dave mcbride

I don't understand this at all. Reich had just been fired by SD, and Pederson called the plays in 2017, not Reich. Reich appears to be a good head coach, which I'm happy about, but he was barely more than a glorified Curtis Modkins in 2017. Reich as the genius who made it all happen in 2017 is a myth that deserves to die. The reason the Eagles offense was so good that year is because a) they were very talented, b) they had no real injuries except for an aging Jason Peters and Wentz late in the season. They were otherwise stacked, especially on the o-line in terms of both overall talent and depth, and they had a great backup QB.

One thing I'll say about Jackson is that he's a better passer than many think. Yes, his passing game is helped by the Ravens running game. However, in their last six games -- which is a six-game winning streak including the playoffs -- his passer rating is a sky-high 107.9, and he's completing 68 percent of his passes at 8.0 ypa. People shouldn't underestimate him. His passing numbers in 2019 were ridiculously good too.

Cleveland is balanced (and the Bills lost to them last year), but I think KC is going to obliterate them. Mahomes ain't gonna turn it over like Roethlisberger.

Lamar Jackson is one of the ten best players in the NFL. There’s a lot of inexplicable contempt for him on this board, which I don’t get. His numbers are amazing (36 td passes and 6 INTs and over 1200 rushing yards in 2019), and he’s 32-9 as a starter in the regular season. He deserves a LOT more respect from us, and if I hear another Bills fan (not you!) make fun of his accent, I’ll scream.

That INT was inconsequential though. Whenever you throw a 40-yard pick from your own end and the defense gets it between their own 20-30 yard line , it’s basically a punt. Those are turnovers you can always live with. It wasn’t a bad pass into the flat that flipped the field or resulted in a pick six.

Good stuff. One thing to note is that they didn't have Calais Campbell last year, and he's really good.

Getting plays in quickly is HUGE. If you're not giving your qb time to get out of bad plays and diagnose what is probably coming, you're failing at your job. It was a huge problem in previous years, especially with Roman. To be fair, Roman is excellent, and maybe that's not a problem in Baltimore. It takes time to be deprogrammed from Belichick martinet-hood.

Well, it is Philly media! (Although to be fair the baying critics are in every city.) Still, it sounds like a toxic relationship, and at the end of the day Peterson got them to the playoffs three times and won a Super Bowl in a 3-year period. Their problem has been abysmal drafting and talent acquisition, and that's not his area. In my opinion, the Chargers job is by far and away the most appealing one. You have three years of an elite young qb on a rookie contract and an excellent overall talent base.

A different perspective: https://www.inquirer.com/eagles/philadelphia-eagles-doug-pederson-jeffrey-lurie-20210111.html

Agreed. This moment is why he is on the team. He's not a bad player, and he will be healthy.

Reich seems to be good head coach, but he didn't do well as an OC in San Diego and was widely viewed as a Curtis Modkins type in Philly, with Pederson running the offense. I'm not sure that's true, but it's not as if Reich ever had a rep as an offensive guru. Also keep in mind Philly fans: If things go sour, there's always someone from the previous good years who was responsible for all of it, and when he left, it all went south. It's a common narrative. The bottom line is that the Eagles are devoid of offensive talent and have an offensive line that was the most injured in the league.

Lorenzo Alexander had a good game vs the Ravens. He is not on the team anymore.

https://www.buffalobills.com/news/top-3-things-we-learned-from-bills-vs-ravens-week-14

Snow helps the offense.

Um ... the receiver literally fell down. It’s the only reason why it was picked.

Well, selling out to stop the run didn't work. They gave up 163 rushing yards on 30 carries (5.4 ypc), and none of those runs were long qb scrambles that skewed the running stats. It was a legit beatdown in the running game. Anyway, their front four was dominated most of the game, although they made the occasional play here and there. Giving up 472 yards and allowing them to have the ball for over 34 minutes is never good. Indy got into Bills territory on every possession save for the kneel down at the end of the first half. Still, they won. Can't argue with that!

Oh, I absolutely agree that Indy is a really good and well-coached team. They are a tough matchup for just about any team. If they had a normal camp, I expect they would have ended up 12-4 -- that is, they would have beat Jax at home in game one of the season. It's mind blowing they lost to them given how good they are and how bad Jax is.

That would be a huge coup for Miami, and it's a plausible scenario. Tua doesn't appear to have it. Watson absolutely does.

After some thought, here's why I think the Bills' defense found themselves in a perfect storm yesterday. Make no mistake about it: they were absolutely shredded, and Indy's failures were more about them failing to make plays than anything the Bills did. They had seven drops, and Rivers missed a wide-open Pittman that 3 times out of 4 would have resulted in a TD. Rivers played extremely well, but he also missed a key slant to a wide open WR near the goal line that would have converted a third down (right before the missed FG). Anyway, Indy has arguably the best offensive line in the league (it features two 2020 all-pros). The Bills' front four is really pretty mediocre, and they only get sacks/pressures against a) teams with weaknesses along the o-line or b) QBs who take too long and struggle to read complex zone packages (i.e., Tua, Drew Lock, Darnold). When rushing four, the Bills were hopeless. Consequently, they blitzed a lot, but Rivers, who is really good (and made sure to get to the line early and figure out over the course of 15 seconds what the Bills were probably doing), made them pay pretty much every time because he almost always had a quick and effective solution to the blitz -- usually a shallow crosser in a zone vacated by a blitzer (but not always; a few were deeper). The combination of getting no pressure with the front four and facing a QB who can chew up blitzes and spit them out meant that the Colts had answers on basically every third or fourth down, and they usually connected. The only times they didn't were because of a bad play call (pitch out near the goal line) or failures of execution by the Colts in plays that should have been executed given the play design's overall success. The one third down stop that was impressive was the near-pick by Hyde on Indy's first possession of the game. At the root of it all is the weakness of the defensive line vs. good offenses quarterbacked by HOF-level vets (of which there are a bunch in the NFL now). They are all decent d-linemen, but they don't have either an interior or edge game wrecker (watching the Rams play yesterday really brought that home). Ed Oliver was supposed to be that guy, but he isn't. He's a starting-level DT and pretty solid, but he plays like a second or third round pick rather than a top ten selection. Addison, Hughes, Epinosa, etc. are all decent players who can play in the NFL and occasionally make big plays, but they aren't good enough to take over games or dominate good o-linemen. And they certainly can't overcome the sort of QB-line-RB combo that the Colts presented. There's a reason why KC traded for Frank Clark last year -- Reid recognized the dire need for an explosive pass rusher in the playoffs. They didn't have a game wrecker coming off the edge, and Clark is that guy. The Bills are a great team this year, but they do need at least one game wrecking pass rusher if their D--which ranked 16th--is to move up to the next level. Final comment: this is a defense that will really struggle vs. NO, GB, and TN given their QBs, o-lines, and skill players. KC is a bit odd because their line has played pretty poorly lately. That said, they have Mahomes, who covers up so much. Tampa has Brady and is absolutely loaded with weapons, but their o-line really isn't that good.

Edmunds had something like 3 big pass breakups.

Al Riveron made the call! Jeezus H. Christ. Interesting that both Steratore and Pereira are tweeting about this. I don’t think they hold high opinions of Riveron.

If you taped the game, go back and watch. It is obvious.

He didn’t touch him before he got up, and the visual evidence is as clear as day. No need to be contrarian about this one. It was a straight up fumble.

Al Riveron made the call. https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2021/01/09/bills-hold-on-to-beat-colts-in-wild-postseason-opener/

But he wasn’t tackled in bounds! He was going forward as he went out, so stoppage of forward progress didn’t come into play. More importantly, if he was ruled to be tackled in bounds, the clock should never have stopped in the first place. Yet it did stop, because he actually got out of bounds.