uninja

It’s a close game but this feels like two very ‘meh’ teams just beating up on each other.

The fact that he, one of the players furthest from where the ball was picked, was the first one there to make the tackle says something. Reminds me of Jim Kelly, he was always so pissed off when you picked him off and he was sure as hell to let you know it too.

I think we give Mills the Heinecke treatment, take away his first read, confuse him, hurry him up and the DBs feast. Between White, Wallace, Johnson, Hyde and Poyer I'm seeing at least 2 INTs.

Was great seeing him run for the Bills for the 2016-2017 years when the Bills led the league in rushing. He had a good run, earned a solid second contract and picked up a couple of rings in the twilight of his career. Not sure what else he had to prove at this point.

I think in that same media session with Frazier, Frazier mentioned that the dline played well and that sacks don't tell the whole story. Personally I never thought this was gonna be a destructive day for the dline with tons of sacks, qb hits etc. For as much as people love to ballwash the WFT dline and their defense they're not giving the WFT oline enough credit. That is a very solid unit and they pass protect well. Heinecke also has really great pocket presence and is excellent at evading pressure, he just sucks at going through his reads and making throws on the run. Our dline played well, they made Heinecke just uncomfortable enough to force bad throws and while that doesn't show up on the stat sheet, it makes a big impact. If we'd gotten 3 sacks in that game I would have been amazed.

I mean I don't know what voodoo magic PFF uses to grade linebackers in coverage but I know what my eyes see. He's quite good to great sideline to sideline and reacting to passing plays, he naturally dissuades QBs from throwing to his area because his frame and speed means he covers a larger area of the zone he's protecting. His issues, as I see them, are with biting too hard on play fakes and he's below average in run support. He's a bad downhill run stuffer, is easily fooled on running plays into vacating his gap, doesn't shed blocks well and takes too aggressive a lane downhill towards runners or receivers out of the backfield because it almost seems like he thinks he's faster and can cover more ground than he actually does, or he underestimates the ball carrier's speed.

We need to stop having some unrealistic expectation that refereeing is some binary black/white thing where we expect games to be officiated perfectly and everything to be perfectly picked up and flagged. The NFL rulebook, almost by design, is massively complicated and very open to subjective interpretation if you read some of the rules. The idea that you'd perfectly call and flag any holding that happens in the trenches is laughable. The idea that you'd perfectly call any illegal contact, holding or pass interference calls for an entire game is equally laughable. Bad calls, missed calls etc are part of the fabric of the game. They're amazing when they bounce in our favor and fill us with rage when they don't. It's part of the excitement, the anger and the passion that we feel as we watch our team play every week. I like how soccer has kind of leaned into this aspect of refereeing and said "yeah we mostly call the game to keep things under control and let it flow, yeah we're going to make some bad calls, miss some others and it might impact the game one way or the other. That's just the way it is in the beautiful game."

That feels reasonably solid, think his rushing numbers are going to trend down and the passing yards will likely trend up. TDs and Ints look very reasonable. Rush TDs feels a bit low.

I think teams are also planning for 13 this year after he posted very solid stats for a WR3/4 in his rookie year, he roasted defenses on broken plays and sideline plays all last year as teams just didn't give him the respect he deserved. He's getting that respect now, and its going to make the targets drop and the throws that come his way a little more difficult to catch.

He's a good to above average, sometimes excellent, coverage linebacker. His ability to cover sideline to sideline and use his large frame to close distance in passing situations is extremely good. He's almost like a giant nickel corner or extremely large safety. It's just his run support that holds him back. He over-pursues, takes bad angles and seems to misjudge his closing distance relative to that of the runner or receiver trying to get the edge.

Heinicke is just a tough guy to sack, very good at feeling pressure and escaping away from it. He's only been sacked twice in 3 games in 2021 so far, against LAC, NYG and BUF. The WFT OL is very solid and not the set of turnstiles that we played against in MIA. This, coupled with his escape ability and his tendency to throw pretty quickly, always meant this was going to be a tough assignment for our DL. Never thought this was going to be a high sack game for our defense.

There's 2 decades of PTSD we're still working through. We're all thoroughly convinced this stretch of competence is a mirage and the rug is going to get pulled out from under us the second we let our guard down.

DC's trying to gameplan for this offense like:

They were also (relatively) at full strength against us. Since that game they've lost Alualu for the season, TJ Watt, Highsmith, Haden and Bush are also all dinged up and have missed time. They're a very flawed team that needs masterful defensive performances to win close games because their line is very meh and their offense is kind of anemic. It's just unfortunate that they caught us with that perfect storm in week 1, that being said I think the team learned a lot from that loss and it's showed in the games against MIA and WFT.

Regardless of the quote, that drive was the classic old school NE/Brady style drive that just crushes any hope the defense might have of getting back into this game. It was beautiful to be on the other side of that for once. I have PTSD from years of watching Brady just dink and dunk his way down the field, watching the defense just slump after each converted 3rd down, knowing that a TD is inevitable and all hope is lost.

he’s also got enough tape from last year that any DC worth his salt is like “make sure you know where 13 is” because he roasted defenses all last season on sandlot and sideline plays. Sanders is an unknown quantity for a lot of defenses so covering him in this play design is still a work in progress.

That’s a textbook, backbreaking NE-style drive that just saps the life out of you if you’re a fan of the other team.

That’s a pbj power defensive series right there.

I better be feeling that pbj power in the second half.

Come on, they’re in the game on fluke-y trick plays and ST shenanigans. Let’s just show them who’s the better football team.

Dang that was one hell of a catch by Knox

After reading that article and Micah Hyde’s interview I just picture a locker room full of dudes eating PBJs, drinking juice boxes and Josh Allen’s mom walking around handing out orange slices.

Yeah energy density on a PBJ is solid, checks all the boxes for protein, carbs and fat. Just laughing to myself thinking that halftime for adult football players is more like my kiddos snack time than a solid strategy check for adjustments going into the back half.