The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - WGR's Jeremy White Joins the Show Ahead of Texans vs Bills

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

WGR's Jeremy White Joins the Show Ahead of Texans vs Bills

Our next guest was an earlier guest on Sports Talk 790 during the day of Matthews morning get together. In fact, Jeremy is invoiced iHeart for Jeremy to make multiple appearances on our show each of the next handful of days. Jeremy, YWGR Radio. Jeremy, thanks for joining 790 for the second time today. Good afternoon to you, sir. Raise to be a part of the family. Well, you'll get nothing like it, and we'll ask you more hours. No, forget it.

I'm not going to give it to that. Hey, let me ask you. Are you from Buffalo? Where are you originally from? May I ask? Syracuse, about two hours outside of Buffalo. Okay, so you grew up a Bills fan, I'm assuming, or at least like somebody that watched the Bills as a young child?

I grew up a New York Giants fan, which is one of the awkward things about being a Bills fan and covering the Bills now is that the most horrible moment in Bills franchise history was losing to the Giants, and I was 12 because I liked the Giants. So I had to come clean with Bills fans about that. I understand. The reason why I'm asking is, because I want you to give, we were talking about this yesterday on the show before we get to the game itself, we believe the three most rabid fan bases in the NFL, not that there are not 20 of them, but the three most rabid, Green Bay, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo. So, I want you to explain to our audience in Houston.

We've got cowboy fans here. We've got Texans fans here. We have Saints fans here. We've got fans of everybody. what separates the Buffalo Bill fan Bill's Mafia as compared to, say, the rest of the NFL fan base? And please and feel and feel free to embellish. Sure. Sure.

There's a lot of factors. I think you've got in the present day, what you have is a team that is good and a fan base that waited almost 20 years to be good. The 17-year playoff route that was from 1999 to 2017, team. Like that was, we were an NFL team and we were threatened by the idea that the team would move because the owner was not, you know, didn't have a succession plan in place. So basically a fan base that was built nervous and bad. That's this generation. And now they're very solidly here and we get a brand new stadium next year and the quarterback is the best in

football or one of the best in football. And they win the division all the time. So you have a fan base that is basically reached into every walk of life, every age, every kind of person. The town shuts down. Every player that plays here says it's like a college atmosphere. And I think that's probably right. The tailgating is amazing. It's just a stadium out in the middle of a bunch of parking lots. Everybody has their traditions.

I like to say that basically every single game day is like Thanksgiving for me because my entire family is there. Everybody's at the game. Who's going to watch the kids? I don't know because everybody's at the game. So the town shuts down. Yeah, like it's absolutely a way of life. I don't know people that don't watch the bills.

I don't know a single person that doesn't have at least, you know, even if it's just three hours on Sunday, never mind fully invested in draft picks and trades and this and that. So it's 100% a way of life. And yeah, yeah. So that's like this generation. And before that, like, you know, it's the game in town. It's the bills with a hockey team too.

It's a very big hockey town. But they're also terrible and stuck in their own drought. So everybody's just really looking at the bills to finally deliver a Super Bowl. You finally have this generation able to bond with their parents' generation, which went to four Super Bowls and understand what that's like. So now everybody wants it, and it's very close by. So, yeah, it's 24 hours a day, eat sleep bills. All right.

Last question before I get to the game itself. The new stadium is open air. It sounds like to me that the dome wasn't even considered. Is that accurate, or is there a consideration of putting a roof on it? I think there was consideration. My biggest thing on that, I switched. I used to think that we should build a dome out this way. And, you know, let's enter the 21st century.

But then I changed my mind. When the Bills beat the Patriots 47 to 17 in the playoffs a couple years ago, and it was negative eight, I slowly began to realize that half the reason we remember those games and have an identity at all is because they're outside. So, yeah, I flipped. Was it considered? Sure. They did studies and all that.

My biggest thing on the dome was it was going to cost twice as much. And I think the state and the county and the owner wanted to get something done. Get in. Let's get something that won't be the biggest problem. And they got a closed stadium. It's fully enclosed. There's a hole in the roof. There's a canopy over 65% of the seats.

So lots of people will be covered. The field won't be. The concourses will be warmed and heated. And basically it's going to be a fully enclosed stadium that is, susceptible to the elements but it's just going to be such a different experience than the current stadium which is wide open and the concourses are freezing i feel like people are going to think they're in a dome even though it's not so um i'm quite happy that we will remain open air it's buffalo it's supposed to be played football supposed to be played outside we've got our share of

people that wish it was closed but i don't have time for them i'm not listening to that cleveland white soft right cleveland cleveland's going to a dome absolute mistake what a disaster Let me tell you something. We've got these teams in the Northeast that live like this. We're supposed to live like this. I'm in Cleveland right now. I'm going to be all for the Dome Stadium. That's just me.

You know what? We're soft in Texas. I'm just going to be flat out on us with you. Jeremy White joining us WGR Radio in Buffalo. All right. You went on Dan's show this morning and said that you fully expect a Texans running back to rush for 100 yards. I know why you said it, but are you,

do you really believe that? Is the bills run defense that atrocious? It's really bad. Now, I don't know. I don't know if I said word for word. He'll run for 100. I said, what's his career high? I wouldn't put it past him to get it.

Now, the game script's going to have to be that way. But if you get that, whoever you get 20 carries, I mean, you'll get your, you'll make money run on the ball against this bill's defense. If you don't, then you really do have problems running the football. The box are down to their third string back last week. He runs for 200. yards, right? It doesn't matter who goes in. It's Derek Henry. He's going to rip off some yards. It's going to be the Saints ran. Devon A. Chan ran. Everybody, Bejohn

Robinson ran on this team. Everybody runs on the bills. The problem is, I think, when you're playing the bills, is that, this is my opinion here, they do want you to run. They invite you to run. Their entire defensive philosophy, the entire Shaw-McDermann era, has been. We're going to stop the pass, and we're going to invite the run. Sometimes that means they get run on. This year. I think it means they get run on even more because they just don't really have the bodies. They're missing important pieces. They're young draft picks. Some of them are ready to play. Some of them are not quite ready to play. So it's a work in progress kind of overhauling this defense from a veteran-laden group from a couple years back to what they are now. So yeah,

most teams can run on them. And if you want to try and run the ball, this is as good a team to try it against as any. All right. There have been storylines about this game. And one of them is that Josh Allen is not like playing the Texans. Has that been much of a storyline up there as the bills, it feels like to me, and correct me if I'm wrong. Are they Jekyll and Hyde in Orchard Park? They're amazing and they're very mid outside of upstate New York. I don't think that's the case this year. That's not really been the case in the Josh Allen era.

They do have a couple of losses on the road this year to Miami and Atlanta. They've had some offensive identity issues. That's really what it's come down to. trying to figure out what they want to be. They are a very good run team, and sometimes they stick with that too much, or sometimes they're too predictable. They were heading into last week.

They were the number one team running on first down, and, you know, plenty of people around here think, your quarterback is amazing. Why on earth would you ever be the run-heavyest team on first down? Why would you ever lean into the run instead of the past? And the reason is they're good at it, and they want to be, you know, they want to keep Josh from doing Josh things.

Josh Allen is the roller coaster ride. You in Houston have seen it. The playoff game from 2019, that was a full young Josh Allen experience, doing crazy stuff. He caught a touchdown pass. He threw a bomb to a fullback who was double covered. He lateral the ball. I mean, he at his best now is a better version of that. He'll truck a linebacker.

He'll jump over a defensive back. He will throw on the run. He will catch touchdowns. He is a one-man show. He's incredible, and I think the bills feel a little bit of a desire to rein him in from time to time. The problem is up here, the belief is that this season, they got way too far on raining him in, way too much. This should not be a run first team. It should not go as James Cook goes.

So last week, they kind of overhauled their receiving corps after the deadline as best they could. They got Josh Palmer back healthy. They dressed Gabriel Davis, who had been on the practice squad, nursing and injury. They benched Giann Coleman for what they said was a disciplinary issue, which is a separate thing. But they could have done that for performance, and we all would have said that makes sense. So they looked different, they played different, and they got their best offensive out against the season. And now we're kind of waiting to see with this big test with the Texans and how good that defense is. If, in fact, that offense, the way they played against the box, can sling it against the Texans,

can sling it against some of the best defenses in football because the box came into the pretty good defense and didn't have any answers. Yeah, what was it, 44 points. Were you stunned by the amount of points that were scored on both sides of the football last Sunday when the bills beat the Buccaneers? I was not that stunned. The biggest surprise to me was that it was a very windy day. And during pregame, the wind is howling. So you would have thought, all right, this would be the kind of game. We've seen these in Buffalo where nobody's going to be able to throw the ball.

And sure enough, they could both throw the ball. They could throw the ball deep. They could throw it anywhere they wanted to. So, you know, Baker and Josh, I think, also have a bit of a friend. rivalry between the two of them. They play golf together. They joked about each other and the press conference leading up to it. I kind of think they might have brought out the best in each other in that day and that game as well because they both played really well. And I was only surprised on the points based on the weather. All right. So anybody that follows the Buffalo

bills, or at least from a fantasy perspective, knows. And we're going to wrap things up here with just a second with Jeremy White from WGR Radio in Buffalo. Look, Cook is no surprise to anybody that owns fantasy but for the average NFL running back he doesn't come top of mind can he by himself if josh has an abnormal game which he's not had great games against texans can james cook by himself beat the houston texans maybe i mean cook is they just signed him to a contract extension and he's the first running back that the bills decided to really pony up the money for and the thing i was pointing to when they were thinking up when we were talking about should they do it or not, is that for the last two seasons, James Cook has been a top 10 running back

in yards over expected. If you use like next gen stats, like breaking tackles, like making more from what he gets than anybody else. Top 10 in the last two seasons. This year he's number two. He's behind only Jonathan Taylor. Like you look at the top running backs in the league in yards over expected per attempt. It is Taylor, James Cook, Rico Dowdles up there, Javante Williams. He had a really good season last year. And you could separate. it out from how good the bill's offensive line is, which is very good. And the other thing the bills did, last year they dressed a lot of sixth offensive lineman names Alec Anderson. Instead of dressing him all the time now, they drafted a fifth round tight end whose name is Jackson

Hawes, who they billed as the best blocking tight end they had ever seen. And they throw him out there and he blocks everyone's face off. So the bills do have the ability to kind of play bully ball and go with James Cook. If you can shut it down, of course, we believe as Josh Allen can do enough. But if the passing game's not there, they have a kind of a pitch that they didn't have in Allen's first two, three, four years. So Ken Cook win it himself if they just kind of grind it on the ground.

I want to say yes, he's very good, and their line is very good. And they got people that block. The receivers on the team, the side ends on the scene. Like everybody buys into the run game when it has to go that direction. If you ever make it to Houston, Jeremy, we owe you a meal because you've been on two times in one day.

We thank you very much for joining us. here on Sports Talk 790 and stay warm. Have you got any lake effects? No yet. Not yet. We got a dusting a couple days ago. I'm told that just after Thanksgiving, it'll start to turn. So we'll be ready for it.

Thank you, Jeremy, for the time. As always, really, really appreciate it. Anytime.