- Bills’ Super Bowl odds shift after two losses in a row
- Allen drops to third in MVP odds after Mahomes and Mayfield
- Bills head into bye week, with coach saying team needs to start from “ground zero”
‘Tis the season for extreme NFL takes, six games in, with the trade deadline barrelling in fast (Nov. 4). The Buffalo Bills are on a bye week, and it couldn’t come fast enough for a team that’s showing foundational cracks.
Falcons Dominate
Monday night’s 24-14 score in their loss to the Falcons was complementary – the Falcons beat them up. There wasn’t one moment in that game where it appeared the Bills were going to come back and win it. The Bills have lost two in a row, sit at 4-2, and are second in the AFC East, behind the Patriots. For Bills’ fans of a certain vintage, looking up at the Patriots in the standings is a terrifying scenario.
These aren’t your Tom Brady Patriots, though. These are your Drake Maye Patriots, a young QB who is seriously emerging – fifth in NFL passing stats, at 1,522 yards, 73.2 % completion (second in the league to the Lions’ Jared Goff), with ten TDs (tied for 9th with five other QBs). As this guy writes, and we agree, Maye has become a proficient deep ball passer.
Blitzed and Battered
If the NFL season ended today, the Bills would be on the road for the playoffs. And this is a Super-Bowl-or-bust season. The takes on the Bills’ effort against the Falcons were scathing – Bills QB Josh Allen was blitzed, battered and beat up by the Falcons’ defence, with four sacks. The Falcons racked up 21 points by early in the second quarter, calling into question the Bills’ defence.
This could also be a lull in what’s a long season. That’s the way sports books seem to be looking at it. At ESPN BET, the Bills remain the Super Bowl favorite, now at +600. The Chiefs improved their Super Bowl odds from +800 (4th best on Sunday morning) to +600. The Packers are at +700, followed by the Lions are at +775. The Chiefs are now the most-bet Super Bowl winner on ESPN BET by handle for both the overall market and since the season started.
Allen Slips in MVP Odds
MVP odds have been tossed up into the air: Patrick Mahomes shortened his odds to +200, with Baker Mayfield at +300, and Allen dropping to third after the weekend, now at +325 (entered Sunday at +140). Back-to-back losses will do that (and watch out for the aforementioned Maye, who entered the season at 50/1 for MVP, now fourth at 11/1).
The anxiety around Allen, the reigning MVP, that the team is not surrounding him with the requisite talent, wasting his prime years, is getting louder. That’s especially true at the wide receiver position. Makes one wonder how active they will be at the trade deadline.
McDermott: Time to Hunker Down
RB James Cook isn’t getting the ball enough (just 17 touches for 87 yards against Atlanta). Injuries are a factor, too, yes. WR Joshua Palmer is listed as week to week with an ankle injury, and WR Curtis Samuel has been out with a necks/ribs issue. It’s unclear if they will be ready for the next game against the Panthers Oct. 26. The Bills don’t have a breakout player at wide receiver, and it’s costing them.
DT DaQuan Jones is week to week, while TE Dalton Kincaid, LB Matt Milano and LB Terrel Bernard are day to day, Bills head coach Sean McDermott told the media yesterday.
After the sloppy Falcons game McDermott told reporters the team has to “start from ground zero.” No guarantees in how many of their injured players they’ll get back for the next game against Carolina.
Trade for a Wide Receiver?
“We can certainly perform at a higher level, and we need to,” McDermott told reporters. “When you go into a bye week, you have a little bit more time on your hands to really hunker down and study things, study scheme, study all the hot spots, if you will. And that’s what I’ve asked the coordinators to do, is let’s identify the problems and then let’s get together on it and figure out the solutions and the best way forward. In this case, it’s evaluating personnel and making sure that we’ve got the right people in the right places that can get the job done here for us.”
All anyone remembers from the Falcons game is a botched end around pitched to Elijah Moore on a third and two in the fourth quarter. An awful call that symbolized ineptitude, not good for a team with Super Bowl aspirations.
Said Allen post-game: “Listen, if it works, it’s a great call. If it doesn’t, it’s not. If we run the ball there, downhill, and it doesn’t work, it’s not a good call, right? Little details matter. We’ve got to find ways.”
Allen Not Pleased
“We’re better than that, and we have to handle that better next time,” said McDermott. “Every year you start at ground zero and work your way back up to where you are. You need to make sure there is nothing in the foundation that needs to be fixed.
“The last two games, we’ve had some good moments, but I also want to kind of look under the hood a little bit more and make sure that we’ve got everything underneath in terms of the foundation, that it’s helping us, to the way we practice, to the way we meet, to what we’re asking our players to do.”
So Palmer and Samuel are out. Kincaid too. Who knows what the Bills have in Keon Clark.
If the Bills opt to trade for wide receiver help at the trade deadline, what’s some of the chatter we are hearing? A name like Jakobi Meyers of the Raiders, who makes plenty of a deep pass catches (29 catches for 329 yards overall so far this season). Meyers asked to be traded out of Las Vegas at the beginning of the season. The Raiders are a bad team and might unload players. D.J. Moore with the Bears, with the ascending QB Caleb Williams throwing Rome Odunze the ball more, are others.
Bills Still Favoured at BetMGM
How about really fantasizing, and bring in A.J. Brown, one of the best receivers in the NFL, seemingly dissatisfied with the Eagles? Saints WR Chris Olave is another potential target.
At BetMGM, after sitting at +200 to win the AFC after Week 6, the Bills are now +300, with the Chiefs at +325, the Patriots at +1700.
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