colin

That was so close to a pick. This game is awesome

Were the ravens showing cover 0 or 1 on those two downs? Generally, if they are showing an aggressive front and not much behind the idea is to attack deep (which we have had trouble doing) but I think they were too greedy on those plays. Baltimore is such a strange team, run and pass numbers are historic, d is statistically horrible vs the pass, have lost to crummy teams, but they are talented and well coached Just an all or nothing bizarro team

Please note my post above on the greatness of Joe Biden. If you recall, President Trump was impeached for conduct during a telephone call with leadership in Ukraine, a key American ally and the recipient of enormous military and monetary aid, questioning the former Vice President who would become President defeating Trump in 2020 and winning the stand out number of votes in the above graph. It has been clear that Biden is America's choice as president, and he has never appeared on a ticket where his side did not win the majority of votes and indeed set records.

The biggest thing I've learned from this is that Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. is singularly the greatest force in modern American political history. The president he served under was seen as a political giant based on his victories and the total number of votes won, but I think we can clearly conclude at this point that Biden was the real driving force behind Obama's two terms of victory. Obama won (more in 2008, fewer in 2012) on average within in a few million votes of what Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris won in 2016 and 2024. He was also the first DNC president to win an actual vote majority since Carter barely eclipsed half at 50.1% in 1976. I thought at the time Obama was a strong political talent who was the figurehead ushering in the new Democratic party, but it was clearly the inclusion of Biden as his VP which won the day. When Obama was removed from the ticket and Biden defeated Trump in 2020 (beating an incumbent president after having himself gone back to continue his long tenured Senate role in Delaware) soundly and won a staggering 81MM votes. When Biden was removed from the ticket in 2024, with his VP (Kamala Devi Harris) running while he was still the sitting president who endorsed her, facing the same Trump who he earned the above mentioned record number of votes against, Harris earned ~13MM (counting is still ongoing in the more tardy states) fewer votes than Biden. The vote total that Biden won was so earth shattering that the second and third greatest number of votes won in a presidential election, both by Trump once in defeat to Biden and once in victory over Harris, were 6MM and 8MM fewer. Every single time Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. has been on a ticket for the White House, his party has won with a majority of total votes, and set or challenged records for total number of votes won. He is the real champion of the 2008, 2012, 2020, and 2024 election, and it is clear that if had run in 2016 he would have been victorious with a then record (possibly shattered during his second run in 2020) number of votes.

our scheme is a bit too one note for my taste. it's great vs bad qbs, you make a negative play here and there vs the run which you run down and force a 3rd and long and make his day hard with a disguised coverage and your up the field fresh legs (why we platoon the dl) pressures the qb and forces an incomplete. vs a complete team or a good qb, you get what we had vs miami, or baltimore. the issue for me is our scheme puts immense pressure on the dl to penetrate and not get trapped or washed out, and our LBs and nickle back have to read the gap correctly and blast up the field and make a play. it makes milano an all pro because he's a human torpedo. the d "works" when you have DL who can create pressure and win up front, smart near mistake free LBs who read the gap and just destroy it, and a sophisticated secondary who communicate and confuse to stop the deep passes. the long term success of the d is very good, great stats and has been number 1 twice i think in terms of yards. as we all know, vs good qbs and coaches, it gives a nice open book for them to read, so if you don't just flat out plays made up front, or in the back end off of confusion for turnovers, the O just takes what is there and your small D gets gassed out running after the ball and tackling all day and they get hurt too because the average size is small at LB/NCB. i will say it looks better than what the ravens have, with lots of giant scary athletes but who just allow insane long passes at the worst rate in the nfl, but at least the ravens can modify what they do to take away the bills strength, for example, while we look the same in every loss. remember the new england win game in like 2020 or 2021? they attempted what, 4 passes all day, and beat us just running the ball down our throats. it also means our roster construction needs a lot of DL to platoon, and a single injury to NCB or LB makes the opponent's QB play on easy mode because they just target the weak link over and over again.

the concrete reasons we have not gotten a chip since 2020 are: free agent dollars getting us sub par returns (Star, that white DE from washington, addison, settle, that OT from the jets, spain, several more. right now smoot is good, but hurt, nothing from the safties we signed, samuel is trash, von obv blows) Injuries (in afc chip game brown and bease were toast) huge coaching and defensive failures (13 seconds, the d in the divisional round in our last 3 seasons) i think mcd has outsized impact on our roster vs other head coaches. we consistently get new guys on O who just aren't used (hines, samuel but he's prolly hurt, kinkaid doesn't get the burn a 1st round te should get) so im not letting beane off the hook for that, but the bad d in the playoffs, non impact free agents, and injuries (because we run such a small and not fast d) all have some impact from mcd. mcd's scheme is limited -- reid lost with it and is now winning with spags, it is so precious and exacting that it made us take the shell of aj klein off the beach over a 3rd round rookie to ensure a loss vs kc, and i think this scheme lends itself to smaller guys getting hurt more because they have to run so hard to get to the ball and tackle. the coaching blunders are simply 100% on mcd. we've been outcoached flatly in games too, but the bone headed stuff is just a bridge too far. we are a bit of an open book on D, and we saw miami eat our lunch on sunday and baltimore walked away in a laugher by just changing up their scheme to destroy us, and we had a player talk about how tenn was busting us up early and he said that they had to return to their normal plays at some point. we are a one note band there. so, i do get that firing mcd and beane opens the door to a downgrade, but I think we need change, so either mcd finds religion and just improves, or we have to make a change. if you remember, the bucs had dungy who built them up but could not get them over the hump, they ditched him for gruden. gruden won a chip for them, and dungy went on to win a chip for the colts. some times you just need to change what isn't working. philly had ried but never got over the hump and won their first chip after bringing in a new coach too.

cook dropped what looked like a td on a drive that resulted in 3 as well

they let a lot of what used to be holding go now, if the DL does a rip move putting the OL arm around the head and shoulders of the defender, they allow a "hook block", i've actually read the rule in the book on that. I think some of these refs are looking for too much detail and make calls based on the result of the play at the line rather than if a rule was broken. it also seems like they just aren't calling as much DPI as they did before. it was a terrible call, but i think the hold got called because the DL jumped and flew and spencer brown's hand slipped to his back, but in no way was he held, and brown didn't even really push his back. a couple of these calls (rapp UR and that hold) going the other way really flips the game script and ends up w a bills cruise to victory instead of a nail biter.

i wish i could say the same! so, i remember in SF TO dropped a bunch of passes, but caught a bullet from steve young to win the game at the end. hopefully, this kick will be like that catch for TO, the play that solidifies his confidence and lets him be his best. it was a truly epic kick, woulda been good from 65

i kinda agree and kinda don't, im a silly fence sitter! i was mad at brady for how useless we were vs houston and baltimore, but (sadly now injured, along w a lot of other talent, what else is new) cooper solves some of that IMO. but, brady has been our best performing coach over the duration. our o was pretty sick last playoffs, it took some big mistakes by diggs et al to sink us on that side of the ball, and the two games above aside, the O has been hyper hyper efficient.

I think this is largely true, but I still have an issue with the scheme. aside from just no difference makers (closest we have is a healthy milano and TJ at his best), we have too many holes with who we put out there (elam seemed weak yesterday, hamlin is obviously not great, dorian either has a knee still or just isn't ready to execute the scheme, TB is not right either). and eliminating all the holes isn't possible (for any team) but our scheme especially on short passes and runs sort of exposes our holes at each position. the real salve for all of this is a sick DL. a wreaker or two on the line sort of covers up all the issues and gives us some negative plays in the run game. if after the no gain stop on the last or second last drive by TB on first down, we had some DL hit the turbo button and create a negative play or a holding, we force a punt. without that, our db's are scrambling to stop a big gainer from getting bigger. this game reminded me of the kc loss in the playoffs last year. kc did it with more passing, but a fluke turnover stopped them, like it stopped miami, and we forced one single punt. the difference is davis had a huge touchdown catch vs diggs dropping a dime, and bass nails the go ahead. i also think we managed the clock well in the miami game vs the kc game. if miami can put us there, then kc, baltimore, cinci, maybe pittz, an top nfc teams can too. it's just frustrating knowing that our FO, coaches, and roster just have no answers for a well executed O.

im still fantasy rostering myles garrett to us, but that's a like zero shot.

ed oliver was stood up by one guy, and couldn't get off of him to grab tua as he was running by, he likely didn't see him because oliver is so short. maybe his hamstring is still not right, but that seems to be trend with him, monster for about 3 or 4 games where he is healthy, and then hurt for most of the rest of the games, or just not effective. he's just not a difference maker.

getting leads and playing bad teams helps us a ton, but the real issue is the key to unlock our d is misdirection and quick to the hole runs, and getting us to bite on play action in the passing game. cinci, kc, baltimore, all of them can do that to us all day. there is a reason why we have so many regular season wins, great regular season d stats, and get bounced out of the divisional round so hard with big defensive failures -- if you have the scheme and horses we are easy to solve.

i think we really need pass rush. a sack or forced bad throw vs tua in the first half woulda made the game totally different. our lbs and to a lesser extent tj didn't have good games vs the run, but tb is coming off of an injury and i've championed him before, but dorian's knee is either bugging him worse than we thought or maybe he's just very good. our d has such a high level of difficulty for LBs, they have to see and smash the run fit super fast, and make the tackle, or else we get what baltimore and miami did to us. a milano christmas miracle would be the biggest gain, but who knows.

Our d is a one note band. By design we suck vs the run, injuries don't help either. There is a lot of pressure on our little lbs and safeties to run up and tackle runners and short passes, and they absolutely suck at that this season. The real death knell is when a QB can make quick accurate throws. Tua just murdered us all day. Getting healthy will help, but this scheme is perfect for beating bad os and playing hard while allowing lots and lots of success vs good QBs.

You don't sit healthy starters, but if we end up there, which I think we will, I bet we err on the side of sitting guys who are less than 100% rather than playing them

That was high drama. What a win! My confidence in this d is not high right now tho

Zero

More garbage

I really hope we win this, but what is this d gonna do vs anyone in the playoffs? Tua has had like 3 incompletes and we can't stop the run.

If one of these bloody holds can get flagged we can win this game. Not a good d roster or scheme

Just weak

This d makes it look so easy

MCD built the d and it is his scheme. He also makes calls like 13 seconds, challenges, defensive time outs prior to allowing easy TDS, and other great stuff!