colin

100% they were playing dirty. TBH, i think that's the book on the bills. you have to play us dirty. The D is super sound and disciplined, so if you can body them up and make them "make decisions" then you have an advantage there. our wrs are small and use route running and separation vs physicality to get catches, and allen is a very explosive and streaky player, so you want to hit him to slow him down and make him second guess himself. we have honestly earned (at least partially) our reputation of being a finesse team. the irony is when we run the ball with intent (because of the pressure our finesse passing and allen threat O puts on teams) we mash up opponents pretty well. until monday we had the longest streak of 100 yard plus rushing games. I think the right mix of our running and gunning and we can use the dirtyness our opponents often play with against them.

there was a spat of them around andrew luck, the LB out of Boston college in Cinci (kuchley sp), and our own undrafted LB AJ Tarpley. AJ got a pretty sweet gig at BOA right after that and was still working out pretty hard. he left wall st because his heart was still in football and he's only been able to get like xfl or indoor football gigs since. he "retired" after his undrafted free agent nfl year because he had a bunch of concussions, but came back because he missed being a football guy (and this is a stanford grad!). I think it takes something really big for a guy to walk away from a top flight nfl career to where you won't be just filled with thoughts of what if and regret.

this is getting a little ridiculous dude. We all only care about Hamlin because we know who he is, and we only know who he is because he plays football (for the bills). there were a thousand + other cardiac incidents last night none of us will ever know about. there is a correct response to this, and i think (and i'd bet the vast majority of people would think) stopping last night was part of it, but playing next week is also reasonable. if someone's health is all that matters (not saying it doesn't, but it's not ALL that matters) you'd never have them playing football in the first place.

i like where your head is at, but i think they'd give out a tie before a W to each team, which still leaves KC with the 1 seed.

im guessing if they wipe the game, it's because the bills asked to not play it given the obvious circumstances, and the bengals didn't protest (and they'd look terrible to protest it let alone i doubt there is much support in the organization to press for something like that right now). that would essentially be the bills abdicating their shot at holding the 1 seed, the bengals giving up their shot at a better seed (sort of accepting the 3 seed), and KC getting gifted the 1. given that the bills have the most skin in the game wrt rankings and are giving up the 1 seed, i don't think any other teams would really complain.

I'm the first guy w his hand up clamoring about our schematic issues on d. Namely, we defend mostly the whole pitch most of the time, so we don't tend to take a single thing away from a team. That means that when we get beat we get beat by the one thing by the opponent, a d we don't tend to make big adjustments. Also, since we play so deep w so much zone/combo coverage, we are gonna miss more tackles than most teams simply because we have more guys in place to make them. I'm not saying tackling isn't a concern, but we are simply in a position to attempt more, so we will miss more The big issue I have w the d is we just play a bit too honest sometime. When we shoot the right gaps and dial up packages we tend to smoke teams (hence the great d stats) but we get a bit vanilla at times and when a single mistake (like poyer in that waddle td) is made it looks just awful. Vs Miami, we got gashed w run fit mistakes but we stopped scores mostly I'm the first half. In the second half we just stank and let them get up on us, but special teams really stank, not to mention bad O. So looking at how the game actually happened, it's not like Miami just didn't run but shoulda, but got yards but not points running.

our FO is gonna have to figure who can be replaced at a greater value (cost/picks) than who we have. poy, edmunds, and gotta think about oliver and gabe davis coming up too. given we threw money at von, and we play so many dl, i think they won't sign oliver to the big contract he will likely command. i suspect poyer will get more somewhere else and they don't want to pay out for an older db, so they more or less have to keep tremaine to keep some continuity in the gut fo the d

In St Thomas the past summer my family and I paid for a pet the dolphins experience (and did we ever pay, not cheap!). when the staff weren't looking i was tossing 6 pack wrappers in the water like confetti. Fish/mammal whatever, i don't like em and i don't trust em!

the risk is he will disprove some really hot hot takes that have been posted here. if you aren't in the take merchant game, you have NO IDEA what it takes to come up with your own hot takes, to get them out on a moderated board, WITHOUT GETTING BANNED, and the THRILL of being able to say i told you so and lord your takes over everyone. deep down in places you don't post about on gameday threads, you want these hot takes, you NEED these hot takes. So either step up and post about some 12th ranked qb in the draft and how we need to draft him as our back up, or some barely understood defensive scheme we have to change over to immediately. otherwise, step back and let the takes happen!!

I think we had a stretch where red zone turnovers murked us, and i think mccoach and dorsey decided they were gonna stop those, and they did. it has slowed down our O some, and we are running less wide open stuff we used to so we are getting some growing pains trying to execute them, but we are winning games and that's what matters. in terms of talent, cook might have something but has to learn, brown might be having a post surgery sophomore slump, but out side of that Diggs, dawkins (who is hurt) allen, and morse are our good players, the rest are basically jags or worse. We have to stop thinking Davis is a very good football player. he's just the WR opposite Diggs in the Josh allen show. put a real stud in there and you are laughing.

statistically, we are the same or even a touch better, so i think he's fine. we need an interior blocker (who can pass and run block some) and one more play maker on O. could be someone stepping up, could be FA, could be a rook, but we need one more person on O who can get the ball and make the D pay.

The winner of that game won the chip that year. i predict the same will happen this year!

it would seem to me that there simply must be more to this story. he must done something just totally out of pocket to get the boot in the middle of a playoff run

i know it's been like this, maybe worse in the past. i remember seeing a big thing on olinemen. basically in the 80s the nfl (and thus every level of football below followed suit) allowed locked out arms while blocking. it used to be you had to have bent arms, or else you were likely to get called for holding (i might be over simplifying the rule, but you get the gist). so back in the day the pittz and oakland OL were all like 6'3, 260# of raw jailhouse roid muscle. it was routine for entire olines to have 500#+ bench presses and they'd all pull and move and hammer people. once they allowed for locking out of one's arms, that's when the giant wide hipped trees of men we see now at LT came out. you don't need a ton of upper body strength to block a guy if you can lock out your 10 foot arms with you hands in his chest. anyhow, back in the day the refs basically didn't call holding on running plays, allowing you to blow a guy once you got him moving. once they changed the rule so they didn't need this strange judgement call, it totally changed what kind of athletes play the most common position in the game. whatever they do to change the DPI/catch rules might change who gets drafted 20 years down the line. i remember someone doing some meta analysis of the ball size and hand size for QBs. basically, a smaller ball would allow for smaller handed qbs to play well, and a larger ball (like in the cfl) would also open the field for smaller handed guys since no one's hands are basically big enough to index finger on the back throw that ball the way modern qbs throw the nfl ball.

ok, so why has rus fallen off so so badly? also, how is denver's d so good? anyone have insight?

they have got it like partially modelled i think. certain specific things they call because they've had it emphasized. the arm around the back w the other arm in the front, they call that arm around the back if it has ANY impact on the play at all, often even if it happens concurrently w the ball getting to the WR. since they seem to have all been told "face guarding isn't illegal in the nfl" they seem to ignore some but not all of the guy getting there early to cover the wr while not looking back to the ball. conversely, if the guy does get his head around, he can more or less mug the wr and get away w it. this stuff, just like the pick play/illegal man downfield and catch rules seem to change based on the context. in the end zone, on the sidelines, and where it is on the field all seems to change the rule. needs a clean up IMO

4-3 would likely help the run d, but would hurt the pass d a ton. we'd take our nickle corner of the field. now our nickle corner has been really good in the past and is having a kinda crappy season this year, but the LBs we have behind our two starters are cheeks. we only go 4-3 when the opponents go heavy jumbo and even throw an extra lineman on the pitch.

i didn't post for a long time and came back to post after we drafted him that JA17 is FavrElway. That might have been the greatest moment in my posting career.

i think he gets 15-17 id pay that

last season i figured he'd play out the year and we'd know if he's a keeper or not. imo (at the time at least) he was not. now the bills extended him, so i suppose the fo wanted another year to evaluate. he's been a total savage this season. the thing is that it coincides w our DL getting a huge overall upgrade, especially IMO with respect to physical size and strength. the big issue w our D when it comes to making decisions on how to pay is that we rely on the DL more than maybe any other D in the nfl to be a bunch of psychotic vikings, but in order to do so we rest them a lot and have a rotation. that ties up a lot of capital. edmunds is one of very few players we keep on the pitch for every snap, so i think he's gonna get a solid contract. we will have to replace quite a few players w draft picks, and at least one of oliver and poyer are gonna get that treatment, sadly.

dow joneser!!

that is a really messed up situation. great result. given we dropped two prior to all of this, in heartbreaking lame snatching defeat from the jaws of victory style, i'd say this is a good bounce back gut check.

You got that right. I was thinking maybe we qb sneak it, but the middle of our line basically blew them up and motor hat a stroll

We CANNOT lose two blockers on one play.

Garbage punt, net of what, 19 yards, and the punter got clobbered and no flag?