Randall Flagg

Yes - he has never gotten flagged for any sort of "embellishment" or "unsportsmanlike conduct" but has drawn a few flags when he shouldn't have gotten them over the years. Though the weak roughing calls he's received recently haven't been a result of embellishment, I would roughly guess that he generates 2-3 flags per year doing it

Donny G will show me all I need to see about him this season, in either direction.

By the way, if we are hoping for reasonable officiating (in any particular direction) historically Tampa Bay games are the worst for us in that regard. I am still sick to my stomach from a few ref moments in Tampa games last year.

Do you not think josh embellishes for a call every time he gets breathed on? Or do you think he does so but likely didn't there? We certainly can't know from here but he has a massive propensity to do that, and could not have fallen in a less-efficient way if your interest is preserving health/shoulders/head

The road in the back of that old TV pic you posted didn't look dirt!

Especially the second one. He just looked more interested in flailing his arms around than actually catching and preserving himself.

I think those two giants game hits wouldn't have injured his shoulder if he wasn't flopping to get a call. He could have fallen a lot better than that on both plays IMO. I hated seeing that.

There has been a very public theme of connecting to the fanbase and the past/history of the franchise with this regime to the point where players constantly bring it up unprompted. Some of this involved things like RJ and Miller night, where many alumni were around and certainly engaging with the team. I'm not sure how much of that was formal mentorship if any, but I don't think there's some magic button the Sabres aren't pressing in that area.

I might be forgetting a Washington touchdown that we scored under center. Don't remember if that one was under center, it was in garbage time. Either way, I'm not also saying that we should never be under center - my point is we need to be multiple, and not being under center at the 1 is FAR from egregious, it is sometimes necessary, and we went 2/2 in the red zone Sunday without ever lining up under center

Our team has scored multiple times this year in shotgun at the 1. Harris vs Raiders, Jimbo vs Miami. Allen's run against Jacksonville came from the gun, they were at the 2 or 3 though They did score with Murray from under center but that was around the 5 yard line. Otherwise they have not scored under center at the 1 this year. So our data seems to suggest it works. And really, ten years of data is not a "wash," it is significantly better than that lmao Across many schemes there is a CLEAR statistically significant difference between how your QB lines up. The reasons are obvious - you spread the defense in the part of the field where the major issue offenses have is how condensed it becomes. But even if i grant you that we need to look at the Bills strengths and weaknesses and not league trends as a whole...the Bills are a spread and finesse team that gets shut down by stout interior lines, the exact type that in your thought experiment would struggle with HB dive!

Big game! First time attending this year, bringing my dad. These guys cracked Tampa's code last year, hope to see it continue.

I just won my fantasy matchup 132.92 to 132.58. My opponent had Justin Herbert, who ended the game by throwing an interception on the last non-kneel-down play

I can't watch this right now, but Colin has been harping this point so much that he invented a segment this summer to dump on McDermott. The segment was "ranking coach-qb tandems." I'm not sure he had allen/Sean in his top 10. I believe he had Payton-Wilson in his top 4. So yeah, I'm not watching this clown lmao

I said "Benny and the Jets!" out loud after that line's first goal. Probably sucks, but Benny is indeed what came to mind

The Bills have progressions for each play based on the coverages and leverages Allen sees. Allen is allowed to break these rules when he has a 1v1 matchup he likes in man. He really likes Diggs 1v1 versus anyone, so Diggs gets a lot of targets. He also trusts Diggs more than anyone, and you see why when Gabe fumbles and Knox drops

Thanks, you always bring the goods so it is a fun chat! I just found this article from last year: https://theathletic.com/3644701/2022/10/05/nfl-goal-line-shotgun-run-stats/?access_token=11969130&redirected=1 This is 10 years of goal-to-go plays from the 1 yard line or closer.

Like when the Giants got stuffed trying this in the first half? The Bills have been stuffed doing that this year, and have scored with pistol/shotgun runs in the same scenario. I get questioning it if we fail, but our red zone TD% was 100 yesterday In general yes I do think that should be at least 1-2 of your attempts if you get first and goal inside the 2, though. I also think we would have seen allen shove the pile in had he not screwed up his shoulder

There's an idea in the fan base that we have an easy button we just aren't pressing enough, but that's just not how it works. There are counters to every easy button that will shut you down the second you start to show tendencies, so you need to break tendencies. I can name about 25 examples of dorsey breaking tendencies that are years in the making for big plays this year. You need to do everything from every formation so that defenses second-guess and guess wrong. Our play action success is great but it already became "not so simple" against a bad giants team, in part because their MLB played the game of his life

Play action is designed to suck linebackers in and create space behind them. The giants watched our film and didn't get sucked in. Play action from under center is vulnerable to A gap blitzes, or great DTs. The giants knew this and employed it effectively. This is why you need to do everything, and need to do everything well. I am completely unconvinced that we didn't do one thing or another enough last night. We certainly didn't do everything well.

I understand the "running back head start" thing. But there is nobody at this level of football who doesnt, so you have to explore why they tried handing off in gun/pistol with that in mind. I don't have the answer for you, but I'm "trusting the experts" on this one that there's a reason for it - perhaps being under center there is too obvious a run tell if they were worried about the interior getting blown up on an under center pass play (as it had happened often last night) and knew the Giants knew that, so shotgun was the only way they felt they could be a pass/run threat. They've had run attempts under center at 1st and goal before this year and they've scored on multiple runs from gun in the same spot. They were 100% in the red zone last night. I don't think our OC is that silly I guess

If we had not added Floyd (how was he available for that price, so late?) Or had epenesa break out, I would be so concerned about how long Von will take to look normal, or even if he ever will. He's been ugly. Just hoping 50, 56, and 57 can stay healthy because they have been great. And Shaq and Kingsley have been good behind them too. Which is why "someone tell dorsey this!" Doesn't do it for me.

The main issue with the Bills offense is when the other team's interior DL and MLB are able to cause havoc and exploit the double teams we employ with the center and guards. Lawrence was a monster last night, as was their MLB. There are a lot of good DTs left on the schedule, DJ Reader, Vita Vea, *gulp* the Eagles, Chris Jones. Gonna have to figure that out.

They look 2 weeks away from playing the best football on the planet, because they were playing it just 2 weeks ago This is footbaww baby. I bet the Eagles and 9ers would kill for our ugly win yesterday. Never forget what our offense looked like 3 months after the 2021 Jags game

What tactical advantage does going under center give you that shotgun doesn't? We averaged like 7 ypc running dart and outside zone out of gun last night. It has been our best run concept and is in gun so dawkins can get across to his gap. Our shotgun plays were better last night. Our play action plays sucked because the Giants watched tape and never bit. The wgr crowd is becoming insufferable with the narrative that under center magically fixes our problems that are being manifest in the shotgun. The giants' blitzes were terrorizing the under center/play action plays that these guys wanted so bad. Josh Allen is a shotgun quarterback and always will be, he sees the field so much better that way, and while you need to do both, the Bills scored on both their red zone trips and on a goal line play that they were in shotgun for.

Dart has been our best run play the past few weeks and it is run out of shotgun, it's basically the reason we scored our first touchdown. We scored on an iteration of it against Miami too. The concepts were there to be had in the first half and every player on offense screwed them up at various points. Then they executed in the second half and were a slightly low throw/bad catch from Knox away from a perfect half. Dorsey isn't a Reid level genius but most criticism of him in Bills Mafia is, frankly, very bad