Einstein's Dog

There will be no scapegoating of Brady, it's all set up to remain with Dorsey. Curtailing Josh's running was a team decision to increase the odds he makes it through the season and to lengthen Josh's career. Now if that restriction is lifted the offense should be more dangerous.

I hope we have Lenny ready to go too. NYJ will try and rip the ball away from Cook. They'll smell blood now after the Denver disaster. Cook needs to concentrate on ball security.

Except McD was right. Cook was not trustworthy. When put back in Cook, while running hard, was loose on ball security.

I didn't say the Bills didn't have a difficult schedule. I was responding to someone who said Miami had an easy schedule. And I don't think the NYJ are easy. IMO, the division title is not out of reach.

But Miami does have Dallas and Balt. The Bills just need to be within a game by week 18 for the division title to be at stake. Also, Miami plays NYJ twice. And with all the QBs that have gone down who would have guessed Tua hasn't missed any time.

Except the tie-breaker w Miami. The division title is still possible.

The hard part for me w Cook was it didn't seem like the message got through about the benching. When Cook came back in it looked like he was running harder and more reckless. The message wasn't to run harder, but was supposed to be about ball security. That didn't seem to be Cook's priority. McD saying he doesn't trust Cook might be a measured response to contain huge frustration on a missed message. For me the interesting development will be the RB usage. A close look at what happens with Fournette, Does the Cook debacle get him demoted.

You seem to mistakenly think all situations are the same. Cook was benched for ball security issues. When put back it seemed like he wanted to make up for it by focusing on running harder. If Cook had been concentrating on prioritizing ball security I don't think Denver would have gotten that fumble.

After the fumble Cook seemed to become sugar-high Cook. He ran really hard and fast. But that was not what the sit down was supposed to be about- they were trying to stress ball security. If the ball security message had gotten through he would have been looking to secure the handoff first.

Not 100% on Allen. Cook didn't look the ball in, he was looking ahead. And this was a guy who sat a quarter because of ball security issues. His eyes should have been on that ball on the handoff. If the handoff was poor, which it was, then the play most likely is a loss, but not a turnover.

IMO, Cook needs to be slowly integrated back into the lineup, 3 fumbles are inexcusable. He didn't even play the whole game. He sat because he fumbled and yet two more after that. What Joe Brady can bring is a spark, a positive focus/jibe. I think Brady gets the luxury of unleashing Josh for the remainder of the season. Josh's bullets to Diggs, high percentage to Kincaid, and increased use of Shakir along w bringing Cook back in still has the potential to be an excellent offense.

There is a Bills fan scenario where a Bengals victory could be beneficial. The logic is that for the Bills to get to the playoffs they must win the division. This game is meaningless to our Divisional aspirations. If the Bills win the AFCE the next hope would be to get out of the 4th seed, the 4th seed will most likely get the path of having to go into KC. The best chance for the Bills to get the 3 seed is to be above the AFCN div winner Balt (because game behind and lost hth to Jax0. If Balt loses they will only be one loss better than the Bills, all AFC losses.

If you can't say "scapegoat" would you accept "sacrificial lamb"? Because this had the look of a premeditated response to a loss. If we won, would this have been done? While I believe there was a lull in the offense for a few games starting in London, it seemed like they were on the verge of breaking out of it. My evaluation of Dorsey for the year was going to be based on overall stats, running Josh less, developing Kincaid quickly, progressing for the playoffs. Didn't occur to me he wouldn't make the end of the season.

Why the Ekeler diss? LA has been much better with Ekeler back in the lineup. Ekeler is more than a decent back, he is legit good. When Ekeler went out Johua Kelley took over and did nothing. Joshua Kelley seems the same tier as Singletary or Cook. Kelley is in his 4th year and was a 4th round pick. The Bills were hoping Cook would be like Ekeler.

but Kincaid will have to overtake LaPorta to get it. Looks like LaPorta has 43 receptions and had his bye already.

What letter of the rule are you talking about? There is a subjective element to determining intent. You can finger point and not be called, the OL does it all the time presnap, Players do it after first downs. So no, it's not the letter, but what Josh did has been called because intent is assumed You know when intent is also assumed is when the ball carrier is taken down by someone's legs. It's generally assumed if the defender takes down the ball carrier with his legs there was intentional tripping. Huge non-call. It's 15 yards and a 1st down, the Bills ,safely in FG range, with time on the clock.

More than that they need to be consistent. They call the point by Josh as taunting but don't call the take down of Kincaid by the defenders legs as tripping (and I don't even know if you need intent for the tripping call).

Normally I would suggest looking at a replay of the telecast but as a fellow Bills fan I would not do that. It was infuriating. My recollection of this farse goes something like this. First they showed the replay of the pass and commented that it looked the two weren't on the same page, Josh going long while Gabe broke it off. I remember wishing Josh had just gone for the short pass. They didn't even mention a flag. Then they showed a replay of the earlier Kincaid play from a different angle and there was a clear tripping. I hadn't noticed it during the play, Kincaid went down hard. The replay of the trip made me say "whoa". Collinsworth said something like "isn't that a trip?" the other guy "yes" and went silent, there was really nothing more to say. Then they talked about the decision to go for the long FG as Bass was going out. Then the penalty must have been assessed. They showed the replay but concentrated on where the pass went. Collinsworth questioned the call but the other guy said "by the definition of the rules" stuff - not even mentioning the "under duress" portion of the call. Two days in and going over this still pisses me off. While the Intentional grounding was more WTF-ish, the non-call on the trip was more game changing that would have been 15 + 1st with time remaining while clearly in FG range.

Running that play in the first place had some risk. L Joseph coming down on that calf could have set back Burrow/Cincy in a big way.

I didn't realize they thought about it and had a delayed flag. That is just wrong. IMO, this could have been a after further review, pick up the flag situation. And from a game situation, it would have made the game more interesting to see if the Bills could have hit the long FG.

I think the rules dork messed up and didn't even bring up the "imminent loss of yardage because of pressure". To me, It seemed like a convenient overlook of the rule so they didn't go back and look at the lack of pressure on Josh on that call.

Tyreek was using the peace sign and then it was being used by the defense and the league didn't like it. So the peace sign, much like "the finger" would be understood to be flagged. However, a finger point is not the rule. You routinely see linemen point at the line of scrimmage blocking assignments and no flags. The ref determined intent, and it was a rinky-dink, unnecessary call (very easily could have given a discreet warning). For me, there was the larger point of cumulative BS. The unnecessary finger point call, the uncalled tripping, and then the out of ordinary Intentional grounding call. But a finger point can mean more than a taunt - as it is with the O linemen. The action he did was not by rule a flag, the ref had to interpret intent and think Josh was taunting instead of identifying a player that needs to be blocked.

That's right, that added to it. They were lining up for the FG attempt and then in kind of a delayed fashion came back. I wish the other refs could have talked the one out of it. As a Bills fan watching the broadcast of that sequence of events was extremely frustrating.

Didn't see a thread on this. How could they call that? The ref purposefully called a terrible non-challengeable penalty. It's one thing to miss/not throw a flag on something. Like the tripping -even though it was on the person with the ball. You can somewhat think they didn't see it or think from their vantage point it wasn't a penalty. But Intentional Grounding - that really annoyed me. Where did they see "imminent loss of yardage because of pressure". The ref should never have made that call. Josh wasn't throwing that ball because of pressure. It was a terrible subjective call. And with the broadcast you see the replay of the non-called tripping, followed up with the inexplicable bogus intentional grounding call was a double whammy. The broadcasters saw the tripping and said a little something and kind of movedon/went silent. Then the Intentional grounding and at least Collinsworth was like "what?". Then the rules dork tried to make like it was definitely by the rules correct. But the rule dork clearly left out the whole under duress element of call, dork. It was very frustrating.

Seems a little short sighted to me to think we should have gone all out to beat Tampa. While running a sneak would have a greater chance of scoring, running a sneak would also have a much greater chance of having Josh's shoulder get hit and hurt. I wonder how many of the same people here complaining about not running a sneak would be looking to fire Dorsey if he ran the sneak and Josh is out for the next 3 weeks because his shoulder is too sore to continue.