Thurman#1

This has been discussed here again and again, most recently within the last week. And no. It would make zero sense. Below zero, it would be directly against their interests. They have a golden goose that could keep paying them hundreds of millions of dollars for decades. Risking that to crank up viewership for a bigger payday that would amount to maybe a 2- 4% increase would be completely and totally bonkers, finanacially. And you can say a lot of things that aren't very nice about NFL owners, but financially they're a pretty acute group. Precisely.

[Word Only Answer] Laudable.

Physical toughness doesn't appear to be the issue. It's mostly just not making mistakes, particularly in this last game. Stop with the penalties and execute. The Bills mostly held the Pats down on the ground. But on a few plays a mistake or two is made and it all turns into a big play. It's not a non-issue; this is football. But it's not the biggest problem. That appears to be execution, mistakes and inconsistency.

Too young. What a shame.

The draft is one way to bring in guys. There actually are other ways. They didn't draft Diggs. Yet he appeared here ... somehow, magically. It's almost as if trades and free agency were ways to acquire people outside the draft. And building a championship team by getting an excellent defense and a great QB and then hoping the QB makes those around him better is a fairly common, very legitimate way of doing it.

Yeah, I think that's a case of confirmation bias on your part. You want change, so you see this very bland statement as proof you're right, when there's zero reason really to think it means what you want it to mean. Not that I'm saying there won't be change. Nor am I saying these exact changes won't happen. Just that what he said there doesn't even mildly indicate it. It certainly says there'll be change. It's extremely unclear that the change will be the ones you're reading this as a signal for.

That was certainly part of it.

I totally disagree. They had to worry about it, but they were ready for the run. Most everyone in the box. But the pull and pin blocking scheme really worked well, with N'Keal Harry seeming to catch Epenesa from the side, allowing their LT to go after our CB and catch him from the side also. It reminded me of the trap blocking we saw last week work so well against us. They had a man on a man with Dotson most able to choose where he was going to meet his blocker, the FB. He's got to try to take the outside gap, but to also squeeze the inside gap small as he can while still handling outside. Another step inside forces the FB to take the same step to meet him. He ends up leaving a massive hole inside instead of trying to squeeze it a bit. That was going to be a first down once Dotson left him that wide a hole, and Hyde, the only unblocked man, totally ran himself outside of the play, probably from the up guys and particularly Dotson making it hard to know early in the play what was going to happen.

It's not an epic fail by any means on offense. But yeah, wildly inconsistent. I think we have to start wondering how they're going to improve the WR room next year, and whether they need another TE. Diggs is sensational, but after that we're not seeing any real game breakers. As for Teller, I don't think it's a mystery. It's one of those things that happen sometimes. Sometimes guys who have looked decent for a while hit a tipping point and improve a lot. That's what happened with Teller, it's pretty clear. Thing is, it's only on a small percentage of guys who are decent for a while that it happens. And it's not really predictable until it happens. The OL needs a bunch of work obviously, but how much? Will Dawkins be back to his normal pre-Covid excellent self next year? Or is this a permanent thing? Daryl Williams was very good last year and much less so this year. Why? Will he be better again? From the outside, there's no way to know how much of this is repairable.

You're proud? Really? I don't know what to say to that. You may be the only one. I doubt you'll find a single Bill proud of the team's performance here. They're not closing the curtain on the season. Nor should they. But that was an awful thing to watch, and I'm sure it felt just as bad to play in. Close but no cigar is not a team motto that will see a lot of play in ad campaigns, and for good reason. They need to cut the inconsistency and they need to play better. Pronto.

Sure, they had a chance to win. Having had a chance to win, that's what the losers talk about. It doesn't matter. We had plenty of teams in the drought that were always in games with a chance to win.

I love positivity as much as the next guy, but ... Who cares? Really? They do, for one group. Did they look happy in their post-game interviews? They're not out of it. That's a good thing. But history shows it's not easy to turn it off and on at will. It doesn't generally work that way. Unless they start playing like a serious contender, they're unlikely to be one. They've got a little time, but they're already losing the week off, home games, etc. That hurts. They care, and so should we.

Yeah, correct. Teams have good and bad years, it's what happens. Of course, that doesn't mean we should all say, "So everything's fine, they can just keep going status quo, everything's fine." There are problems and they need to be working on them and working hard. But they will.

Aaaargh! This hurts so damn much, all this truth. Gyaaaah! This too!

Ouch. Ow, dammit.

Whether a fumble is lost or not - that is, who picks it up after it hits the ground - generally comes down to luck, unless it's a guy fumbling it right out of bounds or something. Fumbles lost isn't the key metric for figuring a guy's risk. It's just plain fumbles. McKenzie this year has returned 17 punts, though he's fielded more than that, and 22 KRs. That's 39 kicks returned and 3 fumbles. That just isn't good. I hope they can figure something out with him, but this is a huge problem. It's close to a 10% rate.

Yeah. McKenzie is really athletic, and he's really dangerous. But he doesn't seem to have good instincts as a kick returner. I can't speak for anyone else, but I was happy in this game to see one of our heady safeties dealing with the kicks in that wind rather than McKenzie.

Yeah, good question. McDermott sends messages, even in public, all the time. This is one of the harshest he's ever sent publicly, IMO. But when it comes to NFL-speak, it just isn't much. I mean, McKenzie fumbled that without being touched. There was good reason for anger.

No, he really has not lost faith and trust in the process. What he did was he became angry. Your word, frustration, would also certainly be a fair one. That is about a level four of ten on a scale of response to bad events, with losing faith in the process being around a nine and a half with suicide being a ten. That's his foundation. He certainly has not lost it. He has become angry. Not blinded ... though where you come up with this is completely unapparent. Jeez the boards go nuts after bad games. And this certainly was an awful game.

As usual you're far beyond wrong into clueless and buried so deep into confirmation bias and wildly extreme pessimism as to be completely lost. Belichick is as much dealing with everyone's feelings and headspace as any other coach. So that's utter crap. He doesn't avoid that area. He simply deals with it differently. Every coach who deals with human beings deals with headspace and feelings. Being kind doesn't mean that McDermott needs to force himself to spend twelve hours a day asking everyone about their emotions and what their favorite Air Supply song is. Nor does Belichick avoid personal speech with his players. Everyone who's worked for Belichicks says he knows the names of their kids and spouses, that he fairly often asks about them and their families. You can be tough as hell and still have a human side. Autocrats and nice guys deal alike with time limits. McDermott certainly deals with his players more respectfully. Doesn't mean he allows people to waste his time. Plenty of nice guys have a terrific knowledge of x's and o's as well. Belichick is the best, arguably. There is zero evidence that's because he's an #######. Arians is a perfect example that a guy doesn't have to be an autocrat to be a very very successful head coach. Coughlin decided he couldn't keep the team as a martinet and mellowed out and that decision won him two Super Bowls and the ability to stay with one franchise for a period that felt like forever. And there are plenty more like them, like Harbaugh, Tomlin, and frankly McDermott though I'm sure he would agree he has a lot more to prove. And really? You're trying to use the Bills over the last 40 years as evidence on McDermott? McDermott, who's been here for just over 10% of that time? Good lord! You aren't aware that makes zero sense, like none? The Bills certainly are inconsistent this year. Much less so last year. In fact there's not much evidence of your whole thesis, mostly because it isn't anywhere near black and white. Where does McDermott fall on the scale of martinet to ball of jelly? 76%? Belichick? Everyone's a mix of these qualities, but even without any specific research it's easily observable that plenty of players coaches have done extremely well over the years in the modern era. Fair enough to note that some coaches become great in their second job, Belichick, Carroll and plenty of others included. Of course plenty do terrific in their first job. And plenty are probably terrible in their first job largely because the players on the roster at their first team suck and they luck into a Brady at your second job, as did both Belichick and Arians.

"Some players obviously didn't put in the work last offseason." That is utter nonsense, a flat-out guess with nothing behind it but that you appear to want it to be so. As for fear being the "most successful form of leadership in football," it's probably true historically. But the last 20 to 30 years there's no particular reason to think so. Belichick probably skews the numbers but he doesn't win because he creates fear. He wins because he's an absolutely sensational x's and o's guy, a terrific football mind, a constant innovator and ahead of the curve in coaching in every significant way. Including cheating by the way, but certainly not limited to it. Not to mention having selected Brady. Mac is no Brady. As society has changed, so has football. Plenty of less fear-based guys have had excellent success the past few decades.

The coaching staff wasn't great. Could've been improved. But it was mostly the mistakes, execution, penalties.

Pretty much any time someone asks that question, "Can it get any worse?" the answer is yes. Really, that's my observation. Every single time the answer is that it absolutely can get much much worse. Certainly true in this case. As evidence I will point to the fact that our record is 7-5. It Is not 0-12. Yes, it can get spectacularly worse. This is not a good idea. And while the play-calling could be improved ... it was not the problem yesterday. Execution was.

Insulting? It's a question. They could've calmly said no and explained what they thought. I think Sully has an argument there though if he'd come right out and said it. That was not an awful game against the run, but it sure wasn't anywhere near good. At some point they had to know they weren't throwing. But even with only three passes thrown we couldn't consistently stop the run. Reasonable question. Hey, the offense deserves its share of the blame as well. Very true. Doesn't mean the D played well, though.

Morse, Oliver, Rousseau, Brown and Zimmer to name a few. No, they haven't put together a great unit, but the lines got us to the championship game last year. Yeah, they need improvement. But you'd be crazy not to trust Beane.