Billl

I’m not trying to convince you of anything. If you think the special teams coordinator forgot to tell the kicker what the plan was, the other 10 players on the field also forgot, and Bass didn’t think to ask anyone what the plan was, that’s your prerogative. Frankly, if they’re that incompetent, I don’t know why you’d trust them to execute a squib kick. Half of them probably had their helmets on backwards.

Just donated $17. That makes donations of 17 and 13 which I’m sure I don’t have to tell you was the score of the 1924 game between the Buffalo Bison and the Akron Pros. This was the first ever final score of 17-13 in professional football history. It has happened 106 times since. https://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/game_scores_find.cgi?pts_win=17&pts_lose=13

Tell you what. Yesterday I donated $13. Today I’ll donate $17 more in honor of Josh’s performance if you’ll go $15 for Mahomes.

2 spies would have been even more effective at stopping Mahomes from scrambling.

It’s 50% snark and 50% respect for an incredible game. Either way, if you’re (not you specifically) so sensitive that you’re mad about people donating money to a children’s hospital then maybe you take sports too seriously.

If you’re under 18, you can have those wounds treated at a hospital that now has $13 of my money.

Yes, and as I said previously, there is precisely 0.0% chance that happened. The conversation has since expanded slightly over the 7 pages since then and I was responding appropriately.

The Bills gave up plenty of TD returns when Tasker was on the team including 3 in his last season alone. Kick return TDs happen. You know what didn’t happen all season until there were 13 seconds left against the Chiefs? Of course you do. Scott Kristie is one of the 6 billion people on earth who didn’t the ball through the end zone. Steve Christie is another one of those people. He just happens to be the one who did exactly what people in this thread were calling for only to get blocked to the ground while the guy with the ball raced into the end zone. I simply cannot believe that people are faulting the Special Teams who did their jobs correctly when it’s the defense who not only have up 44 yards in 10 seconds but then allowed Mahomes to end the game going 9/9 for 137 yards and 2 TDs. Personally, I blame Josh Allen. Gabriel Davis was so wide open in the end zone that Josh could have thrown the ball higher in the air thus burning more time off the clock. You see, it’s not enough to simply do your job correctly. You have to get cute and do it in a way that doesn’t put your defense in the impossible position of playing defense for 13 seconds.

I understand what you’re saying. You’re saying they should perfectly execute some hypothetical play. Every perfectly executed strategy works. The question is who do you trust to execute with the game on the line. Do you want $5,000,000 worth of salary on the field or do you want $100,000,000 worth out there? This isn’t Madden. You don’t get to just drop the ball on the 5 yard line because you sat on your couch and pushed the button. If you could, nobody would know what the term Music City Miracle meant. If the number 1 defense can’t stop a team from their own 25 with 13 seconds left then that other team deserves to win. Nope

Byron Pringle averages 25 yards per return. Let’s say they kick it short to the 15 and he returns it 25 yards to the 40 with 7 seconds remaining. That leaves you in the exact same position as when Kelce caught the pass. This was a defensive failure.

This doesn’t even make sense. Why would it take 6 seconds to return a kick 5 yards? Why would you assume that your special teams guys who make the league minimum are better equipped to defend the most explosive team in the NFL than the best defense in the NFL? There were 9 kickoff returns for TDs in the NFL this year. There were 0 scoring drives of 40+ yards that started with 13 seconds or less on the clock. In that situation, you don’t tell your Special Teams coach to help you win the game. The game was won. You tell him not to f*** it up. Every Bills fan on the planet wishes that Scott Kristie had kicked it through the end zone. That person is wrong. There were 4 TD returns that were kicked short of the end zone. One was on a squib kick.

That’s probably what they should have done (assuming Hill wouldn’t have cooked them on a deep ball). It has nothing to do with special teams, though.

This is the correct answer. With :13 seconds left and a 3 point lead, you really just want to avoid a catastrophe. Here’s what we know to be true… Kansas City has fast players. Byron Pringle has returned multiple kickoffs for TDs. Tyreek Hill in the 2 playoff games against the Bills has a 71 yard catch and run on a short pass, a 64 yard TD catch and run on a short pass, and a 45 yard punt return while Mecole Hardman had a 50 yard run and an ankle breaking 26 yard TD run. These are facts. So the question the coaches have to ask themselves is who do they want on the field defending those guys? Do they want it to be a bunch of special teams guys who are fringe roster players, or do they want their starting defense? It’s 100% reasonable to decide that they want to trust their big money players and that kicking it through the end zone checks the “avoid a catastrophe” box. If they’d squibbed it and an up-man fell on it at the 40, that would have been a disaster. If they’d pooched it and Hardman, Hill, or Pringle had housed it, that would have been a bigger disaster. The narrative would have been “just kick it through the end zone instead of trying to burn 2 seconds”. Instead, people are blaming the special teams for not getting cute and burning 3 seconds off the clock. Seriously, if your mentality is that the defense can defend for 10 seconds but not 13 seconds then you don’t belong on an NFL sideline. The special teams did their job. They put the defense on the field with a 99% chance to win.

I have no idea why people are so willing to believe that the coaching staff that has taken a moribund franchise and turned it into a perennial Super Bowl contender are a bunch of imbeciles. Mistakes were made. You don’t blow a lead with :13 on the clock otherwise, but to think the Special Teams coach is going “gee whiz I didn’t realize that it’s important to tell the Kicker the plan for the kickoff” is just a bizarre coping mechanism.

Some fans will gobble up any BS they’re fed. There is zero chance this is true. My God, people.

That’s not quite correct. If multiple coaches get hired in the same year, 2 comp picks are awarded for the first and only 1 is awarded for additional hires.

Anything can happen, but those red hot Bengals have scored 3 TDs in the postseason. Kansas City has scored 11.

What could possibly go wrong with allowing a last second kick return in the playoffs? Steve Christie, if you’re reading this please weigh in.

Did nobody watch the Rams game? The Buccaneers defended against the shorter throws and Kupp cooked them over the top. If Kelce had been bracketed, you’d have Hardman and Hill to deal with over the top. Your Safeties are great, but they can’t run with those guys. If your strategy is to force Hill to beat you, you’re gonna have a bad time.

Sunday’s game was basically two historically talented QBs playing perfect football. It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The comparisons are inevitable. The only question that has been answered so far is ‘who has a higher ceiling’ and the answer is neither. They are both capable of squeezing every drop out of a game. There’s simply no other way to put it. Brady and Manning were never capable of doing what those two dudes did on Sunday. I’ve always said that Manning was the most perfect QB I ever saw when things were going well, but Brady was the best when things weren’t going his way. Manning simply couldn’t overcome adversity as well, and he had more bad games than Brady. If I’m arguing for one over the other between Josh and Pat so far, I’m taking Pat because his bad games are less bad and less often than Josh’s. The difference on Sunday may have been what happened on November 7th. Both of them had bad days. Pat’s bad day was 20/37 for 166 yards, 1 TD, and no turnovers. Josh’s was 31/47 for 264 yards, 0 TDs, and 3 turnovers. Chiefs beat Green Bay without Rodgers, and Buffalo lost to Jacksonville. Change either outcome, and that game would be played in OP. These guys are both getting better, and it’s hard to imagine what’s next for them. Mahomes is learning how to take what the defense gives him and be methodical while Allen is learning how to stay calm and harness his ability. I’m biased for my guy, but there’s no doubt in my mind that Allen is the biggest threat to his legacy for the next several years. (And the Bills had better be careful not to Cam Newton his career by letting him take so many hits.)

Pick play? There was nobody to pick. There were 4 linemen and 7 deep in coverage. It was essentially a downfield screen where Kelce and Pringle were clearing the way and Tyreek just ran behind them as fast as he could.

For starters, it would have been played in OP. I don’t know how that affects the outcome, though.

Chiefsplanet is an interesting animal. I used to be a frequent poster there but stopped a few years ago due to the level of right-wing extremism that started drowning out pretty much everything there. Sucks because it used to be a really great forum. That said, much of the “toxic” football related stuff is tongue in cheek, so you have to take it with a grain of salt.

This is an awesome thread. I’m glad those of you who came had a great time even though it didn’t end the way you’d hoped. If you ever come back, shoot me a message and I’ll buy you a beer and a folding table. My office is literally a block from Taps on Main that @AdrianW mentioned. I had no idea it was owned by a Bills fan, and I go there quite a bit. This has all the makings of an annual event. Maybe someday you can host it if you ever get a domed stadium downtown.

Yeah, what a disaster that was…