colin

i'm convinced we walk over pittz, and if NE drops the next one to cincy the division is fully in play.

if we are judging with a constant standard, benford was a worse signing than groot. he's hurt more, a rookie (max) and a second year guy (bishop) have had more big plays than he has, and most importantly he's being paid like 65-70% of what a top guy at his position gets, while groot is getting under 50%. now, the reality is benford has not been himself and has been hurt, if benford stays healthy it will be a decent to good signing, same w groot. cook was a slam dunk, shakir is a good bill but i think you can get guys like him so he's not that super important to us imo, but im not the qb or coach so i could be wrong. from a production pov shakir is worth it even w his injuries and mistakes so far. bernard just isn't good enough imo. he had that one year where he filled out the stat sheet after edmunds left, which made me think it was a good non signing of edmunds, but i think we signed the wrong 2 of the 3 lbs we drafted. i love hoyt but his suspension and injuries make him zero, obiewan has been decent but the suspension hurts. bosa has been an outstanding signing for us, even tho he's hurt now. samuel, knox, milano, taron, palmer (i like him, but he's simply not produced), coderington, rapp, possibly ed due to injures, and before that von white, and diggs (and the safties when they got old)are the reason why we have holes in the roster. the value we've gotten from them (in many cases zero as they left the team or were hurt) would easily be replaced with draft picks, allowing us to sign some actual studs.

it's that it is true for every team, i mean it is true, but the point here is that we only lose when we turn the ball over. we only lose to lesser teams when we are on the road and turn the ball over. there is a thin margin between good and bad teams in the nfl, and we have 17 and the oline and 4 and so on. maybe we lose a game here or there, it's inevitable, but even with the terrible run d, and the injuries and the sacks and all of that, if we ran the ball more and more smartly and were less predictable based on formation and passed more to tes and rbs (lower risk, less turnovers) we have 10 ways to beat all the teams who beat us. basically, even with the holes we have, if we just correct the process on the road and do a few things to turn the ball over less (which we did last season, when our roster was objectively worse than this year imo) then we are in like flynn

i do a sit down w mcd and ask him what he and beane did wrong, and how to fix it. brady is gone. I make him DC and HC, i get a top flight wr in (waddle will likely be available, but there are others too) and also draft one. I draft DE and LB and corner with speed and athletic ability. i clean out the dead wood (many who will go anyhow). i bring in a shanahan tree OC, maybe hc in miami is fired, i'd take him in a second. maybe firing mcd would be better, but i don't know who would be better off the bat, and my goal is a year 1 chip.

the hopeful harry in my says we win out, but that guy doesn't get listened to very much. so, 3 on the road and 3 at home. off the bat that puts my expectations at 3-3, so 10 wins and with tie breakers vs balti/kc might sneak us in. we have a mini bye for the first game at pittz. mcd never loses games after the bye, so i take the win there. bengals always seem to have our number, but that's a home game and they kinda suck, philly is a bit of a monster, but at least is at home, clevland is on the road but they suck badly, and at new england is legit the biggest game of our reg season. so considering all that, i expect 4-2 because of the mini bye going into pittz at about a 60% likelihood, 10% we win out, 10% we go 2-4 or worse and miss the post season, 10% 3-3, 10% 5-1 (which i figure is equally likely us not caring about the last game, us dropping to cinci or philly at home, or us winning all the games but NE which would create the most insane playoff scenario possible). if i weight out these probabilities (and floor the wins in the 2-4 scenario at 2) that adds back up to 4 expected wins. so 11-6 and having to win 3 (4 if you count the superbowl) road games in a row to a championship. 12-5 with i guess a home wild card game to start and then at new england after a bye to try to beat the team in our division who swept us is the most insane and thus certain outcome. i'd expect us to have an electric game vs them and somehow lose at the end on a desperation play that is almost made but falls short.

that's a fair point. he seems a bit casual, but also it's a rare athlete who can channel his hatred all the time into productive results (like romanowski, the hater goat) i think dawkins and much of the team simply likes to play with their food. they play down on the road to lesser teams (maybe at home too, but the team is good enough to still win those). they don't get as nasty and fired up and focused and the record shows it. i get part of it is that it's a 17 game season followed by a tourney, so you need to manage yourself, but i think our team has gone a little to far into being accepting of fate. to me the issue is dawkins is a big, skilled, talented lazy fat body of a man. if he had a bit more personal pride in his condition and appearance and thought about living to see 60 he might take better care and be in better shape.

one disagreement -- the d was also good in the second half vs atl, and the exact same ish happened then. 7 and 8 are outmatched (i think they have health issues, in their defense) and the guys behind them are better players right now.

i made an effortpoast thread about my view, but this is pretty close to all of it. i'd say its cuz we play bad vs bad teams on the road, and that's done by us turning the ball over. if we had the exact game we just did vs hou and before that miami, but instead we didn't turn the ball over, we win bad looking games vs bad opponents but are sitting at 9-2. it's a very thin line.

i like to say we because i'm a fan and without the fans there is no anything for the team. i get they don't care about me, but i don't care about them outside of playing football for my entertainment, so it's even! anyhow, i think i covered most of this -- we aren't fun to watch because modern nfl football is more exciting but more frustrating, and our team might be the most like that in the nfl. to be clear, i don't think we do it and win the chip this season, or even win the division, but if this silly azz team just figures out to not play bad on the road (honestly, i wonder if the travel arrangements are an issue, remember our guys flew to london late? stuff like that matters), and honestly if the corches and allen get in their tiny heads that turning over the ball still matters, they can beat anyone we (see what i did there?) will play. i don't expect it to happen, but i find it interesting that the deeper we delve and the more science we have to understand this, john madden was always right and football is a simple thing at the end of the day.

big time. to me edmunds and groot are premium talents, more so edmunds but at a lower value position. neither are perfect and both are somewhat limited, but size strength health and length can't get coached. if you didn't know football and just went to some function and saw the guys in shorts and ts doing athletic stuff, edmunds and groot and allen (and spencer and some other guys) would stand out as big tall long giant athletic guys. you can build on plus athletes if you throw in a game changer or two, and they don't get blown off the ball or crushed like say our lbs or 7 do on every 3rd play.

if you have to ask it's more than you can afford, pal.

i dunno, their play is in line w the record (6.8 expected wins vs 7 wins). the rams, philly, indy, broncos, ne, all squeeked out wins vs bad teams too. we are slightly fewer turnovers or just not sucking so bad on the road from leading the division.

bingo. i think if he stays healthy and plays at the level he's played at since 2024, he was a decent signing, but not a great one. benford to date has been a worse signing. he's been hurt in each of the last 3 years, and at really bad times. bernard was paid less, but he's literally one more injury away from being a total bust off contract. shakir is a good slot player, but he's just a guy who can play, not a difference maker. i think the real issue is we over pay for solid, and horribly over pay for injured, but lack great players (imo a great player is a player who makes players around him better, we have 2-5 of them on the team, and cook and allen are the only elite ones). i think the edmunds comparison is kinda apt. in retrospect, i wish we signed him and let milano and bernard walk

I'm a chatty cathy and a bit of a peter poster, but i almost never start threads. I was doing a lil lookly loo into the numbers and while i love the inside baseball part of football and all the match ups and esoterica and such, just like in the real world, the bigger picture is very often the clearer one. since 2023 the bills average .12 EPA per drop back on the road and .25 at home. .12 is decent, .25 is elite. in the playoffs our epa per play on O is like .2, which is shockingly good. our expected record this season is 6.8 -4.2, so just about exactly how the games have turned out. we lost 4 games, all of which we were strong to very strong favorites in. it is my belief that the handicappers get it right much much more than they get it wrong, so we lost 4 games we shoulda won, two we were mad favorites in (NE and the fish on the road, 6.5-9pt favs in both), one that was slight (3.5 vs atl) and last night (5-6pt favs). our team plays a goofy frustrating kind of football, where it looks like we are either brilliant or useless, on both d and o, but frankly that's the modern nfl. everyone plays the analysis game and does the things that give them their best advantage even if it's not entirely their team's "identity" so it doesn't look like the kgun bills o or the 85 bears d because all teams mix coverage, formations on o, and teams all go nickel and dime way more often than before on d. nfl football is high level rock paper scissors with athletes and emotions and execution mixed in to muddy it up. now, if i step away from my beloved minutia and numbers, and look at what counts the most, it's a really clear picture. we are a bad road team. we dropped 4 of 11 this season, 3 on the road. atl was a kinda tough game for us at the time, but we took a huge dump there. miami was the same thing, in the end the d epa was atrocious, but the o is what we lean on and it sucked. 3 TOs kills us every time except for tampa where we forced two ourselves and allen went super sayan. houston was our only negative O performance of the season where we had a positive D and special teams (and only 1 of 4 games where we had a net positive d and special teams) and boy was it negative vs what we can do. the only games we've been in where any offense has been worse than ours was last night was carolina and the jests, just like the houston game that was vs back up qbs (altho tyrod is better than fields was vs the jets, they just suck). the jets and the panthers were the only offenses who played worse than ours did vs houston, although the saints were nearly as cheeks. we have two wins on the road, one was at the jets who suck and it was a bills crowd, and vs the back up qb panthers, where it was also a bills crowd. 5 road teams, 3 losses, our only 3 negative epa games on o (turnovers). two wins vs basically back up qbs (the o was good in those games tho). we lose when we turn the ball over we snuck a win over tampa with 3 turnovers, but we got 2 of our own and as said before the passing game caught fire and allen when he's on sets and then breaks nfl records. in our 4 losses, we have 11 turnovers, and the real number is worse than that because we also got stopped a few times going for it on 4th down. we are -8 in those 4 losses. we would be better with a better run d, we'd be better with more talent than the 31st or 32nd WR room in the nfl, we'd be better if we didn't have all these bad injuries stacked up on the DL and CB in particular, we'd be better if our coaches made better adjustments (i will say, when mcd calls the d, the second half adjustments are elite tho). we'd be better if we didn't overpay to extend good to really good players (benford, groot, shakir) and meh to good players (milano, knox, taron, bernard) at the cost of playing rookie contract guys who are close as makes no difference or even better than them at times and having resources to bring in a couple elite guys. we'd be better if we brought in healthy and impact guys (bosa has been impact, but his had is a club, so even tho he's playing he's not healthy). and we'd be way better if we found religion and didn't play down to our opponents (saints and miami in home wins, atl, hou, and miami in road losses). all of that comes out in the wash vs the things we actually do well to make us a top team. we aren't leading the division and vying for the one seed for the simple reasons above -- we suck the bag on the road and we turn the ball over in the games we lose. we are like 1 or 2 games over 500 on the road since 2023, and we've never won a road playoff game. it's as simple as that.

It's that simple dude, we are a bad road team