dave mcbride

See below:

Discuss. (Point is, there aren’t any 80-yard runs padding his stats.)

The AFC East on November 13: Miami: 7-3 Jets: 6-3 Bills: 6-3 NE: 5-4 The AFC East on Christmas: Bills: 12-3 Miami: 8-7 NE: 7-8 Jets: 7-8

I think James Cook looks like he might turn out to be an extremely good player.

Don’t look now, but this year for Carolina, Sam Darnold has a 104.3 rating, is averaging 8.6 yards per attempt, and has 4/0 TD/INT ratio.

I saw that comment, which I thought was classic CYA. He was literally pushed back 3 yards! The whistle is always blown when that happens regardless of whether a guy’s legs are still churning.

Yeah, the weather was WAY worse than a lot of people realize. The conditions were brutal.

The weather conditions were worse than a lot of people think and it really affected play. From Allen regarding the second interception (the Bears players all said that the weather was impossible too because of really strong and constantly shifting winds; see below): “It's not so much the cold as it was the wind,” he said. “It just gusts you don't know really where it's coming from. Sometimes the flags are blowing one way and the next year they're blowing the opposite way. So again, just trying to find actually some of the shorter completions and being able to drive it obviously down the field, deep you're not going to have much success. “Just got to be better again, decision wise, obviously that first interception wasn't a great decision. The second one, the wind just kind of was right in the face and I didn't get the nose of the ball down, it just kind of sailed on our back there. I can live with the second one, the first one just a bad decision. I’ve got to find a way to get it to a check down there and move on and live to fight another day.” https://buffalonews.com/sports/bills/observations-bills-overcome-some-sloppy-play-to-clinch-third-straight-afc-east-title/article_14638368-83cf-11ed-831e-63bd16655ad6.html From the Bears: “Freezing,” tight end Cole Kmet said. “That was the coldest game I’ve ever played in.” The 26-mph winds with gusts up to 35 mph made everything a little more difficult too. “It was crazy,” quarterback Justin Fields said. “It really impacted the whole game. From snaps to even tosses. … (Those) were flying everywhere. The snaps were going everywhere. It definitely impacts the passing game and figuring out which way you want to throw the ball.” Added receiver Dante Pettis: “Man, it was cold. And extremely windy. Even on the short routes, that ball would be moving and become a little difficult to track at times because of some of the bigger gusts. It was moving like a knuckleball at times.” https://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/bears/ct-chicago-bears-buffalo-bills-josh-allen-justin-fields-20221224-izkhrz3pr5cvnaulyqcamqfe7m-story.html From the Bills kickers in that same Buffalo News piece linked to above: “Some of the worst conditions I’ve played in in my 10 years,” Martin said. “Obviously, the temperature is already awful and then we were sitting at constant winds of 25 miles per hour and gusts up to 40. It was tough out there. It was a strange wind. You would feel it constantly in one direction and then all of a sudden, there would be a gust from the opposite direction. It was a real-time type of adjustment. Whatever I felt when I got ready to punt, that’s what I was going with. The gusts are what made it difficult because you didn’t know when they were coming and they were blowing on the drops, blowing on the snaps. It was one of the tougher games I’ve been a part of.” Martin got off a beauty of a 62-yard punt in the fourth quarter. “It was a hard left-to-right (wind) and when it comes to punting, it’s not the wind when the ball actually gets up there, it’s the drop to kick,” he said. “When it’s a strong crosswind, your drop is moving. Even in warm-up, there were a couple that I dropped and it ended up on the left side of my body and I hit 10 yards to the 10th row. You really have to hold on to the ball longer and really hope those gusts don’t come along right when you drop the ball.” Bass said the wind simply carried his missed extra point wide right. “I hit it good and hit it to my point, but once it got up into the wind, it just took it and pushed it right,” he said. “Kickoffs were pretty good. The wind was pretty hard in my face on a couple of them but once I got the ball up and through the wind, it would carry a little bit. It was really about getting good contact.”

Totally. His forward progress was OBVIOUSLY stopped. They didn’t address whether it was reviewable or not either. It’s one of the worst calls I’ve seen this year, and there have been some bad ones.

/thread.

Poyer didn’t play in the Minnesota game. Do we forget Cam Lewis so easily? I think it is more a case of Miami’s ability to run at will finally brought Poyer up to check that, and Miami had the perfect answer. If the Bills had been more effective at stopping the run, these things don’t happen. Good play call by McDaniel, who is a smart offensive mind.

The Yakkity Sax.

The Bills D has been terrible on 4th down stops in the aggregate, however.

And the one he threw was not a bad throw. It was tipped. Otherwise it would have been a td to Diggs.

It’s on the west side of the lake. Buffalo is on the east side of the lake, and hence far windier than Chicago.

Belichick appears to be losing confidence in his Pro Bowl QB Mac Jones. After the game, when he was asked why didn’t they throw the Hail Mary at the end of the game, he responded: “Couldn’t throw it that far,” Belichick said. Many questioned Belichick’s comments towards Jones because he’s insinuating that Jones’s arm is weak and he can’t throw the ball 55 yards. In his career, Jones has one pass over 50 yards, it’s a 75-yard touchdown to veteran WR Kendrick Bourne. On the throw to Bourne, the initial pass was 30 yards and he ran the other 45 yards for a touchdown. https://musketfire.com/2022/12/19/patriots-mac-jones-bill-belichick/

The Bills are 9-1 at home in December and January games in the last three years and should have won the game they lost — the wind game vs. NE. So this isn’t correct.

Well put. As I say about 20 ppg scorers on bad NBA teams or high tackle-number guys on bad NFL defenses, *someone* has to score the points (given that even the worst NBA teams average over 80 ppg) and *someone* has to be credited with the tackles (given that every team averages at least 40-50+ tackles per game). Also, the really bad teams tend to have the highest tackle numbers because they can’t get off the field. It doesn’t mean they’re good.

Yes, that was a safe and easy pitch and catch that Singletary simply dropped.

Not the best example because in the six years after his rookie deal was up, Wilson put up elite numbers. He has actually had a pretty great career until this season (really: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/W/WilsRu00.htm). The Broncos are paying for past performance of a declining star, not a second contract to a hoped-for 10-year franchise guy.

You’re kinda missing my point. Of course his numbers go down. But I challenge you to look at the collective passer rating for opposing qbs playing in bad weather home games in 2021, of which there were many. Indeed, The Bills team passer rating rating was a below-average 83.9 vs the Jets on Sunday (but with zero turnovers and a TD run by Allen), but the Jets team passer rating was a godawful 72.38 with two fumbles by the QB (one of which was a turnover) and zero TDs.

Not really talking about the fan experience here. I am focusing specifically on the era when the Bills became good with Josh Allen - i.e., the here and now (2019-present). They have been above average in talent/depth all of those years and borderline elite (albeit with flaws like every other team) the past couple of years. In any case, all I am arguing is that whatever negative impact bad weather at home has had on the Bills offense since 2019, it’s been worse for almost all of the opponents they’ve faced. They dominated opponents in adverse conditions repeatedly last year outside of the Pats game: washington game (winds up to 30 mph IIRC), Houston (driving rainstorm and wind), Jets (high winds), Carolina (wintry mix), Falcons (snow/some wind/cold), and they held the Ravens to 3 points in a playoff high-wind game the year before. And they massacred the Pats in frigid weather last January. The Bills might not like the weather, but other teams HATE it. They did lose to the Eagles in 2019 in bad weather. I’ll grant that.

I said ALMOST every game, and for the record the Bills passing attack was leagues better than the Pts that night. When they shifted to it late in the game, they clearly appeared to be the better offense. The run game wasn’t good, however, and the Pats ran the ball at will despite the Bills knowing it was coming. I wouldn’t cherry pick the craziest game in a long time at the expense of the 12-15 bad weather home games going back to 2019.

My point is RELATIVE performance. It’s tough for everyone, but it’s less tough for the team that performs in such conditions more than any other. Look at the Kelly era. They DESTROYED teams in bad weather at home for a decade. I feel a lot of people here have an *aesthetic* problem with bad weather games and fixate on that to the point of missing the real advantages it gives to the Bills.

Yet the Bills win almost all of these games. Why? The opponents are ven worse in such weather. I could point to 10 games off the top of my head. There’s also a reason the Bills chose the qb with arguably the strongest arm in league history.