Ballhawk

Cooper and DeShawn Watson must have the same agent. Medically cleared to play, but doesn't wanna play. When you hear guys like Khalil Shakir fighting through pain to play (from some very obvious nasty hits), I always wonder how the players in the locker room reconcile that. I too, think the key is his availability for the playoffs...but if I were on the field fighting through injuries (which many are at this point in the season), not sure how I'd feel about a guy medically cleared to play that was resting. Morale and chemistry will overlap into the playoffs...plus your superstar QB plays through injuries all the time.

Two things I can never understand: 1) Offensive holding calls against Bills vs calls against their opponents and... 2) Kicker success FG rates against the the Bills (notwithstanding the snake bitten Jets). Seems like every game the Bills need to be better than their opponent by a wide enough margin to account for guaranteed imbalance in calls and guaranteed late FGs by their opponents. It's a testament to how often they've outplayed their opponents that these are both true this year and they are still 8-2! Replays of bad calls are making me want to listen to game on the radio rather than watch it on TV, ignorance is bliss.

Honestly, I would love a game with few penalties called (even on both teams). I don't care if they let the Chiefs get away with holding, just please for god's sake no mysterious non-penalties called on the Bills! If I have to watch Mahones celebrating by jumping in the air on of a b.s. call, I'm going to hurl.

Funny during last week's game, the announcer's said the saints would be 90 million over the cap next year. 90 vs 43 makes the gap closer, plus the Browns are one Watson misstep away from being able to use personal conduct clauses to get out of that contract... Can we add the Jets to the poll, they're a lot more fun to watch implode!

I think Flacco is a tougher matchup then Richardson. He (Richardson) only seems to have a deep ball, which our defense is well designed to take away. That said, as others have said it shouldn't matter. If we can't handle the Flacco-led Colts, I may want to take a break from watching the Bills play for the next month... The Bills are a hard team to figure out. They are consistently above average as manifest by their high point differential, which seems to be a McDermott trademark during his tenure; however they are capable of really ugly losses. They remind me NBA teams that have regular season records that are higher than their actual talent level. They are usually well coached, highly disciplined and more consistent and win by out grinding their opponents, but in the playoffs when their opponents match their intensity they are just not as good as advertised. Sound familiar? I sincerely hope I'm wrong and there is a lot of football to play (with perhaps Milano returning), but how can we feel confident about making a deep playoff run with this run Defense in January - February?

You're right, all grudges are rational and based in reason. My bad, 😀

I am firmly in the rooting for the Ravens category. Their running attack against our nickel defense in the playoffs scares the **** out of me. While the Bengals have hurt us in the past, I'd rather take my chances with our nickel defense trying to stop their passing attack. Plus without Mo Dixon in their running game, I think our D has a chance to slow them down. The Ravens against us, as we saw, is a complete mismatch. I am praying the Ravens have to go through the Chiefs to get to us in the playoffs.

Just what we need another safety with a grudge against his former team. Maybe he can gift us a late unnecessary roughness penalty in the playoffs!

OMG that interview is incredible. Does McDaniel actually believe that Poyer's hit was a bad call? He just doesn't come across as a mature head coach.

I think it's too early to tell about Davis, but it's a little unfair to say Ty Johnson would have done the same. Maybe, maybe not. Truth is the kid looked good, let's see if the coaching staff agrees and gives him more carries to see if he can build on that. ...And personally that catch was exceptional, I'm 99% sure Cook drops that (even though Davis made it harder than he needed to). It's ironic that a DB and RB had the two best catches of the game for the Bills!

I think for me when I discovered that the NFL used the "entertainment business" legal defense to anti-trust accusations my interest went down. While I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories that suggest they are fixing games for preferred markets, every time a I see a game that is skewed now remember this is not a sports league, it is an entertainment business (by their own definition). Ironically this has helped me deal with bad officiating and one sided outcomes just as I don't yell at the TV when my kids favorite wrestler gets hit from behind when the ref is not watching. For me though, it undermines the NFL's credibility, just like their aversion to having full-time refs does. Also, I find the shameless pushing of gambling on a population that has higher debt ratio and increased cost of living rather reprehensible. I choose to still watch it, but I'm one Josh away from taking a long break... Interesting read, NFL as an entertainment business: https://home.ulike.com/blogs/blog/shocking-revelation-nfl-legally-allowed-to-fix-game-outcomes-as-an-entertainment-business

I'm guessing that Beane will give Bass every chance to get his mojo back this year. It's a bit like the Diggs contract, Beane clearly doubled down on Diggs and Bass and was/is 'pot-committed' (which is why they put up with Diggs last year). I think the Bills will flirt with a replacement, but unless he has more games like the the last one I think he'll ride out the season. As egregious as last week was, as some have said, I am sure they are partly attributing that to weather given how bad both kickers were (even though I think that is bogus). I expect Bass to be better than last week but still generally unreliable and we will have to live with that this year and hope it doesn't cost us in the playoffs.

KC has Chris Jones who consistently disrupts the QB. BB was praying Von would be that for us, and we're all hoping his four week vacation rejuvenates him so that he's close to that level for the stretch run

I happen to agree about the view of his career. The recency bias as I was expressing it, was announcers and media saying he was washed up after the first two games, only to have him go from washed up to all world in two short weeks.

I'll admit that I didn't see the Cowboys game but I did watch the Chiefs and Raiders games and as I said, he had some nice TDs but overall wasn't particularly dominant. In fact, the announcers kept mentioning his lack of utilization/production. Now maybe he just needed time with a new team as is numbers are up in the last two weeks, I just find it funny how quickly the narrative changes sometimes. You're not actually disagreeing with my statement that media personalities have a heavy recency bias when it come to NFL narratives are you?

Maybe I'm the only one, but I thought Justice hill just killed us. It felt like the defense could have dealt with Lamar/Henry/Flowers, but Hill was a clear mismatch. It wasn't just the passing situations too, his straight ahead running style was so perfect for the way our defense was on its heels once the Henry ran that 87 yard TD. Also, I think it's kinda funny the recency bias in NFL narratives. D. Henry, other than some nice short yardage touchdowns, wasn't looking great the first three weeks. Now he's all world again, lol

This is my concern with the Bills approach on offense. If you are going to spread the ball around and take what the opponent gives you week to week then does it not follow that the defense will dictate where you go. To a point that seems smart, in the extreme it feels like DCs will scheme our best offensive weapons out of the game. That system seems predicated on not having superstars, which it will be hard for Kincaid to develop into with this approach.

I can't help but question the usage rate of the nickel defense. I get when the Bills have a lead, but man it feels like they use it too much. I get that Nickel is a different compromise when we have our full personnel (i.e. Taron and Milano) but I'd still like to see more 3 LB sets. If the main argument against this is personnel, I would expect that to change once Bernard, Taron and Milano return. I'd be very curious to see Milano, Bernard and Williams out there 50% of the time with the nickel package the other 50%. We keep talking about the value of being multiple on offense, but seem pretty predictable on defense.

Lol, I always though he looked like someone promoted the Data analytics guy to call plays! I will say this, he's impressed me the last few years. His scheme has produced while covering up his QB's flaws.

The scary thing is the offense looks like it has another gear. The 'break glass in case of emergency' play of Allen with his legs probably gets us another 7-10 points against the Jags. As for the WR's I'm not worried at all. We all watched the patriot years with two gifted tight ends and very mediocre WR's. The test of this offense (IMO) is whether they will be able to run the ball when their opponent commit to stopping the run. In Dec, Jan (and hopefully Feb) if we can do that, I believe our pass catching group is good enough to play off of that strength. Overall a great start, but big leads in the last two games played right into this teams strength (I've always felt like with the base Nickel defense we run, that if the Bills get a sizeable lead and force opponents to pass into the teeth of it; they are virtually unbeatable). This is why (for this team) I hate choosing to kick the ball to start the game (even though the double dip is sweet when it works).

Rams may want Edwards back !

Net, is a stat the McDermott era Bills always seem to do well in. I'm more surprised that we have the most PF (Points For) of any AFC team after the first two weeks at 65 (3rd overall behind NO/AZ). We were supposed to have a 'slow start' while Josh acquainted himself with the receiving corps!

Within the context if this chat we all know who you are referring but... when you say 'Allen fans' I still think of Josh (rather than the RB). Hell, even Josh (now Hines-Allen), knew to get off the Allen bandwagon lol.

Yeah, I think next year and the following one after that will be our big chance to win the SuperBowl. Those draft picks will be nice...

I would humbly add: Watching the utter time mismanagement by the Dolphins on the last drive before half. It's so great not be the team that plays/coaches scared for fear of turning the ball over with too much time left.