Thurman#1

He didn't win? Um, he won huge. Just didn't win a Super Bowl. He was a great coach, absolutely terrific, who didn't win a title.. Deny it or not, being in the right situation is a huge, gigantic part of winning. Ask Andy Reid. Ask Bill Belichick. Ask Matt Stafford. And there are hundreds more who could teach you the same thing.

IMO, nah, not 85%. 60 - 70%? Yeah, probably. And yeah, he took a Mac Jones-led team to the playoffs, when he was 69, not 73 as he would be next year. That's a serious difference at that time of life. They won 10 games that year, against only three teams with winning records, one of which was us in the snow game. The Titans win was a pretty solid one, though Tannehill had a pretty crappy game. 9-8 Chargers 12-5 Titans Bills snow game

Ok, and tell it to the other great coaches who didn't make the Super Bowl when those guys did. And Schotty was great. You look at his rosters and you see players not good enough to have had the success that Marty brought them to. He was terrific, got teams to overachieve pretty much every single year. He had rosters good enough to win a Super Bowl maybe once or twice in his career. Maybe.

Gotta disagree there. He's 72. Ten to fifteen years ago, yeah, 100%. But I don't think he is what he was, and maybe not even very close.

Probably not, as many of those coaches were involved to some degree in choosing that QB, and a great deal in developing him. And a great deal in developing a team around him that puts him in a position to have great success. This is fair. It helps. Still not easy by any means, though.

Yeah, very possible. Also possible that they all realize that in football, the Bills OC, is not the guy most think of first when the name Brady is mentioned. I personally have made that mistake when reading a bunch of times.

Ruben Brown was terrific. He's way underestimated. Yah, he used to drive me crazy with false starts but the man was an absolute road grader. Certainly popularity contest is part of it. But year after year after year if you lined up the Pro Bowl lineup, they'd have been an absolutely ferocious scary lineup. Does Hamlin deserve it, though? Nope. Playing pretty good this year, he's taken a real leap upwards, but not at a Pro Bowl level. Still a terrific lineup there, though.

Yup. TDs. Not TDs by a QB versus TDs by an RB particularly, though. Pick sixes, punt runback TDs and TDs off blocked kicks work just as well too. Same amount of points for all of 'em. Also TDs you prevent the opponent from scoring.

Haven't changed at all. I have tremendous respect for him. I think he's likely to get us to the promised land if not this year then soon.

Yeah, this is it. The way they play, teams are going to be able to run a bit on them. If your RB can turn those openings into chunk plays, we have to play different, and that makes passing on us easier. Knowing how prolific our offense is, the coaches feel opponents are going to have to want to score quickly and that - generally - requires passing. It does seem that Daquan isn't playing this year the way he has in the past. Is it age? Injuries? Hard to say, but he's not having a great year, and Oliver has been up and down as well. If they return to form, things would improve. McDermott loves to have a big run-stopping block-eater in the middle, and DaQuan hasn't lived up to his own standards this year.

It's just not true that the D was bad against the Colts. You can say that they had some problems through much of it. They also put it away in the end. The Bills offense punted in their last drive and the The Colts got the ball back at the end of the 4th quarter with 2:30 left at their own 14. The Bills D just choked them out. They ran 13 plays and gained 39 yards. Ran out of time at the Bills 47 yard line. Allowed 24 points. To a team that averaged 28.2 PPG. Far from great, but not a bad game. The last two years the defense has been just devastated with guys out, and important guys too. They still played decent, particularly against the Chiefs last year, but they just weren't healthy enough to play well. People can say, "next guy up," and all that, but it's just a fact that teams with a ton of injuries to key guys don't generally do that well. That's just the way it goes. The D has been good in the playoffs except for against the Chiefs, really. You can throw in the Bengals game if you want, but that was clearly a team just having a terrible day, with nobody playing well. And for good reason the way that year went, what with Knox's brother dying, and Hamlin and the blizzards and the mass shootings and all the rest. They haven't been able to stop the Chiefs from scoring well enough. Not many teams have the last few years ... that's why all those Lombardis are where they are. They've got to get past the Chiefs. Whose offense doesn't seem to be as good this year, and here's hoping that continues. Nicely put.

Hap, they weren't the best team on the field last weekend, even at the end. Vegas scored more points than KC in the final quarter and if they hadn't done a Raiders thing at the end they'd have had more. They were moving easily on that last drive. And what KC player was it who stepped up and forced that bad snap? IMO you're letting confirmation bias and the great team they were the past few years cloud your vision on what we're seeing now. Vegas isn't a good team and they were going to win if they hadn't made a bad team type of mistake. Are the Chiefs dangerous? Absolutely. Are they also getting very lucky? Yeah, they are. Nobody should look forward to playing them because they have good weeks and they really do have a belief they can do it at the end. But they're beatable this year, and this kind of a streak of getting lucky at the end can't forever. Having said that, they're a team that got a lot better near the end of the season last year. They could do that again, and I hope they don't. But unless they do that, my guess is they don't make the AFC championship this year.

I don't think it's as unusual as people are saying. Recency bias makes it seem so, not to mention the way the Chiefs keep squeaking by. Bad errors have gotten more common as the union has negotiated for less offseason practice time. Awful to watch, though.

Yeah. But for those who would rather see Allen running a bit less, this might see him doing it more. Hopefuly he slides more. He's been pretty good overall at doing that Interesting article, OP.

This is my best guess as well. I think they'd love to get Douglas back, but there'll be a ceiling they're not willing to go beyond. And Douglas might be able (and willing) to get more elsewhere. Douglas is 30 and generally even fairly big contracts for CBs over 30 (he'll be 31 when the season starts) don't turn out too good too often. He's really been an excellent pickup, so I think they'll hope but will have a ceiling and will tell him if he can get more elsewhere they'll thank him for his Bills service. Guy's been great.

Dummy is pacifier? Got it now. Thanks. He confused me too with that one.

Yup, this. Sure they need him to run the ball. At times. Any team with a QB who can run needs him to run at times. Absolutely any team at all. Pass plays don't turn out as drawn up 100% of the time, for any team at any time, that's just football. The offensive line doesn't protect perfectly 100% of the time ... on any team at any time. Of course they need him to run sometimes. EVERY team with a QB who can run does. Every single one. But the pass game has been good this year, even before they brought in Cooper, and even when both he and Keon are out of the lineup.

Yeah, loved this.

Not a huge deal. Yes, it's over the line.

"My sources is I've played violent sports and been concussed," you say. Wow, great point!!! By that logic, around 20 million or so Americans who've played violent sports and been concussed (which would include me) know better than the doctors who actually went through this thing called medical school and then put in years of practice. And then examined Josh Allen. Sheer dumbosity. Hard to believe. What you've got there is an uniformed guess. And nothing but that. Pure confirmation bias.

Nonsense. Allen didn't "need" to run the ball 12 times. As I already pointed out, that's what he does against KC. He had a bunch of called runs in that game an he was happy to take off several other times. He loves it. He does it against KC every time. Here's the proof, from about 15 posts back: He didn't "need to run the ball 12 times in a game." The idea's dumb. This is what he does against KC, and in big games generally. And there's absolutely zero reason to think that, as you said, "the defense has confused him" on that big play. Zero. They did drop into zone but as Josh said, when that happens he has to make a play, which is what any QB would have to do. "Make a play," can be throwing a pass or running. What actually happened is that Chris Jones puts his head inside of Torrance, allowing Torrance to block him inside, while Karlaftis at DE has totally given up the edge and rushed deep and wide leaving a very large, well-blocked hole in front of Allen that he's already headed towards. Give Allen a huge opening like that on a 4th and two and he'll take it. He loves taking things into his own hands, as well he should. Once he's through that massive hole there are two Chiefs on the right side who have a slight chance to reach him before he gets the first down and each is covering a receiver he'd leave open if he went all-out to tackle Josh. Once through that big hole Josh is either going to have a receiver alone or enough space to get the 1st by run pretty easily. Zero reason to think he was confused. He diagnosed it well and handled the situation perfectly. If Karlaftis had better stayed in his lane Josh might have had to do something different, maybe stayed back and thrown, probably to Samuel, but we'll never know for sure, as the receivers and coverage guys see Josh breaking free and react, changing the look of the play. As for your ridiculous argument that, "McDermott wasn't saying he'd see this movie before in reference to Bass missing a kick at the end of the game," yes, you're right, it's not about that. Nor did I say that it was, or anything like it. Gotta give you credit there, you didn't move the goal posts. Instead you created a straw man, saying I said something I never did. If only straw men were more logically sound than moved goal posts. Yes, you're right that "the objective was to put the game out of reach with a TD or running the clock out." Duh. The alternative was to kick the field goal. McDermott chose to go for it because he felt it was the option that gave him the best chance of success. Yet again, your original statement was that, "If he doesn't get that first down/TD at the end they lose and we all know it." That statement is what I said was categorically wrong. And you haven't once defended it, (not that it's defensible), instead going on about how Josh was confused and he had to run the ball 12 times and various other attempts at moving the goal posts. The fact is that the Bills stopped Mahomes on drives inside the 2-minute warning with the Bills up by four or less points to win the last two times we played them during the season, as I pointed out before.

Moving the goalposts isn't just a habit with you, is it? It's apparently more of a lifestyle. And you're doing it again here for the milliontyleventh time. Twice in one post. It's sad that I have to remind you what you said, but clearly I do. You said: That's what I disagreed with. Because it was pretty obviously treating a pretty dumb opinion as a fact. None of what you posted here is even slightly relevant to whether or not "we all know" that if Allen hadn't scored a TD on that play we'd have lost. McDermott did say he "had seen that movie before." But that only means that he thought going for it on 4th and two at the KC 26 with a two point lead was a better idea than kicking the field goal. That it enhanced their chances of winning. NOT that "if he doesn't get that first down/TD at the end they lose and we know it." Again, your interpretation here is dumb. And you didn't say just that he was taking a beating. Nobody would argue that. Every QB does. It's part of the game. You tried to say that this year was different. That was (DUH!) what I disagreed with, and as usual you moved the goalposts and then ignored my actual point. What you actually said was this: Dumb. He's not taking more of a beating this season. Less, if anything. He's getting the ball out faster, taking fewer hits in the pocket, and he's running about as much as he consistently has. He's not being more chaotic this year than he has in the past. Again, less if anything. He's taking what the defense gives him a lot more than he has in the past. The passing game is in damn good shape, particularly for a unit dealing with so many injuries to receivers (Keon, Amari) and Kincaid as well.

He really is looking impressive. I liked him but thought he was more of a slot guy which the Bills already had covered. Looking like a great pick for the Chargers. At the time, if I remember correctly, I liked Legette best, and Worthy next. Thought the Bills were going to go for a separation guy, and that McConkey and Keon would not be considered fits. With hindsight, Keon and McConkey look best. So far anyway.

Jeez. Couldn't happen to a nicer team. Hope Woody doesn't get appointed anywhere. He should stay with the Jets.

Yeah, let's also get rid of Italian gangs who yadda yadda. And Russian gangs who yadda yadda. And poverty. It should all be easy. It appears that this is reality right now. Adapting to reality is the very opposite of unnecessary.