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This just in – football is a brutal sport for the human body.
“It’s a tough sport – it’s not for everybody,” said Buffalo Bills QB Josh Allen. “You’ve got to be a little sick to love this game. We’ve got some sickos.”
The “sickos” will be put the test this week, coming off an epic 41-40 win over the Baltimore Ravens, which had to take a lot out of them.
“I think sometimes it’s hard for our guys,” Allen said on Wednesday. “We played close to 90 plays (against Baltimore). It’s a lot of stress on the body.”
He was not making excuses, just dealing with the reality of the Bills coming off that game for the ages against the Ravens, a Sunday night game, and then turning around on going on the road for an early game the following week.
“Playing a late game and then we have a Sunday game at 1 o’clock – it’s been a while since we’ve had a 1 o’clock Sunday game,” Allen said.
But Allen thinks the Bills are up for this physical challenge.
“We have a pretty good group in terms of where our focus is at,” Allen said.
We will see on Sunday if the Jets have a little more juice in their legs playing at home for the second straight game, against a road team coming off a Herculean challenge against Baltimore.
The amount of plays the Bills offense was on the field (which was actually 81), might turn into a nothing-burger story that has no impact on the game, but to compare, the Jets ran 64 offensive plays last week . . .
The Jets can only hope the Bills offense has a little less juice in their legs than usual, because this just in – that is a very tough offense to stop.
And they are even more challenging on that side of the ball than last year, because second-year WR Keon Coleman, who had a rough rookie year, seems to have taken a big step, if Week 1 was any indication.
They also added former Jets second-round pick Elijah Moore, who, for the first time in his career, has a stable QB situation, aside from that 2023 stretch run in Cleveland with Joe Flacco under center. Moore could be outstanding with Allen.
It looks like the Jets are much improved at stopping the run from last year, if Week 1 is any indication.
But issues with blown assignments in the back seven continued from last year into Week 1.
You could argue that some of the communication in passing off players in zone concepts needs to improve a little.
Also, they need to find better matchups for big, physical corner Brandon Stephens than the 5-8, 170-pound quick as a tick, change direction on a dime, 4.3 forty guy he was often on last week. That isn’t ideal for the 6-1, 215-pound former running back.
We are going to find out a lot about the Jets’ defensive coaching staff this week as far as how much they were able to fix from Pittsburgh going into the Buffalo game in terms of pass coverage, going from one iconic QB who threw four touchdowns against them, to Allen, coming off a game he totaled 424 yards of offense (394 passing yards + 30 rushing yards) and four touchdowns (2 passing + 2 rushing) while completing 33-of-46 passes and a 112.0 passer rating . . .
I’m not predicting a Jets loss this week. Not making any prediction, but here is my gut about how their season might go.
I think they will win their share of games against the MAC teams on their schedule, but not necessarily the SEC teams.
They should be able to get their share of “W’s” against the Miami’s, New England’s, Carolina’s, and New Orleans type teams. These are the MAC teams, just for argument’s sake. There are others on the schedule that might end up falling into this category.
But against units like Buffalo (twice), Cincinnati, and Baltimore, it will be tougher. These are the SEC teams, for argument’s sake.
Unless they fix their pass defense, it’s going to be hard for them to win games against elite QBs.
Justin Fields did fine in his opener, but if you ask him to win scorefests against an elite QBs, which he was asked to do last week, that is tough, and not ideal for him.
But if you keep the score down and do not ask him to put the team on his back, and just ask him to win 24-21 type games, he will be fine.
September 11, 2025
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