Mikie2times

You rock!! I’ve been following Madden 360 and have seen 15 or so screens and a couple videos, but this is the first I've seen of any Bills, great find!

I agree that if the division winner is below .500 then a third wild card should be awarded, and the below .500 winner should not go. Consider the NFL North this year, and ask yourself if any of this team deserve the playoffs if they come in at 7-9. You have Detroit 2-3, Chicago 2-3, Vikings 1-4, and Green Bay 1-4. The Vikings have been about as bad as it gets this year and yet they sit 1 game out of first place and a home playoff game. If the division winners can't meet this minimal requirement then fug em, let a team that deserves it more go.

Wow, and the Vikings still wen't after him?

I'm not somebody looking past Oakland, and I doubt this Bills are either. Throw out Oakland’s record, this is not any easy win with Moss in or not. I think the ST will be the deciding factor in a very close low scoring game.

You bring up a good point Kelly. The Kelly Holcomb led passing attack is turning into a YAC type passing game. This compliments our ground attack, and increases our 3rd down % and time of possession. Parrish seems like a player built for this roll and should really add to the Bills passing game. On a side note anybody else really bummed out about Everett? I know it happened forever ago but an athletic TE is exactly what we needed for this type of offense. Who knows if he would have been a player this year, I'm just praying his injury doesn't hurt his athleticism for next season.

I don't like the fact that people are guaranteeing a loss either. As a team we have the intangibles that can help you beat a team you probably shouldn't, namely we have great ST and force turnovers. I don't think you can ever completely rule out the chance at victory, but I don't see a problem with Bills fans recognizing the odds against us, which do appear to be great in this situation. Sure the Patriots are not playing like the same old Patriots, but the Bills haven't exactly been clicking on all cylinders either. The deck is certainly stacked against us, but as they say anything can happen in the NFL.

pshhh..... Impose your man will Bill, J/K. I'm young, live with my girlfriend, and don't have anywhere close the responsibilities you do being a married father of three. That said I still would much rather watch the games at home. The bills games are a sacred 3 hour event for me, and I prefer them distraction free and void of other team’s fans.

Thanks Cinci, I wasn't sure many people would read the preview with it being a few posts down. For what it's worth the first game I have used these stats with was the St Louis/Colts game and it had Indianapolis -17. That was spot on, but I will admit it was pretty far off on the total. Who would have thought the Rams would throw up 17 in the first few minutes of that one? For all you gamblers here is my lock of the week (if such a thing exists) 49ers at Redskins- The Redskins -12.5. These statistics are being influenced positively in the 49ers direction because of Rattay starting a few games, kind of like our passing stats our being dragged down by Losman starting a few games. Despite that the Redskins still show being a favorite of 20+ points. Statistically the Redskins hold a major advantage, but as any good handicapper knows it’s not all about statistics. The skins are coming off back to back road losses so this one is a must win for them. To make matters worse for the 49ers Alex Smith makes his first road start against a dominating Washington pass defense. In Smiths only other start of the year he threw 5 INT’s at home against the Colts. Don’t be afraid of the big spread, the Redskins will cover by a TD or more.

Here is the Bills at Oakland Match up using the adjusted statistics. Rather then post a unreadable chart I just did a write up including some of the highlights. Raiders on Offense The raiders with Randy Moss didn’t pass with much consistency, without him these stats plummet further. Oakland completes only 56% threw the air, and when matched up against our secondary should be held to a passer rating under 70. While the outlook is rosy for the pass defense the same can't be said for the run defense. Oakland isn't a good rushing team, but matched up against us they should average around 4.3 a clip. With Moss out expect Oakland to try and establish the ground game. They saw us let one of the leagues worst ground games torch us, and will certainly try play to our ground weakness over our pass strength. Key to winning: Force turnovers and stop third down conversions. Oakland is ranked first in not turning the ball over, Buffalo is ranked fourth in forcing takeaways, something’s got to give. Despite how horrible Buffalo's third down defense is, Oakland has been equally bad in that department. Oakland average of 27.6% will kill an offense, and they don't pass with much efficiency, but Buffalo is 26th on 3rd down defense so both coaches are looking to right the ship this week. Bills on Offense This weekend will be a real test for this offense. We run the ball well with an average of 4.14, but Oakland holding teams to 3.75 per rush. Hopefully the addition of a CV and MW will pay dividends in the run game for the second straight week. As for our passing game the games in which JP played have really pulled down our averages, so it’s difficult to measure how effective this unit is. I have Oakland’s pass defense as the 17th best in the league, and 21st in QB sacks. They certainly aren’t world beaters, but they play around the league average, and being on the road should make it a challenge for the Bills passing attack. Key to Winning: Keep the completion % high in the passing game. Holcomb has been able to keep our offense is manageable third downs by hitting on a high rate of his short passes. Oakland’s pass defense, while average, is 5th in the league in completion %. The ground game won’t be effective all day, so Holcomb needs to continue to complete short throws and win the 3rd down battle against Oakland who ranks 21st in third down defense. Special Teams Oakland ranks 20th in Kick Returns, 30th in kick returns allowed, 22nd on Punts returns, and 21st in Punt returns allowed. Janakowski is also slumping badly as their 28th in the league in FG accuracy. Bobby April should be salivating at this match up as the Bills hold a major advantage in almost every ST category. Look for Bills ST to play a major role in this one, and Terrance to possibly return his first kick for a TD. Final Thoughts Offensively and defensively these two teams match up pretty evenly, so anybody expecting an easy win could be in for a rude awakening. Being on the road will make it a challenge, and our ST needs to take advantage of this obvious mismatch. Expect a low scoring, tightly contested game, one that will go in Buffalos direction if they take advantage of the ST mismatch. If not Oakland probably wins by a field goal and the Sunday night game in New England becomes a must win.

I used to despise Madden and called him the king of obvious, but he does a great job of breaking the game down, and you can't question his knowledge. Now that the Cowboys dynasty is long gone old Madden has grown on me a bit. As for my other quiet favorite I like Jim Nance. I hate the Patriot love fest, but he does a good job raising the drama level and that’s what his role is. Worst group hands down is the Sunday Night football crew. To bad I can't sink up the radio broadcast with the TV, I tried the internet feed before and it didn't sink up.

Don't get me wrong, I love when Sam try’s to guess the cadence and blow plays up. But if he misses on that swim/rip move he uses it throws him way off balance, and usually takes him out of the play. Right now our defensive line is not keeping the offensive line of our linebackers, and we continue to let runners untouched into the secondary. If I recall Sam needed a talking to before about staying within the system, and with Pat gone I feel like he might be struggling in his new role. His free lancing playmaking style complimented PW's ability to keep blockers off our LB's, but now we need Sam to be our PW and I'm not sure if he wants to play that role. Of course this is all speculation, but I just noticed he took himself out of a ton of plays on Sunday, and really left some huge lanes.

Thanks for a response I will post the Oakland match up, I did one for the Colts game tonight and it looks very accurate. Like I said I created this to handicap games, because the stats get averaged out the weak and strong teams become very apparent. This basically is measuring in every phase of the game how strong your competition has been compared to the average team, and how well you faired. One discrepancy I noticed with Buffalo is the pass defense. We lead the league in yardage allowed by a decent margin, but in reality were not as good as it appears. The passing offenses we have faced have been way below the NFL average statistically, and they haven't been throwing the ball that often. Buffalos run defense has been so bad teams just don't pass, but when they do the average per pass puts buffalo at 8, and not 1. Eight spots in that category is a big jump, and may describe the reason for our 3rd down defense.

I had no problem with what he said, Moulds has always been one of my favorites. He may not be the deep threat receiver he once was, but he has become a great short yardage guy, and is still is decent after the catch. That’s important considering our entire offense right now revolves around the short passing game. If he doesn’t renegotiate next year for the cap he's probably gone, and even at his age I think the offense will still miss him more then people think.

I was going to post the match up with Oakland and some analysis if you guys want, but it doesn't appear like people care that much about these stats.

This is long, but will be worth it to die hards and handicappers so just bear with me. NFL statistics are extremely biased, much of the value statistics have gets lost without factoring in the strength of your opponent. So for my own handicapping purposes I started a stat project that factors in strength of schedule. After all how can we say a certain area of this team is performing well if the competition being played has performed far below NFL averages. Rather then try and go threw a lengthy explanation of how I reached these statistics I will just give a quick example. Let’s say Buffalo is scoring 25 points per game, and the opponents they played have averaged allowing 20 points per game. The NFL league average for points allowed is 17, so overall Bills opponents have allowed 3 more points then the league average. Since Buffalos opponents have allowed three more points then average three points gets deducted from the Bills total. So against an average team Buffalo would score 22 points, and not the 25 points the scored against slightly inferior competition. That example is fictitious, but I have done this process with over 25 NFL statistics and if anybody wants the excel file feel free to PM me. The following is how the Bills stack up across the league in terms of ranking when everything is averaged out. You will also notice I didn’t include rush yardage or passing yardage, both these statistics get manipulated by how good or bad other areas of your team are. Instead I use averages which are a much better indication of the overall performance. If an asterisk is by the ranking it means it was not averaged out league wide. Offense Points Scored- 30 Pass %- 26 Yards Per Pass- 32 QB Rate- 29 Sacks Per Pass Attempt – 28 * Sacks Allowed- 24 Yards Per Rush- 11 3rd Down Conv %- 9 Penalties- 23 * Giveaways- 10 Defense Points Allowed- 15 Pass %- 17 Yards Per Pass- 8 QB Rate- 4 Sacks Per Pass Attempt – 7 * Sacks- 25 Yards Per Rush- 31 3rd Down %- 26 Penalties- 28 * Takeaways- 4 ST/ MISC Kick Return average- 1 Opponents Kick Return average-5 Punt Return Average- 12 Opo Punt Ret Avg- 25 FG%- 8 * Punt Avg- 5 * Turnover margin- 4

Average is fine if the rest of the team is good enough to pick up the slack. The ST is very good again, and a healthy line makes a big difference, but an average QB will not win with the way the defense is giving up rushing yards. These last two games felt great and we needed them both to have any chance this year. But I'm looking for an expectation level with this team, and ultimately if the move to Holcomb was the correct long term decision. If we stay in the hunt and finish 8-8 or better then I believe it was the right move. But many aspects of this team were not playing well for JP, and still aren't playing well for Kelly. The jump from Losmans play to Kelly’s play, and the ground game was enough to overcome the aspects of this team that continue to under perform. But the schedule isn’t getting any easier, and an average QB will not be enough to overcome these things against better teams.

Sure that’s the bottom line, and that’s why he's playing. Like I said in the original post his ability to complete short passes is critical to our offense. I just hope our expectation on how a QB should play has not fallen so low that we call Holcomb’s play excellent. It was good enough to win against the Jets, and Dolphins, but it must get a lot better to really consider this team a playoff contender. Either that or the defense needs to play like last year, and I don’t see that happening at this point

Easy with the Tom Brady analogy, Brady may not be known for having a canon but he still throws a great deep ball. Kelly has yet to show us that he has the particular attribute. I'm not trying to rag on Holcomb at all, but if we lose this game he is the goat not the hero is being made out to be. He should be starting because he does give this team a better chance to win then JP would, but we all need to stay level with our expectations of Kelly. He has a couple picks, and some questionable decisions, and has yet to complete a ball downfield. He's made up for that with great short throws that have kept the chains moving. That is certainly more production then JP would be getting, but not more so then your average NFL QB.

I factored that in my logic, and again I think Kelly has brought things to the table that JP couldn't bring. He has been a positive factor in both wins, but he is not the reason for them both, and is not a good enough player to overcome the rest of the team playing poorly.

Only the return of Ben Coats could make this scenario worse then it already is. Bye week, home game, off a loss, national TV, and the return of Teddy. That pretty much combines all the situations the Bills have struggled in the past few years against the team they have struggled the most with.

Despite the fact that Kelly is not fully assimilated with the offense I think it's safe to say what kind of QB we have after 2 weeks. What he brings to this offense is the ability to make third down more manageable by converting short passes. That ability means a lot to an offense that wants to control the clock. JP wasn't putting our offense in these types of situations, so yes Kelly has had a big impact on both wins. But at the same time don't discredit how important turnovers and the ground game have been the last two weeks. Kelly is not a game changing QB, but with good play elsewhere he is a QB that we can win with. He seems like a player that would rather check down then take any chance downfield. Perhaps somebody at the games could comment on this, but he doesn't appear to have the arm strength to go downfield. Unfortunately I also have noticed some things in his play that might not have killed us the last two games, but could haunt us down the road. Much like the last QB he doesn’t seem to have much pocket presence and doesn’t protect the football that well. He also has made some panicked decisions that led to INT’s, or potential fumbles on backward passes. The positive is he gets rid of the ball quick, so even though he will make some poor pressure induced decisions he usually has checked down before it reaches that point. We can win with Kelly, and at this point we give ourselves a better chance then if JP was in the game. But Kelly is not a world beater, and for us to keep winning the other phases of our team must play well. This isn't as simple as saying Holcomb is 2-0 and JP is 1-3, Holcomb has gotten plenty of help, and when you figure in the Texans game all three of our victories have been games in which we won the turnover battle, and ran the ball 25+ times.

I think those observations are spot on. Holcomb at times looks like he's a decent QB, but he is not close to being a game changing player. I also thought JP might be able to win the last two given the ground game, and turnovers. But you can't completely discredit what Holcomb brings to this offense, and that’s the ability to create third and short, and pick up yardage threw the air via his west coast style passes. Terrance IMO is the games best return man, and that includes Daunte Hall. He's just unreal to watch and reminds me a little of Barry Sanders with the way he runs. He doesn't possess Barry's agility, no player ever has, but he runs with the same shiftiness in his shoulders that Barry used to.

I'm not guaranteeing a loss in New England, but let’s face the facts about that match up. The Patriots coming off a loss, at home, with two weeks to prepare, on Sunday night football. Talk about combining every factor that's bit us in the ass the last few years. The Bills fan in me could never bet against Buffalo, but the handicapper in me is drooling over what will probably be the Patriots favored by less then a touchdown. All this makes the Raiders game that much more important. A loss to them and the Patriots game is a must win for our playoff chances. Otherwise you go into the bye 3-5, with plenty of difficult games left. I would feel much better about our chances if the real must win game against the Patriots is in Buffalo, and if we can beat Oakland that really increases the chances of that happening.

Just like last year it seems many people believe AFC record is relevant in breaking a division tie. Under the old playoff format it followed division record, but after realignment common opponent moved ahead of conference record. The fact is when you look at our common opponent record with New England things don't look so good. The Bills are 0-3 against teams New England played or will play, and the Patriots are 2-3 against teams the Bills played or will play. You also need to take in consideration that those records are against our weakest portion of the schedule and New England’s most difficult. Not tying to piss on the first place talk, but in order to win this division we will either need to beat New England twice, have a better division record, or better record overall. Our undefeated conference record is great for a Wild Card, but just not as important to our division chances.

Rian Lindell is having a Pro Bowl year, it would rock if he keeps up with the consistency.