Slagathor

QB- Losman is the primary reason the Bills will win 6 games at most this year. In college he relied on his running ability and a strong arm to force things to happen. JP is figuring out that won't work in the NFL. You need to be smart and have firm unserstanding of the game and what's going on around you. He's another guy who lacks mental capacity at the QB spot.

RB- McGahee as never really wowed me. Don't get me wrong. I think he's a good back, but he lacks something in my mind. I can't put my finger on it. He'll only be as good as his O=Line allows him to be.

OLine- Villarrial and Gandy are good. Everyone else is pretty suspect. I'm looking forward to see what our front seven will be able to accomplish. It could be scary

WR- Lee Evans could be on the verge of being something special. Everyone else is a bunch of names, meaning recognizeable but the volume of work does not impress. None of their guys are big either, so I like the way our secondary matches up against them.

TE- Not a strong point of the team, but I think Buffalo and Levy still look at Tight Ends as an extra blocker for the running game only.

DLine- Schobel will keep Light very busy. How Light and the TE's handles Schobel will be the difference between winning by 14 or winning by 3.

LB- Lotsa tackles from this group. Very Solid. I think they've benefitted from better D-Lines in the past, so I think their production will drop off a bit.
One of their strengths going against one of our strengths...TE.

DB- Very Formidable. That's all I can say. They'll be able to handle our WRs without problem, but how will they fair against our big fast TE's roaming deep in the secondary. That'll be an interesting match-up also.

ST- Great special teams. Seely better have the troops in top shape for this one or McGee will be returning kicks all over our butts.

My prediction is 24-13 Pats, but it'll be a fight. My opinion is if the Bills had an above average QB and a slight upgrade to the O-line, they are easily a playoff team. I love their D.

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BelichickFan

This is a good place to mention that I think Felger's got it wrong when he talks about some matchups the Bills have that will keep it close and he talks about their CB. I think he has it wrong because, for now, almost every team has a solid matchup against our WR - hopefully Gabriel and Jackson will start to change that. I think we can run on them and get the TE matched up against the LB/S and cause big trouble. Right now I'm more concerned about the opposite defense, ones like Pittsburgh's, who can stop the run and make you make big plays 1-1 with your WR because our WR, right now, probably can't do it against average CB. Felger seems to think the opposite that it's bas for us for a defense's strength to match up against our weakness - I think that's overkill for the defense.

Slagathor

I think most writers/analysts including of course Felger hold a traditional view of football analysis.

"If your WR's are bad and the opponents DB's are good, your passing game will suffer"

or

"If your LB's are suspect, the opposition will run all over you"

These guys truly view football so one-dimensionally, it really is aggravating.

I think boards like this one carry better analysis than any paid observers, because the media tends to take a macroscopic view of the game.

Football amongst all sports should be analyzed by the value of each individual part and how it is utilized rather than the sum of all the parts themselves.

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PatsFan37

NE Tailgate last night had an excellent analysis of Losman, showing how in pre-season, he was set up with simple patterns and simple reads. Now, that could easily be the coach not showing his hand in pre-season, but you wonder when Losman will learn to work with more complex patterns and progressions. Still, he's got some accuracy and if his receivers can get separation, he'll be okay. But he's a long way from the complex sight-adjustment offense that Brady used to have with Givens and Branch. (Troy may figure big on Sunday).

Problem for Losman on Sunday is he'll have very little time and BB will keep Evans on a tight leash.

Bobs My Uncle

Nice topic.

Here is how I see the key matchups and thus key's in the game.

On defense the Billis run a cover 2 defense that relies on generating a pass rush with just the front 4 so that the back defenders can play back and take away the deep pass and stop the big play. The best way to counter such a defense is to not allow the DL to pressure your QB and also to run the ball effectively. If the Bills DL isn't able to generate a pass rush on their own then they'll be seriously exposed to play action pass plays which, if completed, will go for huge gainers. Especially so with a QB as good as Brady in the play action game.

Fortunately for the Pats the DL is probably one of the Bills biggest weaknesses this year. At the same time the Pats OL might be one of their biggest strengths. So I really like this matchup in the Pats favour. I would expect to see the Pats flooding zones galore as well as hitting on some deep post patterns along with plenty of Watson in the seams, all very exploitable areas in a cover 2 defense.

On the other side of the ball most everyone knows that Belichick gameplans around removing the opposing teams biggest threat while taking his chances that the secondary threats won't do him serious harm. As such, I would expect that the Pats will look to render RB Willis McGahee ineffective and see if QB JP Losman has it in him to beat the Pats defense. Seeing as how the Pats 3-4, with its excellent front 7, is ideally suited to stopping the run, I would think that the Pats defense should be quite effective in controlling McGahee sufficiently enough that he won't do major harm. Then it's Evans, Price, Reed and company against our secondary. Like with the other side of the ball, I like this matchup for the Pats.

So my two keys in the game are:

Don't allow the Bills front 4 to pressure Brady and stop McGahee along the ground and force Losman to beat us thru the air.

BelichickFan

I think Belichick can typically take away the two top threats as long as they aren't monster talents. I don't think he forces a team to their secondary threat, more like their third. Magahee is #1, Evans is #2. They'll be able to stack the line enough to still have a safety help out on Evans. Which will leave Losman trying to beat us with the likes of Price, Reed and the TE. Good luck with that.

ATippett56

Mike Gandy is actually one the worst offensive left tackles in the AFC. Buffalo made a huge mistake allowing Jonas Jennings to leave via unrestricted free agency.

PatsFan37

Agree about the OL. Given time, Brady can pick these guys apart with the reliable weapons in his arsenal: Faulk, Brown, Watson, and Graham. Maroney and Dillon can run on them.

But I would add one more key. Don't allow the new receivers to run a timing route where they zig instead of zag and Brady gets picked by McGee and run back for a touchdown. We'll never hear the end of it from Felger and his boxing buddy.

Brownfan80

I'm the most interested to see:

How our TEs do against a pretty good set of LBs.

How our OL blocks their DL, particularly Schobel.

Who our WRs are and how they do against what has historically been a pretty good secondary.

How our run defense will stack up against McGahee.

It should be a very interesting game. I think those points of interest are the ones that I'll be paying attention to the most.

flutie2phelan

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