mbs

Which bishop highlight are you guys celebrating? Please be specific, lol.

Why does every borderline call go one particular way? lol jk

These are all great throws. I bet they look even better at full speed.

As for the Hoculi being corrupt. I think he just hates the Bills. p=0.012 is very strong evidence that something is up. We feed kids new medicines on far less. It also is consistent with "the eye test." I rarely complain about refs. There a couple these days that make me wince, but Hoculi and his dad are just in their own awful tier. I can't see him being on the take for the Eagles and against the Bills over the course of years. I think he's just personally biased.

Is there any technology or even radio frequency that allows one to locate a "chip in the ball" to withing a few inches, works from 100 yards away, and can penetrate at least one human body twice (to get to the chip and then to return?) Seems like it would require a really high frequency and a huge amount of power. I'd love a technically competent person to open a thread on this because I can't imagine that we have this capability anywhere else, but lots of people think it's practical so I'm probably wrong but I don't know why. I also think the advanced stats people would have chipped the ball if it was a thing that could be done. Okay, so I looked it up. The claim is that they can do it with enough receivers, very short wavelengths, and fancy math to draw inferences from reflected waves.

He has no superpowers. His highlight reel is never going to make you think he's special. He isn't exceptionally fast, athletic, or strong and he doesn't have a noticeably big arm. I don't think it's a coincidence that Allen, Jackson, and Mahomes are near universally agreed upon as top three and each looks like some comic book character in their own way. It is harder to judge an elite guy like Burrow who just completes a bunch of passes without tearing the laces out of the ball or who scrambles a few yards for a first down without injuring a defensive tackle or breaking a corner's ankles. It's why I erroneously thought Brady was less than Rogers. I could see Rogers being awesome. Prior to Tampa, I really thought Brady was a "system quarterback." But obviously I am just not as smart as Brady because he could see what I didn't. (Also, he cheats.) If Maye becomes an elite QB, and Sunday's game only hinted that it's possible, he will have to be Brady/Burrow level to even get noticed. That's a tall hill to climb and that last game is not a very big step. The Bills rush D is supposedly terrible but gave up only 71 yards. On the other hand, they gave up 267 in the air. That's too much passing, but overall lets not pretend our terrible secondary and their awesome QB made it a game we need to pee our pants over. Not long ago, Miami was as much of a hurdle and it just made the season a bit more exciting. 338 yards total is not a whooping. 273 passing is very good, not great. Maye is very promising, but he has not arrived.

I thinkineed a “talk me off the ledge” thread.

The Ravens have played half their games against the top two scoring offenses in the league. In their last game they were missing half their starters against Mahomes with Worthy. We are only four games in, tossing out "last in scoring" is worthless. Detroit put up 38 against the Ravens and then put up 34 against the Browns who are supposed to have an elite D this year. They gave up 40 to Josh Allen in an amazing Josh Allen type roll and given at least one short field. Stats are hard enough to make sense of in a 17 game season, raw ranks like this at less than the 1/4 mark is worth less than a quarter of a pail of spit.

Ah yes. That's true. But the market would be there next year and if there was a good chance he'd get it, he would have played out his rookie deal. Probably should have, I guess.

Sure, he's on pace for 1700+ yards, but you guys are gonna feel pretty silly when he finishes with only 1650 or so. I don't think it's fair to blame people who didn't want to pay him Henry money when he wound up signing for like 20% less. That is, no one else was offering him Henry money either. I was relieved to see 12M/yr with a reasonable guarantee and now I feel like it was a steal. In hindsight, I would be be plenty forgiving if they had given him 15M for four years, but I also think he's playing better than anyone expected. And it wouldn't have been a steal.

There are problems with preparation of the players and problems with executing their plays. In the former, sure, I agree. In the latter, I also agree. The latter, specifically, looks like a problem where they have no plan for tempo. Does it not look like the past two games caught the defense while they were still signalling and shifting? This is well beyond my football expertise but if a bit of tempo can catch the defense unprepared, then the coaching really needs to adapt to that and preferably in game. If that is a big part of the problem, then that's a big coaching problem. Even if they fix it, the fact that they did not foresee it looks bad. Again, this is beyond me, but I'd like to hear from those of you who might be able to clear it up.

The approach as we have heard countless times is to make them move down the field first down by first down and wait until they bobble a pass, fumble the ball, or throw to a safety. In the past three games they gave up no big plays and waited for the opponent to bobble a pass, fumble the ball, or throw to a safety. That's mission accomplished. How you can look at the past three games and to an extent the Ravens game as well, and think they are not accomplishing what they set out to do is beyond me. Holding even a bad team to under 300 is not a bad performance. Holding a bad QB to a career low in passing is not a bad performance. Being #1 (2?) in passing yards allowed is not a bad performance. The strategy they have chosen is painful to watch, but the results speak for themselves. If the approach was more balanced we would be arguing over how great the defense looked except for Tre getting burned by Waddle/Wilson/Olive for 65 yards and a TD. Still would have a been okay, but Achane broke past the edge on that one play and ran free like Henry. "Just a couple of plays, man, just a couple a plays away ." And this is not to excuse having whiffed tackles and confused linebackers. I am not pretending there isn't a lot of a ton of room for improvement. But even if we were stuck with the defensive roster we have now, I feel a lot better about it than I did when Benford went down in KC and a broken old man in Rasul Douglas was on the other side, same Williams at LB and a very green Bishop at safety and here we are expecting to get much better talent in short order. The bigger problem is talent (which is partly coaching, sure.) If you get average tackling last week, this run defense would be average and the pass defense elite. So, while the players are struggling, the defensive coaching is delivering exactly what they promised and I hate it too, but 4-0. Edit to add that I didn't address your main claim. Too focused on my own. I will though in another post.

Exactly. I feel this too: 3rd down, seven seconds into the play, Rattler scrambles for 12 yards and a first down. FIRE EVERYBODY! 3rd down, three seconds into the play, Rattler hits a slant for 14 yards. Eh, it happens. (This is my last excuse the terrible run defense post.)

They built a defense to address Mahomes and Hill and now they need it to address Mahomes and Worthy. That is still the right strategy. Rattler had his worst passing game and Tua, Fields, and even Lamar had low yardage passing games. They are absolutely vulnerable to Henry and Jackson on the ground and even made Rattler look like Tarkenton. Fine, that's better than watching Hill running to the endzone in overtime. Baltimore is their kryptonite and they still figured it out in the end and the team got the win. It is massively skewing the stats and will, on paper, be less worrying over the next few games. As for perception, yes they miss tackles and have players out of place. It's painful. But they will get starters back and it is 100% reasonable to expect the young players to get more disciplined and for the defense to improve until six or eight of them get hurt in January. 4-0

Rooting for the defense has made this game much more enjoyable.