dave mcbride

Um ... Mac Jones prefers to throw very short passes behind the LOS because his arm sucks and NE is good at running screens. That's literally all they are good at. Expect those plays and scheme against them.

They literally did it against Detroit last season. The got the ball at their own 25 yard line with 23 seconds and Bass kicked the game winner with 7 seconds left. And the Bills had been shredding the Eagles all night. Plus Allen is quite literally the least sacked QB in the league this season (tied for first with Mahomes with a 3.3 percent sack rate). So it's unlikely he's going to get sacked. Last night, the Bears got the ball with 10 seconds and completed a pass to the Vikes 34, where the WR fumbled because he couldn't get out of bounds. But they didn't have any TOs, and the Bills did.

I can't believe I'm writing this, but if an athletic, game-changing safety is there, it's something I'd consider. They are really hurting at that position, and the best safeties these days can make a big difference. Ideally, though, I'd prefer to get a safety in round 2 or 3 as long as the player projects to being good.

If the one loss is to the Cowboys, they'll be 8-5 in the conference and 4-2 in the division (not that the division record matters for the WC). The Bills would have 2 non-conference losses. The Colts and Houston both have two non-conference losses already. Denver has only one. For tiebreaker situations, it's better to have more non-conference losses than the team you're matched up against in a tiebreaker. Pittsburgh has one but has a very easy schedule the rest of the way. Unless they fall apart (and they aren't that good), I see them getting to 11-6 despite being a fraud. That's one probable playoff team. Cleveland has one non-conference loss and I see them losing 3 more games because they have no QB. The Bengals are technically in the running too, but they don't have a QB. So if the Bills make it to 10-7, I don't see the situation as insurmountable. And they all play each other: Houston faces, Denver, Indy, and the Browns going forward. Having said all of this, I'm getting serious Rex Ryan-era-in-November vibes just from typing this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xta-iJliupo

You don't have to look that far! Scroll down and note the final possession: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/202211240det.htm

Love the Francis Bacon avatar!

Don't look now, but the Rams are 1 game out of a playoff spot and, given their schedule (https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/ram/2023.htm), look to go 4-2 the rest of the way. The way the NFC is shaking out, a 9-8 team (and maybe two) will probably make it. Plus they've beaten Seattle twice.

Granted, the offense has had issues over the course of the season, but it mostly shows up in the fourth quarter, generally speaking. As for the defense in such situations, they have by my count folded 8 times in late-game situations: Pats game Denver game Philly game Giants game (saved by a ridiculous non-call on the last play - that was blatant DPI) Cincy -- couldn't get a stop on Cincy’s final possession late to give Allen one more chance Jax: with the score 11-7 at the beginning of the fourth quarter, they give up 2 long td drives to Jax, with one drive starting at the Jax 7 yard line. Yes, there were injuries, but the D was still steamrolled late in the game — which has been par for the course. To be sure, the offense should have done more early on, but they woke up in the latter part of the game. TB - the Bills had a dominating two-TD lead and almost blew it by surrendering a penalty-riddled late TD drive and 2-point conversion followed by a near miss of a hail mary after giving up 3 completions to a team with zero timeouts, which allowed TB to get in position to make the throw. First Jets game (with special teams collapsing in OT too) - they had a 13-6 lead in the 4th and gave up a 60-yard TD drive to a horrible QB, allowing the Jets to tie it. Of course, Allen was awful in that game too, but the Bills D didn’t create any plays late either.

There’s a word for this: nepotism.

Pretty small-minded, IMHO.

Philly is actually a pretty great city. Have you ever been there? As for the fans, they are passionate and they care. Spend some time in LA (where I lived for a while) and you come to appreciate these things.

Why??? For the record, I think this game is a terrible matchup for the Bills and I expect them to get destroyed. Hope I’m wrong.

Rooting for injuries is bad karma. Just sayin’.

If nothing else, a hail mary has to make it to the EZ.

Well, it almost happened last week vs the Bills. The Jets DB got to about the 30 of the bills before finally going down.

A fg vs the Jets is effectively a TD because the Jets offense is incapable of generating more than 13-16 points. Always kick fgs vs them on 4th down!

I don't disagree with you, but with regard to assessing the Bills D last game, I want to emphasize the last line. Here's what Randy Mueller wrote in the Athletic today: https://theathletic.com/5081950/2023/11/22/bills-steelers-jets-changes/ "The Jets have been on the verge of a total organizational meltdown in 2023. Changing the starting QB at this point might be the equivalent of throwing a deck chair or two off the Queen Mary. They are converting 22.9 percent of their third downs on offense and were 0-for-the-game Sunday against the Bills. If this continues, it would be the lowest such rate in more than 50 years in the NFL — and there has been a lot of bad football in the NFL over the last half-century. Out of more than 1,500 NFL teams in that time, nobody can match that ineptitude. And do I dare tell you what team led this statistic in 2022? That would be the Denver Broncos, orchestrated by the same offensive mind behind the Jets — Nathaniel Hackett. I am surely not absolving Zach Wilson. He has been bad enough at QB to lose the faith of the locker room for the second year in a row. The film that I reviewed after Sunday was as inept as I’ve seen in a while at the NFL level. What I’m seeing is putting everybody in the Jets building in jeopardy of losing jobs. The design/execution of this offense and the lack of ability of most of the players on offense (some because of injury) are a fatal combination. The Bills embarrassed the Jets up front. New York had no answers for the most basic of blitzes in the passing game nor any soundness to control the line of scrimmage in the run game. As a whole, the offensive line’s struggle to protect is as much about scheme as it is about individual skill sets. The Jets could have rolled out a healthy Aaron Rodgers and it wouldn’t have mattered. Wilson was awful, but he is safe now and probably the most thankful of us all that he doesn’t have to take the blame anymore. His days in New York are over, but some team will sign him in the offseason, and he will be better off working in the dark for another franchise, trying to rebuild his career. And he will have takers, trust me." My point is that yeah, the D looked awesome, but consider the competition. The Jets' offense is historically bad (as is the Giants, for that matter).

All the work he’s put in since he entered the league, the aim being to prolong his prime as long as possible, and then this happens: a freak, untimely accident with grave consequences, one that cost him an entire season and threatened his career. ... The Bills, unsurprisingly, were not thrilled upon getting word of the accident. Back in the spring, as offseason workouts were finishing up, since-fired offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey had made it clear to general manager Brandon Beane how excited he was to open up more of the playbook to Hines in 2023. It’s what Beane envisioned when he made the deal with the Colts last year, calling Hines a minute before the trade deadline and asking him, “We’re happy to have you, can you be on a flight in three hours?” The disappointment was evident when Beane met with reporters on the eve of training camp. “It’s not like I can go out and find another Nyheim Hines,” he said. Hines had renegotiated his deal with the Bills before the season, landing on a two-year agreement for $9 million through 2024, spreading some incentives — a signing bonus, workout bonuses — out over time. But since the accident occurred away from the team facility, the Bills placed him on the NFI list, which technically doesn’t require the team to pay him anything. Suddenly, Hines was out millions of dollars. After months of back-and-forth, the two sides agreed on a smaller sum with which both were comfortable. “We were both upset, both parties were upset,” Hines says. “I didn’t expect for that to happen. They didn’t expect for this to happen. We both had big plans for myself. And they know I hold myself accountable, and they knew that this is gonna kill me more than it kills them.” The matter resolved, a sobering lesson learned, Hines expects to pick up where he left off in Buffalo next year. “They treated me right at the end of the day and they took care of it,” he says, “and I’m a member of the Buffalo Bills and I look forward to coming back there next year and earning the right to win.”

No, you’re just consistently in error and I’m responding.

Huh?!? That was a totally different band, The Rembrandts. It was not the Replacements!

No, his favorite band is the Replacements. And the Residents - the band you're referring to above - don't suck (check out The Rutles movie and you'll see). Anyway, the Residents and the Replacements bear no resemblance to each other. And the Replacement's decidedly don't suck, despite the fact that their second release (an EP) was entitled "The Replacements Stink": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stink_(EP).

I am terrible at predicting outcomes, but I think the Dolphins might do an absolute curb-stomping of the Jets this Friday. I just feel like the wheels are coming off that team right now--kinda like the late Gase era. Their offensive line is quite possibly the worst in the league due to all of the injuries.

Every team with high sack totals for the entire history of the league has had their numbers inflated by outlier games. Lotta teams never have any outlier games, which isn't where you want to be.

He also makes turnovers! He did it with Green Bay too. Jackson and Benford do not. One of those dropped a pretty easy pick in the first quarter yesterday.