Utah John

That's because he had the most practice.

The Rams chose to go all-in for this year. Going forward they'll struggle to keep their team together. Beane has been conscientiously working to build an enduring top-notch team, one that will be strong year after year, by NOT chasing high-cost performers that distort the payscale of the players under the salary cap. Are good players better than picks? Well, good players on their rookie contracts are a hell of a lot cheaper than veterans, and that matters if the goal is to have a strong, complete team. If the Rams win the SB, they'll look smart for having made the choices they did. But they almost didn't make it, which would make them look foolish for making the same choices. And whether the Rams win the 2021 SB, it's a really likely outcome that the 2024 Bills will be better than the 2024 Rams.

You're right, and it's obvious if you just watch the video closely. Of course the orchestra wasn't faking it, so they must have worked out how to accompany a taped performance ahead of time.

Sure, let's ignore the offense for another year. In the guns and butter debate that economists like to have, defense is guns and offense is butter. We keep thinking we can win by investing more and more and more into the defense, and let Josh and Stefon and Gabe figure out how to score points with an O line that's shedding players, and no depth and no real playmakers at RB and TE. Then when that doesn't work we'll blame the problems on the new OC. A society that puts all its money into defense and nothing into helping its citizens develop, won't amount to much for very long. A team that can't stop fixing its defense long enough to keep its offense healthy won't win a lot either.

The Bills QB that Mac Jones is comparable to is Joe Ferguson. Not very tall, and not much of an arm, but a good game manager. He can win if he has a strong defense backing him up, and if NE ever gets themselves an OJ that will make him look even better.

Allen definitely did NOT whine about OT. He said the rules are the rules, and if Buffalo had won the coin toss the Bills would have been the ones celebrating. Classy and NOT whining.

About Josh's pushing for Dorsey to move up to OC, I think this is likely because he thinks Dorsey will follow the path Daboll laid down. Josh likes that path, naturally, and would not welcome some outsider OC's ideas being installed to replace what works so well for him. But, three things. First, Dorsey hasn't called plays before. Sure Dorsey understands Daboll's system, but he hasn't had the pressure of making calls in critical moments during games. Let's hope he's up to the challenge. Second, to be successful, an OC has to be innovative, constantly coming up with new schemes because anything they've done before will be on tape, and the opposition has a chance to try to stop it. Can Dorsey innovate? Can he come up with new ideas? Actually in this case Dorsey could very well be better, since Daboll's new idea well might have run dry by now. We'll have to see whether this is a positive or negative area. Finally, while a new OC could very well disrupt what the Bills' offense is used to doing, it might be an outsider brings strength to the running game that Daboll never really exploited. We'll never know about this change since it didn't happen. Hiring Dorsey was a "it ain't broke so don't fix it" kind of move. It could work out and of course I hope it does. But we'll never know what we might have had with a new guy. Of course we do have a new guy as the QB coach, and that new guy was an OC last year, so if Dorsey's not up to the job, maybe a change happens anyway. I hope that doesn't occur, and that the offense continues to be as lethal as it was in the two playoff games. The biggest question for the offense next year actually isn't the coaches, it's the players. The only QB on the roster now is Allen. How well and how quickly can new guys come in and fit into backup roles? With Allen's style of playing the backup QB is very important. Also how many WRs can we count on for next year? Diggs and Davis. Sanders was looking pretty much over the hill late last year. Beasley has lost a step and is expensive. McKenzie apparently will never forgive McDermott for benching him, and will be looking to leave. The only legitimate TE we have is Knox. At RB, Singletary has come into his own while Moss has faded. On the line, Ford and Feliciano have shown they aren't good enough, Bates is a FA, and Williams is way overpaid for a guard. Overall, it's looking like an offense with good players at most of the positions but with no reliable depth at all. The Bills have been drafting defense for so long and have not focused on building the offense's personnel, either depth or new starters. The only true need on defense is at CB -- it's time to bring the offense back up. Otherwise, if we get a critical injury -- and of course we will -- there won't be any material for Dorsey to work with anyway.

The Bills won, but boy were they a bad team that year. I can see why Dallas was embarrassed at losing. I think Ferguson was playing hurt, and he was very ineffective. The Bills didn't have any WRs that could play. (Was this the first year after Jerry Butler's injury? That was such a shame, for such a good player to have his career ended.)

I hope Dennis Allen got a long contract -- at least 6 or 7 years -- on the grounds that it's going to take a few years to clean up the mess, and he doesn't want to get that job started and then get fired because he's not finished yet. It's a little late in the coaching carousel calendar to find a great new OC (and DC for that matter) in New Orleans. Everything is lining up against this guy's early success. He'll be coach of the year if he gets to 9-7.

The Bills had a great defense who Schwartz was DC, but they had built that defense to play his style. There is zero chance the Bills want to start over, building a new defense, when we're in the SB window NOW. Plus look at all the high draft picks on our D -- we've invested so much in building Frazier's and McDermott's idea of how a D is supposed to work. It was Wrecks Ryan who pushed Schwartz out. I don't think Schwartz would hold a grudge against the Bills. But for the reasons I mentioned I think he's the wrong man for the job.

Well, Allen was offered the chance to go as a replacement for Lamar Jackson. He politely told them to take their Pro Bowl offer and stick it where the sun don't shine.

I think that's a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

McKenzie apparently really likes Daboll, and a lot of people are expecting McKenzie to follow Daboll to the Giants.

I'd like to see McKenzie on the team next year, but I'm not sure he wants to stay. I think McDermott burned some bridges with McKenzie by benching him after the ridiculous fumble on a KO return against the Colts. But sometimes money really talks. Especially if Beasley is cut for salary cap and performance issues, McKenzie could take on some of Beasley's pay as well as the starting slot receiver role. Neither McKenzie nor any other player is the equivalent of Tyreek Hill. We can't get Hill so we need to have the best possible alternative plan. That could be McKenzie, or possibly another player via the draft or trade. Maybe some team with a quick slot guy really needs a road grader OL player, and wants Feliciano or Ford.

I don't think the world has ever seen Daboll's personality, unleashed. I have no idea what that might be, but he's now the head guy and doesn't have to let McDermott or Saban or Belichick represent the franchise. Daboll might just be trying to establish that he's The Guy. Who knows. Maybe he figures this message will get to the players on his team. Anyway, good luck to you coach, you did very well with the Bills and we're grateful, no offense taken of course that you'd leave for a HC job. But you're not a Bill anymore.

Likeliest option, as I see it.

The reason they don't have full time refs is that the refs all have careers and they don't want to give up those careers to go sit in a room every day going over the rule book. Refs move up through the ranks, and only a few get to be NFL refs. All the time they're moving up, they're also moving up in their day jobs. By the time they get to the NFL, they're also pretty high up in the food chain wherever they work. If they quit those other jobs to become full-time refs, they wouldn't be able to go back after their NFL days were over.

This does point out the silliness of the Rooney Rule as it currently stands. Teams know whom they want to hire, yet they're required to waste the time and effort of several other people to pretend anyone else has a shot. Overall, the black HCs have done about as well as the white HCs. Tomlin is an excellent HC. Caldwell had great success. Flores himself did a great job pulling the Dolphins up from being terrible to being not that bad -- although he didn't seem to be getting anywhere moving beyond that level. But there have been so few black HCs that the sample size isn't representative of their skill. The rule about how if you have a minority coach on your staff and you lose him to another team, then you get extra draft picks -- now THAT'S something that should help get more black coaches into the game. And yet it still doesn't seem to be working.

This will keep Josh happy, but who knows if Dorsey is ready for this job. Did he ever sit down with Daboll and talk about the thought process Daboll used to call plays? Fingers crossed this all works out, and Dorsey's offense isn't so predictable that opposing DCs can scheme up ways to stop it.

Her eyes are definitely not popping out of her head. Literally. They're wide open but they're still in their sockets. Literally.

I'd go further. Out of four games last weekend and two yesterday, the home teams lost all of them except the Chiefs beating the Bills (and even that one obviously could have gone the other way) and the Rams winning a close one.

I'm interested, not excited. Yesterday's games were more enjoyable in a relaxed sort of way for me than any games this year. The Bills weren't playing, and yesterday's results had no impact on the Bills, so I could just put all that out of my mind and watch the games. If I'd been a fan of any of the four teams playing yesterday, I'd have been a nervous wreck by the end of the day. As it was, I just enjoyed watching tight, close games. OTOH their O line is so bad they have Quinton Spain starting at guard.

Between Jones and Darnold, I'm not sure which New York QB was screwed up worse by their team. Darnold is going the same way as Josh Rosen, QBs who might have been successful if not completely mishandled. Of course there are a lot of other QBs who didn't succeed who probably feel the same way about THEIR teams. OTOH there's Josh Allen, who could have collapsed in his first year or two without the nurturing of the coaching staff in Buffalo and Beane's ability to put good skill players around him. Thankfully it worked out so well.

IIRC, during the game yesterday the announcer said no team had ever won two OT games in the playoffs, back to back. And the reason is probably what you said.

I'd be freaked out too if I saw someone's eyes literally popping out of her head. I am glad I record games and watch them a little after the fact so I can skip commercials like that.