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Sometimes, drafts are deep at certain positions. Last year especially and this year also. And if a draft isn’t deep at one position it will be at another. One of a couple of Beane and company’s fatal flaws is chasing needs instead of BPA. Year after year after year. A real argument to be made about the Coleman pick is there was probably a LB, CB or S prospect there who had an appreciably higher rating ( although maybe not by this bunch). Slow , project wide receivers are a dime a dozen and the eye test, pre draft, told us that Coleman was a meh pick at best at that position. Another in a long line of head scratchers by this group.

To toy with the gullible Nedboi’s and roundy’s of the world. Nobody gives a sh*t about what Steve Bannon is putting out there. You guys should BILLIEVE though. Do you recall when your undies were bunched up over saber rattling towards Greenland? Same scenario at play here.

Why can't he have at least one?

LOL, Panthers signed Mike White for intel…

With Mike Brown as owner, you could probably get a deal with 6 cases of bratwurst, and a JUGGS machine.

Beane knows nothing about WRs! I hate this pick more than Elam The only WR who is in even in the ballpark vicinity of worst efficiency is Bub Means- whoever the hell that is

He didn't do those things particularly great in college though. That was part of the evaluation on Keon. He doesn't dominate enough at the catch point to compensate for the lack of separation.

McD when he sees a LB that can actually play through contact when coming downhill

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I believe defense wins championships. You gotta have a defense that can win you playoff games because it gets tough. We don't have the horses for it and even if we did the scheme is questionable.

245 pounds? Much too big for LB in McD's scheme.

See it is statements like this that frustrate me. Because last season that was absolutely not what the Bills did in Kansas City. They played heavy man coverage almost the entire first half, pressed at the line with their DBs and got shredded. It was actually only 2nd half when they went back to their fundamentals and played zone and kept the game in front of them that they managed to get a few stops. So was the coaching partly culpable for the defensive failures in that game? Yes. Was it because of too much "soft zone coverage" (a phrase posters here throw around so liberally as to actually pollute the meaning of it somewhat)? No. To be fair to Babich, and we must, probably his best gameplan as the Bills DC was the regular season win vs Kansas City last year when he completely surprised them with a heavy man coverage plan and Reid and Mahomes couldn't adjust. I understand the thinking in the playoffs being "we had some success doing that, we will stick with it" but having given Andy and Patrick 2 months to work out an answer it wasn't a surprise when they figured it out pretty quick. They ran those man beating mesh routes and got Hollywood Brown and Worthy matched on defenders who couldn't live with them. EDIT: I will try and find the numbers from that game but the Bills got killed in man and were pretty solid in zone. It isn't "the same thing over and over." They haven't gotten it done, that is the one consistent. And they have to find a way. But people talk as though the Bills are running the exact same defense now that they ran in the 2019 wildcard or the 2020 AFC Championship Game. And that isn't the case.

But did he ever play with Carolina?

We shouldn’t overreact to this because there are a lot of good players all over the map. At the same time, there are some extremes in here:

Some really good and fair points by @GunnerBill and @folz - i do love an impassioned defence! But its going to be tough for people to swallow that there arent issues with the fundamentals of the scheme when year after year we watch dbs standing 10 yards off and being picked apart in the games that matter. I totally get that we are (used to be?) elite against Mac Jones and Bo Nix and whichever other rookie or JAG we play in the wildcard round. But the standard now is SB - fair nor not - and to do that you need to beat the big boys - Mahomes, Burrow, Lamar We have beaten the Ravens twice, absolutely true - and first half last year the D really does deserve credit for bringing out play off Lamar, fair! But almost every single other one of those games, including the second half of that Ravens game we just sit off, allowing ourselves to be picked off by guys we know are good enough to pick us off - and quite famously, managed to make the Chiefs look like a 30 point offence for the first time in about 2 years! This is the very definition of a fundamental issue - because its the same damn issue every single year. As an added bonus, it takes wild amounts of time off the clock at key parts of the game - when 17's greatest value is when he gets in a groove and just goes to work with run and pass. To put it another way - what do you rate the odds of the following scenario? The sky is in fact not falling, Bills get back on track and finish something like 12-5, steamroller some punk 7th seed on wildcard weekend - and then lose to Mahomes or Rogers in a divisional or AFCC game where they complete 30+ passes without taking much risk at all, Josh gets us to within 3 points, but we lose because a third rate wide receiver cant make a catch whilst James Cook watches on forlornly from the sideline, and we all complain that it would have been so different if Benford and Milano had just managed to stay out there? We were unlucky because Josh only got 7 possessions? Because i rate the chances somewhere around 90% 😂😂 We just want to see something different - play man, go no huddle, hurry them up, blitz - whatever - just something different than going there with the exact same !@#$ing plan hoping to win by 3 and ending up just short. Because these guys have a long proven track record in the biggest games of all of doing exactly that! The most fair bit of it is lack of talent - Beane has ultimately failed to find elite talent for the most part. Its shocking overall the last few years. That missing talent on both sides of the ball has really handicapped the ceiling available to the coaching staff - that is absolutely fair. And at this point it is clear Sean cant make lemonade. So go get someone who might know the recipe.

This is also my view with one caveat: we have downgraded at defensive coordinator too. I think Leslie Frazier was horribly underrated by most Bills fans. Blamed for things that were not his fault and given no credit because everyone just said "oh it is McDermott's defense." But neither Sean in his one year wearing two hats or Babich since then have called the defense anywhere near as well as Leslie and the changes they have tried to introduce, the schematic twists on the original recipe have by and large made it worse. So we have less talent and worse playcalling. Those two elements are much more to blame than the fundamentals of the scheme IMO.

I had Logan Wilson for two years in my keeper fantasy league as one of my top 3 LBs (we played with individual defensive players). I was always very happy with his tackle production. But that was fantasy, a couple of years ago, and I have no idea how he would fit in McD's system. He's 29 years old, 6th year in the league (4-1/2 years as a starter). Third round pick in 2020 draft. Bengals fans seem mixed about him. Some still think he is their best LB on a bad squad. Some think he hasn't been quite the same (lost a step) since returning from season-ending knee surgery in week 12 last year (maybe he didn't come back the same, maybe he's still working himself back---he's not quite a year out from the surgery still). Some think he was benched because of performance, some think he was benched because they just want to see what their rookie 2nd rounder can do. Either way, bad look for Cincy to bench a team captain and have him request a trade. Up thread someone said he was a two-down run thumper. But I saw a number of places saying that he was good in coverage (at least before the injury). Yahoo sports said this, "Wilson is a three-down defender with the coverage instincts and range to impact the pass defense. He has 11 interceptions and 11 pass breakups over his career, plus he has averaged seven tackles per game during his five-plus seasons. Wilson would be an upgrade for multiple teams in the middle of the defense.” He is still owed $3 million for this season and has two years remaining on a 4-year $36 million dollar contract.

I agree with your first statement. I do not think that our defense has played well vs. the Chiefs in the playoffs and obviously, Josh and the offense carried us in those games. I was just noting that most defenses appear to get "smoked" by elite offenses. As I noted, the Chiefs offense was basically only stopped 3 times in 21 playoff games (since Mahomes has been starting). Most defenses do poorly against them and we have had to play them 4 times in the post-season (which leads to playoff stats being skewed in comparison to other teams or in comparison to the regular season stats, etc.). Yes, to be the best, you have to beat the best. And if you measure McD's success vs. Andy Reid, sure he does not measure up because he hasn't beaten him when it counted yet (and doesn't have the hardware). But if you are using ONLY the Chiefs games and maybe the Bengals game to measure McD vs. say other coaches or whatever---then you have to look at those coaches only against elite QBs/offenses also. I understand that we have had some very good statistical defenses that have not been able to be dominant or impose their will in the playoffs. Believe me, I would love to see that too. And the defense has fallen off a bit the last couple of years, but I think that is more personnel than scheme or coaching. I guess I just give McD some grace because it is the Chiefs (elite coach, elite QB, elite offense, formerly elite TE and WR, elite DC, darlings of the NFL and referees, the whole Taylor Swift bs, etc.) and because of how close to beating them we have been (and that we have beaten them in the regular season---Sean is 5-5 vs. Reid overall; Interesting note: Reid is 20-5 vs. all of his other former assistants, not named McDermott---yes, I know, McD has Josh---but why do we never say, yeah, Reid has Mahomes?). Anyhow, the average points by a playoff team in a playoff game (over the last 5 years) is 22 points/game. If you take away the Chiefs' games, the Bills defense has held six clubs to at or below league average (3, 7, 10, 17, 17, 22, and 22 points). They have allowed 4 teams to score more than league average (24, 25, 27, and 31). And 2 of those teams had elite (not just legit) QB play and offenses (Baltimore and Cincinnati). Just pushing back against some posters who seem to think that playing the Chiefs 4 times in 7 years doesn't skew our defensive playoff stats, or our previous chances to reach a Super Bowl. Obviously, we still need to be able to beat them (or the like) to get to the promised land...I guess I just still think that McD can do it (with the right pieces)---but I understand that others don't agree with that. The whole idea of offensive and defensive schemes being figured out is overblown imo. All teams run variations on probably less than a handful of schemes. You can outsmart a team in a game or on a play, but the idea that you could come up with a scheme that no one can figure out doesn't seem to make sense to me. So, coaches would need to change schemes every 1-3 seasons (as their schemes get figured out), if that was really a thing. I think it is much more about personnel, player development, team culture, and execution. Do you not think that the defensive rankings going down could have something to do with Tre, Poyer, Hyde, Milano, and even Johnson aging out over that time? Our secondary (and back seven) was a major strength and a key part to our defense from 2018-2023. We have not been able to match that talent level and experience overall the last couple of years. I think that has a lot more to do with it than our scheme being figured out (is McD so smart that it took the NFL 8 years to figure out his scheme, that is probably just a variation of Jim Johnson's old scheme?). The transition in personnel may be taking a bit too long, but hopefully we will start seeing improvements as the year goes on.