dave mcbride

It’s ambiguous, but a rule-of-reason interpretation would find that that amounted to a touchback. Kneeling isn’t required, as far as I can tell. If a ball gets to the end zone and touches the ground, it’s an automatic touchback. There’s no need for a player to pick it up and kneel, or even catch a ball if it’s headed for the end zone and they don’t intend to return it. This is a small time saver, but the goal is to blow a play dead earlier so that unnecessary collisions don’t happen. Under the previous rules, a player could take their time gathering a ball and kneeling while the coverage team and return team blockers still careened toward each other for no reason.

Um ... that wasn’t actually called. And it wasn’t a penalty anyways.

I am telling you - I have seen this multiple times throughout the league, and gene steratore said this too. It’s always treated as a touch back.

The first penalty on ford was really ticky tack too. A lot of helmets get grazed on most plays in the the battle between o-lines and d-lines. It’s never called unless delberate/blatant. It was a big play that killed a drive.

Given the truly dreadful over-the-top pro-Texans announcing last night and the Watt love fest, I have my suspicions.

It actually happens all of the time. That is the new way to signal “I’m not returning”, and I’ve seen it numerous times throughout the league. More to the point, this is a disaster of a thread and basically moon landing stuff for the nuttiest of Bills fans.

There were five called in all: 2 on Tunsil for false starts, 2 deliberate delay of game penalties on punts, and the offsetting post-play PFs after the Hopkins fumble and recovery by the Bills (and I don’t know why Hughes was called for anything; he seemed to be on the periphery of that scrum). Given the offset, they were penalized only 4 times for 20 yards. Only 2 - the false starts upon Tunsil - negatively affected them. Anyway, the Texans racked up zero in-play penalties in a really long game filled with crazy plays. Zero in a what was essentially a five-quarter game. Call me suspicious. The Bills had a garden-variety 7 penalties called for 64 yards (6 penalties were called in regulation, I think, which is normal). Ford was flagged twice, and both were very ticky tack. The hands to the face call only seems to get called when the facemask is clearly held or the hand pushes the chin up hard and deliberately. Ford barely grazed The defender, and it wasn’t intentional.

Um ... the play did stop the clock, which the Bills needed ...

I get this, but it is a terrible glitch in the rules. Basically, people pay watch a sporting event, and 1/29 of that sporting event that we pay to watch or attend evaporates into a non-sports activity because the league didn’t anticipate this problem. It’s not sports. I am too. I wanted Hyde to take a knee on that Offside kick he recovered, not run it in. Make it a sure thing. The pats had their heavy personnel in on that play and Lynch had been bad all season long on 4th and goal fro around the one. Don’t be so sure he would have scored.

Allowing the clock to run on those plays has to stop. That is terrible for the game —burning off time via non-sports non-activities in a competitive sporting event. The league has to fix that. It is a glitch in the rules and terrible for the game.

It was weird but not alligator arms

“Alligator arms” refers to when a player doesn’t extend his arms in order to avoid a hit. That’s not what happened.

It was late.

The db got his hand in there before it hit his hands. It wasn’t PI, however. look — at the end of the day, williams is a undrafted street free agent/practice squad guy who was playing in canada. He’s not great and performed about as well as could be hoped for.

But it’s actually not. DBs make those plays all the time. Deandre hopkins makes that catch, but he’s one of two all pros. Not many of those.

I thought the throw to brown was late. Brown didn’t have much of a chance. He did make some great throws, but 24-46 was pretty representative of how he played

Tough catch though too - duke wasn’t able to separate and the DB was right there. He got his hand in there, which caused the breakup.

It was a very poor decision. The DB was all over that play. He made some good plays, but overall he certainly didn’t do enough win — ie, get the team to 20 points. They don’t score enough to be a really good team, and while he needs more weapons and an upgrade at RT, a lot of it is on him. He can’t remain as nad as he is now in blitz situations.

I suggest we keep him.

He had two easy picks dropped, including one on the final possession in regulation that was a very easy pick (the wtf? throw to mackenzie). They were terrible passes and for that reason I have to give him a D overall. Plus there was the not meeting the moment in the second half.

The bills had a really good defense last season — #2 overall in defensive dvoa. Their offense was legit awful.

One difference between rex and daboll is that rex basically rolled out the same scheme week to week. Daboll, for better or worse, is a matchup guy (ie, altering schemes from week to week based on opponent) and frankly a lot more intelligent than Rex. He hasn’t had the success Rex did in fact have in Baltimore and NY though - at least not yet.

Of the 12 teams that made the playoffs, all passed for over 4,000 yards except Baltimore and three WC teams -- Buffalo, Minnesota, and Tennessee. And Tennessee passed for 3,956 yards.

The last time a Bills offensive player was named to the first team of the AP All-Pro squad was in 1991. Hull, Kelly, and Thomas were all first team. Moulds was second team in 1998 and 2002; Ruben Brown was second team in 2002; and Sam Gash was second team in 1998.

I hear you, but McDermott could have reacted similarly in 2017, right? Sometimes the right people get hired and the culture changes. Not saying it's going to happen in Cleveland, but it could.