I still don't believe the Bills will win more than 8 games this year. If we beat SD then we need to start rooting for the Raiders who have a pretty easy schedule the rest of the way ... starting with three home games against Cleveland, KC and Denver. Not exactly murderer's row. I don't see too many future losses on SD's schedule either. Our fate could very well come down to SD @ Oakland in Week 17, with SD having 5 losses ( @NE, @NYJ, GB, @Chicago, @ Detriot) and the Jets going to Miami with 6. Hopefully Oakland can clinch the West with a win and SD will lose the head to head tiebreaker to us without a third team involved. Of course there's still a hundred variables to deal with, but if San Diego beats us, we better pray for a total collapse from the Raiders.
To assume the Bills will finish 4-7 (or worse) is absurd when they have 2 games against the Dolphins, the Giants (Without Jacobs I might add), Redskins, Cowboys, Broncos, and the Titans. Hell the two games against Miami should be a gimme, the Giants needed the refs to give them the game vs the Rams/Cards and got beatdown by seattle, the Boys/Skins are capable of winning/losing to any team on any day, and the Broncos/Titans are both dog shit. There is no way in the world Buffallo finishes with less than 9 wins unless they lose fitz/fjax, so sweeping them is an absolute MUST for us. And SD already has 4 wins so I think we have to cheer for them to just win the division and for Oakland to simply fall apart. I mean if McFadden gets hurt their season is over anyway, and we all know SD gets hot in nov/decemeber but not so much january
People are looking WAY too much into tie breakers at this point to make any game "a must win". Teams will go up and down a lot, we just need W's. Our hardest games (as of now) left are SD, @BUF, NE, BUF. As so long as we don't go 0-4 we still are in the thick of things for a playoff birth. 10-6 gets the playoffs more often then not: Playoffstatus.com currently has us at 59% odds of making if we end up 10-6. http://www.playoffstatus.com/nfl/jetswhatif.html Of course AFC games are important, and divisional even more but that is always true, and people saying "we have to sweep the bills" or "have to beat the pats" or "have to beat SD" are overreacting at this point in the season. The only thing we have to do is beat the teams we know we can (MIAx2,KC,DEN) so we can have the ability to lose a couple more down the road.
First off, it's "ma'am". Second, the Packers are the favorites because their performance warrants it. However, that doesn't mean that being the favorite will determine if they win or not. To paraphrase Mr Spock, "that's illogical". Third, you cannot say that the Packers will be the favorite in all of their games this season and that that favoritism will somehow improve their ability to make the playoffs because you cannot predict the future. If Rodgers were to be lost for the season, the entire dynamic of that team changes instantly just like it did when Peyton was lost to Indy. Now, stop being absurd and trying to defend a silly statement you never should have made.
Not really, if youre trailing teams by 2 wins and theres only 11 games left, and then they have the tiebreaker over you that effectively puts them up 3 games over you. Now how easy is it to make a 3 game differential over 11 games ? Not very whatsoever. In other words if the bills go 6-5 wed have to go 9-2. If they went 8-3 (which we would have to to have a 59% chance of making the playoffs) then we would have to finish the season 11-0. Tie breakers are HUGE, especially when you are already trailing games 1/3rd into the season. They are even more huge when teams we will be directly competing with for the wild card spots are both up games on us (Ravens, Raiders) AND have the tiebreaker on top of that. This isnt baseball, its fricken hard to make up lost ground in this sport, especially when you only get 1-2 h2h matches vs a team in an entire season if even that !
Miami game is a must win. If they lose Monday night, we can stop any and all playoff talk. I'm not panicking yet because we're 5 games in and we're 2-3. But I think a loss to Miami solidifies the season as a loser and I skip right on past the panic stage to acceptance of defeat.
If we lost to Miami that might be such a pathetic loss that it could very well be significant enough to stimulate us to outright fire Schotty, thus saving the season. How much better it would be if Westhoff could straight up cut him on the field
Since when did the Bills and Chan Gailey (26-27 lifetime) become the Patriots and Bellichic?? You're seriously telling me you can't find 8 losses in their schedule? As it is, it took miracles to beat Oakland and NE. I'm not drinking the Bills Kool Aid just yet. They're giving up 450 yards of offense every week. You cant count on getting 5 turnovers and scoring 30 points every game. Sooner or later you're going to have to stop someone ... or at least slow them down. Assuming we take care of our own business and beat them twice, ... you can add @NYG, @Dallas, @NE, @SD. They certainly have a chance to win 9 games, but I wouldn't gaurantee it. I think they're going to lose 4 of the next 6 games and be sitting at 6-5.
Man they must have never taught logic in school in whatever Western NY hell hole you crawled out of. The "Favorite" means that people consider them better odds of winning. Those odds are determined by people by looking past play of both teams. People evaluate the relative strength and weaknesses of a match up and deduce who is more likely to win. This is why "upsets" exist, because they go against what generally happens in that scenario (i.e. a team people generally consider a "good" team beating a team that people consider "bad") The season changes, teams peak and struggle, people get hurt, etc. no crap, you are not proving anything or bringing anything new to this discussion. I never said that odds are static, in fact in all my explanations to you I have proved that they change based upon scenarios.
Look at the teams I listed them playing, hell Miami is probably 2 free wins even for them. Their schedule is a complete joke.
And look at the games I listed ... how many of those games are they going to win? I stick by my prediction 6-5, when the stretch run for the playoffs begins. Then we'll see what they're made of. And BTW ... are they already so good that they're going to win every game they're "supposed" to win?
They could go 5-6 over their last 11 games which is bad by most standards, wed have to go 8-3, are we so good that were going to win every game that were "supposed" to win ?
In 2008 the Bills started out 5-1. They ended up 7-9 ... in last place, out of the playoffs. It's a long season ... Let's not put them in the playoffs just yet.
Dick Jauron is no longer the Bills HC and Trent Edwards is no longer the Bills starting QB. In fact, only a few players from that 2008 squad are even on the 2011 Bills, and most of those were backups in 2008. The Bills have a good coach, a good QB, and an NFL caliber offense this time around, all things that they didn't have in 2008. Baring disastrous injuries, it's highly unlikely that a Chan Gailey squad would go 3-8 over its last 11 games (that's what the Jauron squad did) after starting 4-1. I think that going 6-5 is realistic for this Bills squad. If their defense can get better, they could possibly win 7 or even 8. It's also unrealistic to assume that a struggling team, which is what the Jets are at this time, can sweep any division rival. Heck, it's unrealistic to assume that any divisional game is a gimme. Don't be tallying up wins against the Phins and the Bills in your playoff calculations just yet.
