Youth Harrison Phillips Jerseys , Seattle, and the Motor City, and taking in some rarefied air in western New York.That’s what happens when your hapless, helpless and hopeless football teams suddenly turn nasty, effective and victorious.Most shocking, no doubt, was what the Bills did to the Vikings . After being the brunt of so many jokes the last two weeks following inept showings, then exacerbating it by tweeting an image of their helmet traveling to meet the Vikings’ helmet — in Wisconsin — the Bills dominated in Minnesota. To boot, they were 16-point underdogs, making them the sixth team in the last 81 games with such a spread to pull off an upset.Where did that come from?Well, cynics will say the Vikings were coming off that emotional tie with Green Bay and face the NFL’s most powerful squad in a short week when they host the Rams on Thursday night. The folks in Buffalo will tell you the Bills, who broke a 17-season drought of playoff appearances last winter, aren’t as bad as they’ve looked.“No one thought that we were going to come in here and play the way that we did, except the people in this locker room now,” offensive tackle Dion Dawkins said, and he was right, particularly about the oddsmakers. “We came into the game fueled and ready to play.”Say what you will about their forgettable first two outings, the Bills proved a lot Sunday. A team in turmoil, missing its best offensive player in injured running back LeSean McCoy Harrison Phillips Jerseys Stitched , seemingly a sieve on defense, manhandled one of the Super Bowl favorites. With a raw rookie quarterback, too.“We really don’t really pay attention to what people think about us,” linebacker Lorenzo Alexander said. “It’s all about internal belief and confidence. If you listen to outside noise, we’d never win a game because nobody respects Buffalo at all. We have to continue to go out and earn that respect.”Eli Manning has earned plenty of respect — and two Super Bowl rings — in a borderline Hall of Fame career. What he’s earned the last year or so has been doubters that he had anything left.At Houston, he showed when given any sort of protection by the Giants, he can be productive and a winner. Manning was besieged in the first two defeats, either sacked or hit or pressured so much he barely got the snap before he was inundated. Against the Texans, and with 2015 first-round draft pick Ereck Flowers wisely benched at right tackle, Manning had some of the best numbers of his career: 25 for 29 for 297 yards and two touchdowns. He connected with nine receivers.“I thought we kind of condensed the offense a little bit and made sure guys knew what they were doing,” said Manning, pointing out without saying as much that the Giants were slow to react in losses to Jacksonville and Dallas. “Plays that they knew, they were playing fast, the offensive line was playing fast and we have good players, just let them go play. Let’s not try to be perfect and trick or do too much. Let our guys go win, because we got good athletes.”Seattle once had as talented a roster as any team, winning one Super Bowl that should have been two, and dominating the NFC West. With defections, injuries and retirements White Doug Flutie Jerseys , though, these Seahawks need to succeed with guile, grit and coaching acumen.In their first home game, the Seahawks showed they still have a huge advantage at CenturyLink Field, especially when they get going quickly. The Cowboys, coming off a masterful manhandling of the Giants last weekend, ran into a buzzsaw.The 24-13 whooping the Seahawks put on the Cowboys was reminiscent of past Pete Carroll teams. They played with an edge that has marked his squads since his Southern Cal days.“We were trying to get to our formula, and we just didn’t get started well in the first couple games,” Carroll said.“But this is how we want to play. “The day of relief was completed Sunday night when the Lions stunned the Patriots 26-10 as Matt Patricia got his first victory as a head coach — besting his boss while he was leading the New England defense, Bill Belichick.Detroit fans believed their team’s prospects heading into 2018 were solid in a tough division. Then they fell flat in the opener against the Jets — yes, the Jets won at Ford Field and the Patriots lost. Last week, the Lions lost at San Francisco.But now, a sigh of relief that could be felt along all the Great Lakes, and a further belief that Detroit can compete in an NFC North where the Vikings and Packers have struggled, too, and the Bears lead at 2-1.Followers of the Bills, Giants, Seahawks and Lions also can take comfort in knowing there are three 0-3 teams out there: the Raiders, Texans and Cardinals. They might even feel some empathy for fans in Oakland Doug Flutie Jerseys 2019 , Houston and Arizona.Football Outsiders breaks down rookie quaterback Josh Allen Wyoming’s Josh Allen is one of the more polarizing rookie quarterbacks drafted in the last decade. Some scouts love his big arm, pocket presence, and mobility, and they feel he will be a perennial Pro Bowler. Others think he is the most likely quarterback to bust from the Class of 2018, citing his poor completion percentage (56.2 percent) and his 16-11 record during parts of three years at Wyoming. Declaring for the draft as a redshirt junior, the Buffalo Bills traded up and selected Allen with the No. 7 overall pick in the NFL Draft. They have given him every opportunity to show off his rocket arm and athleticism so far in the preseason. We asked Football Outsiders for thoughts on what they have seen from Allen so far, and about his potential in Buffalo. “The sky is the limit if Allen can actually be coached to play football well, which is the reason why he is ‘polarizing’ rather than ‘maligned’,” Rivers McCown said. “Because he was not even a good college quarterback. Drafting Allen in the first round was like when baseball teams used to select pitchers that threw 100 miles per hour and figured they could make them learn how to actually pitch later.”Allen’s play has generated plenty of buzz this preseason, and he has shown a lot of potential in completing 18-of-32 passes (56 percent completion rate), for 176 yards with two touchdowns and a 92.7 quarterback rating. This preseason success has not swayed Football Outsiders’ original pre-draft opinion of Allen: that he is a gifted athlete with all the physical tools in the world, while also representing as risky of a pick as there was among rookie quarterbacks, especially considering the decrease in his yards per attempt from his sophomore season to his junior year (from 8.6 in 2016 to 6.7 in 2017). “Allen had the worst QBASE score of any quarterback in this draft class. He struggled to dent college defenses like Oregon and Iowa. He was drafted in the first round because he is tall and because his arm generates ridiculous amounts of velocity,” McCown said. “Every piece of empirical evidence we have on Allen leads to him being a failure. Even the big-armed guys like Joe Flacco and Derek Carr have struggled to actually complete deep balls in the NFL, and they are far more polished than Allen is at this point. If the Bills turn him into a great quarterback, awesome. I’ll be happy for them and happy for your readership. But it is incredibly hard for me to believe that will happen.”The Football Outsiders Almanac is available now.