dave mcbride

Deion ran a 4.27 40 coming out of FSU!

October 1987: two first round picks and Greg Bell for Cornelius Bennett.

The Athletic didn't really say that. It said that even his bad games are good games (and the stats bear that out for the Pats game - he was in fact reasonably good but not great). In any event, scoring only 20 at home is not going to win you a ton of games. The pick in the red zone was, however, pretty egregious. As soon as he threw it, visions of Devin McCourty from a couple years back leapt into my head. It was a terrible decision and looked like a pick the moment it left his hand. He hadn't thrown a terrible pick like that in a long time.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6697771/2025/10/08/how-patriots-took-down-unbeaten-bills/?source=dailyemail&campaign=601983&userId=6953080&source=dailyemail (Fodder for @GunnerBill, @HappyDays, and @Kirby Jackson) “New England did a really good job, for the most part, of keeping a roof on stuff, and we’re going to make Josh Allen hold on to the ball or take a lot of the underneath stuff,” Klassen says. “And I think at a certain point he got pretty antsy with that and started making a few mistakes.” Allen’s bad games still look an awful lot like good ones, but New England did push the MVP into working further downfield than he normally does, and forced a red zone interception that kept Buffalo from taking a late third-quarter lead. Allen has attempted 51 passes of 10 or more air yards through five weeks, and 30 percent of them came Sunday against the Patriots. Part of that was the disastrous run game, but combined with an unsettled Allen, the Bills never seemed to be fully in rhythm. “It felt a little bit up and down where they rely more on splash plays than this offense typically has,” Mays says. “I just think about how methodical they felt for the most part over the four weeks. They haven’t been that explosive, but they’ve been ruthlessly efficient.” The fallback was to lean on their MVP, which worked, but has a limited ceiling against a disciplined defense. “Even a lot of the chunk plays they had early, it was Josh Allen making some sort of crazy play outside of the pocket,” Klassen says. “[Like] the flea flicker that they hit down the left side. It was a lot of, ‘Josh Allen, save us!’ or these one or two designer plays.” The Pats also challenged Buffalo’s receivers to beat them one-on-one, playing man coverage nearly 40 percent of the time. That’s always a risk against a quarterback who can run the way Allen can, but New England was able to leverage the Bills’ biggest weakness against them. “We’ve talked about this for years with the Buffalo Bills,” Klassen says. “They don’t have many we-can-just-beat-you-one-on-one receivers. Challenge them. If you feel (Patriots defensive back) Christian Gonzalez is going to blank this guy 80 percent of the time, OK, then you take the one in five losses that you take. Same with Carlton Davis and all those guys.”

The Pats could easily be 7-2 by November 2 and 10-3 coming off the bye to face the Bills in week 15: https://www.patriots.com/schedule/. What a freaking easy schedule.

Not really. It's more an analysis of what's wrong. Joe B does say that he doesn't think Beane has gotten to the point of seeking out a trade -- yet. But it's the exact same problem as last year and they didn't adequately address it in the offseason. The best outside separator has been Palmer, but he's not getting a lot of snaps. Maybe Palmer becomes a bigger part of the passing game going forward.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6698187/2025/10/08/bills-wide-receivers-problem-trade-deadline/ More ammo regarding the Bills’ flawed group of boundary receivers.

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/buf/2025.htm Scroll down. This is not accurate. Rousseau has two, Tre White has two, and seven other players have one (11 in total). Incidentally, INTs count as pass break-ups, and they are obviously the best kind. I mean, just two games ago Bishop had a spectacular pass breakup, with the added benefit of actually catching the ball himself.

Thanks. Al Riveron.

Honestly, it doesn’t matter. Just yet more absof**kinglutely egregious officiating by part-time employees. It was an obvious call.

That is absolutely interference @HappyDays

Hold off on this judgment until you see the replay.

Addison is the second coming of Diggs with regard to his game.

Samuel doesn't actually look that open to me.

He had to return it. If he lets it land in the field of play (which it would have) and bounce into the endzone, they get the ball at the 20. Really, the only plausible chance they had was a kick return for a TD. That was highly improbable, but more probable than going 80 yards in ~20 seconds with no timeouts.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6677047/2025/10/02/jj-mccarthy-sam-darnold-vikings-seahawks/ A sample: ‘When the Vikings were winning with Darnold last season, I asked a veteran coach to watch the Vikings' offense in hopes of learning just how well Darnold was playing. The coach thought there was a big gap between Darnold's impressive 2024 stats and how well he was actually playing for Minnesota. We found relatively few high-level plays in the games we watched. That same coach could not believe he was watching the same quarterback when he flipped through the Seahawks' offensive plays with Darnold this season. "The whole thing was Tier 1," this coach said. "No one we know is throwing better than that." Play after play showed Darnold delivering the ball accurately and with nuance, including against the rush. "He used to be jittery in there," the coach said. "Now, he stands in there and looks down the barrel. A couple times, he jumped and threw like (Aaron) Rodgers does. He dropped to three-quarters (delivery)." Was this really the same player? "The deep ball has been accurate, making sure they can catch the ball and assuring the yardage," the coach said. "He's throwing it correctly into the short zones to keep his guys alive, which is interesting. He is leading receivers away from the hook defender, making the guy slide on the digs. He's way better. I'm so impressed."’

It is in all likelihood a lecture about cartels/monopolies for undergrads by a professor simply trying to engage students with an easily recognizable example that many will have familiarity with. The person lecturing is Jonathan Gruber, who is head of MIT's econ dept and a genuinely accomplished economist: https://economics.mit.edu/people/faculty/jonathan-gruber.

Someone has to be the holder on FGs!

MIT has the second ranked economics department in the country (after Harvard), and they’re great at both macro and micro.

It also indicates once again that NFL players have EXTREMELY high pain thresholds. I would have been in a clinical state of shock if that happened to me.

Also, Josh McDaniel is simply better coordinator than Babich. That concerns me. Obviously, I’m not saying the Bills will lose. But I don’t think this will be an easy game. NE outplayed Pittsburgh, largely, and destroyed Carolina. They are clearly improving.

I actually think White played pretty well today. He had tight coverage three times where he almost succeeded in punching the ball out. The holding calls, well, I feel like if you look at all-22s, you’re gonna see a LOT of uncalled defensive holds.

Ball was tipped by the rusher.

Well put. There is WAY too much criticism of players when in fact the reason for underperformance is that they’re hurt (and it definitely is underreported a lot too).

Here’s why: ’Michaels attended Arizona State University, where he majored in radio and television and minored in journalism. He worked as a sports writer for ASU's independent student newspaper, The State Press, and called Sun Devils football, basketball, and baseball games for the campus radio station.’