colin

Lol, miracle stop

If this d isn't coming forward they are useless. Let's see if our brain trust can figure it out

What the heck were the back 7 doing on that pitch and catch?

Just another awful play on 3Rd down This team seems to have hung it up after the Jax blow out

Sooooo, are zona Miami and Jax just absolute trash, and we aren't even good then?

It kinda looks like the book on how to beat us is open. Can't pick up a blitz on o, any motion or misdirection kills us on d

Awful play on that 3rd down

our OC and DC got taken out behind the woodshed. baltimore changed up what they do on O to trap our gung ho up the pitch rush on the dline, their d simulated pressure and took the middle of the field away, and what stood out the most was the eye candy and misdirection. they had so much misdirection on o it looked like an army offense, and on d it was all crazy formations and changing who drops where. they bet that our coaches wouldn't know what they were seeing, and they were 100% right. kind reminds me of the rams vs pats super bowl. the rams were like 1 or 0 of 13 on 3rd down. the pats did not have the roster talent to match up to the rams, and had huge struggles on O because the front of the rams was near all time great (darnold and suh just obliterating everyone). but billy b knew young HC of the rams never saw a bear from D, and he ran it to perfection daring the rams to change up what they do to find easy success but the rams just couldn't. the coordinators better learn some life lessons quickly, because an OC with like 15 games experience and a dc with 4 games experience isn't a great look. as much as i whine about mcd, it's kinda shocking the team with the 2nd most wins since 2020 can't spring for a solid vet (not dust bin frazer) coordinator. that might be our biggest coaching hole. let's hope these guys are rapid up and comers.

lol, im sure it won't happen, but if this team can add adams and budda baker without breaking the bank, the talent level in the field in the playoffs will be an entire tier above what it would otherwise be. our d is soft and slow right now, buddah (along w TJ coming back) turns our back 5 from giant gaping holes and horrible tackling to 5 guys with real athletic ability making life hard, and if we added adams to the outside we'd have coleman and adams creating problems for the teams 2 best corners and best cover safety with cook shakir and kinkaid in the gut, and josh allen w the ball. one extra touch down possession and one extra forced punt woulda made this team get to the superbowl at least 2 of the last 3 seasons, and that woulda been facing philly and sf (mayyyyyybe they beat cinci and play vs the rams, which woulda been a lay down win). I think we would have had both of those.

that hit to his leg looks so brutal. he's not the fastest and isn't small, so i suspect that will hobble him for quite a while. with what i expect from him, and what we saw from von and tre falling off hard after lower body injuries, i'm always amazed looking back at terrell owens. he had his leg snapped to bits and that year in the super bowl he was the best player on the field and if mcnabb didn't fall apart he woulda won the game for the eagles. adrian peterson also came back from a horrible injury to be a top 5 offensive player in the nfl the next season. some guys are built different and will simply not rest in pursuit of rehabilitation, others let the injury get in their head and never come back.

less pre season to get in the groove and more real games is gonna have this impact. schematically the o was eating the d's lunch for a few years, and now the d's have figured it out, but there is a gap between the white board and the grid iron. coaches have more tools and data and are doing more than ever (remember when top coaches would just run their scheme all the time and never adjust and would pile up strong records? now most coaches have more looks and more ability to adapt than before). but the players practice less and easier, do less as a team in the offseason, and don't get the warm ups they did before and play more games. the result is poorer execution. i hate the refs and laundry days worth of flats ruin games, but some of these games are shocking. i watched the chargers vs jets, it was raining but my gosh was it a slop fest. the ball was falling out of guys hands, i counted a dozen pre snap penalties between the two teams, and they execution was weak when it did happen. two bad os and two good ds, but it did not look how a pro football game should look.

in the biggest games coaching has hurt us as much or in some cases more than the roster. beane did get us josh, so that counts for something. the real failing of beane is his contracts and extensions, and i suspect mcd has a lot to do with it. he's drafted well, his weakness in drafting has been not getting players for the positions we are thinner at, but that is largely a result of being tied up with bad contracts. before we signed jags (star, that DE from DC, settle, addison, a bunch of special teams only guys) to far too high contracts because mcd wants his guys who fit a scrappy plucky but not big or fast profile. the real hurt comes from the von contract, the knox extension, the milano extension (great player, but the greatest ability is availability), paying spain and trading teller, signing non impact wrs to reasonably high contracts (samuel and hollins and mvs so far, he got a bit lucky w beaz and brown, and has gone to that well too many times) and signing DQ and that other DT who just got hurt to more than they are worth. what is teh cap we have in von, milano, diggs, knox, mvs, samuel, bass, poy, and hyde? three of those guys are off the team, one is hurt and not playing, one is suspended and injured otherwise, one is usually injured and just not good, two are non impact, and one just fell apart after his big contract. that's like a third of our cap on players who on average can be replaced with street free agents (right now, w injures or being off the team). if we never had those we'd simply have had more burn for williams who'd have improved, and be able to sign a heap of talent who could contribute. Josh allen on the chargers, the raiders, pittz, and possibly the jets and miami are better teams today than the bills. so i wouldn't say beane has totally failed, but between his mistakes and mcd in the playoffs we have squandered some of josh allen's great years.

a hall of fame pro football player making it to 85 is an absolute epic run. i think the idea is guards are not higher impact players, they are steady contributors, and the difference between most guards who even make the nfl is small. a top flight guard, particularly a hall of famer, can make a real impact on a team though. a great one makes the guy to either side of him a better football player, and thats why people will start a guard who was drafted late or undrafted and just picked up off another squad for years, but will put a 1st or 2nd round pick into a guy who can make a difference, and pay a top guy a multiple of what a replacement level guy costs. i never saw him play live, but from his accomplishments and some of his film, a guy like billy shaw is a contributor to a championship level team. more than 1/11th of the reason why they win. RIP

doesn't their D kinda suck? correct me if im wrong but i feel like they are a bit sloppy and le up big plays too much. exciting team for sure tho

our biggest need is nickle corner, lb, and safety, but we have guys to fill most (not safety as much maybe bishop can ball) of those spots when they are healthy. WR is juuuuust behind those, and if we were full health i'd say tied w safety. it likely can't be done due to cap foolery, but if you throw budah baker and devante adams on this team and we get TB, TJ, oliver and von back playing, this team is kinda nasty. to win on sunday we are gonna need samual to be good (i think his toe is holding him back) but a breakout game for coleman would be the biggest get.

He's a bit of a fat body. He could lose 20# of pure slop and still be one of the bigger and stronger guys in the NFL. Our oline seems to me to dominate when they know what to expect, and just bad when they get confused or tricked. even in games they dominated, like vs miami, a couple stunts had edge rushers up the gut just unblocked. i think our biggest issues with both lines is scheme/preparation. when they are dialed in they look great, and the fall off is just huge when they are not. i've always felt like our team under mcd is a bit of smoke and mirrors. i've waxed poetic about the d enough, but i do think brady was caught pants down vs baltimore. we failed to exploit the clear weaknesses of their d. i'm hoping he's learned form it and gets it righted. if we recall last season, we had some real weak sinkers on O (the chargers game really stands out) where we were struggling to score points. in the playoffs our o looked great vs pittz and kc, but the team came up short. so far this season, we have 24 quarters of football. 2+ are basically non quarters because we had starters sitting in blow out wins, 2 quarters to start vs zona were pretty awful, and 4 quarters vs baltimore were trash. So 16 of the 24 quarters we have seen what looks like elite production, but vs craptacular teams. we need some guys to really emerge for me not to think we are smoke and mirrors with an all world talent at qb.

i think our safeties kinda suck, they don't do well running up and tackling people under their coverage, be it shorter passes or runs. this mcd D is totally dependent on that, which is why he kept poy and hyde around past their due dates. nickle corner is really huge for the d as well. TJ is sick, top 3 at the position, but we need him to blast forward and tackle runners, which means when you put in a really marginal nfl player like lewis, you lose out on the pass coverage and the run coverage. i think our degree of difficulty is just too high. no screens and we are predictable on O, and on D we give ourselves match up problems (unless the other team is down and has to throw the ball deep, then we are the best) when teams have a neutral game script. dropping huge money and picks into the DL to have casey toohill play a ton of snaps for our D is also a gear grinder for me!

As a team we simply lack size/speed/power. Too much money on jags and hurt guys.

he was running hard for yards and TDs the first two weeks then he mashed his hand to pieces so that he couldn't even use it for a handoff vs miami. it's good enough for a handoff now, but if you aren't confident holding the ball w the left hand, it changes where you can run, and you don't have that hand to help break tackles. also, he prolly doesn't want to make it worse. so he's likely less super fast than he was years 1 and 2 (i think he broke like 21mph a couple times in those seasons) but still a monster runner. right now he's not running the same cuz he's hurt.

slow and bad at the nfl level. this is a big issue w the mcd scheme. he needs some special profile of people to fill it, who evidently are not fast or strong, and he doesn't seem to like to adjust his gameplan for an opponent. setting up your guys to fail is not good coaching. maybe our roster w injuries was never gonna be good against the bmore O, but the plan coming into sunday night was doomed from the start.

Joe Marino's all 22 breakdown of the game is up on his locked on bills youtube channel. he's always pretty sober and on this one his biggest 3 duds of the game (no studs) were babich, brady, and mcd. basically we got trucked with light boxes and the ball carrier averaged 5.5 yards pre contact on D, and on O it mighta been worse. he blamed the players too, but the reality is baltimore dared us to do "what we do" and we took the bait and the line ran past into space and the back 7 just sucked. o was predictable and weak. i did like the comment by brady that it was a badly called game, that's strong accountability. he's gotta show out vs houston now.

so, one potential sliver lining from a coaching POV, is how much room to improve with little things the O is. w all the blitzing and such, you'd think a screen to super fast cook here and there would get something done. at some point the bills have to just line up in a one read and go scheme and throw an rb screen out of a formation they can also do their slower to develop stuff out of. the constant josh has to dodge a guy, roll around find someone is great sometimes, but there has to be some plays that are rock paper scissors vs what the d is doing, and i think the one saving grace is that there should be some low hanging fruit there.

he's at risk of being another zach moss bust for us (guy has had better play in indy tho). i hope he works out. agreed w the above that says he and our other backs need to cook (lol, pun) more. they need burn and they need rhythm. brady has some real tendency problems -- it did look like cook on first down was making money tho. lots of 2nd and short in the game.

I think this was the insiders take too. the ravens have a sick and power o, awful for our d, but if we scored a few TDs it woudla changed the game script. lack of focus and intensity, poor execution, and some really bad scheme and play calls did us in on O. i look at the kc game last playoffs, that kc team that night was better than the ravens last night, this bills team didn't show up as much as that one did. they did whatever they wanted on O to us, but we kept up and had a luck TO in our end. if bass hits the fg, maybe we make them punt and steal a win. so as much of a nagging negative Nancy ninny pants as i am, i think they way forward is to get the O smarter and executing at a high level, and patch up the d enough to just not get trucked. It's just annoying that it's the old pile but a different day sometimes. very fair point Mango. my gripe w sean is not his in game adjustments -- they are never radical but there have been lots of bright spot, but the fact that he knew about this game months in advance and just didn't really show what i thought was needed. someone made a comment about the bounce back against houston will tell us a lot, i think that's a second gut check of this season.

I was on the fence for a while, and the injuries on D, how well allen played, and the missed fg vs kc gave me some hope, but at this point i have to think mcd is just cut out to lead us to the chip. one thing that bothers is his selection of coordinators. frazer was a vet, but a scaredy cat who worked his way out of a job. dabol, dorsey, and now brady are all raw green ocs, brady did have a sliver of experience, and dabol had some too, but none have had any nfl success at all. the hc having the goat at qb and bringing in guys like that is just not a good strategy. harbaugh in baltimore is clearly a superior coach, and has a good qb, and we see how hard it is for him to get past kc. how are we gonna do it with these consistent just set up to fail moments? the optimist in me hopes mcd can go down like the GB now dallas coach, who kinda fluked his way to one w rogers just lighting the world on fire.