Monday, 18 December 2017

Bills 24, Dolphins 16

Jay Cutler has one of the strongest throwing arms in the NFL. Yesterday in Orchard Park in conditions which were orders of magnitude better for football than they were a week earlier, he threw for 274 yards - a total which was about 50 yards more than Bills quarterback Tyrod Taylor tallied on the day. Both teams put up 21 first downs and the Dolphins held the ball for just over 32 minutes while the Bills had it for just over 27 minutes. Miami had 349 total yards to the Bills 328. It was obviously an evenly matched game. The difference? Cutler threw three interceptions and Taylor threw none. I have gone on about this for three years now and yesterday's game proves my point once again: Tyrod Taylor avoids costly turnovers. This almost always allows his team to stay in games with a chance to win down the stretch. It's really quite simple. Nathan Peterman may turn out to be a perfectly serviceable NFL quarterback someday but, in stark contrast to Taylor, his start in Los Angeles a few weeks ago (I'm ignoring last week's blizzard game in this analysis) was a perfect example of how interceptions lead to losses. Cutler played well at times yesterday and the Dolphins running game was working well too but the turnovers were the differentiating factor between two relatively evenly matched teams. 

Yesterday also saw LeSean McCoy become the 30th player in NFL history to record 10,000 career rushing yards. Now in his ninth season, he has been very consistent. In six seasons with the Eagles, he racked up 6,792 rushing yards and with almost three seasons under his belt in Buffalo, he has 3,219 yards on the ground. McCoy is a gifted runner who poses the greatest threat when he breaks through the line to the "second level" of defenders (linebackers and safeties) where he can make tacklers miss like few others ever have. He is a kind of feast or famine running back because when he doesn't make it through the line, he is often dropped for a loss. A McCoy run is usually either good for 12 yards or minus 2 yards. He has a long way to go before he catches all-time NFL rushing leader Emmit Smith with 18,355 yards. 

I was checking on the Partiots game and stoking the sauna fire late yesterday afternoon and I left the game in the Steelers hands when the sauna reached the requisite 110 degrees celsius. The score was 24-16 for Pittsburgh in the fourth quarter and the Partiots were lining up to punt as I checked on it for the last time. I thought the Steelers would likely hang on and clinch home field for the AFC playoffs in the process. And the Bills would be headed to Foxborough two games behind the Patriots with two games to go and a theoretical, although slim, chance at a division title. But New England got a key late interception (have I mentioned that these are critically important?) in their own endzone to secure the win - a scenario which reminded me of the end of Superbowl XLIX where the Patriots intercepted Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson at the end of the game to turn a likely loss into a win. So, the Patriots and Steelers are both 11-3 now with the Patriots holding the key head-to-head tie-breaker. 

Now at 8-6, the Bills and their rookie head coach Sean McDermott are assured of avoiding a losing season which is something that few pundits foresaw in their pre-season predictions. NBC showed the Bills as occupying the 6th and final seed in the AFC playoff race last night and I presume that they crunched all of the tie-breaker numbers before doing so. Their destiny, in terms of making the NFL playoffs for the first time since 1999 and ending the Drought, therefore lies within their own hands. A trip to New England at this late and critical time of the season would not be anyone's first choice unless the Patriots had already wrapped up the first seed. But they still need to do that and the Bills therefore face a monumental challenge in week 16. If they can somehow pull out a win, they will have earned the right to a playoff birth in my mind.     

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