Trendy Tyrod's Team 'Overrated?'

Everyone around here seems pretty happy with the local football team these days.

Buffalo has also become a chic topic among the national media since last week's 41-14 demolition of the Dolphins in Miami. The Bills reached No. 10 in ESPN's weekly power rankings, while Sports Illustrated puts them at No. 8 and Fox Sports rates them sixth in the National Football League.

Much of the spike stems from Tyrod Taylor's rebound from his struggles for two-and-a-half quarters against New England to go 21-of-29 for 277 yards and three touchdowns in South Florida.

Kurt Warner, who knows a bit about coming out of nowhere to quarterback a playoff contender, ranked him as the league's No. 3 quarterback in Week 3 on NFL.com, which also featured a sit-down interview with Tyrod at the top of its front page Saturday night and Sunday morning.

All the Tyrod love follows another NFL.com piece theorizing that his early success after four years watching Joe Flacco in Baltimore could lead teams to have more patience with young quarterbacks, as well as a glowing profile in The New York Times.

Not everyone in the New York City press, though, is as enamored with the Bills as they prepare to host the Giants on Sunday in Orchard Park.

Writes Mark Cannizzaro in the New York Post:

This is a team that was getting waxed by the Patriots at home two weeks ago before a garbage-time rally in the final quarter after New England had lost interest. That rally turned the score into one that was not indicative of how much better the Patriots were. 

The Bills rebounded last week to dominate the Dolphins, but let’s be honest: The Dolphins are an underachieving, dysfunctional bunch with a head coach on the hot seat.

The Bills will face the Giants without their best running back, LeSean McCoy, out with a hamstring injury, and their best receiver, Sammy Watkins, out with a calf injury. Their quarterback, Tyrod Taylor, is a work in progress with the talent to make big plays, but vulnerable to disguised looks on defense.

Ripping Buffalo's current head coach was an integral part of Cannizzaro's beat during Rex Ryan's five season with the Jets, even when it required manipulating quotes to do so. You might remember Cannizzaro for his creation of a nontroversy after Buffalo's 37-14 win over Ryan's Jets in 2013. Seems Rex took his then-team to Dave & Busters, which the columnist cited as a motivating factor in the beat-down. After all, one of the Bills said so!

"Me personally, I feel it was disrespectful. I take my nephew to Dave & Busters,'' Bills defensive end Mario Williams told The Post.

Turns out Williams did not actually say that. So it's not particularly surprising Cannizzaro's column downplaying Buffalo's 2-1 start ran under the headline "How Giants can quickly shut up Rex Ryan's overrated Bills."

The trick, according to Cannizzaro:

Here is the Giants’ formula for success: Smack Ryan’s Bills in the mouth first, before the Bills have a chance to smack them. This is always the best way to neutralize a supposed bully. It also will slow the Bills down, because Ryan is a front-running coach whose teams reflect his personality.

This is not to say the man is necessarily wrong. New England doused the enthusiasm of a Ralph Wilson Stadium crowd ostensibly geared up to be the loudest assemblage in the history of anything with three quick touchdown drives abetted by some of the dumbest special teams penalties in the history of ever.

The Giants, however, are not the Patriots, no matter how many times they beat them in Super Bowls played an NFL lifetime ago.

Key to New England's 40-32 win was a masterful pass rush/coverage combination that led to eight sacks of a flustered Tyrod Taylor. The Giants have shown themselves in possession of neither element through three games.

With just how high Jean-Pierre Paul can count using only his digits still in question, his teammates have blown double-digit second-half leads in both their losses. Even in its win, New York gave up a 316-yard day to Kirk Cousins, best known for not being Robert Griffin III, as well as making throws like this:

The Giants have been better against the run, ranking second (to Buffalo) in yards allowed, in part because they have been so accommodating to throw against. The Bills, however, present a superior ground threat to the Falcons, Cowboys, Redskins or, for that matter, anyone else through three weeks, leading the NFL with 152.7 yards per game.

With LeSean McCoy sidelined, Karlos Williams gets his first start and a prime opportunity to keep his touchdown-a-game streak going.

Williams is averaging an almost-alarming 7.8 yards per carry, while neither Rashad Jennings or Andre Williams has been able to get above 3.3 for New York.

Which leaves any potential mouth-punching by the visitors to Eli Manning. While it feels a little weird to think of a 34-year-old, 12-season veteran with two Super Bowl rings as anyone's kid brother, you know you do, too.

Maybe it's the pictures you invariably see if you get all your sports news from snotty blogs, in which he either looks like he just got grounded ...

... smelled something horrific ...

... or got whacked across the forehead with a two-by-four:

As someone equally as unfortunately unphotogenic, I can appreciate that there's more to Eli than some goofy pictures. There are those two Super Bowl wins, four seasons of more than 4,000 passing yards and his reversal of form after a 2013 campaign in which he threw a career-high 27 interceptions.

Manning has improved his completion percentage and drastically cut his picks since Ben McAdoo (no relation to Bob) took over as offensive coordinator before last season. He still isn't nearly as surgical as Tom Brady, though, and is completing fewer of his attempts (64.8 percent to 74.4) for a shorter average gain (7.1 to 9.2) than Tyrod Taylor. Though he has not thrown an interception in 108 attempts, Manning has not exactly been mistake-free.

So expecting him to make like Brady, which his team's other shortcomings seem to require, and shred Ryan's schemes by spraying quick, short, accurate passes to a variety of receivers against a hyper-aggressive defense, feels like a stretch. Especially since Odell Beckham Jr., spectacular as he can be, is about his only healthy, reliable downfield receiver, with longtime Bills nemesis and former Patriots back Shane Vereen coming out of the backfield .

New York's best chance rests with the possibility that Cannizzaro is correct, and that both the oddsmakers who made the Bills a five-point favorite and the various national power rankings have placed too much emphasis on the routs of Indianapolis and Miami, and not nearly enough on the loss to New England.

The single biggest variable in that assessment remains Taylor. While Ryan's defense and quarterback are getting most of the attention, the Bills -- particularly Williams -- ran effectively in both wins. So if the Giants can keep Buffalo's 240-pound rookie runner in check, Taylor will have to show that he can carry the offense on his own when needed when the game is still close.

However things turn out this afternoon, this much is pretty certain. In the pages of the Post, the Bills will either lose because of Rex, or win despite him.

(Note: For additional pre-, post- and mid-game foolishness, follow @DavidStaba on the Twitter.)