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mineofilms · 15 days ago

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It Just Feels Different

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—And so it begins again… We left off with yet another season in heartbreaking fashion, falling to the Kansas City Chiefs in the divisional round for the third time in four years. Injuries, free agency concerns, and salary cap constraints loomed last summer as the team entered the 2024 offseason, looking to retool and make another push for a championship. This was supposed to be a rebuild or a retooling year. With a new defensive coordinator in Bobby Babich, a full season of Joe Brady as offensive coordinator, and key decisions in free agency and draft blunders, the Bills needed to find ways to improve in crucial areas—particularly depth on defense, wide receiver, situational football, and a more balanced offensive attack. Another first-place schedule, Buffalo knows the window for a Super Bowl run is still open.

We started the year with a tough win at home, coming from behind against the Arizona Cardinals. We went 3-0 before we hit our first roadblock against the Baltimore Ravens and two-time reining NFL MVP Lamar Jackson. The Ravens out muscled us, handing the Bills their first loss of the season—a bitter but necessary reminder that every step forward demands utmost attention and accountability. We then lost a tight game at Houston where we should have won, but a missed field goal by Tyler Bass, who struggled last year and missed the kick in the playoff lost to Kansas City the season before. Bass would prove his mustard by draining a 61-yard field goal to beat the Miami Dolphins to sweep the series and pretty much take the AFC East from everyone for the fifth straight year. Even those great Bills teams of the late 80s and early 90s could only garner four straight division titles..

The Bills, after the Houston game went and signed free agent Amari Cooper who did help in spots but did not become the go-to receiver we were hoping for. Now that doesn’t mean he won’t, just that he didn’t this year. If the Bills re-sign him, I’d imagine he will work harder to become one of Allen’s go-to targets. But Cooper did make some important plays for us. Just not as many. The Bills then ripped off seven straight wins, including handing Kansas City their only real loss for the year.

The Buffalo Bills were rolling at 10-2, largely with offensive weapons that other teams would considered a non-threat. Boy; were most Defenses wrong, most of the year on that front. By the time we made it to week-14 at the Los Angeles Rams the injuries did start to pile up in the secondary and at linebacker. The Bills defensive line wasn’t getting a very good pass rush on its own and with all the inexperience on the field the Bills couldn’t blitz in most situations. Our inability to consistently stop the run, get pressure on the quarterback and be able to cover man on man, showed how to beat the Bills and even with that, Josh Allen almost brought us back to win the game. Josh Allen was 22 of 37 passes for 342 yards, 3-Touchdowns and zero interceptions. Along with 82 yards rushing and another 3-Touchdowns. The very next week the Bills had to go into Detroit, who had the best record in the NFL going into week-15. Another big game from Allen, 23 of 34 passes for 362 yards, 2-Touchdowns and zero interceptions. Along with an additional 68 yards rushing and 2-Touchdowns.

These two performances are only in part of what Josh Allen did for this team and what he means to the entire organization and the greater-Buffalo area. The Bills won out the rest of their games except the finale in New England, which was a meaningless game, but Josh Allen did take the first snap to keep his streak of starts going, which he is most proud of as far as stats and accolades go. That’s 117 straight starts during the regular season for anyone that is counting.

The grind doesn’t stop there. Alas; the playoffs… We got the second seed in the playoffs and would host all games except if we play Kansas City in the AFC Championship Game. We bullied-balled the Broncos in the wild card game and ground out a very hard win over a very game Baltimore Ravens. This matchup was not favorable for us. The Ravens are built to rip apart weak defenses which we sort of do and did have, but what our defense does well at is make you take chances to where turnovers can, will and did happen. I think the Bills learned more about what they have in that game than in any other this season. Especially when the Ravens beat us up earlier in the year. It was a big win but now we go to play Kansas City in the AFC Championship Game on their field.

A place we know well. A place we lost in the playoffs often. A place we won in the regular season in past years.

2:30-3:30 am, after the game in Western NY, on a work night, cold, windy and people still balled out to welcome the team home after the loss.

I still stand by my words all year, "It just feels different." It still does, it still does. Even in losing a game like this, the way we lost it. It wouldn't be a Bills/Chiefs playoff game without controversy. The Chiefs cannot just win outright, there always has to be some asterisk by it or a solid, "BUT," -but ultimately as Josh Allen put it, "To be the champs, you gotta beat the champs and we didn't do that tonight." All true, but we'll be back. Most of the team is under contract. We have solid draft capital. We have largely the same offense going into next year, where we scored 525 points, guys like Kincaid will be 100% healthy. Buffalo will be a run heavy offense next year with a 3-headed dragon at running back in James Cook, Ray Davis and Ty Johnson. With Josh Allen as your 4th head. I think the Bills will also be wanting to push the ball more down the field and Josh will run a little less. They will have some more wrinkles with how Josh runs the ball, where this year it was sort of predictable when he was going to run, where 90% of NFL defenses still could not contain it, but solid defenses like Kansas City, you just cannot do that to and expect to win those battles on every try. We thought we could, we clearly could not. At least not the way I would have expected. We’ll get to that later… I have a problem more with the play call on 4th down than the Ref's bad call about the spot of the ball, on the 3rd down to Kincaid and then Allen’s 4th and inches, but that is no excuse. Never leave it up to the refs. The officiating in the NFL has been below C-average for a few years now. They might as well make ALL calls be decided by either fancy AI-tech or separate refs from the one's on the field. I believe the first true robots humans ship out will be used as refs for the NFL 😆.

Fixing the below par officiating in the NFL:

I think ALL calls need to be made from the booth. All flags thrown on the field, need to be doubled-checked. No longer should the game be solely controlled by the referees subjective opinion of the game. It now warrants a real objective approach. Can't do that under the current reasoning. Anything close, should be automatically doubled-checked and verified. It should not slow the flow of the game down and even if it does, so what… That excuse is no longer really valid. Besides, longer game, more TV timeouts, more ad revenue. Shut up NFL… The NFL’s people are too slow. Most fans know within a few seconds. Live or at home. The NFL has way better angles than we all do. Yet, they still keep screwing up with very obvious positions in the game. The situation is out of hand.

You are telling me trained professionals cannot do this?

It appears they cannot?

They do not actually show they can?

I have not seen it!

I think those are fair points just on whether or not these actual professionals that ref the NFL (No Fun League) can see what we all just saw and faster with more accuracy. So far that has not been the case. So far, as in the last, oh, what? 12-15 years?

The NFL is not doing everything they logically can do to stop these things from happening. Now we have to watch a Super Bowl no one wanted to see unless you live in Kansas City or Philadelphia. The rest of the country is over hear planning on next year’s fantasy football draft. It doesn't matter who I wanted. I am just tired of the NFL being so fucking stupid and then turn around and act like this is the life…

Between the Rumors of the Bills possibly going after Myles Garrett and Josh "the Alien" Allen winning NFL MVP, I feel like the quest for a championship has already begun. Since "the big game" has lost its "Super" definition, it’s just "a Bowl" now. I feel like people in general are following what the Bills do, right now than what happened over the Super Bowl weekend. All stories have a beginning and we've been here a few times already. Defining what it means to be the "Most Valuable" Player to his team and the league this season. Josh Allen always carries himself to a high standard. Takes the high road whenever something negative comes up. The first thing he did was talk about the other players and people that helped make Josh Allen the player he is. He is completely selfless as a captain, teammate and player. What he does for kids cannot even be quantified. The championship run for next year has already begun.

The 2023-2024 AFC Championship Game:

Well, we lost… Again… This one felt different too… I felt like we let the Chiefs off the hook. They couldn’t really stop the offense most of the game. The Bills were grinding hard. Before we even get to the moment where this went south I think the Bills game plan was not a great one. While what they did was working to an extent. I felt like the Chiefs were always one or two plays away from stealing the game and they did. Let’s flash-forward to the Super Bowl and the Eagles destroyed the Chiefs, 40-22, where it was 40-6 before the Eagles stopped worrying about what the Chiefs were doing. The game was won already and there was still a whole quarter to play. The Chiefs never showed up to the Super Bowl. What the Eagles did to the Chiefs I was expecting the Bills to attempt to do to them. Show they are the better team. Play aggressively and even though the Bills did go for it a lot in the game, they played between the sticks all game. They small-balled the Chiefs to death. They were being predictable again and just edging by most of the game. The Bills are driving again and a score here on this drive would seal the game in the fourth quarter. Bills get a little itchy here with play calls and execution. A 3rd down to Kincaid, where he made the first down, was marked short. The booth could not stop the clock fast enough because the Bills wanted to go fast tempo, not substitute, so the Chiefs couldn’t bring in/off subs themselves.

Josh Allen rushes to the line and they do their quarterback sneak version of the tush-push. Josh makes the line to gain. Then out of the blue the official on the other side of the ball, who does not have the best or even dominant angle, marks it shorter than the spot actually was. The ref that actually had the better view marked it correctly, but for some reason he was overruled and the ball was spotted there. The play was challenged by the Bills, which should have been a formality. Due to how the rule is written they needed an absolute and the officials could not come to an agreement. So the challenge failed. The Chiefs take over and march down the field to score a touchdown. The Bills get the ball back, start the drive, stall the drive. On 4th down the Chiefs run a crafty corner blitz, which they had not done the entire game. Josh still beat the blitz, made an amazing MVP-type throw and Kincaid drops it. Kincaid, in his second year had injuries all year. Even though that is no excuse, he missed a lot of time. He was toughing it out. He probably shouldn’t have been out there to begin with. He almost caught it and I feel like, last year’s Kincaid makes that catch nine out of ten attempts, but he didn’t make it when we really needed it this time. I know he is a stud. He will learn from this. He will grow. Kincaid and Josh has a lot of upswing. So with that, the Bills lose the AFC Championship, with yet, another asterisk.

I get the league’s point of view here. With how the officiating was handled towards the end of the game. My argument is, you are telling me the ten or so seconds the Bills are rushing to lineup, there isn’t a person, “extremely closely,” watching the game, every play, to know what is happening, logistically, in the game, in the moment? So, no, I call bullshit, the league is just, in general, incompetent. With that said that is why I would like to see the league go with a more science approach of, ‘objective fact’ than ‘subjective choice.’ An objective fact, in football terms, is a fact whether or not the ref sees the play or not. A subjective choice is the ref’s opinion, that a foul or non-foul was committed. The ref’s opinion does not qualify as objective facts. It has to be verified by an outside source to prove the objectivity of the fact. That is why I believe all calls the refs make now need to be verified. No more back and forth. The refs on the field can no longer impact games like this. This really cost the Bills. In a year where the cries of public opinion, “the NFL is rigged,” is louder than ever. More people are saying it too. The league has a responsibility and it is not doing everything logically possible. It’s been a problem for years now, most of the 2000s. I don’t remember this being so much an issue in the 1990s. But, hey, I don’t remember a lot of shit. Maybe we need a DOGE for the NFL.

“DOFE…” —Department of Football Efficiency…

And that was the NFL season for the Buffalo Bills. Not as much drama as other years. We sort of dominated most of the year with a team that basically could do a few things better than anyone else and just being average in other areas. They pretty much handled most of the league this year with the exception of the Chiefs, Ravens, once, and the Rams. The Rams really were scoring at will against us. The Bills played tight most of the game with glimpses of success. There were signs during the game that this might not go our way. I was hoping Josh would just come out and chew up the Chiefs defense. That is what they deserved from us. A Bills team that comes in and wins 35-11 and goes to the Super Bowl. Instead they left the Chiefs off the hook with a conservative game plan disguised as an aggressive one. It almost worked till the last two drives that are going, oh, too well and you don’t trust it and some shit finally goes down. Ah, there you are my ole friend, the FUCKENING…

—So, till next year. —We will plan. —We will train.

We will draft and we will wait till next September. Go Bills (a phrase now adapted to mean whatever you want it to mean, in the moment)…

“Be good, do good, God Bless and Go BILLS” —Josh Allen, upon winning his first NFL MVP (2024-2025 NFL season).

Non solum sentit aliud Latin for, It just feels different. by David-Angelo Mineo 2/13/2025 2,763 words

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