Thurman#1

I'm glad that you want that. I wish it for you if it's your wish. But that's not what Daboll has done. If he really had sucked, he wouldn't have been hired at Alabama. Or New England. He just wouldn't have. Offensive success is based on many many different factors. One of them is the OC and the play-calling. Another is the quality of the offensive roster and the QB in particular. Bad rosters can hamstring good OCs. And vice-versa. But Belichick and Saban are two of the canniest strategists in football. And both hired Daboll. Open your mind to the possibility that a lot of the offensive failure of those teams may have been due to the fact that he was working with truly awful QBs and rosters. Including the one here. If Wood and Incognito had been here, maybe we could have seen a bit better offense. But they're gone and the line is having problems, as is the QBs and the WRs. It isn't hard for teams to figure out where they should place their resources to stop the Bills when the one good position group on the offense is the RBs. If Daboll isn't here next season, we'll know McDermott agrees with you. That could happen, easily. But it might not. We'll have to see.

Yeah, it must be the game plan. It certainly couldn't be because when a team is losing by a lot they have to pass a whole lot to catch up, could it? And we've - you know - been behind by a lot ... a lot. Couldn't be that, could it? Or that on plays like 3rd and 11 a pass is more likely to get a first down then a run and that we've seen a lot of situations like 3rd and 11 this year? Or that teams are laughing at our pass game and loading the box making it very diff Oh, wait, it could. So it is indeed not a coincidence that the ratio is different between wins and losses. But you're confusing cause and effect. Teams that suffer big losses pretty much always are slanted towards far more passing than running. You need far more evidence to make this point.

Yup, the guy, Joe Marino from Draft Network, having done a lot of analysis on Daboll's offense, says he likes a lot of what he sees. https://wgr550.radio.com/media/audio-channel/10-31-joe-marino-draft-network-schopp-bulldog Thanks to FadingPain's thread for the link. Around 1:38 is the bit about Daboll. Marino: "What I really like about Brian Daboll's offense is that it schemes a lot of throws for Josh Allen or whoever his quarterback is. And they can use a lot of different formations, use a lot of personnel packages, but run a lot of similar route concepts out of them that create space to make throws and so ... you've seen a lot of that earlier in the season with some of the wheel routes that they were doing and a lot of different route combinations that are designed to create that space. So we've talked a lot about the Bills supporting cast and how they don't necessarily have great receivers that are going to create that separation, but when you can use leverage and use route combinations to find that space, you just need a quarterback to read it and rip it. It creates some easy throws. That's one of the things that I like about it. And then you saw this past weekend in the New England game - and it was really an indication that you know Buffalo knows where it is on offense, with using all the different formations and packages, the Wildcat and all those different variations. It really speaks to just that Buffalo is undermanned. It's not a fair fight when Buffalo takes the field offensively, but I do think that Brian Daboll does his best to get the most out of his talent. And I just don't know that anyone else would do a better job with this personnel." There's more but that's a good introduction to it. It's really hard to separate bad planning from bad execution sometimes. And this offense does not have a lot of talent to work with. I've got no problem if they part ways with Daboll after the season. But I wouldn't be surprised or have any problems with it if they keep him. They know a lot more about what plays were called, what defenses they should be called against, and whether it was a bad plan or the players not managing to execute. It's a literal glitch in the Human OS to want to quickly find a scapegoat and attach blame. Feels better. What works better, though, is careful grinding analysis of the problem and cold dispassionate decision-making.

It really did turn out to be a bad sequence of events. But looking at McCarron's work in Cincy, you wouldn't figure he'd be the #3 guy in this competition. #1 or #2, surely. But that's not the way it turned out. And they still might have kept him but Carucci wrote that they were concerned that McCarron was discontented and might have caused problems in the locker room. When I heard this, it made a ton more sense to me. They didn't expect to trade McCarron, but felt they had to. If that's true the whole thing makes a lot more sense. They did leave themselves in a bad position and Anderson is a stopgap who'd have made a ton more sense if he'd been brought in during the offseason. I'm not sure how you anticipate McCarron being trouble in the locker room, though. I don't think he ever caused any problems in Cincy.

Yes, that's how much it turned out to cost to get Allen. But obviously they didn't know how much it would cost before it happened. It might easily have cost more. They brought in a ton of draft capital and a lot of the reason must have been that they felt they desperately needed to come out of this draft with one of the top three or four QBs. Yeah, they didn't have to spend too too much. But they might have. If they ended up with extra capital left over, no problem. But if they didn't have enough, that would have been a huge problem. Veterans aren't more important than rookies just because they're veterans. Plenty of veterans don't work out or retire suddenly ala Boldin, or don't fit the system ala Darby (and yeah, you can say McDermott could've made him fit, but I think McDermott is a much better judge of that than you). And Darby isn't playing well for the Eagles this year, but could easily pull it together. Two DLs instead of Lotulelei ... isn't what McDermott wanted. He probably could've worked with it but Lotulelei is what the system called for. There's plenty of reason to say that McDermott may not know how to build an offense. He's still got a ton to prove there. But as for a defense, he's a lot better at that than you are, and he's shown it. If he wanted Star at $10 mill a year, it's probably because Star made his defense better by a pretty fair amount. Do your version of that rebuild and we have more offensive talent and a lot less defensive talent. No Star, no Edmunds and a CB in Darby who might be expensive next year when our current CBs are doing a great job and are cheap for another two or three years. Where's the advantage in having a bit better offense and a worse defense? The net gain is about zero and it costs more now and especially in the future. And it's just not true that losing cultures happen when you lose a lot. If that were true, Bill Walsh's teams would have developed a losing culture in his first two years when they won two and then six games. And the great Barry Switzer having inherited a Cowboys team that had won two Super Bowls in a row and himself winning one two years down the line since they won so much would have kept a winning culture. And they were pretty awful pretty quick after that If cultures worked like that, losing teams would never ever turn it around and winning teams would never ever start to lose. Cultures are much more complex than that, and many of football's greatest dynasties came from rebuilds where they were absolutely awful for a couple of years or more.

Yeah, and it totally makes sense to judge a draft class and how well a rebuild is going in eight games. Take the 1989 Cowboys draft of Troy Aikman, Mark Stepnoski, Daryl Johnston and Tony Tolbert. Most people consider that a terrific draft and crucial to Dallas' rebuild. But your excellent method here reveals it to be a terrible draft for a rebuild. In their first eight games: Aikman ... hurt and out and in the first four games had gone 37 for of 85 for 515 yards, 1 TD and 6 INTs, for a YPA of 6.05 and a passer rating of 38.1. Steve Wisniewski ... not a single snap for the Cowboys ... sure, 8 Pro Bowls and he made the 1990s all-decade team but not a single snap for the Cowboys in the first eight games Stepnoski ... zero starts Daryl Johnston ... zero starts, 7 carries for 9 yards, and 53 yards in receptions. Rhondy Weston ... who? Tony Tolbert ... zero starts, zero sacks, or forced or recovered fumbles or INTs or really anything particular Keith Jennings ... zero starts Willis Crockett ... zero starts Jeff Roth ... who? Kevin Peterson ... who Charvez Foger ... hunh? Tim Jackson ... nope Rod Carter ... unh uh Randy Shannon ... no starts Scott Ankrom ... no starts, and who? Not only that, but they lost all eight of those games. Clearly, using your method we've proved that that was a bad draft and that the Cowboys rebuild was doomed to fail. Without a doubt, you've unearthed a terrific useful tool here.

Fine, if you believe as he said that a coach's #1 need is to motivate, then as I said, hire a cheerleader and loft the Lombardi. And yes, players are motivated because they're pros. But maybe you're different. Maybe if you had a job that paid $3 or $4 mill a year and your alternative was an office job that - maybe - paid $40K, you'd be really really unmotivated. Probably you'd just screw around and do nothing even knowing that your performance was video'd and made available to all 32 possible employers. Knowing that the average career in this highly paid field was less than three years, yeah, that would make sense. And sure, Beane can be judged. But only in a preliminary way. Judge him only on the moves he's made and understand that there's never been a complete rebuild that didn't suck in the second year. Every time I say that people run to give me tons of examples, but their examples are all either reloads or rebuilds that are three or four or five years old. Second years of rebuilds suck and anyone who thinks he can come up with a conclusive judgment of a GM based on the first and second year of a rebuild just doesn't get it. I did notice that the rest of your post was in English. So it has that going for it. But is not understandable to any real degree, IMHO.

Suddenness. Quick change of direction. Route-running. Pushing off in a way that won't get called. It all fits in. Plenty of it can be coached, but certainly not all of it.

He really has just NOT proved to be a bad judge of offensive personnel. How come you folks making this argument keep forgetting to mention Dion Dawkins? Why is that? Couldn't be because he disproves it pretty completely, could it? And that you don't want people to think about him for just that reason, could it? Excepting Dawkins ... Kelvin Benjamin has started to look pretty solid the last three games or so. Same with Zay Jones. Corey Coleman cost them a bit of money, but it doesn't appear to have been an issue of offensive skill, as reported by Mary Kat Cabot, " The Bills didn't like Coleman's attitude from the time he arrived, a source told cleveland.com, and it never got much better. He also still struggled to run full speed because of his tight hamstrings." https://www.cleveland.com/browns/index.ssf/2018/09/bills_cut_corey_coleman_less_t.html Any argument that has to pretend that guys like Mike Tolbert and Jerome Kerley were anything more than extremely low-budget fill-ins is one pathetic argument. What it shows is exactly that it's hard to find examples of areas where they spent significant amounts of resources (money or high draft picks) on the offense that aren't showing signs of being successful (Dawkins and Zay). Boldin? Good lord, are you reaching much to blame his retirement on the coaches when bringing him in cost absolutely nothing? Ducasse has outperformed his contract too. Yeah, after that it's hard to find examples, exactly because they clearly prioritized the defense. Next year it's a good guess that this team led by a coach from a defensive background who now has a defense playing quite well will spend a lot of resources on the offense.

And yet more of empty denials with almost zero football content whatsoever.

It ain't an indictment of Beane and McDermott. It's what happens in the second year of a rebuild. It's just a shame Allen didn't get the year to sit and learn that they obviously planned for him to have. Agreed that not giving him a vet mentor from early in the offseason was a bad move. My feeling is that they thought McCarron would serve. But they should have brought in someone who had more experience than McCarron. That's a really fair criticism. But a poor surrounding roster is just what happens this early in a rebuild. You're right, he's not going to suddenly get it. If he gets it ... and he easily might ... it will be a long drawn-out process. That process might hit a tipping point making it looks "sudden." But it'll actually be the result of a long continual process. If it happens. As for who is delusional ... that would be anyone who thinks they know the future of Josh Allen, positive or negative. It's possible to guess right. But what you're doing there is guessing, and confusing opinion and fact. You should know.

Nope. You've made it extremely clear that you don't get this, but our biggest need is time. When you're in the second year of a rebuild, you're going to suck. We've got an LT, a good one. And Watkins has been paid for potential his entire career. Sammy is the 6th highest paid WR in the league by average salary, and yet being thrown to by probably the hottest QB in the league he's managed to put together 456 yards (31st in the league) and three TDs (a 24-way tie for 34th in the league, which puts him in the top 55 in the league!!! Wow!!!) in eight games. That's about as far from a bargain as you can get. If we had Sammy, the big result would be that we would be in considerably worse cap shape and would suck ever so slightly and marginally less. I'd love to have Woods, but teams fighting their way out of cap trouble are going to have to cut guys they'd rather keep. That's life in the NFL. I'm sure that someone, perhaps Freud or Einstein, could find some meaning in this. I can't. Belichick hasn't reloaded since Cleveland (why would you with Brady and a record of terrific seasons) and doesn't have hubris. I guess he's fine, though. So, there's that to what you say. Dude, first, you weren't on the subject. You tossed off a stupid remark about opinions and conjecture and Kool-Aid, having nothing to do with Daboll or even football. Not an ounce of actual content and certainly nothing about Daboll. Do I think Daboll is the right coach for Allen? Don't know. Nobody out here does, really. The guys who do are in the meeting rooms. They have a far better idea of whether it's bad play-calling or play-calling that would have worked with decent execution. I get the feeling that he has to go, though. Knee-jerk searches for scapegoats feel much better than just buttoning it up and going through the inevitable pain of rebuild. Conjecture? Um, yeah. You too. Anyone making a guess at the future is using conjecture. And no, Pete Carroll reloaded. What he did is absolutely nothing like a complete rebuild.

Of course it's real hope for the Bills. You don't have to be competitive this year if you're building in the manner that has the highest chance of being successful. And they are. They've at least showed they're canny. I don't even agree that we're not competitive. We've beaten two good teams this year and the Pats game was still competitive late. Good? No. Fair enough. But yeah, there's real hope with that defense moving forward and the terrific cap shape we're in starting next year.

Can't even come up with one word of factual or logical support for your position, hunh? Which I understand. There really isn't much to be said for it, but not one word? The meaning of that is pretty clear.

I agree he's in the top 32, but not the top 20. The problem with him is that you can't run an ordinary offense and expect success. Like Tyrod you have to put him in a certain kind of offense to maximize him. If your team is at the beginning of it's cycle and is trying to input one kind of offense, you don't want to bring in Kaep and then have to change things up and stop the learning process for what will be your system for - you hope - the next five years or more. As for Garoppolo vs. Kaep, come on. The thing that made that performance amazing for Garoppolo is that he had thrown 63 previous NFL passes. And no, their stats weren't all that comparable. Garoppolo was throwing for 8.76 YPA (1st in the NFL), in other words, he was putting the ball down the field and making a lot of yards. Whereas Kaepernick threw for 6.49 YPA, a bit lower down than 1st, at 27th among QBs. He was throwing a lot of checkdowns. Kaepernick replaced the 1-4 Gabbert and went 1-10. You can't blame him for those losses, it wasn't a good team. But Garoppolo replaced a 1-4 Beathard and an 0-6 Hoyer and went 5-0. Sorry, but those two seasons were anything but comparable.

No, they didn't "jettison" the talent they lost on the offense. The majority of it was lost by career-ending neck injury and career-ending nutsoism, two of our three three above-average OLs last year, or above-average OLs who played more than five games before season-ending injury, anyway. They did trade away some talent for draft capital and cap relief, but outside of Robert Woods, none of that talent is proving impressive anyway. And yes, you did forget the rebuild ... again. And you're still not getting what a rebuild is if you say McBeane doesn't want to win. They want to win. But their goal is long-term, not short-term. Deal with it, dude. Don't avoid thinking about it. They're sacrificing the short-term for the long-term. This is what a rebuild does. It actually annoyed many of us, me included, that he didn't do a complete rebuild. Instead he kept Tyrod, Kyle W, Incognito and a bunch of others in 2017 that he would have gotten rid of if he'd given up on winning and completely rebuilt. He instead gave them a chance to win, and in a crappy AFC and with a lot of luck from the schedule, they won nine games. Is it hubris in the Rex Ryan mold? No, just the opposite. Rex was so smart and capable - in his own mind - a rebuild wasn't necessary. Sure he could win a title with Tyrod at QB, he thought. It's the reloaders who are full of hubris. Why did a defensive minded coach hang the offense out to dry? Wrong question. Here's the right question ... The right question is, "Why did a defensive minded coach going into the second year of a rebuild with serious cap problems from the previous regime hang that year's offense out to dry, with the tremendous exception of bringing in a QB who may well be their future franchise QB if things work out?" And the answer is in the question. He prioritized the defense. And he prioritized the long-term, which is what rebuilding teams do. He at least brought in a QB who could be the answer down the road. And the cap problems handcuffed him even further and losing Incognito and Wood pretty much drove the final nails into the coffin of the 2018 Bills offense. Not the Bills offense. The 2018 Bills offense. And that's what a rebuild does. It guarantees suffering for a year or two for a greatly increased chance of success in the long term. Not a guarantee. This could fail, as could any personnel strategy. But it is the strategy that contains the greatest chance of long-term success.

Back then we weren't in a rebuild. Now we are. Wins are a team stat, not a QB stat.

That isn't much of a post. Ridiculous from the first minute. The first job is to motivate? Good grief, hire a cheerleader if that was the case. Players are pros, they're motivated. It's a part of the job but nowhere close to most important. Beane isn't doing his job? Jeez. The most any Beane draftee has had is eight games of experience. And you want to judge him? Bizarre. Again, Beane has only had one draft. He's the one in charge of personnel acquisition, though he undoubtedly asks advice from McD. As for Beane not working out, we should know by around 2022. Thinking you can judge by the personnel on the roster in the second year of a rebuild is pretty sad stuff. Winning is a habit. So is losing. They are both habits that can be broken, mostly by building a good roster. If you'd like a team not to be embarrassed by ... wait till the second year of the near-complete rebuild is past. Because this is what they look like. Embarrassing. Unpleasant. It does indeed suck. If they still look like this a year or two from now, they would deserve the criticism.

Nor anywhere else, not for $20 mill. Some of these guys will re-sign, but there's plenty out there. https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2783459-an-early-look-at-the-2019-nfl-free-agent-class#slide3 1. Odell Beckham Jr., New York Giants 2. Brandin Cooks, Los Angeles Rams 3. Stefon Diggs, Minnesota Vikings 4. Golden Tate, Detroit Lions 5. Larry Fitzgerald, Arizona Cardinals The top five free-agent wide receivers only scratch the surface of potential movement. Beckham, Cooks and Diggs are 25 years old or younger and established No. 1 targets. Tate is the game's best after the catch. Fitzgerald will again consider retirement next offseason, but three straight 100-reception seasons say he's far from done. Randall Cobb, Kelvin Benjamin, Devin Funchess, Martavis Bryant, Jermaine Kearse, Rishard Matthews, Donte Moncrief, Cole Beasley, Tyler Lockett and Tyrell Williams are wonderful second-tier options. Whatever skill a team lacks in its passing game, it can find in free agency next year.

Your last sentence is ridiculous. You'll pay or win unless your health is much worse than can be expected. I'd do it. $100 isn't going to break me. Yeah. Could've picked up a hundred bucks or so.

Don't feed the trolls. Already being discussed in multiple other threads and this one adds nothing whatsoever. Nothing.

He wasn't. But the last three weeks or so the light appears to have come on.

Yeah, our offense is awful. And our defense is good. McDermott and Beane put together both. Not just the offense. They put almost no resources into the offense outside of bringing in Allen. McDermott is a defensive coach, it wasn't a surprise to see them prioritize the D. They're likely to spend a lot more resources on the offense next year. They're in Dorsey's second year, correct? Yup, same very reasonable argument still holds. They're still very early in Dorsey's build. Not that either team should be happy with recent history. But both fan bases can feel real hope for the future.

The LA Rams are in around the 6th year of their rebuild. Check the GM. He's been there a while, putting things together. Reid's been there awhile too and though the Rams ran a partial rebuild, the Chiefs didn't. The Chiefs, outside QB, weren't awful. They had some good talent to start with in Jamaal Charles, Dwayne Bowe, Moeaki, Branden Albert, Tyson Jackson, Dontari Poe, Justin Houston, Derrick Johnson, Tamba Hali, Eric Berry and Kendrick Lewis. And because they were in good cap shape, Reid managed to bring in Alex Smith to play QB. Both teams were really lucky, because the previous year's team had two wins.With that kind of background to your hiring, you can get an impact player at ground zero. A complete rebuild, or near-complete in the Bills case, is different. The second year will suck.

The talent wasn't there. We made the playoffs through a real accumulation of luck. The first bit of luck was an easy schedule (126-130 with most opponents from the weak AFC giving them their own weak schedules) The second bit of luck was that that schedule was made a ton easier by playing two of the good teams we played, KC and Atlanta, right in the middle of the only slumps of their season. Atlanta was in a three-game slump in a season where they never lost more than one game in a row elsewhere and that was made even worse by having Julio Jones injured and out of the Bills game. The Chiefs were in a four-game slump that you could argue was a seven-game slump with one win coming from beating an awful Denver team in the middle. But the biggest chunk of luck was making the playoffs with a 9-7 record. Most years 9-7 won't get you in but we were in a seriously weak AFC that year, and that was very lucky indeed. Watkins has 453 yards in 8 games. In other words, he's on track for a season of 906 yards. While being thrown to by a QB who's playing lights out in an offense that doesn't let teams double Sammy easily. Three TDs. For $16 mill a year. So by average salary he's the 6th highest paid WR in the league and for that money his production is this: 453 yards (30th in the league) and 3 TDs (in a 24-way tie for 34th position, so he's in the top 58 in the league). And that's not a bad year for Sammy. Glenn plays LT, a highly-paid position that we have filled. Woods was a great bargain for the Rams. Would've been great if we could've kept him. But teams in serious salary cap situations have to give up players they would like to keep, as do teams trying to put together enough draft capital in trades to be sure of bringing in a franchise QB.