Cash

Bingo. The more exposure this gets, hopefully the more restraint people show when harassing opposing fans just for the sake of it. Of course, some people don't really think much when they're drunk, but there's plenty of people at the margins who could be affected by this kind of news. Guys, it's okay. Drunken mobs of 60,000+ people just need more freedom. No sense in policing them at all.

Passer rating certainly has its problems, but it's at least based on objective data and it's easy to account for its biases. ESPN's metric is based on subjective judgments of biased people who have preconceived notions about the players they're judging. And since we don't know who those people are, what biases they have, or what sort of methodology they use, it's hard to know exactly what the problems are. As an example, ESPN's description talks about accounting for overthrows & underthrows. But how can they determine which throws are bad throws by the QB and which are bad routes run by the WR? Or, worse yet, just an example of the QB & WR reading the D differently. Without knowing the play call or the reads that each player is supposed to make, it's hard to make those subjective judgments. Of course, some stuff is obvious. If a pass hits the WR perfectly in stride, bounces off his hands, then intercepted, that shouldn't count against the QB the way most INTs do. But just because ESPN's metric is better than passer rating some of the time doesn't tell me that it's consistently better.

No fumbles, but 15/35 for 214 yards (6.1 YPA), 0 TDs, 3 INTs, 4 sacks, and a 27.6 passer rating. I'll go ahead and give eball the Prognosticator Award for this game. Well done, sir.

:lol:

I really think the problem was more "bad offense" than anything else. Obviously we were bad on 3rd downs, but a lot of those were 3rd and long, which came about because we were bad on 1st and 2nd down as well. Definitely agree with your last sentence... we pretty much need to be mistake-free to move the ball right now. If we want to be optimistic, we can think about how much different Seattle's O looked under Russell Wilson during the 1st and 2nd halves of last season. Actually, the evidence doesn't really say anything about fast vs. slow or huddle vs. no-huddle yet, because the Bills haven't huddled up or played slow. They might have been just as bad, but slower, if they'd huddled up last week. Then we would have seen about 25 minutes of possession instead of 22, but no extra yards.

+1. Also good luck to the OP on a potential Stevie/Gore trade. Highway robbery if it goes through.

And we've also seen from the same reviews of the All-22 footage that Colin Brown was universally rated as atrocious, in both the run and pass. Do you really think that 1/5 of your O-line playing terribly makes no difference to offensive success? "But there were no sacks." There were also only 10 throws intended for WRs. Maybe the Bills would've like to throw downfield a little more, but either couldn't call certain plays or didn't have time to throw certain routes because Colin Brown was getting blown up? Maybe with a better LG, Marrone has more confidence in his short-yardage formation and goes for that 4th-and-1 at midfield and/or converts a few of those failed 3rd-and-shorts on the ground? One more scoring drive may have been enough to win the game for the Bills. Sometimes all it takes is one more 3rd-down conversion to make the difference between a punt and a score. How can you possibly say with certainty that Colin Brown's crappy play didn't cost us a single first down? Yes, every move a right one! 286 yards of total offense is an unqualified success. The Bills continue to make the right move again and again! /sarcasm Seriously though, I obviously can't convince you of anything, and I don't even specifically believe that replacing Colin Brown with an average or better LG would have swung the outcome in the Bills' favor. But your religious insistence that there's no way there was any impact is puzzling. How hard is it to admit that having a really bad player play every snap on offense is bad for your offense? And that, in a game where your offense was really bad overall (granted, with rare flashes of brilliance), that replacing the bad player with an average (or good!) player would help? And that, even if it's only a small help, because it's not a very important position, it could have been the difference in an extremely close game? The bottom line is that the Bills' offense was terrible in this game. You can't say that they succeeded in spite of a terrible player. So instead you come up with this insane logic that because Spiller had a bad day, the run blocking couldn't have been a problem. And because Manuel wasn't sacked, the pass blocking couldn't have been a problem either. That is bananas.

Love it, thanks for posting!!

That's a pretty tough statement to back up after a 2-point loss where the offense put up 286 total yards and went 4-13 on third down. Even a small marginal improvement on offense might have been enough to tip the scales in the Bills' favor. Can you really say with conviction that better LG play wouldn't have led to a couple more first downs? Maybe an extra FG at some point? It's impossible to say that better LG play would have definitely won the game for the Bills, but given how close the loss was, I think it's very hard to say that any improvement on offense wouldn't have swung the outcome.

Good post. Lost in all the "uptempo or no?" debate is (IMO) the more important point: the offense was really bad. Don't criticize it for being uptempo, criticize it for stinking up the joint. 286 total yards and 150 passing yards are pathetic totals. And the true believers can talk about penalties and drops and fumbles all they want, but penalties and drops and fumbles are all part of the game. You shouldn't need to play a 100% mistake-free game in order to be good, and it's unrealistic to expect a mistake-free game more than once a year at most. And in fact, we probably should expect a lot of mistakes. The Bills had huge penalty issues all preseason; why should they magically go away now? If our offense can't overcome several penalties a game, it will not succeed with this current crew. Stevie has had drops in the past, Graham has horrible hands, and Woods had tons of drops in training camp, per practice reports. If our offense can't overcome a couple drops a game, it needs to get new receivers before it can be any good. Now, the whole uptempo debate might have some merit IF the Bills' offensive problems are due in part to the fast pace -- e.g., maybe the linemen are getting winded and forced to hold more often or something. Way too early for me to say that the tempo is part of the problem, but I don't think we should blindly accept that the coaching staff is correct in their assumption that uptempo offense is inherently more efficient than downtempo offense.

It definitely seemed that way watching it live. I think moreso than any penalty, the play that killed me the most was Chandler's drop of a 30+ yard completion. We'd have been approaching midfield with at least a chance to pin them back against their own goal line, if not score. Instead, it's punt from our own endzone time.

As would the penalties. Problem is, we seem to need everything to go perfectly just to be above average. It would be nice to have an offense that was capable of overcoming the occasional mistake. (It would also be nice if the offense made fewer mistakes in the first place.) Three if you count Terrelle Pryor, but yeah, pretty low-impact week for running backs. Only 1 guy (Vereen) had 2 or more runs of 20+ yards, only 1 guy (McCoy) got above 101 yards, no one got above 2 TDs...

Provided you have the right personnel, yes. If the D doesn't commit enough defenders to either side, you hit them with a quick screen. If they commit only little guys to one side or another, you can be reasonably confident that your tackle will put a guy on his butt and maybe find someone else to block. Should be at least a decent gain. If the D does commit enough defenders to both sides, like Washington did last night, then you've got the middle of the field wide open for your electric RB to make guys miss. If you don't have an RB who can make guys miss (like McCoy or Spiller or Jamaal Charles), then the formation is probably a dud. If you don't have at least 2 WRs who are reasonable threats on the bubble screen, whether through moves or speed or both, then the formation isn't as good. But the key to it is that the ridiculous spacing forces the D to show its hand, but gives the O at least 3 options depending on what the D commits to. There's no way to send a corner blitz from the outside against that formation. Although the other key is that your QB needs to have a quick enough release to get the screen pass off without getting nailed if the D decides to just load up in the middle.

Awesome!

The singer or the cartoon?

Thanks! I'll just add that 286 total yards is pathetic.

I picked Inability to convert 3rd downs and Penalties, and I'm writing in for Inability to stop the run as my #3. Shane Vereen is the only RB in the league with a 100-yard performance, and he didn't even start. Apparently Marrone made an excuse in the postgame press conference that we "held" the Patriots to 4.5 yards a carry, as though that's something to be proud of. Not quite as bad as Pos saying "we imposed our will" after giving up 300 yards on the ground (to the Jets, I think?), but still not what I want to hear. Honest question: do you think the offense would have converted additional 3rd downs by playing slow? Because I don't. The problem, to me, was just bad offense, not fast offense. I did vote for 3rd-down conversions up top, but in fairness, a lot of those were 3rd and long after 2 terrible plays. That's not so much "Inability to convert 3rd downs" as it is "Bad offense". Now, if slowing things down would have improved the offense, then I'm all for it, but I don't buy it at face value that huddling up will gain us extra yards.

Not a lot of throws to WRs in generally, and only 1 specifically directed towards Graham. What happened to him tearing it up in camp? I want to be encouraged by the positives from Week 1, but it really looked like the same old Bills to me, just at a faster pace. Lots of 3-and-outs. Lots of checkdowns. The rare deep shots were down the sideline and either underthrown or out of bounds. Very few intermediate throws. Just enough of a glimpse of what it *could* look like (2nd half opening drive) to keep us hopeful, but most of the time, it's drive-killing penalties or general ineptitude. Both backs are good players, but the run game wasn't very effective, particularly on 3rd down. No sacks allowed, but only 150 yards through the air. And to cap it all off, a disturbingly predictable heartbreaking loss. I'm sick of moral victories. I'm sick of teams that would be good "if they can just put it all together". I'm not writing this team off after 1 game, but I'm not very encouraged.

I can flip that around and say that a depleted/young receiving corps probably won't be able to get open if you drop 7-8 guys into coverage, but the hot read is always open against a blitz. Brady usually destroys blitzes. Then again, if our front 4 can't beat their o-line, he'll have all day to throw, and someone will get open eventually. In other words, it is hard to successfully defend against a good QB. But Pettine (under Ryan) has done it before; let's hope he can do it again.

Which ones?

Excellent news! Love it!

I love it!

Bummer, always liked him. Although I liked him a lot more as a FB/H-Back hybrid than as a WR/TE the way Marrone's staff has seen him. Edited to add that the Bills' roster exemption for Byrd expires at 4pm today, so they had to drop someone. Will be interesting to see if they make any other cuts today, or just save them all for tomorrow.

He was picked up -- by the Cowboys, if I remember correctly. But a couple of days after signing, he announced his retirement.

No, that's a ridiculous standard. You might as well say "shouldn't the best WR in the league be able to fly?" People who are the best at anything are usually the best because of a combination of natural ability, work ethic, and tons and tons of practice. You don't get to just say "he should be fine without practice because he thinks he's really good." He *is* really good, but even really good players need to actually learn the scheme they're playing and practice it in order to play at a high level.