inthebuff

Yesterday was the first game of the season that I was able to watch, although I did get to see them in Charlotte during the pre-season. I'm glad that they had such a great showing and that the announcers (Romo and Nantz) were off-put by the Cowboys' loss and the national media had to eat a bit of crow. It's always about Dallas and/or New England, so of course the overhyped Cowboys would be the lede for today's news.

The Bills ARE a good team and it seems that with the growing into a good team from even a few weeks ago to now that they are peaking. Back in the day (early 90s) nobody would want to come into Buffalo to play us on our turf and we were proud of that. Now we're heading into a tough December with 2 games at home ( Ravens at Jets) and another two on the road (NE and Pitt) in hostile environments with weather challenges of their own. I really hope that against the elite of the AFC - Baltimore and the Patriots - that we come away with at least one win. This did answer the question for many of us and (not that I care one iota) the national media talking heads.

This is a great point and to be honest, I've never thought about it in that way. My thought was play great defense, run the ball, and pass well enough to win would be the philosophy that most teams, especially in places like Buffalo, New England, Green Bay, would employ. The philosophy to play any style of ball to win a la the Patriots style over the past two decades should be the model to follow. When they won their first Super Bowls they were a great defensive team and Brady was more of a manager (like Dilfer), then in the middle they were an offensive juggernaut and the defense stopped people enough to win and now in the twilight of Brady's career, they're back to being a strong defensive club with TB12 managing the game on offense (much to his disliking). Probably the reason most rebuilding teams do not do this is because they don't have the time. It's a win-now league. I suspect for the Bills it was a perfect storm situation. We were mediocre for this whole millennium and with a bunch of coaches that we all know should not have been in charge of this or any team. The time was right for McDermott and Beane to convince the Pegulas of the process that they were going to follow designed for long term success. After the Rex Ryan debacle, they were also ready, as we the fans were. Most of us (to quote the Sixers) "trust the process" that will hopefully bring long term success. Yes, we didn't draft Mahomes or Watson and in the process ended up with White, Edmunds and Allen.

No matter the score...you can always count on Jason to clap it out

https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2019/11/21/20975461/josh-allen-buffalo-bills-quarterback-perception

This is the correct answer. I said to my Browns fans friends yesterday that until we have a QB (and it will happen) who we have the confidence in when there's a 1:48 left in the game and we're down by 3 to lead a march down the field to score either the game winning TD or the game-tying field goal, then we'll not be a team that is top tier. We're going to be middle of the pack. We'll go 9-7, maybe 10-6, maybe make the playoffs only to lose in the first round to a team with a better QB. Josh Allen is in his second year in the league and he's shown marked improvement. He has also shown marked regression. Sometimes in the same game. It's a learning thing. Sometimes it's going to click and sometimes not so much. Again, thanks for your posts and followups.

Thanks, Shaw for a great post. I always look forward to reading your Rockpile Review as I am not in the Bills' view area and rarely get to see a game.

With props and a ton of respect to Shaw66. The game today is all my fault. I humbly apologize to all the Buffalo Bills fans and members of #BillsMafia. 1. During the preseason, I convinced my fiance to cheer for the Bills at the preseason game against the Panthers. We went to the game together and I even had a Bills "I live in SC, but the Bills are in my DNA t-shirt." Her team was the Rams but they abandoned her home of St. Louis and she will no longer speak the name of the team. She went away for the weekend and I failed to put in her suitcase anything Bills related -- t-shirt, jersey, cap, anything. That was the first problem. 2. I have gifted her a Hawaiian Hula Girl suitable for attaching to a dashboard. She regifts it back to me. This is our daily routine. I failed to locate the hula girl this weekend...which usually wouldn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but today WAS A GAME DAY!! I am so lame. 3. This was the foreboding...the harbinger of bad things to come....my day on Sunday starts when my little dog (yes, she weighs 45 pounds, but is little compared to her 75 pound Pitador sister) wakes me up between 6 and 6:30. I walk them, feed them, take a quick shower and head to 8 o'clock mass (and yes, we do have Catholic churches in the south). She woke me up at 7:48AM. So, no mass this morning and it's a GAME DAY! I've trained her better. I knew my day was going in the wrong direction. 4. Usually, I don't pay a lot of attention on game day to the talking heads...you know who I'm talking about ... Mooch, Irv, Terry, The Coach, etc. Today was different. I watched as some millennial woman on the NFL network tell Rich (we're on a first name basis after all) that her upset special this week was the Eagles. This was based on simulations that she had done on her computer and came up with a score of Philly 23 Buffalo 21. I scoffed at her and then at my good buddy Rich for being the lone wolf in picking the Eagles. "HA," exclaimed I to no-one there. 5. Then the game started and I came to 2 Bills Drive (apparently I transported myself via the interwebs to Orchard Park NY) and started checking out what was happening on THE thread on this here board. Did I mention that I have never done this? EVER! My first time. I was thinking...this isn't quite as bad as I kinda thought it would be. People were civil. The game was going well. The Bills had the lead for a bit of time. Then, as Marlon Brando said in Apocolypse Now, "The Horror," Josh Allen fumbled in Eagles territory. Oh my goodness. I felt so guilty. I knew it was my fault. I am never on this thread. And now the bad stuff is happening. And the excrement started hitting the ventilation device. 6. Instead of immediately signing off, shutting down my computer, and unhooking my wireless router from the modem and unplugging it from the wall to remove all of my bad karmic influence, I did nothing. I stayed on the board. I stayed on the thread. I got to the end of the first half. And the thread was shut down. Oh...OK...so we're only down by a few and we can come back. No problem. 7. I HOPPED ONTO THE 2ND HALF THREAD!! Just what the heck was I thinking??? Immediately some player that I had never heard of runs the ball for 65 yards and a TD against our top defense. THE HORROR!! Did I do the aforementioned tasks to change the karma??? NO!! I didn't. I stayed right here. 8. 4th quarter arrives and only then did I leave the computer. I did some laundry, put together some wing sauce for a friend of mine, and some other house things. BUT the damage was done. It was hopeless. I am so ashamed of myself. And I call myself a Buffalonian. So...it's not Daboll's fault. Nor is it Allen's fault. It's not the fault of the defense or of McBeane. The blame lies squarely at my feet. I'm so sorry. Please forgive me.

Using the famous Bill James Phythagorean formula modified for football... Given the current point differential, the expectation would be for the Bills to win 10.6 games...rounding up, that would be 11 because in the immortal words of Nigel Tufnel, it goes to 11. Here's the formula -- =ROUND(POWER(121,2.37) / (POWER(121,2.37) +POWER(91,2.37)) *16,1)

A friend posted this one on from the totally buffalo web site/FB page. Very cool story.

And another point...which is interesting...Barnwell writes, "Goff's track record of NFL success suggests that he's more likely to improve, but who can be sure?" It seems to be one of those hedge your bets comments. He may not be likely to improve, given two things - Gurley is always hurt and he needs Gurley for the play-action to work. And the fact that many defenses are now switching after the 15 second QB mic turnoff time, thereby making Goff read the defense.

Player A: 61.8% completion percentage, 7.0 yards per attempt, 7 INTs Player B: 62.4% completion percentage, 7.0 yards per attempt, 7 INTs Let's start with a straightforward comparison. Player A is Jared Goff's 2019 season so far, with the Rams quarterback hitting these relatively mortal numbers only after getting to face the free parking space that is the Falcons' defense last Sunday. Goff should continue his return to form against the Bengals in Week 8, but the former first overall pick will have to contend with the likes of the Steelers, Bears and Ravens after Los Angeles' subsequent bye. Player B is Bills quarterback Josh Allen, who has unquestionably improved as a passer after a moribund rookie season. If anything, he deserves a bit of a boost given that he has played the Patriots, which is his only truly dreadful performance of the season. The Bills have surrounded Allen with a better infrastructure and receivers than the replacement-level talents he worked with in 2018, and his numbers have rebounded by asking him to throw deep less frequently. Throw in Allen's distinct advantage as a runner (190 rushing yards and 13 first downs, to 16 yards and three first downs for Goff) and you could very well argue that Allen has been the more productive player this season. Of course, we're telling different stories about these players because they look to be on different paths. Goff, who played like a franchise quarterback for most of last season, appears to be taking steps backward. Allen, who looked to be in over his head as a rookie, is on the way up. They're both roughly in the same spot as below-average quarterbacks, with Goff and Allen ranking 27th and 29th, respectively, in Total QBR. Goff's track record of NFL success suggests that he's more likely to improve, but who can be sure?

This is the correct answer. We're a year away from being a strong contender. Right now we're good enough to make the playoffs...but not good enough for an extended run and I don't think renting a Sanu or Sanders is going to put us over the top.

Despite the two "big turnovers," later in the column he doesn't call out Tre'Davious as one of the D players of the week.

The Bills are scoring an average of 18 points per game. However, the Dolphins are giving up a whopping 36 PPG - they've been blown out every game with the exception of the game against Washington in the Tua bowl. This game is against Fitz as the starting QB and we know how hot and cold he can be...even in the same game. I believe that the Bills will win and I would avoid betting this game at all costs.

1. As Beasley himself has stated, his goal this year was to be consistent and that's not been achieved. 2. He makes $12.8M and that's more than any Bills player on the roster, including Mitch Morse, our latest FA acquisition. I don't think that would sit too well...kind of like when Eric Wood told Maybin, "Give back some of that money you ain't [expletive] earned!" 3. He's an underachiever except for the year he led the league in sacks, which many people believe is an outlier to his usual yearly sack total of 5. In five games he's got 1.5 sacks which would be about 5 for 16 games...his usual total. He probably could get more in the Bills D scheme and interior linemen, but unless it's a dump of the player and the Falcons will eat his salary, I don't think the Bills will make the trade. And if they did trade a low draft pick for him, he'd have to buy in to the Process....

Oliver could get his first sack today...and I'm sure whether or not he gets that sack today or next week or the week after that the Bills are very happy with him. He's been playing well.

I dig the standing Buffalo. I have had hat a few hats over the years, including one presently on a black carhartt hat. All-white throwbacks with the white helmet and red-standing Buffalo...my favorite

I live in the area -- 20 or so miles away -- Coach Swinney seems to recruit very nice young men for his teams.

Trading 2 first rounders for any player is a crap shoot. Maybe Les Snead would rather have a proven player than an unproven one. Who knows. I'm in agreement with many who have said that this is not the move that will take them back to the Superbowl. The first problem that they have needed to solve is the Todd Gurley problem. Despite the fact that they've cut back on his workload, he's still not the dominant player that he was just a year ago. By the time they got to the Superbowl they knew he was not going to be the offensive force, he was earlier in the year. They would have been more wise to use half of this draft capital (one first rounder) on the Chargers' Melvin Gordon when he was available earlier in the year. And don't get me wrong...I don't think that that would have been a good deal. I just don't agree that mortgaging the future for a CB was a good move and a better move would have been to improve the areas that cause issue. And before we bury McVay as a coach, he's been uber successful. He took the team that Jeff Fisher had and turned them into a juggernaut, going 11-5 and 13-3. They made the Superbowl in his second year. Fisher's records with the Rams were: 2012 7-8-1 2013 7-9 2014 6-10 2015 7-9 2016 4-9 (fired in mid-season) Rams went 4-12 McVay has a career record of 27-11 Contrast that with the Bills record before McDermott 2012 6-10 Chan Gailey 2013 6-10 Doug Marrone 2014 9-7 Marrone 2015 8-8 Rex Ryan 2016 7-9 Ryan/Anthony Lynn McDermott has a career record of 19-18.

A little bit different than 2 first rounders and a fourth.

Great article. It's nice to read that these two had similar experiences with their former teams and came to Buffalo to make a difference. And they sure have. Thanks, OP.

1. Pats 2. Chiefs 3. Bills 4. Texans 5. Colts 6. Titans My personal take on these kinds of power rankings is which team can beat another at a neutral site. So, the Pats could beat every team in the AFC; the Chiefs would best every team but the Patsl; the Bills would defeat every team, except the Chiefs and Pats, and so on.

I fixed the title so it was clearer that it was Bill Barnwell's speculation. It's not a deal nor is it even proposed.