Wind was crazy during that thing. Pats were smart to not put the ball in the air. This is one of the big reasons they drafted Josh Allen because he has a big arm and can throw a little in that wind.
Yeah, I watched the 1st three quarters- it was light snow and very heavy wind going left to right. The announcers were even saying that the first quarter was Buffalo's passing time while it was NE's in the 2nd, just because it was almost impossible to throw against the wind. Allen tried to rifle a few passes in the 2nd and they should have been caught, but they were absolute bullets to slice through the wind...almost no arc at all.
Not that I’m wanting to stir a certain pot…who am I kidding, of course I do…last night’s game certainly out an exclamation point on what I’ve been proclaiming for years…that you need a STRONG running game to win. The Patriots ran the ball 44 times for 222 yards while Max Jones was 2-3 for 14 yards. His first pass was in the first quarter and his next pass wasn’t until 6:something left in the 4th. New England was committed to the run; the Bills KNEW they were going to run the ball and STILL couldn’t stop them. Great quarterbacks are great but when you have a GREAT running back, you pound an opposing team’s defense into submission…and Belichick put on a clinic on how important running the ball truly is. He has done it so often, even with Tom Brady but it was always Brady that got the attention. If and I emphasize IF we can fix our line in the off season (OL coaching and better players) and pick up a strong powerhouse running back, with Tua shining as he is right now, Miami could easily steam roll over the entire AFC East.
Mac Jones da gawd. But seriously, the most important thing that Belicheat has had in his reign (beyond Tom Brady for most of it) has been a baller offenisve line. You'd think that having our arses spanked for 20 years would convince our team builders that striving for an adequate OLine is not a proper goal. If we ran the ball on 90% of our plays, we'd finish the game with negative yards and sadly, that's been true for most of this century. I wouldn't be upset if we used all of our available loot for a dominant OL next offseason, as long as the acquisitions make sense.
LOL dude.. all last night showed was that when the wind blows too hard you can't pass the ball lol. Statistically it's clear as night and day: winning in the modern NFL is correlated with high pass efficiency and high pass defense efficiency, not high rush efficiency or a great run defense. I agree that would change if the weather for every game is like yesterday lol.
That wind was some funky ish. I live in Michigan and we had that front blow through earlier in the day and it was absolutely wild. Allen throwing the ball as well as he did was a testament to him, but overall they got into the red zone/goal line twice in the fourth quarter and came away with 0 points to show, absolute killer. Also, don't look now, but the Bills are imploding. They've looked really bad as of late.
LOL dude!!! So by YOUR “logic”, Mac Jones was the BETTER more EFFICIENT quarterback last night with him being 2/3 for 14 yards, completing 66% of his passes and averaging 7 yards per completion, right? Statistically that’s what your saying since Allen was 15-30 for 148 yards, completing only 50% of his passes averaging 9.6 yards per completion. I watched the game. I saw the many dropped passes…i saw the Patriots defense break up many passes. There’s no way on this earth you can convince me that had there been “no wind” the result would have been any different. In fact, I would argue the win by the Patriots would have been much more lopsided as the Bills defense was sitting ducks for play action passes. If you keep depending on your stats sheets instead of focusing on the actual game itself, you’re never going to understand why the Dolphins have been mediocre and will continue to be unless the fixes that I and so many others have been screaming for for years
No dude. There's such a thing called sample size, and 3 passing attempts have almost no effect on overall correlation. The absolute minimum sample size to look at for stats like passer rating is about 150 passing attempts. The stats I reference are stats from every game ever played in the SB era, and you can clearly see which stats are more correlated to winning. Just for comparison: the correlation between passing Y/A and win% across all NFL history is 0.55, so about 30% of the variation in win% is due to offensive passing Y/A. It's similar for defensive passing Y/A: -0.5 correlation so 25% of the variation due to that. In total that's approximately 55% of variation in win% due to passing efficiency on offense and defense (technically it's probably less than that because there's some correlation between the two). The comparable numbers for rushing efficiency are 0.16 for offense and -0.22 for defense. In total that's at most 7% of variation in win% due to offensive and defensive rushing efficiency. So passing efficiency is historically approximately 55/7 = 7.86 times more important for winning than rushing efficiency. That's what the data actually says regardless of what you think is going on in the game. Yeah I watched the game too and saw balls that shifted position in the air while in the air multiple times, and often pushed off course by the wind. Yes the Patriots broke up some key passes, but if you think the wind had no effect I don't think you saw things accurately.
I saw that the Bills also had 250+ yards rushing as well from three backs. It just wasn't a passing day with that wind.
I didn’t mean to imply the Pats ran the ball and the Bills just threw it. That wasn’t my point at all. I was just merely trying to illustrate the necessity of a strong running game and the Pats were able to run the ball right down the Bills’ throat and they couldn’t stop it.