dave mcbride

How one can consider a blocked punt returned for a TD NOT a turnover is beyond me.

They were better than our slow secondary and WEAK pass rush. Starts an ends there. The D, collectively, is slow. Belichick said it 10 weeks ago.

And it was a sustained 25-30 mph wind throughout the course of that game.

The Bills’ D was *SHREDDED* all game long. Starts and ends there. No late-game decision excuses allowed.

Literally everything about this game was the Bills’. HORRIFIC defense. Starts and ends there — full stop. @Success

This reminds me of the second half of the 2020 Rams-Bills game. McVay outschemed McDermott on virtually every play, but the Bills were saved by Allen heroics and a really shaky illegal contact call on Gabe Davis on 4th down at the end of the game. The combo of Stafford, Nacua and Kupp are built to skewer zone schemes.

Well, it felt like 15-20 yards!

I recall that ridiculously negative play vs Miami in OT where he lost like 15-20 yards

The Rose Bowl is SO far from campus that it's a joke -- 25 miles!

UCLA football fan enthusiasm captured in a single image (I went to UCLA, as it happens):

He's a villain because he's a JAG defender and both the overall business of NFL and actual teams are built on QBs. Headhunting QBs is really bad for the league and bad for 53-man teams that no longer have a credible QB. I don't think the penalty is enough given the absolute centrality of competent QB play to watchable football.

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/buf/2024.htm#team_stats The numbers in this link are pretty remarkable. They are terrible against the run and good vs the pass in terms of yards per play surrendered, but they also rank 20th in plays per drive and 19th in yards per drive (meaning they're fairly bad on third down defense - ranked 20th). They are also 19th in the number of sacks made. Yet they are 6th in points allowed and 11th in yards allowed. My takeaway? They are heavily reliant on preventing big plays that result in short scoring drives (in terms of the number of plays on the drive) and turnovers (they are second in the league in turnovers forced), and turnovers are more likely to happen on drives with a large number of plays -- the idea being that the offense will make a mistake sooner or later. They are 3rd in passing TDs given up and 6th in rushing TDs given up, which seems to confirm the philosophy. Will this approach work against the better teams in the postseason? I have no idea, but it hasn't really worked in the past. That said, I do think that they are better at getting after the passer than they were in, say, 2021 - despite the overall low numbers for sacks (2.4 per game). Finally, they are 11th in opposing team passer rating: https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/opponent-average-team-passer-rating. Solid, but they've always been better than this in the Allen/McDermott era: 4th in 2019, 7th in 2020, 1st in 2021, 2nd in 2022, and 7th in 2023. Differential in team passer rating is the greatest statisical predictor of team success/failure in the NFL. Last thing to add -- the scoring numbers for the D really speak to the importance of complementary football. The offense is second in the league in terms of fewest turnovers given up, and they are first in fumbles lost (meaning the least). Opposing offenses therefore are gifted with hardly any short drives, and the Bills haven't allowed a defensive TD score all season.

Forbes has been AWFUL.

Bill Walsh's famous quote about Steve DeBerg: He's just good enough to get you fired.

Bill Belichick just said on Manningcast that Khalil Mack is probably the best two-gap and best power rusher in the NFL. @PromoTheRobot care to opine vs BB?

With regard to George, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. That first season where he had 29 TDs and 9 INTs, he was actually awful. He was a sack magnet and consistently crumbled in the stretch run of games. The Raiders went 4-12 that season and were done with him before the midway point of the second season of his contract. Gruden had come in and quickly discovered that George couldn’t — and didn’t want to — run his offense, so they shifted to Gannon and George was out. I will say that played pretty well for MN in 1999. But that was not on the Raiders contract and the Vikings were done with him after just that one season.

This is possibly the stupidest Bills homer thread of all time. That is all.

I guess I'd go with possibly Raiders giving Jeff George 5 years/26 million in the mid-1990s. That was real money back then.

Dawson Knox is far more talented and productive than Lee Smith ever was. He's a pretty good player although certainly not elite. Maybe moderately overpaid, but he's he's not killing the Bills salary-wise and he's probably still worth $4-5 million per year. He would easily have gotten that (at least) on the open market a couple of years ago.

There have been a lot of bad QB contracts over the years, and while Jones was overpaid, his contract isn't close to being the worst. Ryan Leaf went 4-17, had a 48.8 lifetime rating (very hard to do!), and a career TD/INT ratio of 14 to 36. (Jamarcus Russell was bad too, but not THAT bad: 7-18 with a 65.2 rating.) Leaf's rookie contract was 6 years/31.25 million. Different era, but it ate a ton of cap up, which is all that really matters when you're talking about NFL player salaries. Daniel Jones, who I think will be a career backup, actually had a LEGIT good season in 2022 - 708 rushing yards, 5.9 ypc, 22 total TDs (15 passing TDs, 7 rushing), the lowest interception rate in the league, and a very respectable 62.9 QBR. He had an AV of 15 (via PFR), which is very good. As a complete QB (not just measuring one counting stat but looking at his production in its totality), he had a good season. The offense overall was 15th in points/18th in yards (middle of the pack) and second in fewest turnovers surrendered.

The Killers are pretty huge and have been around for over 20 years. Strangely, a Vegas band that's actually bigger in the UK than in the US (although still big in the US). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killers

I'm not saying he's great, but he is good. Who do you replace him with? He at least created a real, distinctive, and positive identity for a team that had none for decades.

I think McDaniel is a good coach and I also think it'd be crazy to fire him. But it could happen. As for the playoffs this year, they are currently a good team but unfortunately (for them) 4-6 with games in Green Bay, in Houston, and at home vs SF. The rest are manageable; their away game vs the Jets is the final game of the season and that could be a classic run for the bus game for the Jets. The Bengals are the most interesting to me. If they beat the Steelers at home coming off their bye, the rest of their schedule is pretty easy until the final game. I can easily see them at 9-7 before their season-ending game in Pittsburgh. The only other tough opponent is Denver the prior week, but that's at home.

I was just about to post this!! Ya just hate to see it. 🙂