Bills Defensive Star Search and Josh Allen's Playoff Pressure

0:00Hey, good morning everybody. Uh, glossed once, Jerry and Joe. Uh, yesterday we were dubbed as Goober and the Farge. It's Goober and the Farge. What a moment. Much rather me Goober. I-I called dibs. I'm Goober. You called-I called dibs, Amber. I'm Goober. It dibs. I am Goober. Amber Farge. Is that come from anywhere? It's a roast. He's most saved about everything. All right. You're listening to Goober. They're the Farge. Juan Wester, New York Sports Giant WGR. Happy football season everybody. Good morning. 6 a.m. on a Wednesday, September 9th. The season begins tonight. I have a fantasy draft tonight. It's one of my favorite nights of the year in part because I have a fantasy draft and the NFL season opens. I'm actually it's on Thursday night, but we do it on Wednesday.

1:00And everyone always asks the question. When I say I have a fantasy draft the night of the opening game. What do you do about the players that score in this game? The answer is it doesn't matter. It never matters. You can do this too if you want to. Not that you have to. But I feel-I feel like I'm going to cool club because I got a draft tonight and you're all probably done. Right? Aren't you- Aren't you immediately jealous that I have a draft? A little bit. Yeah. A little bit. A little bit. You know, finally get a little bit of Colston Loveland. I don't have any yet. And one last chance. It's an auction draft so you can kind of get who you need and you know. Where am I not diversified enough in my portfolio? I got options. The world is my oyster. Yeah. I had my last one last night. Yeah, we actually drafted the Paul League last night. Okay, not the Odyssey. No, but the Paul League last night. Paul League. Paul Hamilton League used to be 12 guys sit in this room and draft it with pens and paper. Right. It's probably not that anymore. Not that anymore. No, it's down the street. Yes. And we sit at a restaurant.

2:01But at least it's in person. That is true. That's very cool. It was my second in draft or in person one we did. You know, the Odyssey was in in person at my place and then we did last night with Paul. Yeah. We saw Sneaky. Sneaky was there. Okay. Good. Yeah, it's always nice to have an in person draft. Yes. It's mostly just like groaning at each other because you took a player that I wanted. That happened a lot last night. Yeah. That was going on. You know, you'll need that once or twice a year just to fill the hole. Yeah. Yeah. You know, make somebody feel good for taking someone you wanted to. That's what happens in the snake draft in an auction draft which I've got tonight. We have an auction draft. We run the auction online even though we're in person. So it's kind of a passive aggressive auction draft. You and I sitting in the same room. No, not knowing who's going to do what. I just like bid up your guy a dollar and you'll swear at me. Yeah. We used to have it where my good friend was the auctioneer. So we didn't we did it offline and he would just he was not in the league.

3:01He would just auction the players. All right. What do we got? We got 10 over here. 10 to I hear 12. We really did an auction. He did it the whole night to drink beers and auction players. That's fun. It was fun. It was fun. Yeah. So you get the petty moves there of like the is the timers clicking down on the. Yes. We'll come in with a dollar. But our timer is so short. I mean, it might be 20 seconds per second. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's such a short timer that you're petty sure, but it's really just riding the wave. Yeah. You know, click, click, click. Right. And that one is with the timer being 20 seconds. Sometimes there's 12 people in a room. You know, I get talking over here and next thing, you know, like, Jaylin Waddle went for $10. Right. Because people get distracted or something like that. That happened last year. He might have gone for like six bucks because no one paid attention. Whoa. Not that he had a huge year. And if that was the player, but more on that is, you know, your, your rides of emotions for this kind of auction is, you know, Josh, all right.

4:01You think you're going to get Josh. It sluts to slow down at 10, 11, 12, 14 clocks ticking down. Five seconds left. You're like, I'm going to get this. I'm going to get him for $14. $15. Three more people wake up. Sixty-seven eights. Twenty-three. Oh, all right. I mean, like, I've never mind. I thought I had this guy. So yeah, that's, that's tonight for me. A league that's been around for, for 13, 14 years. So nice. Yeah, but your friends in the area and excited to do it again. So we do that. We'll watch the game tonight. Seahawks and Patriots. And we'll find out if the Patriots are schedule merchants from last year. If they lose this game, I think their season's over. Right. That's what's going to happen. That's how it takes control. AJ Brown trade, not worth it. If they win, then of course, they're going to win the Super Bowl. Yeah. One game at a time gives us take paucalipses and I for one and fully ready for that. Instead of breaking down joint practices and preseason games.

5:02I can't wait. That sounds good. Yeah. Seattle raises the banner as the defending champs and a new campaign begins. And we're talking about it here. 803-050. Okay, coming up on the show today, Joe Marino joins us at seven o'clock. Joe Marino locked on Bill's podcast. John Harris, sideline reporter for the Houston Texans. He'll join us at eight. Selkopaccio at eight thirty. We've got Bel in that heating hot and cold coming up. We've got updates on Connor Hellebuck because there seem to be a lot of updates on that. And every insider returned from the cottage yesterday. I saw no less than three or four just features about Hellebuck, one from Pierre Lebron, one from Adam Gretz, Elliott Friedman's talking about it. All of a sudden the whole thing is getting talked about like there are more teams involved. This is not a Buffalo or bust. It's many, many more teams maybe involved in this. And Florida was heavily involved before trading for Brady Kachuk. So we'll see where it shakes out. But we've got updates on that for you to share and football season is upon us.

6:08Sunday, one o'clock, Bill's in Texans. We spent a lot of time talking about this game. Of course yesterday and on the Bill Squad show with Joe Merino and the big O Mr. Jerry Astroski. So we did that yesterday. And in our conversations, like I was looking into some things about the bills and I asked them a question that I want to ask you that we got from a caller yesterday. I think it was Mike. Mike asked a simple question and I tweaked it a little bit, which is what's a good season? Not what's a good outcome, though, Super Bowl. But what's a good season? What would be a good thing to happen this year that you want blank, you want XYZ, lay out what it is you want, you want what to happen this year? What's a good season? Again, not a good outcome like the Super Bowl because of course everyone wants the Super Bowl. And my answer was about the defense. For me, what I really want out of this season is I want to firmly believe that one of these players on the defense is a star is a real, real star.

7:13Matt Milano was an all pro player once, right? Tray White was an all pro player. Jordan Poir all pro, they had all pro players on the defense and on their defensive front, they haven't had somebody up there that really rates in a long time. We know at Oliver's pretty good. We know Gregor so is pretty good. You could make a case, the Christian pen for this a really good player. He's on the front seven. I want someone, maybe two someone's on the defensive side of the ball to make the NFL's top 100 again. And I know that's a player poll. You want to make the executive poll. I consistently get this feeling that bills players are good. But if you want to talk about like sixes and sevens or fives and sixes and sevens and eights and not nines and tens on a scale of one to 10. I just want someone to be someone we talk about building around. And again, you've got Benford who's good.

8:13And I've got Cole Bishop who I think is pretty good. But I don't want to talk about this team being underrated anymore. I want other fan bases to yell and scream about the safety of the corner or the line and being overrated. Someone that rates entirely nationally. They're just short on that. And I know the collective will be the real story. But for me, the best way to build a great defense is probably to have two or three great pieces you build around. What great defense doesn't have that. It is rare to have a great defense and no one is thought of as the best at their position. Even the Sean McDermott bills, like I just mentioned some of the names, Poir hide, tray white over the years. You had some other pieces mixed in. When Vaughn was here, we were about to see a player be truly great in a Buffalo Bill's defense. And then the knee injury happened. And of course, like it all went up in smoke. But if he has that whole first year, the way he played the first eight games, I mean, it would have been all pro first team all pro pass Russia.

9:15He was that good in half a season. I want someone to get us back to that. Someone to show us something. I don't know if Landon Jackson and his new role is going to do that. He's probably going to have a nice new role. I don't know if TJ Sanders or TJ Parker or up and down the list. I don't know who it is, but someone please. And really all this is is an extension of what we wanted. I think a lot of us wanted this off season from the bill's defense or from the bill's roster, which is stars. Somebody that's a that's a blue chip talent. I feel like we went to the off season talking about it and came out of the off season with okay, you got some pieces instead. I what here's another name for you. How about Michael Hoyt does for a season what we saw he was looking to do in six quarters. He played six quarters last season and he looked like the real deal, a real game changing player and whoever that is for them this year, it can be CJ Gardner Johnson.

10:16It can be you name it. Someone that rates. I feel like the best way to build a great defense is to have at least two guys thought of like that. And I don't know any great defenses that don't have it. Your models about this team one like this, this team one like that. If you think the the Eagles won the Super Bowl because of the strength of their defense, they've got guys like this that rate. The Seahawks had guys like this and for the bills, it's been I guess a slow burn, a slow build and disappointing along the way. And had some numbers from last year on what this defense did and where it needs to be better. Maybe you've seen some of these. Maybe you've been screaming about them. Sal pointed out he had the final rankings from last season where the bills need to be better and where you expect them to be worse offense defense special teams where they ranked in the league. And one thing about their defense that jumps out. It absolutely jumps out at you is how good they were against the past and how bad they

11:16were against the run. And we talk about this a lot. Joe and I talk about this a lot when he's here. He's not in today. He's off the rest of the week. Last year in past yards per game against the bills were let's play a little game here, everybody ready? Last year in past yards per game, the bills were what defensively? But first first this defense that was a mess was first in past yards per game. Where were they in past yards per play? Third, they were very good against the past. Sacks per past attempt. They were 14th. So an average team rushing the passer and getting to the quarterback. But first or third in past yards against per game and per play in the run game. Where were they? You know this one. They were 28 against the run in yards per game and 30th in your rush rush yards per play against. So what last year's defense was was terrific against the pass and horrific against the

12:20run. And that averages out to being a pretty good defense. Seventh in the league in yards per game. Fifteenth in yards per play average, scoring defense. They were top half of the league. The formula to be average is to be better against the pass than you are against the run. The thing for me that does get me to get excited or really eager to see what a totally different defense looks like is simply this. It doesn't really make sense. I know we all watched it for seven years. It doesn't really make sense that the bills in the regular season were consistently excellent against the past, bad against the run. And then they would lose in the playoffs and they would never lose because of the thing they were bad at. They did not lose because of the run. They lost because they got thrown on and all these playoff games and all these stats where you see points per drive, how many points per drive of the bills given up in their last six playoff losses. And it's the, you know, you're playing the level of the O seven patriots and it was never

13:23because of the run. So a different outcome for my defense comes from I'm no longer going to do the thing where I'm great all season. And then when it comes time to buckle down, try to win a playoff game. I'm worse than the league because that's what we saw every single year. They would flip a switch on defense and be bad against the past. And whether that's injury, we know there are injuries to linebackers in one season where they didn't have any linebackers. We know Christian Benford has been hurt here and there. Kair Elam had to go in because of Ben for getting her an AFC championship game. Like there have been weaknesses, but all in all, the defense has been very good. And then you get to the playoffs and you can't count on it. And we'll see what this defense, this version of the defense brings with Jim Leonard and Oddfronson switching to a three, four and how they're going to get after the pass or with scheme. But that's going to be the test they have to answer and it's going to take a long time

14:24because we won't know until the playoffs. But I want the defense to show me stars because when I get to the playoffs, I need someone to take over a game. I need someone to make that play. It really is a story of both sides of the football for the bills where Allen has been doing that and where's the other person to take a game? You know, we got a Terran Johnson pick six against the Ravens. And if you're thinking of other players to have all game in the post season to carry them, you know, maybe they should stick out more than they do to me at 6 a.m. But I just look for the development of studs. Can that be Dion Walker? Can that be a second act of the career for Bradley Chubb? Maybe. But I'm excited to see a different world. I didn't think Chubb McDermott was ever in danger of getting fired. He did get fired and they made a lot of changes to their defense scheme, structure, talent, players, draft picks. They got younger, hopefully more athletic. You could always say more aggressive, but I don't want to say that because every defense

15:27claims that they are aggressive. And we'll see if this one is. But 80305 fit these the number. My answer to what's a good outcome this year is that next year we're talking about a couple of studs to build around. That's the good outcome without going all the way to the Super Bowl, right? The Super Bowl is the outcome I want. What's the season I want? What's the development I want? It's a stud on defense. Somebody, anybody please. At Oliver, it can be you. Oliver looked like he might have been that last year. So there's my answer for what I want this season to be. What's a good season? The development of a stud somewhere. He comes 80305 50. What's a good season to you? What would be a good season? Stop short of the Super Bowl because otherwise, you know, we could fill up the phones and just have people say Super Bowl, which we'll start to think about that. I'm sure. But what's a good outcome for you? It would be a good development this year for a team that is endlessly trying to get over the hump or through the proverbial playoff wall that they keep hitting their head on.

16:31It's been a strange existence. Yesterday, there's going to be an article in the New York Post coming up this week. And I talked to someone who writes for the post who's writing an article in the post about Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen. He asked me what the feeling is on Allen in town when it comes to winning the big one. Is there pressure on Allen to win the big one? And my answer for the season is reflective in the answer I gave the post, which is there's definitely pressure on Allen, but it feels like to me, there's more pressure on every other person to carry the weight with him. Because there seems to be no doubt justifiably that Allen has done enough or he's played at a level. I should say it this way instead. He's played at a level that is on par with winning Super bowls. Quarterbacks have played less significantly less well, worse, that's what I'm looking

17:34for. Quarterbacks have played not as good and won Super bowls. He's been at a level in the post season, every bit good enough to win and it's everyone around him letting him down, whether you want to say that that's the GM and the roster, the coaches he had before. Now what we look for for this team is for someone to also step up and be the guy in the moment to get the stop on the third down against one of these teams when they need to stop when Bohnix drives them down for a touchdown on that big play, right? The blitz, nobody gets there, nobody makes the play and somehow the Broncos are in the end zone again. Where's that guy? Where's the GM to draft the defense to stop that? Where's the defensive coordinator to stop that? So even in a game where Allen had turnovers, he pulls them out of it and gets them back in front with the ball and wears someone else to make the play for him. So that was my answer on Allen, the pressure on him on how much bills fans think about

18:41him for he better win one. I do think we are getting to the clock is ticking, but I do not think we're getting to Allen's part of the problem, not yet. We certainly have been flirting with the idea of, well, the final drives of games, they're not getting it in, but again, the ball ends in the hands of someone and the catch has not been made. So I think he's still someone do it with him, someone do it for him. And hopefully this defensive change this year can do that 803 05 50. You can join us, start a football season, you know, give it take on the bills, what would be a good season and any sort of prediction outside of the bills for the year. What do you like? What team are you buying in on? What team are you fading? You can throw something like that at us as well here on WGR 803 05 50 bills and Texans in a house of horrors kind of game.

19:42We'll see what kind of answers they have in Houston. The Patriots and Seahawks tonight, Rams and 49ers tomorrow, the Rams will play without Aaron Donald, who is not going to Australia. He's decided to kind of ramp up a little slowly. He misses the first five or six games. Wouldn't that be nice if he missed the first five games? Take a take a take game. Fight off. We need to get this bills interior of the offensive line. But I'm excited for tonight. All the things we get to get mad about, I'm excited to get mad about how quickly they go to a rules analyst. Tonight's game is going to be NBC, right? NBC. So that's that Amazon or could be Netflix. I got a double check. It is Netflix. No. Tomorrow's national. Tomorrow might be. No tough. Tomorrow's Netflix. Tomorrow's Netflix. Yeah. Tonight is, it's got to be NBC. I should know this. NBC. Yeah, NBC. So we get the Collinsworth slide. We get rules analyst Terry McCauley.

20:44We get all the good stuff. Collinsworth. You know, something out there. Love to hate Collinsworth. It's worth mentioning that the bill stadium gets the week two treatment short week. We're less than a week away for, sorry, we're weak. But I almost said less than a week because the game starts and whatever. Thursday, a week from tomorrow. The bill's new stadium opens with the first regular season game with the first real passionate crowd, big moments, the lions, you know, legend of the game. Who's that? The bill's put out a hype video with Fitz, which was pretty cool talking about the new house and everything like that. Tonight Seattle, which is very well known for being one of the loudest stadiums in the league. And maybe we are eight days away from adding a stadium to that list. Houston, Seattle. Who's on the short list for this? These are those the two I think of the most, but Buffalo soon. I think it'll be louder. I think it'll be different.

21:44By week two, we could have a new reputation as one of the louder stadiums in a league. And that'd be pretty fun to have that. So tonight we get started 803 0 550 R number. Joe Marino coming up at eight o'clock. Joe Marino coming up at seven o'clock. And John Harris sideline reporter, the Texans at eight o'clock on CJ stroud, the things they've done, why the Texans are thinking they are super bowl caliber as well. How a win for them would be a statement would be the chance to show the league again that they can take out a good team because Houston last year had a good season with a quarterback issue and went out with a couple of turnovers in New England. A game they feel like, you know, they should have won. So join us if you'd like 803 0 550 Sal at eight 30. I'll, excuse me, I'll swear in the NFL. There've been some more injuries and more like bad luck for the Niners. The Niners lost the starting defense attack for the season with a knee injury. No substation to blame here. Baker Mayfield got a contract extension after we've got to make a decision to do.

22:49To never, ever think about contract drama ever again between Christian Gonzalez and Baker Mayfield. I guess Joey Porter is the next one. I mean, the Steelers, by the way, the Steelers consistently do this and don't pay their players. So we'll see if this one's any different. But Baker drama out the window, Vita Vaya drama out the window. We have reached a portion of the NFL calendar and NFL world where public statements that you'll never play for the team again will just be ignored. Miles Garrett opened letter to Cleveland, blah, blah, blah, and then he returned and was traded the next year. So anyway, Baker gets a contract. Good for him. Good for them. The bucks going to try and push it forward with Baker Mayfield on a $55 million average deal. Jeremy Joe, Joe's out today. We'll get your thoughts in. Also get you latest on Connor Hella Buck as well. It's opening day in the NFL on WGR.