colin

we've actually had a sick pass rush, and it looks like groot just woke up from his slumber (think it was a knee). adding back ed will be a huge gain. if we can also get tj, obiwankenobi, and hoyt (sadly, not till the next week and likely not fully operational until after the bye) we might actually have the d we are supposed to.

agree, but i thought babbich and the D were pretty solid on sunday night (vs prior weeks). great pass rush, did well on 3rd down and vs the run, just total disaster in the back end, and i think that was on the players (rapp basically lost his courage, and tre is not nfl level). the 4th quarter total flop was weak, but we were a couple slightly better plays from the DL (who played really well over all) from shutting them down. to me, the OC was baited into a trap and ate the cheese with his tail caught for more or less the entire night.

i admit, i thought he was a round earlier. still -- we have holes at CB and S, last year it was DT, this year it seems to be LB and most def WR, but we keep throwing reasonable picks (im not knocking the cook pick, i was a booster then and even more now, talent matters more than position) at a position we already have a platoon at, and one of the easiest to find a replacement level player at, leaving huge depth holes in the roster. being down a single corner (albeit our best one) and a safety basically took us out of the afc chip game, but if we brought in a practice squad guy over davis or whoever at arb, what difference would it make to our O? that's my gripe.

walker is a good bull rush away from being a 5 tool type player, and if we get our ish together and have hoyt and bosa rotate at DE, groot and epenesa at the other, oliver and TJ at 3, and DQ and walker at 1 tech, we might have the best pass rush since shwartz

i think the concussions and such have him scared. remember the non angles he took on henry in week 1? he's just not an nfl level safety at this point.

our biggest needs corner safety outside plus player at WR. we have the rookie who hopefully recovers at CB, i thought we had a rookie who might be able to play safety for rapp, but maybe not, and my one issue with going in for a WR is it will give brady ammo to get out of our dominating formations which he already likes to avoid (multiple TE/backs, few or no WR). based on that, if we can get a JAG at corner for cheap we should because it's just too big of a hole, if we can get a plus safety for cheap that's another slam dunk, and i'd love to have a guy like brown or someone to light it up outside, i don't think that's possible.

our scheme has the secondary playing much more as a unit than as individual players unless the O can isolate a corner (and it will always be tre). bishop IMO is at least OK this season, tre is really bad, benford is below his average but still a flat to plus player, rapp is legit awful and scared to hit and just floats super deep, and tyron is not so good as a slot corner.

our d is set up to protect the heck out of the trash secondary, gun for negative plays and stuffs on the run, and hope the pass rush gets there for turnovers and incompletes. it stank in the 4th quarter on sunday night with milano out and strong with a horrible neck issue, but over the course of the game it was more than good enough to win. the real strategy failing was putting palmer, samuals, colemna, and shakur out to try to beat the strength of the NE d while the TEs and backs who can dominate them got a total of what, 9 targets? it was also so obvious when we ran or passed.

if we run and gun out of jumbo sets we walk on small and fast atlanta. our d will have its struggles, but vs NE they cleaned up the tackling some, much better on 3rd down, decent against the run, and just so so awful in the back end, shallow lbs and deep safeties and putrid corner play. they just have to not get toasted in the turnover battle to do enough IMO. we will be getting back the rook corner, rook DT, roid DL, and ed oliver in short order, and our LBs will get more healthy too. i think our d will look good soon enough, we need to control the ball and score long drives, which we are the best in the nfl at doing.

the only answer anyone has found vs our jumbo set was a psycho big front miami had against us, and really we shoulda passed instead of run it against that. a couple passes to cook and ty out of that formation would have extended our drives and broken up the 3 and out middle of the game streak we had, and we'd have walked away early. brady needs "if it ain't broke don't fix it" tattooed on the back of his eyelids.

so, i think we have 90-95% of what we need, and have had that for at least 3 out of the past 6 seasons. that last little bit we need can be had via a very good few moves/decisions. the 13 seconds coaching issue, the not forcing kc to punt w aj klien hobbling at lb while dumb but talented rook williams was on the bench (who led us to a punt, our only forced one of the day), and lately the refusal to line up on O with our clear and present maximum advantage (tight ends and backs, and mixing up passing and running with that personnel grouping, 0, 1, or 2 wrs) vs the pats when ish was hitting the fan just lowers my confidence that we will find the answer when we need it most. as far as the d goes, im a mcd hater, but honestly this is the nfl now. teams start at what, their own 32 on average? that's 35 yards from FG range for like 15 NFL teams. one single big play means points in today's NFL, so everyone is deep shell and nickel as a base D (as opposed to Base D, w 3 or 4 LBs depending on 4 or 3 DL). short efficient passes and running with misdirection and a rotation of running backs is the standard everywhere. denver cinci and minni are the only teams who seem to want to push the ball deep today, philly sometimes but their o is a disaster. from this POV, mcd is a leader in how the Ds of the nfl are coached, so i can kinda see keeping him. we are short ed oliver, hoyt, african anabol (never remeber his name), two LBs, rookie TJ, and our only fast corner on D. we have a pretty great pressure rate and a reasonable sack rate, along w some usually weak run and 3rd down d, but i think we do have something to work with. it's not fair, but the nfl never is. mcd is going to be a shottenhiemer joke or an all timer based on if he can win a chip in basically 25 or the 26 season. based on that i'm basically 50/50 on blowing it all up for a new FO or rolling with what we have and hoping to find that next 5-10% to win it all. looking back, the house shoulda been cleaned after 13 seconds, i think we'd have won one by now with about 5 or 6 different front offices, and we'd have had our pick that season.

when we were multi back/tight end we ran almost every time, and not super well, and we passed twice and it was for good results. passing out of 10 or 11 we didn't do so great, because NE has great outside corners and we have weak wrs, also we are predictable based on how we line up. brady took an ish in the bed. the rag tag d fell apart in the 4th quarter, but if we stuck to multi back and tight end formations and mixed up the pass and run, we woulda walked to 30 points, which we have done in ever other game of the season, and won the game boat racing them. it is so frustrating being a fan of this team sometimes.

astute observation. brady hates to do the same thing that has already worked, he loves to try new stuff, and keep at it until it works. he's a young/new oc and is learning the job, which is a sin with the tight ends, rbs, qb and oline he has.

i see brady drooling into his go go juice forcing outside passes with our sisters of the poor wr group with the tight ends on the bench and cook not getting targets vs the pats cumbersome LBs

we have the best tight end room in the nfl. we have a top 5 or 8 rb room. top dual threat qb, and a top 5 OL. kinkaid really was hurt last season, he was great for a rook, and is just about the best te in football right now. but, we chose to only run when the pats were in base, and then trot out our trash heap dirty cheeks wr corps to suck out loud vs their (top 5 or 10) strong outside corners. i'm worried brady is a stupid idiot.

this is buffalo/mcd arrogance. not that we don't pass the ball deep, but that we just pick and choose what we feel like with not much consideration to what the other team has in terms of weaknesses or what is or isnt working. we FINALY have gotten exceptional production out of our TE position this season, and our run game is our greatest strength, but we still line up w this dumbazz trips left 4/5 wide outs formations (i know a te will be one of the wide outs, but you don't get the match up of him vs an lb like that). we don't get faster w the wide outs, we do get worse match ups, and it puts us in a worse position to run, and thus play action isn't effective. it's just the fact that brady is a child of an OC learning on the job, because that's how mcd likes his coordinators.

it's a bit crazy to me that this never happens (not just us, very few nickel backs move outside). like, if he could be an ok outside corner, his back up would be better at his slot position than tre has been at outside corner. also, as you mention, presuming dorian or milano come back, we can go 3 lb's too, so we'd limit the exposure to the back up 3rd cb.

Everytime someone brings up using tech to eliminate bad ref work, we are told "it will eliminate the human element". As if these flag tossing goofs are some how something anyone cares about. We don't use "a human element" to keep time, we have replay because of bad calls, we need to go all the way tech and have all calls reviewed, or at least in high leverage situations

No disguise on O, rookie coordinators only, d is so flipping fancy that only delicate geniuses can execute it. My conclusion: it's the players fault, not the guy who runs every football aspect of this organization !!

I love the accusations of tin foil hat stuff, as if there are no good and bad or biased refs. And didn't new england get caught red handed cheating multiple times? Like, you have to a punk moron to think the only time they ever cheated were the times they got caught. Didn't an NBA ref get popped, and then called games telling exactly what the ref was about to do prior to the play showing the bias and corruption? I don't quite think the NFL is rigged, but you'd have to have both hands up your own butt to think there aren't any biases or thumbs I the scale.

Sounds like mcd arrogance. Same way they said they never have a back up d plan

we simply don't contest catches, mcd seems to like his dbs to be clever mcd guys who sell out hard to get tackles in the run game, have seven reads and 3 communication calls pre snap, and stop passes with positioning. the problem with all that is it is very fragile, and just one safety or corner getting hurt means it all falls apart. we've seen this show too many times.

we've spent 3 picks and traded picks (hines) for replacement level (or worse) running backs. we hit a home run with a higher pick w cook, but singletary, morris, hines, and now davis are all top 100 picks who just are not meaningful players for us. we got TY as a free agent for cheap and resigned him for pretty cheap too. we've got to stop spending quality picks on players who's impact on the game is at best like 30% of snaps and not being used much.

There might have been some, but in high leverage situations we either tried fast screens which suck, passes for rear shoulder or jump balls to the outside, or stuff broke down and Allen ran around and found no one. We have top 5 or top 3 groups at QB, RB, OL, and TE. It really shouldn't be hard to figure out a way to feature that until the d wises up. I remember Miami had like 3-4 Dts and a bear front vs our heavy jumbo stuff and shut it, and instead of doing something different out of those looks we sort of put it in the back burner for the last two and a half games, but it still works when we run it.

Their interior do a d outside corners out played our interior ok and outside wrs, but other than that we were physical and flew around on d, rushing the QB well until he leaked out to his right. We were not out matched, we were out coached and our executed. I still don't know who sings that song, don't know any words, could not recognize it unless I see it being sung at the stadium, and feel like it's a Fitzpatrick era (no idea when they started playing it tho) lovable loser type buffalo bills fan thing.