JM57

Nothing against Hauschka personally but he's in his own head now. This is a call a good team would make. You know the kid already, he's familiar with Ferguson as the LS and Bojorquez as the holder from his time here in camp. You don't often get the chance to get anything other than a journeyman at this point of the season (see the Patriots) Actually speaking of the Patriots I could see them trying to get him.

The article I found that had Eagle/Fouts in Buffalo did mention that as well. As expected, really, that's a huge game and CBS has the doubleheader. That game is going to be on basically everywhere except whichever 2 poor cities have the "other" late CBS game

I saw it during the second half of the 4:00 game on Sunday when they were pumping this week's lineup. Like PTR said, it was listed at the top of the 1:00 slate. Edit: I've been able to see CBS has assigned Ian Eagle and Dan Fouts to the game so it's definitely the "national" game for the time slot. That's their #2 crew behind Nantz and Romo

Sure did have them mixed up my fault

Multiple other reasons have been provided why this wouldn't be something the NFL is inclined to do, but I think the biggest one has been skipped. It's a CBS double-header week and guess what they have lined up for national coverage at 4:25? Patriots/Chiefs. They wouldn't want to flex anything against that jewel that would draw any sort of real ratings away.

Great work as always @Virgil Re: kicking woes, at this point of the season it would be hard to find an upgrade to Hauschka but I wouldn't be opposed to them kicking the tires on Chase McLaughlin again. I thought he was fine in camp/preseason, just not good enough to supplant an established starter here. He's gone out and done relatively well as a multi-week fill in for both the Chargers and 49ers (kick into the tunnel aside), and as an added bonus already has some familiarity with Ferguson and Bojorquez from being here already. At the very least, I would be disappointed if they don't try to get him back in the fold for the off-season unless he signs elsewhere

Can't believe I forgot those. It goes up on the top tier with the throwbacks and blue on white

Jersey power rankings: Throwbacks Blue on white White on blue White on white (Pause) Blue on blue Literal garbage bags (Long pause) Ketchup bottles

Go heavy to stop Ingram, and Lamar beats you with his arm or his legs. Go light to combat Lamar and they run it down your throat with Ingram.

Playoff leverage wise, it's the Steelers game. If the Bills went 1-4 down the stretch with the win coming against the Steelers, they still have a 78% chance to make the playoffs at 9-7. If the win is against the Jets, it's 57%. If it's the Ravens, 53%. Patriots, 52%. Cowboys, 37%. Obviously I want to see them at 10-6 (or better) but knowing that 10-6 with wins over the Steelers and Jets is a 99% chance for a playoff spot is good enough to make that the goal I want them to hit. I assume the 1% there would be some scenario where there's a multi-team tie and the Browns somehow make it to 10-6 and get over the Bills on conference record but it's just so unlikely I don't worry about that

Definitely the most important game left on the schedule. With 8 wins in the bag, beating the Steelers and Jets should get it done. Anything more than that is a bonus.

Almost a 0% chance the league is flexing Seahawks/Rams out of SNF. That's a good matchup. The Bills/Steelers is far more likely than Bills/Ravens because the current matchup that week is hot stinky dookie. No one is running to the TV to turn on Vikings/Chargers

I would bet that Rams/Cowboys is absolutely the game that Fox protects (or protected; I'm not sure if they had to already decide on that) due to it being two major TV markets + the name brand for each team. There's no way they would want to give that away. It could definitely be in play, I think, and depends more on the Steelers continuing to win than anything. The decision has to be made by Dec 3. If the Bills split the Broncos and Cowboys and the Steelers go 2-0 against the Bengals and Browns, they will be 8-4 and 7-5 when the decision has to be made. Buffalo then gets Baltimore and the Steelers get the Cardinals. This is potentially a matchup of two 8-5 teams with heavy, heavy playoff implications.

The whole situation is very simple to break down if we can manage to keep our feelings about his protest out of it. Is he one of the best 32 QBs in the league and therefore should be starting somewhere? Nope. And that was probably the case back in 2017 the last time he played. Since then, have multiple QBs been employed who are objectively worse than him? Yep. Including at least TWO right here on the Bills (they wore #2 and #3 and I'd rather not speak of them). To me it comes down to this: most teams carry 3 or 4 QB in training camp and 2 or 3 on the 53. Pretending every single team was on the low end of the scale, 3 in camp and 2 on the 53...To get on a camp roster, that means he should be one of the best 96 QB in the league pool. To make a 53, one of the best 64. You can't possibly believe neither of those conditions apply. All other things aside he should definitely at least be on a roster. Perhaps this is the time where his contract expectations meet the offers of the teams

That's how 7 teams would work. #1 in the conference gets a bye.Other division winners are 2-4, Wildcards 5-7. #2 hosts #7 #3 hosts #6 #4 hosts #5

I'm absolutely jaded. I'm 31. The first game Ir remember going to, Todd Collins was the QB. Or in another way to phrase it, I don't remember the glory years any more than knowing they were good and my dad enjoyed watching them. My entire life has been watching the Bills with awful offenses. It's been a ride.

Being a good fan should mean being realistic about the state of the franchise, not predicting a 13-3 season every year despite obvious warts. I voted 0-20% for each. I would need to see significant growth from each to have confidence in being a Super Bowl contender. Without that growth I think the ceiling of this team is similar to the Chiefs with Alex Smith. With the right mix of schedule and roster makeup, you can make the playoffs, even do so consistently. But there has to be something to push them over the top. Allen's flaws are obvious and have been gone over time and time again. Pre-draft I saw him as a prospect with a sky high ceiling and an incredibly low floor. What he has done through 20 games, in my opinion, has raised that floor. I now think the worst case scenario is average to below-average NFL starter, kind of like Andy Dalton or Alex Smith over the last decade or so. Perhaps he becomes a poor man's Stafford if the gunslinger tendencies come back. That would be his floor, it's not great but at least it's not all time bust bad. The ceiling still exists but the likelihood of him reaching it lowers with each start. Sure, Daboll isn't an elite play caller, but he's also missing open receivers and/or not seeing them at all, so there's fault on both parties. McDermott needs to grow also. He is 1 for whatever on challenges and that 1 came back in 2017. Either he's going off his gut and is wrong frequently, or whoever is in the booth telling him when to challenge is immeasurably awful at it. That needs to change. You can also count on him to take a knee and jog to the locker room if they get the ball back with 75 seconds or less in the first half, even if they have all their timeouts. The two minute drill is the slowest I've ever seen. There's often no useful on the fly adjustments made if a team is beating the D or stopping the O until the half. Why can't someone upstairs assist here? At least he has shown some progress this year in going for it on 4th and short.

Yes, the reason is that he tore his Achilles last November

Assuming he has a medical visit coming up or something like that. I think it was right around this time last year that he tore his Achilles so maybe there's a check-up scheduled for 1 year post-surgery that would get him a clean bill of health

It shouldn't take much. Landry and these Bills haven't got along basically since the AW hit. If I recall correctly the last time he played against the Bills was the 2017 season finale, in which he and Kenyan Drake were ejected for trying to fight the entire Bills defense on their own

Passing offense is different now than it was in 1993. Marino and Fouts chucking it around the yard in the 70s and 80s is irrelevant because no one else was doing it. After the 1993 season, there had been 21 4,000 yard passing seasons in league history. #21 was Joe Namath in 1967, with 4,007 yards. That very same Namath season is now #172. That means there have been another 151 4,000 yard seasons from 1993-2018, or roughly 5.8 per season. There's been 11 5,000 yard seasons since then. #21 overall is 2001 Kurt Warner, with 4,830 yards. 18 of the top 20 seasons overall have taken place since 2011, with the exceptions being 1984 Marino and 2008 Brees (5,084 and 5,069 respectively.) Marino held single-season passing yards record from 1984 until 2011. That season is now #9 overall, and has been surpassed by Brees (4x), Brady, Big Ben, Mahomes and Manning. Times have changed. Comparing passing yards from 1993 to 2019 is akin to comparing points in the NHL during the late 90s/early 2000s, when every game was 2-1, vs the 70s and 80s, when every game was 7-6.

This applies to flexing times on Sunday only. For the week 16 block it's a different set of rules because the league/NFL Network is choosing 3 of the 5 games to be played on Saturday instead of Sunday. From the official league schedule announcement: https://operations.nfl.com/updates/the-game/nfl-announces-the-2019-regular-season-schedule/ “Flexible scheduling” will again be used in Weeks 11-17. In Weeks 11-16, the schedule lists the games tentatively set for Sunday Night Football on NBC. Only Sunday afternoon games are eligible to be moved to Sunday night, in which case the tentatively scheduled Sunday night game would be moved to an afternoon start time. A flexible scheduling move would be announced at least 12 days before the game. In Week 16, three of five possible matchups currently listed as TBD will be scheduled for Saturday on NFL Network: Houston at Tampa Bay, Buffalo at New England, Detroit at Denver, Oakland at the Los Angeles Chargers and San Francisco at the Los Angeles Rams. Start times and Saturday games for Week 16 will be announced no later than following Week 8, with the non-Saturday games to be played on Sunday. A couple of weeks ago, they decided to move that deadline back to "following week 10" as noted in the blurb above the matchups here: http://www.nfl.com/schedules/2019/REG16

I wonder if they could use Liuget as the 3-tech with Oliver and then play Jordan Phillips out of position at 1-tech instead of Star. I know it's not ideal, but I suppose it could work, and if it led to an improvement...

Agreed. Depends on the length of Brissett's injury in Indy too. I think Hoyer having to start 2 or 3 games will allow the Raiders and Chargers the chance to keep pace. Should be very interesting since the Raiders and Chargers play each other on TNF and if I remember correctly, the league has to make the decision on these games next Tuesday.

I think Rams/49ers gets the primetime slot. Makes more sense for the league to get the LA media market on as late as possible but I think BUF/NE could be the 4:30 Saturday game depending on if the NFLN chooses to take HOU/TB or OAK/LAC. We all know that a Chargers home game won't start at 1:00 PM Eastern so that is probably the deciding factor. IMO it will be one of these two lineups BUF/NE 1:00 OAK/LAC 4:30 SF/LAR 8:15 OR HOU/TB 1:00 BUF/NE 4:30 SF/LAR 8:15 I'd be interested to see if they do the Raiders/Chargers and have both LA teams playing on Saturday. I know they don't play in the same place but I'd guess that it's less than ideal when they have the ability to dictate who plays when. Of course the problem there is that the other two games kinda stink.