised, at all, if we beat Tampa! Seriously. No one is expecting it....that's why we'll do it. And then you won't know what to think and you'll wonder even harder how we lost to Jacksonville. Bills Football.

House man, these are the rationalizations of a loser. Sorry.