BADOLBILZ

I do think the Pegula's had a major crisis of confidence surrounding the Rex Ryan debacle. They totally bought into him and gave him whatever he wanted and then Rex basically dared Terry to fire him. I think they were publicly embarrassed in a way that isn't even possible in the low profile NHL and at that point they decided that they knew too little about the sport at the time to run a franchise. Terry bought into McD hard........and McD saw the opportunity to seize full control and he did. But as Paul Hamilton has stated many times.........now that they feel more comfortable with the sport the Pegula's regret giving them carte blanche over the organization.

I keep hoping Beane is going to get better with the player valuations in free agency.........but he just hasn't gotten there. He overpaid for McGovern, Hines and Harty as well, IMO. Maybe McGovern is actually on the rise and becomes a good starter but given what he's shown that deal was extremely generous. Hines.......I mean, how much is he even going to be used? Harty was coming off a wasted season so I am not sure how he got more than those $1.7M deals that Beane gave out after he was tapped.

Yep Chan Gailey had that thing where he would send messages to players thru the media by saying sh!t like that. They knew what he meant even if the media could only speculate. I think that pointless stuff really helped undermine the buy-in to his regime. Most notable example of that tactic was the......."Aaron Maybin works hard......nobody can say Aaron Maybin doesn't work hard.....he works hard.......did I mention he WORKS hard?" answers he'd give to people perplexed about his uselessness. The subtext being that he didn't PLAY hard on the field. Working out is strenuous "work"........but playing hard in the trenches is painful and injury is inevitable if you are selling out. Maybin wasn't in for the latter.......he was just cashing checks and play acting on the field.

Kim is not and tmk never was a professional athlete.......that would be her daughter Jessica. Neither of Terry or Kim had any football acumen. They lived in Orchard Park for years, including the SB years, and yet the first Bills game they ever attended was AFTER they bought the team. They were the casual-est of fans.......if you can even call it that. I'm just telling you what Terry has said........that he dove into researching the game of football like he did his business. He's been very hands on with the hockey organization for years. As president of PSE Kim was assigned the job of overseeing the business affairs of the teams. That's a relatively big job. Maybe she has mastered X's and O's as well but I kinda' doubt it.

That was a lot of words to say almost nothing, IMO. Obviously he talks to other people in his line of business. What the OP is asking is who does Terry Pegula go to whom he will heed their advice to make decisions. As @GunnerBill noted.......Terry Pegula very much appears to makes his own decisions for better or worse. I don't believe he was "advised" to pay $1.4B for the Bills either. He probably did it against his financial advisor's advice.........the man who tried to talk him out of getting into sports in the first place, as the story went.

I'd say she is definitely not the football brain of the operation. Kim has basically always worked for Terry and relationships like that rarely flip 180 degrees. He bought the toys to enjoy them and her role was managing the less fun day to day business activities while he has been learning about the sports that he bought into.

I really don't know who is the highest drafted foreign born and raised player but my first guess would be Ziggy Ansah #5 overall to Detroit.

Yeah to develop skill players you need more actual football to be played. Not a coincidence that most of the talent coming from abroad are lineman. The league has many foreign born DL and OL. If you are big and REALLY athletic like a Jordan Mailata.......or like this Okoye kid is with his 45" vertical........you can transition into major college with a pretty short runway. Becoming a QB or receiver is something entirely different. Those guys are playing flag football all year round from an early age in addition to their real ball schedule. Might be a decade or longer away before we see a real "foreign" starting level QB.

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/37668211/emmanuel-okoye-goes-nigeria-nfl-academy-vols-commit There have been a lot of players coming from Africa and taking up football in the states...........but Osi Umeniyora is heavily involved in getting young players in development in Africa during their HS age years. This kid Emmanuel Okoye is committing to an SEC school right out of the program. This is significant, IMO. As participation in football is declining at the youth level here in the US the NFL needs to start finding new pipelines so we don't start having drafts like the last one on the regular. Hard to imagine an NBA without Giannis and Luka and Embiid.

Yeah with Elway it's just kinda' simple though.........he built the highest scoring offense in NFL history and then built one of the greatest defenses in NFL history and won a SB with it.......all in the first 5 years of his regime. That's just "scoreboard".........and that's the NFL way of evaluating your production..........in part because the NFL is such a small sample size league/game. He won't be remembered as a great GM but there have been lots of GM's who had more consistent results but are forgotten because they didn't win a SB or build anything truly special. Right now, Beane is squarely in that group. He's the "architect" of teams that have won in the regular season but not the playoffs and also fallen short of expectations. Like a John Butler or AJ Smith, for example. Guys who will be largely forgotten outside of the cities they worked in.

Yeah and wasn't Trent Sherfield the one who got the punt kicked up his ass in the playoff game? Funny how sometimes those players end up on the teams they committed/suffered their most embarrassing gaffes against.

Dorsey never gave him the opportunity? Say what? McKenzie got a ton of action early..........he just made a ton of mistakes with the opportunity. Starting with bobbling a perfectly thrown pass into an interception in the opener. I don't know if people just have poor memories or what but they fed him like there was no tomorrow early in the season and he rewarded them with drops and boneheadery. Dumb fuk ran out the clock in Miami and almost gave poor Dorsey a coronary.

Yes McBeane are obviously to blame for keeping a guy like that on the roster. That's the way it works, we criticize the player for not being good but what we are really doing is criticizing management for having them on the team. It's not personal. I think you understand that but seem to be conflicted because you think you like him personally for some reason. He landed where he belongs in Indy........with a team that's not serious about winning right now with a young Josh Allen type QB who could use his gadgetry. That's why he ended up in Buffalo when he did. Buffalo, at the time, could afford to absorb an all-time-worst kinda' special teams mistake maker because they had zero juice in their WR corps at all. They were terrible. At some point when you get serious about winning though, you gotta' move on from guys like that. You went out of your way to note that keeping a team laughing all season is important but that can also be a guy who is accountable to his organization. Humor is not hard to find in a locker room full of 20 something dude's.......what's really important is getting players to suspend disbelief for 6 months and buy into the process. No-account persons like McKenzie are an enemy of that mindset. It's not like he's a QB/team leader and being the teams Jay Cutler with that weirdness but the loose ends he creates still matter when the goal is to be great.

To the highlighted.......Elway built both the highest scoring offense ever and THEN totally re-tooled on defense on the fly and built a top 10 all-time D just 2 seasons later. And the foundation he started with was a roster that was overmatched against Chan Gailey's 2011 Bills because they were significantly less talented. The first 5 years of his regime were remarkable. After that........a lot of bad decisions. Similar to Seattle in that regard........historically great moves in the span of a couple seasons that vaulted them to the top of the NFL.........then a lot of almost inexplicably bad ones. Bottom line........same amount of SB rings as HOF GM Bill Polian.......and more than the Bills. I wish Beane could have been that much of a "bonehead" in his first 5 years.

Didn't have the personnel for it last year. He started off looking like a stronger armed Tom Brady getting the ball out rapidly against the Rams and in subsequent weeks he tried to feed his only slot option Lil' Dummy relentlessly.........but that lead to the defeat in Miami and nearly losing in KC despite being dominant other than Lil' Dummie's bumbling mistakes. Beane just dropped the ball wrt receiving weapons. Hopefully we see a big change there.

He was only the GM for 10 years before getting the boot "up" after 2020......which was mostly to finish out his employment terms. He's not even employed by the Broncos in any capacity at this point. His biggest mistake was passing on Josh Allen. Simple as that. Practically a local prospect playing at Wyoming that Elway had spent a lot of time scouting. In December of 2017 I'd have thought Allen would be the Broncos pick if on the board. But Elway was impatient and chasing results and having built two SB teams in different styles he was probably over-confident in his decision making. Sustained success requires taking shots at young QB's until one pans out. I think JA17 took Denver passing on him personally.

They did find him funny but at the same time they knew he was a liability on the field. Everybody with any clue knew that. Just too many mistakes. When you are torn between wanting a teammate around personally and knowing he is costing you on the scoreboard........and unapologetically at that..........those are unnecessary loose threads to have when you want your team to be focused on being great on the field. It's why the Belichick/Parcells were so adamant against having players like that around. There is a negative synergy created by accepting that in your locker room. It's OK to be goofy off the field........JA17 is great and he's like that............but that guy can't both suck and not even be accountable about it either.

Certainly possible but at least they invested a first round pick in their passing game this time.

Show P the money!

Yeah and that was a dumb plan. Crowder had struggled with injuries in 3 of the prior 4 years and had a huge drop-off in performance in 2021. They turned a key position over to a $2M flyer and Lil' Dummy was the insurance plan. The presumption that Gabe Davis was ready to assume the WR2 position without a backup plan was even more shortsighted. At least if they had some depth outside they could have played Diggs in the slot more.

Big addition by subtraction........dumb players kill you. Beane just really screwed it last offseason in how they addressed their WR situation.

There are a lot of players entering make-or-break seasons for the Bills...........and yet they were still one of the most dominant teams in the NFL last year. That and all of the players entering walk years with big money on the line are reasons to feel great about their chances.

Jones has a mostly plant based diet so he seems to be one of the players trying to stay ahead of the turk but he's not a great player.........he's just the same solid run plugger he was in TN and Carolina.......just older. You don't go out of your way to extend players like that. As @GunnerBill said, that would be a stupid financial decision. All but the greatest DL his age start playing on successively cheaper one year deals at age 32-33 like he'll be after this season.

Love it........can only help build the Bills fan base up in Toronto. But on this side of the bridges the bottom is how baseball fans see JA17 Even Giants and Jets fans want to point out that JA17 plays in NY. The reality is that he's a San Francisco Giants fan but he is a SB win away from being the most popular pro athlete in the northeast.

Terming the fanbase "mafia" was lame AF. The story that used to be sold to defend that phrasing was that Schefter complained that Bills fans were like a "mafia" and people ran with it sarcastically. Now, in hindsight, Del Reid now claims he just coined it out of thin air? Whatever. It's a nerdy name but it achieved something that was necessary IMO.........it gave the fan base an identity to build around. That was necessary because the product that was being put on the field by Ralph Wilson was lousy and there wasn't a commitment to winning from him. We had basically become the Chicago Cubs of football......long suffering.......but without the charm. Because the fan base couldn't figure out how to embrace the fandom itself being more important than the team and their results on the field. We were fractured and weak.......making us more vulnerable to the kind of treatment Ralph gave us. The reason the Bills and the NFL jumped on the Bills Mafia branding was because they didn't want Bills Mafia to continue to evolve and become it's own entity........separate from the team. If that mindset took off it could create something of a management/union dynamic between the NFL and it's fans that the NFL wants no part of. They've done a good job of creating the impression that every team is committed to winning and that helps the NFL print money as a collective. Outliers like Ralph in his later years threaten that dynamic with their obvious lack of concern for satisfying their fans.