Hello friends, another Bills fan here.
First, I have to say this: I read the message boards of our opponents' fan bases every single week, and this is, bar none, the most level-headed and highest quality football talk I've seen this season. An excellent forum.
This is only my second time ever watching Bills playoff football, as I began watching in 2004. It's the first time that I have thought we were good enough to have a chance at winning the game. I see our teams as fairly even, with opposite strengths and weaknesses. Obviously, your offense blows ours out of the water, and our defense has the edge over yours. I'm hoping our defense travels this weekend, because Watson, Fuller, and Hopkins terrify me, and every time I caught a Texans game this year the TE(s) seemed important. That is a lot of bodies to be able to cover, and we're thin at DB with Wallace limping around this week.
I'm curious about the special teams matchup - ours has lost us games vs NE and @ CLE, and has scraped by despite terrible performances another game or two. The remaining games, it feels like they are barely competent, and shaky while doing it. Our punter broke a franchise record for punts inside the 20, and yet it feels like he didn't get one inside the 15 all year, no matter the starting point of the punt. And he regularly shanks them at the absolute worst possible time. Hauschka hasn't been the same kicker since he got injured by a cheap shot vs. the Jets last season, I don't want him kicking anything further away than 47 yards. If you guys have good special teams, I could see that being the difference in the game, if your defense bends as much as your offense lights it up. I could also see your defense holding against our mediocre offense, with our defense having a good day. In either case, special teams would become important.
Those CB rankings (Tre White at 15 or whatever) show how silly PFF can be. The man leads the league in interceptions at the position and hasn't allowed a touchdown all season, and has the second lowest QBR against since 2017. And PFF doesn't seem to notice that we play coverage zone defense, and that a lot of his yards given up are while doing this in garbage time to kill clock. He's a stud. But like the other Bills fan said, he won't necessarily line up on any one receiver because we usually play zone, give up the short stuff, and bet on our opponents making a mistake at some point along the drive. Our last game in Texas, on Thanksgiving, was the perfect example of this strategy working. The NE game two weeks ago was the perfect example of its limitations. I think Watson is a very smart QB, and am worried that he will happily take the dink and dunk stuff down the field on long, crippling drives.
This is also the best opposition fan analysis of Josh Allen that I've seen. The narrative on him changes by the month, as he's really grown fast. Turnovers were the main story on him until week 5. Analysts on TV still pretend it's the main story. But he's only thrown 3 picks in his last 12 games, and lost 2 fumbles. This gives him a 23/5 Total TD/Total Turnover split in that span (and one of those games he only played 2 series, last week). They also talk about his accuracy issues, but that's a dated view of his problems and doesn't really describe him, well, accurately. When his feet are set, or he's rolling right, he's absurdly accurate. When he gets panicky and pumped up, his footwork is bad and his throws sail because of that. Right now, the things he needs to work on most are settling down, especially early, and reading the field better both pre-and-post snap. Cover 0 looks still confuse him, though he consistently beat it for the first time in his career 2 weeks ago. The stretch of football he played in November was tantalizing, against Miami, Denver, and Dallas. After that, a superficial look at the stats shows regression, but in reality he had pretty solid games against Baltimore, NE, and @Pittsburgh, which are obviously tough defenses. I'm hopeful that against yours he can look like he did in the previous three games. I wouldn't worry too much about deep shots. The early string of INTs has essentially made it impossible for him to not overthrow guys deep, as he's too scared of turnovers. Like his near-miraculous improvement in mid range (10-20 yards) throws over last offseason (he was horrendous there last year, and through a large chunk of this season had the best passer rating in the league on these throws, and is still top ~5 last I checked), I expect an improvement in this, but not until he gets a lot of offseason reps. We're excited about him. We hope that someday soon he can look like Watson does for you guys. I have so much respect for Deshaun, and if we lose, it's going to be because of him. I think he could win a super bowl this year, though I'm not sure your defense is quite yet up to the task.
I was happy to draw the Texans, because if we lose, I'll hold no ill will, it'll be easy to move on to next year. I like your team and almost always find myself rooting for them, especiallly since they give NE a hard time lately. If you guys move on, I'll be pulling for you from the AFC. Good luck and I hope it's a fantastic football game.
