“Pressure coming again, Josh in trouble … gets rid of it, fires it down the middle, picked off, intercepted by Josh Allen. Josh Allen of the Bills is picked off by Josh Allen of the Jaguars. Josh Allen of the Bills threw a horrible pass, under pressure again, and Josh Allen of the Jaguars was sitting there waiting for it.”
-Bills radio announcer John Murphy, stumbling ebbity ebbity ebbity uh Porky Pig-style through one hell of a mouthful on the play by play in Week 9. It didn’t get much easier for Murphy, or “Josh Allen of the Bills,” as “Josh Allen of the Jaguars” made his doppleganger’s life hell all day long. On top of the interception, he added a sack, a fumble recovery, and 4 tackles to his game log, all against the one time MVP favorite but now the clearly inferior Josh Allen. It was like some Looper from the future came back through time to hunt his mirror self all game long and finally put an end to him once and for all.
This game was so bad for the Bills that in hindsight it appears to have been some kind of turning point in their season. Before it, their most recent loss had been a 34-31 slugfest with the Titans in Week 6, when Hammerin’ Henry was still healthy and steamrolling everyone in sight. It was a hard-fought game against a burgeoning AFC powerhouse, so there was little shame in it, and thus they remained the favorite to win the conference. They even tried to prove it by coming back the next week and man-handling the sorry Dolphins, though the final score was only a moderately convincing 26-11 against a team they had absolutely buried in a Week Two 35-0 rout.
Then came The Looper and the ugly 9-6 loss to the 1-6 Jag-offs, a dead-last in DVOA team the Bills were favored to beat by 15 points, and a game whose entire scoring consisted of 5 piddly field goals. Hey, any given Sunday, right? Even a top-tier team is capable of at least one stinker per season. They even did their best to wipe that vomit-fest from memory by going all Peaky Blinders and taking a rusty-nailed bat to a very bad Jets team, leaving Gang Green in a 45-17 puddle of blood, Bushmills, and shattered teeth. But then the Colts came and did the exact same thing to them in Week 11, thrashing them to the tune of 41-15, a beating so severe that even a casual viewer couldn’t help but notice that something was really wrong in Buffalo. Looking back, one can see that, with the exception of the Chiefs, all of the Bills wins have come against teams that currently hold losing records. It’s easy to look like a terrifying juggernaut when you play the Jets and Dolphins and Texans every week. But then a feisty little runt like the Jags go full-blown Psycho-Ralphie wailing on Scut Farkus (you don’t need a clip, you’ve seen it 4000 times on TNT), and expose them for the lily-livered frauds they really are. Then they let Jonathan Taylor run for 400 yards and 27 TDs against them, and you start to wonder if they’ll ever beat another above-.500 team again this season.
Part of the problem plaguing the Bills is the same one plaguing the rest of the go-for-broke offenses this season. One of the big stories in the NFL this year is the widespread rise in Cover 2 defenses, which has been successful almost across the board in containing gunslinging QBs like Allen and Mahomes. Hanging two high safeties in soft zone coverage works well to strangle downfield passing attacks and forces the “win on every throw” guys to become methodical underneath passers, carving up the middle of the field with 5 and 6 yard dinks — a method to which restless, rocket-armed maniacs like Allen have a fundamental aversion. Instead, the scheme lures these guys into trying to throw perfectly into miniscule windows downfield in the middle of extremely dicey coverage, until inevitably they are less than perfect and turn the ball over. Despite the effectiveness of this defensive strategy, Allen actually is the most accurate QB on long passes this season, and has contributed to the highest number of “explosive” plays, according to Next Gen Stats. Yet the scheme is as much a psychological advantage as a strategic one. It frustrates QBs used to having their way with defenses, pushing them to think less clearly, force bad throws, and make dire mistakes, and as the QB falters, becomes angry and less confident, the whole offense falters right along with him. If there is no high-octane running game with which to right the ship, things can go south quickly.
The solution so far this season to the 2 high safety defenses has been to run the ball down the defense’s throat, but measly crumbums Singletary and Moss haven’t exactly stricken terror into the hearts of many defensive lines. Meanwhile, Big Josh wants to chuck it down the field to Diggs as much as possible, and failing that, run it himself (preferably leaping clear over at least two defenders in the process). He keeps waiting on tight man-coverage or a blitz, which he consistently destroys, and they are no longer appearing with any regularity (teams went from playing Man 39% of the time against him last year to 27% this year). He’s like a monster fastball hitter getting nothing but nasty breaking shit, but he’s either unable or just outright refusing to adjust to it. He wants to knock it out of the park on every play, and instead he’s striking out all day long.
The result of this is that the Bills have dropped to second in the division (as of Thanksgiving they are back in first, see below) and are in the familiar position of trailing the Patriots. Instead of being the runaway favorites for the top seed in the AFC, they are in the sludge pile, scrapping for a Wild Card spot with about 7 other teams. Which is not to say it will remain that way. If they can get a grip on things, and find ways to answer the defensive looks being thrown at them and start to beat good teams, they still have a shot at the division, and even the top seed (Tennessee appears to be slipping, while the Chiefs and Patriots are on the rise once again). They still have both games against the Patriots coming up, and if they win one or both, that will put them in a much better position to grab home field advantage and a possible bye.
But things are definitely looking down for ol’ Buffalo. And it started when “Josh Allen of the Jaguars” tore open the space-time continuum and terrorized his poor Joseph Gordon-Levitt self. Bills better do some serious badass George McFly shit at the Fish Under the Sea Dance, because their photograph is fading fast.
[PS — They toppled a Kamara-less, Siemian-led crapwagon on Thanksgiving, 31-6, a team that technically had a winning record before the game started, but all things considered it was an even less impressive win than the ones against the Jets and the Texans. The Bills play the Patriots a week from this Monday, which will give us a much clearer picture of who they are. At least they made a meal of a bad team they absolutely had to beat.]
He sure is baby! Just like old times. Makin’ big entrances, doin’ wild and crazy ass flips into the end zone, gettin’ the team fired up on the sideline, throwin’ only a single pass all game that goes further than 19 yards downfield, and most importantly, takin’ that muthafkn L!
I kid ol’ Cam, but really it’s good to see him out there again, even the C+/B- version we’ve been getting. We all wish we could see the old Cam, lighting the field on fire and making life miserable for defenses, taking over whole games and blasting off the charts as a fantasy QB. I miss that fuckin’ guy a whole lot. Kyler and Mahomes and Jalen Hurts are out there doing a lot of the same types of awesome shit and backing it up with much younger bodies. But there’s just something sleek and charismatic and reckless about peak Cam that nobody has quite been able to replicate — moving like a… well, like a panther I guess, flashing quick and dangerous out there in streaks of black and blue and silver.
We are not hurting for fun, great quarterbacks in 2021. The new generation is special and exciting in its own right. But part of me wishes we could get a few more flashes of unstoppable 2015 Cam. I don’t think he’s capable of most of those feats anymore, or willing to take even a fraction of the brutal punishment he used to get handed on the reg. But give me a glimpse. Just one game where he is full-on balls to the wall superstar Cam again, and nobody can take their eyes off him for 60 full minutes, and he makes some starchy white bumpkin like Troy Aikman be all like: “The guy’s talented but I just don’t understand this hip-hoppity kinda football that Cam plays. Is he quarterbacking or break-dancing? Because if that’s quarterbacking, it’s not the kind of football I grew up with. We respected the game. And we certainly didn’t wear paisley scarves and designer sunglasses and big silly hats to post-game press conferences like we were on tour with Prince. I just really don’t get it, Joe.”
Joe Buck: (expertly letting only the tiniest smirk into his voice) “It’s a whole new generation, Troy… and it’s McCaffrey up the middle and he gets the first down!”
Cam is still 12 years younger than Brady, and look at that guy. Figgy Newton’s still got time for a second act.
So let’s get this hip-hoppity party started!
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ASTRAL GEEKS FFL 