In this episode, Taylor talks about the Buffalo Bills NFL Week 15 win over the Miami Dolphins. When he talks about the Bills, he talks about the huge performance from Josh Allen, where he fits in his quarterback hierarchy and where he sees the Bills going foward. When he switches to the Dolphins, he talks about how encouraged he was by the performance despite the loss, breaks down his feelings about Tua Tagovailoa and where he thinks the Dolphins should focus on to keep building up the team for Too dn the future.
In this episode, Taylor talks about the Buffalo Bills NFL Week 15 win over the Miami Dolphins. When he talks about the Bills, he talks about the huge performance from Josh Allen, where he fits in his quarterback hierarchy and where he sees the Bills going foward. When he switches to the Dolphins, he talks about how encouraged he was by the performance despite the loss, breaks down his feelings about Tua Tagovailoa and where he thinks the Dolphins should focus on to keep building up the team for Too dn the future.
Taylor: What's up, everybody? It's the Roundtable sports podcast. My name is Taylor McLean, and we're on to game number two, which was game number three on Saturday, the the Buffalo Bills versus the Miami Dolphins. I enjoyed this game thoroughly. It was the bread of a terrible game sandwich, but the bread was good. Games, if you will, with the Minnesota Vikings. Come back on the Indianapolis Colts. And this one right here, which was a tight game that went down to a snowy last drive for the Buffalo Bills to get the win. It's always exciting. Before we get into the game, let's give a shout out to Evergreen Power Solutions. They're the sponsor of the podcast. They are a concierge power company. They want to go in, shop around for the best electricity rate they can possibly find you for our Texas listeners only, and then come back in when it's time to renegotiate. They renegotiate for you, get you a lower rate at that time or keep you locked in to the same rate. Give them a call, 886-6586 use prompt number two and let them know that the Roundtable Sports Podcast and Taylor McLean sent you. Now let's get into the Bills versus Dolphins. I think at the time of the game, I was a little sports hungover from just how crazy that Minnesota Vikings win was. I converse with a bunch of Vikings fans, so I've been a little bit more invested in their game. So to have that situation all hit me all roller coaster style, like most of their games do, including the one that the Bills played against the Vikings I was a little out of it for a moment, but as I watched it as I heated up, as the game heated up, and also as I rewatched it and then recaptured the video for a Josh Allen video later on. It definitely caught fire with me. And I was excited to watch. I don't really need a whole lot to get me excited about watching Josh Allen, or to a tongue of Iloa for that matter. And we're going to talk about both of them today for sure. I've been watching both of these guys for a while. I started watching film really seriously again when Josh Allen was a rookie. I feel a certain amount of camaraderie with Josh, even though we've never met, because I've been watching him and I could see that he had this promise in his rookie year, even though it was really hard to see it. You could just see it in flashes and spurts. And to his credit, he has gotten better and better as time has gone on. And any down feelings that anybody would probably have about Josh, if they're not a hater, is just that the bar has been set so high that any time that he's not dunking on everybody, but on a football field, everybody kind of gives it some side eye and they start to get concerned. Plus, there was the story about his elbow, which, when I heard it the first time, made me have a lot of worry for JPA. Joshua Patrick Allen. Not that I needed to tell you, if you're deep enough in the weeds to be listening to a podcast like this about the Buffalo Bills, you know his middle name, just like I do. I think anytime that you hear something about the elbow, there's going to be some natural worry there. But even when the story came out, you could still see on the film that Josh was absolutely capable of ripping fastball. Still no problem. You saw that tonight as well, that whenever Josh needs to call upon the football gods and throw a ball faster than most people can even dream of, he does. So. There were some throws in the weeks preceding that story where it did seem like his arm kind of gave out a little bit, and some throws wouldn't go quite as far as he expected them to. Maybe there was some pain in the elbow at that point. When he would release it, it would cause him to come up a little bit on the throw, even. Naturally, even if you're trying to throw through it, you have that twinge and you're going to probably take a little bit off of it. At that point. That seems to be happening less and less. And honestly, in this game, I didn't see any throws that I felt like were a power outage. The Dolphins did a good job of penetrating and stopping the non Josh Allen running game pretty well in its tracks. The Bills gained 150 yards on 29 carries, which doesn't sound too bad, but really Josh was the impetus of that. Although James Cook was able to get loose a little bit more than single Terry got to, I like James Cook a lot. As an aside to the greater Josh conversation, I don't dislike Devon singletary, though, either, necessarily. I think James is the alpha between the two, but felt like James's carries came at more unexpected time when the box was light. They could check to the run play out of their passing set with James versus Devon. That seemed to have the more expected run carries either way you slice it. The Dolphins were trying to play on the other side of the line of scrimmage more and trying to disrupt those plays and trying to get to Josh as well. The only issue is Josh is pretty masterful within the pocket when he gets off schedule. Especially, he can make you pay. Whether that's running the ball like he did on the 44 yard scramble or a couple of others, obviously. Or just getting some more time and letting it rip like on the pass interference to end the game. That was definitely pass interference. It looked even worse from the coaching film view when I saw it again, because you can kind of see the distance between where they are and how much that guy really goes into Isaiah there. Josh buys just a little bit more time with that play, and those are the type of things that take you from being a good quarterback to being a great quarterback. I really like Justin Herbert a whole lot, but I think where Patrick and Josh separate themselves right now is that they're better improvers and they're able to stretch the defense more with their legs and then throwing off of that. Justin is a little bit more robotic when it comes to his actions and what he's doing, and he's great within the play, but he hasn't been as good with the improvisations as the other three quarterbacks that I love, and it kind of takes them down just a little bit, in my opinion. Just so you know, my quarterback list is Patrick and Josh in a one A, one B type scenario, or maybe even one A, one A at this point, because I love them both on that god tier of quarterback. And then I have Joe Burrow. The only reason Joe's not right there, too, is that he doesn't possess the same physical skills that Josh and Patrick do. He's just as good an improviser and is a great decision maker, which makes him great, but I don't think that he has the same exact physical arm talent or running talent, even though the running talent is there. That part is fine. The mobility and all that's fine. It's just not elite like it is with Josh Allen. He just has elite decision making. Justin has the decision making down pat. He's just still a little bit more raw than the other three when it comes to the improvisation. Really. I think out of the three, he also has the worst offensive coordinator. Not to apologize for Justin on a Josh Allen podcast, but it's been something that's been on my mind that I want Joe Lombardi gone and fired, and I'm willing to have the Charger season tank to get it done. To have more josh allen, more bill style play calls from them to try and take advantage of the laser rocket arm that they both possess. I think a lot about quarterback and how hard they throw in baseball terms, just because they don't really have anybody clocking throws as far as how mph they're going. I wish they would, and I'd be into that because I'm really good at visually clocking how fast these guys throw. And Josh, Justin and Patrick are all throwing 100 on that metric. It's useful because then you can compare everybody else to how fast you think they're throwing it by comparison. And Andy Dalton is throwing in about 84. He's kind of the low end of the quarterback arm scale, so everybody's throwing in between those two things. Pretty typically, Joe is throwing like 94 by comparison, 95 maybe, if Josh and Justin are throwing 100. So there's a quick aside let's talk more about this game and to my greater point, about Josh's Armstring, that it carried them on this day, the unpredictability of Josh and the offense, whether he brings it down and runs with it or throws it over the top of these guys, is something that really makes them go. And the fact that it didn't snow just a literal ton like everybody thought it was going to, as shocking as it's going to sound, probably played more into the Dolphins than it did the Buffalo Bills, but it was so much better to see both of these teams stretch their legs and really show us what they can do on offense. The dolphins did a pretty good job on Stefan digg. Stefan was still able to get his, but overall they did a pretty good job of keeping a cap on him. So it was good to see Dawson Knox and Gabriel Davis step up in those moments. Josh has always had a special connection with Dawson Knox. It's just the role has been growing for him, especially in the last two weeks, obviously, but it was something that I had expected from the beginning of the season. It's just taken a little while for it to hit full steam. There was a lot of targets missing when Cole Beasley left, and it was good to see him back out on the field. For the Buffalo Bills, it was a limited snap count, obviously, with eleven of the 77, but still, it's good to have him as backup for what they already have. There's just a lot of space in the middle of the field when Josh can stretch the field to all the different parts and you're forced to COVID the Bill's defense deep. And when you're worried about that, that allows a lot of stuff underneath and up the seams. And Dawson Knox has been doing a good job of filling that role. And Isaiah, I like him a lot, but sometimes you need some sure hands out there, too. So I'm hoping that Cole Beasley can work his way into that and give the Bills some additional options there to kind of stretch everything and move everything around. Because make no mistake, the Stefon Diggs, the Josh Allen thrown over the top game, that's what makes the rest of the offense go. The fact that you have to honor that as a threat on every play. And Gabriel Davis, that does a lot for it, too, when Gabriel is capable of also housing a football with relative ease if you get him into space. So when you have to play safety is high and you have to play a good amount of coverage deep, that opens up everything below. It's also really important that Josh has those outlets when a team is trying to get after him like the Dolphins were. It didn't feel like they were having to blitz too much. They're playing a lot of coverage, but Dolphins are good at penetrating and rushing the passer. A lot of it stems from the front. Christian Wilkins has been a lot better than I expected him to be going into the year. Not that I had a list of people I expected to be good for the Dolphins or anything, but I think it all kind of stems off them being solid all the way across their front. I mean, Siler, Jason Phillips, Jerome Baker, Rayquan Davis, Josh Jenkins, they all play a role in that savage front. Obviously, Melvin Ingram had something as well. They're missing Ogba at this point that really gave them a little bit extra juice when they had him as well. And of course, they traded for Bradley Chubb, which is supposed to take them over the top from the edges with Jalen Phillips on the other side. Haven't seen that materialize quite as much. Even though he's been fine, I usually see these guys that are of his status pop a little bit more, but to the credit of the Buffalo Bills, I thought they did a good job of matching that. And even though they didn't get the running game going a ton, they also didn't bang their head up against that wall too much. Felt like they were trying to keep a balance in there to undo pressure throwing the ball. It's better when you're able to mix both things together, and in this game, Josh had to take that over with some solid rushing and some timely rushing. And I know that not a lot of people think about Miami necessarily defensively, but they're actually good on both sides of the ball. It's not just an offensive team here. It's just the Bills were really good schematically and gave the Dolphins some fits when it came to covering them in every part of the field. It's a big winning streak for the Buffalo Bills, and it's the first time since 93 that they've beaten their division opponents back to back to back, so that's got to feel good. And if you're a team of the Bill stature, it's expected of you. But the fact that they've been able to pull it off and it's been such a time, and even with the way they've been playing, the division is really competitive across the league. And the Patriots might have played their way out of playoff contingent, possibly with that loss that they had, but they're still in the mix here, so it's not like you're the best team in the AFC or NFC South, so this definitely has to feel good. You've got to feel good about your chances if you're the Buffalo Bills. Obviously, the Von Miller thing, not having him come back is not good for the defense overall, but there's still a lot of playmakers on this defense. Shack Lawson seemed to step up in a bunch of moments in the past. Rush Taron Johnson, the cornerback, opposite tradeius. White made some big plays, and just getting Tradavius White and having his feet getting back underneath him a bit is going to be super helpful going forward, because while I didn't see as much pressure as I would like from the Buffalo Bills in this game, they still did a decent job and they didn't let Tua get absolutely comfortable. There was still a lot of errant throws and there was still some pressure in there. It didn't seem to have the same punch that it used to have with them using Von Miller the way they were using him. So the secondary is going to have to make up for that a bit, and Travia's White seems to be in good position to do that, coming off the ACL and seemingly looking a lot healthier out there in this last game. And if you're the Miami Dolphins, I don't think you're that worried about it necessarily either. You were able to beat the Bills earlier in the season, and honestly, after the two games that you had played in the weeks before, I think you have to feel a lot better about your team. As I said, the defense showed flashes of playing better, and while they weren't able to him up the Bills completely by any means, they did keep them in this game and led the Bills to five straight possessions in the second half where they didn't have anything really going on offense. Once again, they were causing havoc, penetration, and playing the passing lanes tight. But even more encouraging was the offense coming to life a bit. Tua had looked really off in the last two games and seemed to regain some composure and some confidence in this game. The last two teams had done a really good job of taking away the middle of the field from the Miami Dolphins, and they were able to take it back a good deal in this game. Obviously, there's the Jalen Wattle play. Those are the big plays that we see, but Tuo was back on schedule and hitting guys in stride in that part of the field where he excels because he was drafted with Justin Herbert and Joe Burrow. There will always be those comparisons, but I think Tua is of a different type of quarterback, and I've said it many times that I think Tua in his best form is when he plays like Drew Breeze in his prime. And I don't mean that Tua has the same mental faculties that Drew Breeze at this point in his career. He absolutely does not. I mean, from a physical standpoint, he has those type of tools. And if you remember Drew Breeze through for a ton of yards, but it wasn't because he was a domineering passer of the football with his arm. And you see that with Tua that he's not a great guy when it comes to the deep outs, and he throws a good deep ball from an accuracy standpoint, but he's not just powering it down the field every time. It takes a lot of his body to get that ball down the field, and he needs to be completely set where when you watch Josh Allen, you'll see him be all kinds of off kilter and be able to power that ball down the field to the point where it doesn't matter that he's off kilter. Tua doesn't have as much of that in his game, not that he can't move and make those throws, but he's not able to power it and push it past defenders. He kind of has to throw it up a little bit more with that part of it, which is just how Drew Brees used to do it. You have to beat the defense with your mind throw super accurate, on time passes that allow your receivers to run with the ball after the catch and you just live on 1000 cuts, breaking that defense apart while also getting it to your main guys. Having Waddle, having Tyreek, even Cedric Wilson is your third guy, has a lot of speed and pushes the defense to its limits. When you have to COVID all three of them plus Mostert or Jeff Wilson out of the backfield, that's a big problem for anybody, not depending on the quarterback. And then you throw in a guy that is able to execute the way that Tua is able to execute when he's looking right and it can be a real problem for the defense to COVID And then Mike McDaniels has been really great about Schematically making things interesting, which when I say interesting, I mean it can be confusing for a defense and really sets up an offense for success. It had seemed in the last couple of weeks that people were onto Mike McDaniel and Tua and what they like to do, and there was still a lot of what they like to do in this game plan more than there had been in the last two weeks. But it still seemed like there were some good adjustments made and part of that was re embracing the running game. They hadn't really been able to get that going in the last couple of games. So to have them come out and raheem Mostert go 17 for 136. Granted, a bunch of that was on 167 yard run. That was all heart, but it was still impressive. And having getting him going and keeping the Bills off balance that the Dolphins weren't just going to throw every time was a big move and it was something that they hadn't had going in the last two weeks. That's why I'm not as concerned. Everything felt like it got healthy in this game and I have a tremendous amount of respect for the Buffalo Bills on both sides of the ball. So the fact that the dolphins were able to push the bills as far as they pushed them. And are the snow coming an hour later away from potentially winning this game? Because they had the ball, they could have gone down and scored there, and it just seemed like the snow took a little bit of starch out of the dolphin sales. It is something you want to consider if you're the Dolphins too, that you want to have your team not have to play in conditions like that. That comes with a little bit more overall consistency in the regular season. So your wins are up. So it's you winning the division, not the Buffalo Bills. But I kind of think that the Dolphins are a little bit ahead of schedule here too and still have some room to outfit this team with more things that can help Mike McDaniel push this team to the next level. They need to keep building up the offensive line. The offensive line played a lot better and that was a big part of the running game, but I'm still not a huge proponent of some of the guys that they have on there. Basically everyone outside of Tehran and Connor Williams, they paid for out the nose for both of those guys. So it's going to come along with probably drafting up some guys and looking for guys that are more appropriate and better for the scheme that they're running. Shell and the guards are just not a big fan and this is something that Miami is kind of having to build themselves out of and trying to build themselves out of for some time. Obviously they're without Austin Jackson, but he wasn't playing that good leading up to his injury anyway. I would still take him back though, in a second. So that is a part of it for me when it comes to Miami with this is I need to see them keep adding, but I like what they've added so far and the fact that they've gotten to jump. His level to where it's at now in year three. I mean, honestly, whatever happens in the season, that's the biggest win that they could have had. Tyree trade working out too, isn't bad. That could have been a disaster had it not worked out. But the fact that Mike McDaniel has Tua in the position that he has them in and then I feel like there's a lot of room for growth with Tua, with Mike McDaniel, first of all, because make no mistake, quarterback and scheme are not independent of each other. You need both for them to be successful and as I said, kind of midstream here. I talked about Justin Herbert who relates to both these quarterbacks in one way or another. I said that I hate his offensive play caller and that I want him fired. Doesn't mean that I love Justin any less, but I don't think they're going to have success, the type of success that they could have until he's gone. And Tua has had a ton of behind the times offensive minds behind him. Chan gaily wasn't getting the job done, whoever it was after that, I can't remember his name off the top of my head, I don't feel like looking up, but he has not been getting that support and he hasn't had the weapon this time either. Finally, you have Tyreek in there. You have waddle in there? You saw it a little bit with Waddle last year. But oh wait, all of a sudden Tua gets one of the best wide receivers in the whole league who self admittedly had a down game by his standards in this game, even though he had a sick 20 yard touchdown they used his speed on. But I guess my point is I'm glad that I'm finally getting to see to with a full complement of players and a full complement of coaching insight. There's still work to do on this team, no doubt, but they've got the playmakers. It's just the offensive line I take issue with on the offensive side. And what's the next step, you may ask, to yourself with forTua, it's being more consistent with all of this and continuing to bolster up his head movement, his eyes, his feet, having his feet set in the right way so that he can drive the ball more efficiently. There's some things in there that will get better with just repetition and time. And there's some things where there's going to have to be some epiphanies and just him being more and more comfortable so that he can do all those little intricate things like you looking the safety off. He did that some to get the looks that he wanted to get within this offense. He needs to do more of that and needs to be able to do that more consistently. That'll be what uncaps. His ultimate upside here is just the mental game because the more he's going to see things through this offense, through the lens of Mike McDaniels, and just for his own personal growth, seeing cover three for the millionth time or whatever it is, all those things are going to have to click. And this season, the reason it's such a win is we're seeing those things happen before our eyes right now. This is just the start. Year three is not the ultimate form like, yeah, it looks great on Joe Burrow for sure, right? He's an aberration when it comes to that right now. Even Josh Allen from the same game, not the defender for Jacksonville. Obviously there were still some kinks and there were still some inconsistencies in what Josh was doing. Josh had the problem where he would go in and he would try so hard that he would push things too far and he would make a mistake or his feet would get out of control, or he'd just get out of control in moments and he'd make a mistake. It was bad and it was way worse before that. He used to be Clifford the Big Red Dog who would just be just running around and trying to do everything he could and running through guys and it was crazy and awesome. That was part of what made me fall in love with Josh in the first place. But my point is that Tua is still in that point. He's just not running around like crazy and running through guys. So it has to be more on the mental side that he develops and that takes more time and you have to have a pretty good leash with these guys to get them to that point. I hear a lot of people talk about that there's not going to be any more Tom Brady's because it takes so much leash, so much time to develop that guy. Like even Matthew Stafford had a laser rocket arm and he probably would have gotten the leash, but he's pretty slow too. And in today's NFL, when you're not flashing those elite physical tools like Josh Allen was, you don't always get that four year leash to figure it out. And let's not forget, Josh wasn't completely Josh until then. And so the fact that Justin and Tua are still figuring out in year three and there's still some inconsistency there shouldn't be surprising. It's just we should be seeing less and less and less of it as we go through time. And Tua, with the strides that he made, has shown us that this is on the table. That going beyond that Kurt Cousins tier where you can't create beyond the first play, or there's some deficiency that is so glaring that teams that have solid defenses eventually exploited in the playoffs, that's what you're trying to get yourself past. And Tua may end up not having the physical tools where he can't take advantage of absolutely everything that a team can throw against him. There may be some teams that still give him problems at times. The 49 ers thing may not be an aberration, right? But I want to see it and I think that Tua has that type of potential. That's the overall point and that's what we want to see going forward is can he continue to build on this? Can he continue I think of it in dorky terms, in terms of quarterback Jedi. Those Jedi weren't great when they first got started. They had to study and learn things. And at least now Two is in the position where I think he can learn and I think he can be in a situation that sets him up for such success that he can be that guy. Because of all of the different things we talked about, because of McDaniels, Tyree, Jalen, all of these things that have come into Tua's quarterback life that have really allowed him to up his game to this level. I know I talked passionately about Josh Allen and to a tongue of iloa it's because it has always been everybody on the bandwagon. And the good thing about making videos in the rookie years of players throughout their career is that you've got. The receipts. Go back and look at my old Josh stuff. I've been saying this from the beginning, and I've been saying a lot of this to us stuff, too, because you can see the skeleton of Tua still forming, and now he's starting to add meat on the bones and he's able to do something there. He's just not all the way muscled up yet. Josh is reaching the height of his powers, so I think that's a big part of what we saw today, and that's what we'll see going forward. If you've gotten to this point and haven't done so, download the podcast. Let me know that you're here and listening, like and subscribe on YouTube. Those are the important ones there. Look for more videos. I took a long form video of Josh Allen from this game, so I'm going to try and get to that today. Look for more short videos as well. There's going to be some of those from this game and more. And have a great rest of your day.