My Bills/Patriots recap

If you want to beat the New England Patriots, you have to play close to a perfect game. Tonight may have been the best game the Bills played against New England since they beat them in 2011, but it wasn’t close to perfect and that’s why they lost. You can make a major mistake or two, but when you start making a bunch of small mistakes, that’s when it can really start to snowball in your face.

• Leodis McKelvin can’t fumble- What the fuck is up with this guy in NE?! Heading into this game the Bills were 25th in punt yardage returns. The Bills punt return game has been awful this year. Someone sign Roscoe Parrish.

• Holding penalty on Graham negates a INT by Rambo- Im still waiting for ESPN to show me the replay on this. You have like 40 cameras and 20 talking heads and a murderer at this game, but you can’t get me a replay?

• Drop by McCoy or a great defensive play by the DB to stop a TD reception- It was a great/shitty play by both guys.

• Under throwing Chris Hogan on 2 passes-  One throw connected with Hogan, but if Tyrod leads #15 more in his route, he scores. Same goes with the throw that was in the air forever that resulted in an incomplete pass.

• Not targeting Sammy Watkins enough- 3 catches on just 6 targets. Sammy has been just too many misses and not enough hits for his career here. He needs to be more consistent. Of course it would help if the QB was a tad better.

• Drawing up a slow ass sweep to a running back who is better suited to run north/south- Just an awful play call. It was too slow developing and I’d like for Karlos to not run East/West that often. Also, its 3rd and inches. Run a fucking QB sneak while spreading the field. Brady does this all the time and they get 1st downs. STOP BRINGING IN FAT PEOPLE!!!

• The refs suck- A reoccurring theme.

• Not hurrying it up efficiently on the 2nd to last drive- The Bills were a mess when it came to the hurry up offense. The Bills ran just 9 plays for 60 yards while taking 4:05 off the clock. Also, 45 of those yards came on the Hogan completion, so, its not like they were dinking and dunking their way down the field to get yards which would mean taking more time off the clock. No excuse to run that much time off the clock.

• The 14 point swing at the end of the 1st half- I can handle the missed FG/McCoy drop, but to let the Pats score a TD in just 33 seconds? Unacceptable. That was just such a huge swing for both teams.

Its like Titanic sinking. You bust in enough small holes in that ship and you are fucked. Now, there were some good things to like about this game and we will get to that momentarily. For the most part, I was satisfied with the game from the Bills POV. I didn’t give them much of a chance and I think a number of pundits thought the Pats would drop 30+ on the Bills. The defense played their hearts out and the Bills showed they can play with the best in the league. This doesn’t change the Bills playoffs chances because they still control their destiny for the most part and I think the 6th seed is WIDE OPEN. It still stings to lose to the Pats, but if the defense can play like this on a weekly basis and the offense can get back to what they were a few weeks ago against Miami, we’ll be the ones doing the stinging in December.

—This was the defense I wanted when the Bills hired Rex Ryan. This was the best performance the Bills defense has done against Brady since the home opener in 2003. They finally got to Brady. Unofficially, ESPN.com says the Bills hit Brady 10 times in this game which was more than double the first game between both teams. Pro Football Focus had Brady pressured/hit/sacked on 20 of his 20 dropbacks. That’s 50%. They mixed in the creative blitzes and knew exactly when to back off when it came to dropping guys in coverage. It was a perfect gameplan that I’m sure the all-22 crowd will have giant boners for while dissecting the film.

The Bills did a great job on Gronk who had his lowest output in catches/yards for the season. As for #12…In his last 34 regular season starts, Brady has had a completion percentage of less than 51% just once prior to this game. His QB rating of 72.3 was the lowest he’s had since week 4 of last season against KC.  After a few hiccups during the first 7 games or so, the defense seems to be adjusting to Rex’s scheme and they are doing it at the perfect time.

—From PFF, Ronald Darby and Stephon Gilmore gave up just 5 catches for 64 yards on just 10 targets.

—Whether its Edelman, Welker or Amendola, that NE slot WR has been killing the Bills forever. But what can you do? Its either you take away the slot or Gronk and we know where are desires are on it.

—LeSean McCoy has 3 straight games where he’s amassed 100+ yards in total offense. CJ Spiller was the last running back to do that and it was the final 3 games in 2012.

—The Bills had 9 missed tackles last night. They were great, but the tackling issue has been a season long issue.

—Seantrel Henderson was dogshit last night.

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—Im getting sick and tired of complaining about the officiating. However, when your play-by-play announcer from ESPN says the officiating kind of sucked, you can’t help but talk about it again. I still don’t understand the inadvertent whistle call. It was obvious that Ronald Darby kind of gave up on the play while the ball was in the air because, well…HE HEARD THE FUCKING WHISTLE AND YOU ALWAYS PLAY UNTIL YOU HEAR THE WHISTLE!!! It should have been dead at that moment. And then Rex gets flagged for being in the refs way? What??? Oh and then Sammy Watkins catches the ball and rolls out of bounds without being touched and the clock keeps ticking or it was an incomplete pass from the start which would have given the Bills another play with a second left.  I’m just sick of this shit. These refs are making up rules as they go. Fuck them.

—Tyrod Taylor and Sammy Watkins didn’t bring their best games today. If there’s one thing we should learn from Brady, its that the QB really dictates the flow of skilled position players. Oh, so Julian Edelman gets hurt…No worries, we’ll get Danny Amendola to cover for him and get over 100yards receiving (2nd time he’s done that against the Bills). Brady can make my dog execute receiving routes. And that’s the thing about Sammy. When Tyrod sucks, Sammy’s going to suck as well. The Bills only targeted Sammy 6 times and just once in the first 3 quarters.

I’m not looking for Tyrod to be a franchise QB. I think you’d have to be an idiot to not think his 70% completion rate would go down (63% and 55% in previous two games). I’m surprised it lasted this long. I’m kind of over the Franchise QB narrative because it gets tossed around that they only way you can win in this league is if you have one. That’s Bullshit. You need a good QB and if he have an elite defense, you can make due (See: R. Wilson/Joe Flacco’s SB years). Look, Tyrod needs to be better. But the sweeping declarations about his play after just 8 starts is annoying the shit out of me. Some fans and lamestreamers have the patience of virgins on prom night when it comes to rolling this guy into the hall of fame or out of town. Speaking of Wilson/Flacco..their numbers after their first 8 professional starts were what you’d expect (11TDs/7INTs/4-4 record for Wilson and 5TDs/7INTs and 5-3 record for Flacco). In fact, Tyrod is kind of on par with other starting QBs after 8 professional starts.

The lamestreamers know what they are doing because the fan base is so irrational and starved for a QB to be their guy for the next 10 years that they can feed off their anxiety and push the sweeping declarations of panic. As I wrote after the 1st Miami game, let the season play out and then we can decide what we have with him. I know most want to just break their hand patting themselves on the back to say they got it right all along about Tyrod, but patience is kind of a nice virtue to have in football. Good is all I want because that’s all you fucking need to win in this league.

—The Bills averaged just 3.1 YPC against the Pats. It was their lowest since the Giants game.

—What was worse, the Karlos Williams or Tyrod Taylor slow ass sweeps? I can’t decide.

—Tyrod was 2 of 7 on throws that traveled 20+ yards through the air. Heading into this game, he had the 11th best completion percentage on throws that traveled 20+ yards through the air and was tied for 2nd in passing TDs on 20+ yard throws. Just had a really off night with the deep ball.

—Jerry Hughes had 6 QB pressures.

—STFU about EJ Manuel needing to be in on that last drive. Did you see his games this year? I don’t really want to see EJ coming into that type of situation when he’s ice cold.  Of course Rex is praying that Tyrod can finish the game. Let’s hope Tyrod’s injury isn’t bad because I can’t go another few weeks of #casselgate bullshit on Twitter. Please. I can’t.

Final word: Its 2:20am and I am beat. Bills have a short week and they need the offense to get their groove back. They have scored just 2 offensive TDs in their last 2 weeks. The KC game could be the season on Sunday. Get better Tyrod.