Welcome back to Earth. Alright, we've actually been here for a while with the Bills. They have been kind of an enigma this year with their near wins and near losses. The narrative has been that if this or that happened, they would be much better than their record indicated. So, going against a 2-6 team, I was hoping for a blowout or at least a convincing win. I wasn't saying it was going to happen before the game, as I picked the Bills by 3, but I was hoping that for once..The Bills could get a convincing win on the road.
No "What ifs". None of that crap about the other team handing the game to them. It was a game in which we could separate ourselves from the bottom of the league and just feel good about ourselves going forward. God forbid we actually don't erase our playoff hopes by the time we have our turkey stuffing.
Um, yeah..We separated ourselves alright.
Pittsburgh was the team that separated themselves from us and we separated ourselves from any sort of connection with being in the playoff hunt. PLAYOFFS?! DON'T TALK ABOUT PLAYOFFS!?
The Bills were tough to watch today. It reminded me of some of those awful Dick Jauron/Trent Edwards games where you just had to beg for the opposition to fuck up in order for us to stay in the game. There was nothing good to take out of this game. Zero. Nada. Zip. Nothing to build on. Nothing to put on the Bills' resumes.
This game was the pure shits. I hated every single moment of it. It was a beat down that won't have me talking up the Bills for at least the rest of this week. No tougher to play against crap. No Jeff Tuel cost us a game or EJ Manuel got hurt excuse. There was no progress today, only regression. If anything, this was a reminder that the Bills are in middle of a rebuilding season. Yeah..it sucks, but that's the truth.
—So..who had EJ Manuel having the worst quarterbacked game for the Bills this season? It wasn't Tuel or Thad. It was our 1st round pick. Yes, I get all the excuses: Rust, the wind, Dick LeBeau being 17-2 against rookie QBs (I had that stat earlier this week and everyone decided to steal it this weekend. Better give me some credit punks!), or the Steelers coming off a 55 point loss and wanting revenge. In the end, this is probably one of those bad rookie moments that we all predicted would probably happen for EJ.
As I've said before, it is all about the eyes of the beholder. When EJ throws for almost 300 yards against Carolina, the optimistic fans go wild and the pessimistic ones are more guarded with their approach. When EJ struggles like he did today or against the Jets, the pessimistic ones go crazy and the optimistic ones are saying "It is just one game! Shut up". It is very hard to find a middle ground sometimes with rookies. You just have so much hope in them that you are trying to will your way into believing in them or your frustrations of seeing them struggle get to you because your hope is tied into just one guy.
It just sucks watching rookies play.
This is just the growing pains of a rookie QB. Don't get me wrong..this was the worst game he could possibly have with me. I don't want to hear about the wind. I don't want to hear about the garbage TD drive. Outside of him completing 10 of 13 passes for 76 yards on the garbage-time TD drive, EJ was just 10 of 25 for 79 yards. The offense overall had just 140 total yards prior to that garbage-time drive. That's it. Just an awful game. Hopefully he'll rebound like he did when he had that terrible outing against the Jets, but played well against the Ravens.
—Stevie Johnson needs a hamstring transplant.
—Take away the first and last drive of the game (24 plays) and the Bills ran just 41 plays on their other 11 drives. 8 of those drives resulted in 5 plays or fewer. Seriously, Byrd's INT return yardage would put him ahead of all the skill guys in terms of yardage. Just blah.
—So, since I bashed the 1st round pick of this year's draft, let's go to the 1st round pick from 2012. I'm not saying Stephon Gilmore is a bust or anything like that. He's in his 2nd year and it is going to take time for us to figure out what kind of guy we have starting at CB. But right now, he's not answering the bell and quite frankly, he's been overrated since he's been here. You want to know why Gilmore was "decent" last year? It was because teams were gunning for Aaron Williams and Justin Rogers because they couldn't cover flypaper. When you look at his rookie numbers, they were fairly mediocre. When QBs threw at Gilmore, they had a QB rating of 91.0.
Heading into today's game, Gilmore had given up a QB rating of 106.3 on the season and QBs were completing 70% of their passes. That's obviously going up after getting burned today. As I said, he's not a bust, but there is NOTHING about his game over the last two seasons that tells me he's a legit #1 CB. Teams are leaving Leodis McKelvin alone and attacking Gilmore. That should tell you something.
—Why in the blue hell are you punting it from the Steelers 35 yard line when you are down by 2TDs and your offense can barely get it across midfield to begin with? WHY?! Isn't this the reason for why you have an analytics guy? Just go for it! On top of the buffoon act of punting, the Bills were terrible when it came to taking advantage of their field position. The Bills had drive starts at the BUF 44, PIT 44, PIT 29, BUF 48, and BUF 40. They came away with just 3 points and 4 punts on those possessions. Embarrassing.
–I didn't like Mario Williams' game today. I'll leave it at that.
–Um, trying to find something nice..I thought Byrd, Dareus (Outside of that stupid off sides penalty), Hughes (2 sacks, but needs to shut up when you are trailing by 2TDs) and Kyle Williams had nice games. Between 95/99, the duo had 2 sacks, 9 tackles and 4 for losses. Byrd..just pay the guy since I hate the team right at this moment. Hughes now has four sacks in his last three games and has more sacks this year (6) than he did during his first 3 years in Indianapolis (5). For the record, Kelvin Sheppard has just 16 tackles this season for the Colts. Hey, we won a trade!
—Really wish the Bills would have done more play action or bootlegs with EJ today. He was too stationary for my taste.
—Between CJ/Fred, the duo had 10 carries that resulted in 2 yards or fewer.
Final word: Yeah, we may as well bury the "In the Hunt" graphic in regards to the Bills. The playoffs are pretty much done and the rebuilding process is once again on. As usual, the Bills are out of the playoff hunt before Thanksgiving. Ugh. Anyways, it will be interesting to see how they fair against the Jets. Not just because of today's terrible effort, but how the Jets beat them down in week 3. Let's see if they can get rid of that bitter taste in their mouths.
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