GASabresIUFan

The Flattened Stanleys The Invisible Men

Is it irony that our 41 year old kicker kicked the game winning FG to give us 41 pts?

I was thinking the same thing. Personally I think Harbaugh’s mistake was not using his time outs just after the two minute warning. Instead he waited until the clock was down to 45 seconds or so after the Bills had already moved into FG range. Ultimately, once the Bills got the ball back with 2 minutes plus left the birds were cooked given the momentum the Bills offense had.

I agree that the defense needs work. We knew that last year and we knew that coming into the season. However, Henry is a load for any team even a stellar defense. I firmly believe that the defense we see the Bills play will evolve (positively) over the course of season as Bishop gets more experience, Hoecht becomes part of the team and hopefully Babich commits to using Williams in more base sets as team try to run on us. By the time (and if) we see Baltimore in the playoffs, I think we'll do a much much better job containing the run. Don't forget we just saw the 2nd best offense in the NFL in the first game of the season.

These are the exact things said before the playoff game last year. The Ravens have also failed to stop our offense the last two games despite all their name brand talent on defense. As I mentioned before the Bills are 4-1 against Lamar and the Ravens in the last 5 matchups including 2-0 in the playoffs.

If the Ravens roster is so much better than the Bills’ roster, why is Buffalo 4-1 in the last 5 match ups including 2–0 in the playoffs when it really counts? If their defense has so many elite players and the Bills offense lacks any elite talent besides Josh, why have we torched them for 41 last night? One issue with making this comparison is that the Ravens rely on many more experienced players. The Ravens have 10 guys with 7 or more years of experience as starters or as significant role players like DeHop. The Bills only have 7 including Tre White. The core of the Bills are McGovern, Brown, Torrence, Bernard, Benford, Cook, Kincaid, Coleman, Shakir, and now Palmer and all have 5 years or less of NFL experience, most 3 or less.

I said this during the draft that Hawes has better hands than people give him credit for. He had a huge game against UGA and current Ravens rookie starter Starks for GA Tech and was someone I drafted in every mock draft I did as an upgrade replacement for Morris. My guess is Beane envisions him as Knox’s eventual replacement.

No. No one has the cap space or enough injuries yet to be willing to take on a guy who is sitting behind Shavers and Moore. He’ll only become tradable if some gets decimated by injuries. What will be interesting is when Gabe Davis gets healthy. Will they elevate Davis from the PS, cut Shavers and leave Samuel as a healthy scratch?

It’s pretty simple if you have followed camp and the pre-season. He had been nursing another injury early in camp and when he played he was outplayed by Hamler, Wilkerson, Shavers and Moore. The only reason he made the team was that it was cheaper to keep him on the cap than cut him. His cap hit is $9 mill and it was a $12 mill hit to cut him. The reason he is a healthy scratch is that he is behind Shavers and Moore on the depth chart and he isn’t one of the 48 best players to dress on game day. Bottom line is that he is a scratch because he isn’t good enough to be playing when everyone else is healthy.

Do you mean the oft injured $10 mill PS player?

The last KC playoff game was worse. i have zero idea why this wasn’t a booth review on either spot. I also don’t know why the Bills don’t have some intern watch the spots and radioing to McD after the terrible KC game? It’s enough already.

That was an amazing football game. Reminded me of UGA/OK when Baker Mayfield was OK’s QB and UGA/OSU game when Stroud lead the Buckeyes. As to the Bills, my simple takeaways were the team’s lack of quit, which is great news for the season, the great early returns on Kincaid, Palmer and Coleman, plus the same issue on defense as last season. However, any game facing the Ravens offense of Henry and Lamar has to be taken a little bit with a grain of salt. No other team in the NFL, not the Eagles, Chiefs or whomever present the same issues defensively as do the Ravens. The Eagles are the closest with Barkley, but Hurts is not close to Lamar’s level. The key for the Bills defense is whether Bishop gets better and whether Hairston can step in at CB and add some desperately needed speed to the secondary. Getting Hoecht back will help. The next 5 weeks will be a great opportunity for McD and staff to coach up the defensive secondary against beatable teams. If they don’t improve, it’s going to be hard for this team to take the next step.

Collinsworth is butt awful.

Not according to Chris Collingsworth.

John Elway

Elam?

It’s a Bills game, aren’t chicken wings and pizza (Bocce?) required menu items?

Jordan Phillips is going to have to step up for first 6 games with Carter out. Getting Ogunjobi back after the suspension is now more important than ever.

Sacking the QB is not his job in the defense. His job is to occupy OL or 2 and create lanes for the pass rushers. He does that very effectively. On the Bills, I expect he’d be more active as a pass rusher.

What were you expecting? He is a D tackle who the defending SB champs just exercised their 5th year option on.

We actually could use Jordan Davis to help the DL ( Go Dawgs).

62 catches 1029 yards 6 TDs

What about Wright Down the Middle?

My understanding is that it doesn’t start until his football career ends. I assume that to mean any pro league (CFL, UFL), but it could be limited to NFL and the NFL PS.

Actually most people thought Shakir followed by Kincaid would receive the lions share of targets following Diggs’ departure. As to Ty Johnson, he is the 3rd back in the RB rotation. As much as we the fans like him, he only had 25 targets last season. Baring injury to Cook or Davis (G-d forbid) his role will remain similar to last season. Josh attempted only 483 passes last season (all attempts 495) the second lowest he’s attempted in a full season. If you round that to 500 attempts, how are you allocating between Palmer, Kincaid, Shakir, Coleman, Cook, Davis, Johnson, Knox, Hawes, Shavers, Moore and Samuel? Last season, the top 4 pass catchers received 57% of the targets. With the addition of Palmer, a healthy Kincaid and an improved Coleman, I’m expecting that number to increase to 62-65%. Also the backs had 17% of the targets. I’m expecting that to remain steady. That only leaves 20% (or about 100 targets) of the targets to be allocated between, Moore, Shavers, Samuel, Knox and Hawes.