BADOLBILZ

Marv had a winning record versus Shula but also was upset a number of times by his Dolphins. And Shula still won the AFC East twice at the expense of Marv. So it wasn't anything resembling the domination that Shula had over Buffalo in the 1970's. The Bills longest win streak versus Shula was 6 games....and that was in the 80's.......before the SB run. There was never any real threat of them hangin' 20 straight on Miami. Just like Shula.......whom they were 3-0 against in the playoffs.........the only avenue the Bills have to get over on BB is to beat him in the playoffs.

What are you talking about? I'm talking about adding an immediate stud to the interior OL..........not drafting one in the top 3 rounds and waiting for them to develop like most OL do. And LAC drafted a stud offensive tackle in round 1. Otherwise didn't draft another OL until round 5. No idea what your rationale is here.

You don't fundamentally alter sound draft strategy to fill needs. They are in this position because Beane did that in 2019 by drafting Oliver, Ford and Singletary for need. You could make an argument at the time that Oliver was the best player on the board and a pass rusher. Ford and Singletary were both the purest form of drafting for immediate need over BPA at more valuable positions. They literally drafted Cody Ford to fill a perceived need and in the process undermined the smart work they did in finding value late the previous year in Wyatt Teller. That was an unfortunate NUCLEAR type of accident. But it underscores my point.........you treat the draft as a big picture solution. Finding interior OL help should not be a long term problem. By having QB/LT/CB1/WR1 and possibly Pass Rusher 1 all addressed with draft picks and reasonable contracts they have positioned themselves to be able to justify paying a Brandon Scherff or Laken Tomlinson type in UFA to give them a big matchup winner inside. And those players "should" be available because their teams haven't filled their premium needs inexpensively like the Bills and will have a hard time justifying paying interior OL with their bigger needs.

That's a recipe for a coach-killing Reggie Ragland & Cody Ford kinda' yield. You don't draft low ceiling players at lesser positions early to fill immediate needs. And this year ESPECIALLY..........center, RB and DT are all light on higher quality talent in the rounds you put them in. You'd be lucky to get a Devin Singletary quality RB in round 2 in this draft.........it's not a great class.........but even if it were a good one it's still a waste of equity for that position. The Bills need to address their immediate interior OL issues in UFA or via trade. The OT, WR, CB classes look pretty good which is always good when premium talent positions like that are well stocked. Gotta' get them when they are hot. Might be the deepest TE class in a long time and pass rusher is pretty deep again. All the woe we feel about the interior OL pales in comparison to being light at premium positions.

This isn't really how you solve a "now" problem at a positional area that is known to take a long time to develop like offensive line. See how much drafting two promising young pass rushers in round 1 and 2 has helped the Bills immediate fortunes in that area. Not much. Pass rusher is a long term play. You address pressing issues like this in free agency or even via trade. Pro personnel moves. Fortunately, guard is a position that is usually fairly well stocked in UFA. Spend the $10M-$15M per on a very good guard.............then save your premium picks for players at positions who are going to be commanding $25M-$30M per year at the end of their rookie deals. That's how you fill needs and win at the salary cap game.

I'm for benching Moss and incorporating Williams. For most of last season the OL wasn't blocking it up well for the run either and eventually Moss in particular started anticipating missed blocks and it really slowed down his decision making. Would-be 8 yard runs were turning into 3 yard runs. It was very evident in that finale against the Dolphins when Moss was leaving yards on the field and enter Williams and he just ran hard to where the hole should be and it paid off. They aren't blocking it up well enough for Williams to get much done......certainly not against Tampa........but it's time for Moss to grab some pine, IMO.

Singletary is fine running the ball. Career 4.7 ypc on 415 carries. His fumbling has just been out of control this season. I doubt all of them will be gone next season but there will be changes. But put these RB's behind some more OL talent...........and switch to more inside zone, pin and pull blocking like they used prior to McDermott getting here and we could see an instant transformation to a consistently excellent run game. Easy to forget that the a line with Wood and Glenn was seen as unredeemable garbage under Marrone with his man-blocking, run CJ Spiller up-the-gut style..........Eric Wood was so bad in that system that even he thought he might get cut by the team..........but a year later they added Incognito and two scrubs in Miller and Mills and then lead the league in both rushing and big plays on offense (with an incredible amount of long runs). And that was also the season when LeSean McCoy missed every gotdamn hole and played like a JAG.

Pay a little closer attention. The worst hit Allen has taken all season was an impossibly stupid play where Breida ran right past a blitzer he was responsible for. Then he had a play last week that he blew in the red zone by going in motion to the wrong side of the field. Then against NE he just forgot how to physically accept a handoff. That's an exceptional amount of egregious mental mistakes for the few snaps he's played. There is a difference between improperly executing assignments and missing them entirely. It's discouraging because he is a really explosive player with his hands on the football and a good fit for an outside zone team.

On the flip side.........the Bills have beaten the Patriots two of the last 3 games. This year they made the mistakes to lose the home game to the Patriots...........last year the Patriots outplayed the Bills in Buffalo and they made the unforgivable mistake at the end and the Bills won. But if you want to let what happened from 2000-2019 bother you NOW........then have at it. It's a self inflicted wound though. They aren't ever settling the score with Belichick in the regular season. Anyone old enough to remember Shula domination should know that.

Here lies Casey. A dismal 7-5 record in December of 2021 was da' last straw.

Other teams runnin' bax miss holes all the time too. Behind a good run blocking line, where the hole will be is often a pre-snap read for a RB...........for the Bills, it's all post snap because they rarely execute their assignments as they are drawn up. Moss is too slow for outside zone for me. I wouldn't have him out there. Singletary is clearly their best back. Breida is the most explosive but it's now abundantly clear why he was available so cheap in UFA. He's really dumb. One mental error after the next. That's why he's bounced around and played sparingly in Miami and Buffalo despite that talent.

Well.......that's obviously not the case. Fan support thru the drought says it all about the willingness of fans to support the team thru thick and thin. Bills fans are rabid fans of the team.........but maybe not as understanding of the league as they need to be yet. The dominant team doesn't just go away so you can have "your turn" to win for a decade and a lot of people are mad because it's not that way. As supportive as Bills Mafia is..........understanding the NFL as a whole isn't a strength yet because the Bills haven't been in contention enough for the past 2 decades for many fans to feel compelled to follow the entire league closely enough to understand that it's not going to be "easy" just because you have a QB now.

As usual, you are wrong. Most long term successful regimes still lead thru fear and cutthroat personnel management and at the very least the HC's keep players a bit more at arms length than Sean McDermott. And relying on fear really helps Belichick stay on top of his X's and O's because he's not dealing with everyone's feelings and headspace every day. McDermott has his hands full now just managing his teams mindset. Especially now that they have such familiarity with him and feel comfy and cozy with all the continuity they've had. It's not an accident that they might be the most inconsistent football team the NFL has seen in the past 40 years (as DVOA suggests in addition to the eye test). As I've said though........Arians was dealing with very similar issues in Tampa last year.........but they got hot in the last 4 weeks of the season and went on to win the whole thing. One of my concerns is a coach like Arians really started to be perceived as a slam dunk great coach at his SECOND full time NFL HC job. When he left Arizona his style wasn't getting it done there anymore. When he went to Tampa it was like "hey, he won with Arizona for chrissakes" and then he basically had the old Marv Levy "if you get a reputation as an early riser you can sleep til' noon" thing going on where he could do little wrong despite flat out sucking early on there. Hopefully McD and Beane can figure out how to reign things back in before they have to go somewhere else to get the most out of their teams again.

Nah. Sorry, Casey. When I was growing up the old men used to say things like "once a man, twice a baby" to describe their moodiness and "once I hit 60 better find someone else to operate this machinery, etc.." because they were self-aware of their increasing tendency to lose their patience quicker. Not sure when we stopped realizing that was natural. I think you actively gotta' fight that tendency to get emotionally upset or resign yourself to less stressful activities.

I think he knows it's the offensive line. There is more top end OL talent coming out than top end RB talent as well so that is probably for the best to help prevent something regrettable like drafting a RB in round 1. I see them making their biggest FA focus adding a very good offensive guard. And tend to expect an offensive tackle in round one and Dawkins being kicked inside. No question they need better results from their coaching and they need to find more talent later like they did with Teller. If McD chooses to shake up the OC and OLC positions he should be able to pull some decent talent because he is pretty secure in his position and has the elite QB to make good coaches look great, IMO.

I'm not sure why people that "age out" have to have these grand announcements here on TSW. Most of my father's generation that used to go to games religiously are sippin' Coors lights on the golf course down south when the Bills are playing now. None of them put back of hand to forehead to tell us why and remind us of the context. Some people can stomach the ups and downs of following sports teams when they get older........a lot of others don't have the patience for it any longer. Good luck in fan retirement.......but please people..........writing your own Bills obituary is super Lampy.

Last week NE allows 270 yards rushing to guys TN picked up off of the street. Last night NE runs for over 200 with a couple RB's who'd look like trash if they were running behind the Bills OL. Today some Bills fans are blaming RB's for the team's lack of a consistent running game. It's not like this is happening in the NFC west...........these are teams that the Bills are competing for playoff position with that are putting up big yardage numbers without talented RB's. Dumbest response ever is to use a high pick on a RB to address the issue. Some knucklehead was lamenting not trading up for Najee Harris..........the dude's running for a pathetic 3.6 ypc on the season. Give it up already, the jury weighed in and went home like 20 years ago. Block it up and the yards will come.

Here is a much simpler rational and actually FACTUAL thought: The Bucs were 7-5 last year........blown out twice by their division rival Saints in the process.........and went on to win 3 road playoff games and the SB. Their structure is similar to the Bills........a talented team with a great QB whose coach puts a lot of trust and faith in his players and looked very bad at times for doing so after 12 games last year. So anyone making absolute conclusions at this point of the season is getting ahead of themselves.

As many of us said in frustration last offseason.........they were clearly just trying to "run it back". But I've never deviated that I hate the spread. Allen can make it work to some extent but this is not the way to use him. With the exception of Morse, who has been about exactly as expected..........every OL that has gotten significant snaps has either been extremely disappointing or has been too often unavailable(Brown). That's the issue with their running game. They could use a better lead running back but if they were simply blocking it up their running game would be a positive. Very few things have been proven more right than not needing a stud RB to run the football. Look at the street trash that TN picked up to put 270 yards on the Pats a week ago. Block and it will look like you have good RB's. As for drafting DE's.........I loved Rousseau, didn't like the Basham pick. But that position is something of a long term play. I suspect Rousseau has had a foot injury that's hampered him since the KC game and he's only played one college season so not surprised if he's hit a wall as well. I have to admit that Basham has shown flashes but yeah give me Creed Humphrey or a WR there. I'm all about drafting offense early........its more sustainable. But I am definitely not on the idiot train to drafting RB's early-ville. Maybe one of those will win a SB for the team that drafted him one of these decades but the odds are against it.

They don't need to go back to the stone age. They need to be able to get under center, utilize play action and let Allen beat teams over the top. Offenses like that have produced some of the highest point totals in NFL history. Like they looked in the Jets game. That's not really how they are built though. They are built to run a spread offense and get the ball out quick, which leaves you vulnerable to a myriad of mistakes and negates the advantage of having such a gifted thrower of the football. Wouldn't take a lot of expensive changes to become that team. Not sure wicky-wacky Daboll is the right guy to call that offense though.

Allen was outstanding last night. As much as I'd be happy that we won if I were a Pats fan...........I would have come away from that game a little discouraged knowing that my long term solution at QB is likely Mac Jones in a division with Josh Allen in it. Allen was far better last night than he was in that Ravens playoff game last season in similar wind conditions.

It's astounding how far their OL has fallen off of a cliff from last year. I knew they were middling in the middle.........but they have gone from that to terrible this season. Feliciano has been a bust after losing a bunch of weight and apparently power and then getting injured again. Boettger went from promising long term backup type to garbage. And I have long been critical of him, but can't even believe how Cody Ford has managed to regress. And the tackles..........Williams has been atrocious at RT after being excellent there last season. I could see a drop-off but this can only be explained by a lack of preparation and want-to. The other tackles: Dawkins f*cked around and ended up nearly dying from Covid and has subsequently been a weakened and inconsistent version of himself. Then Brown misses games after passing on the vax. The OL is a prime example of what can happen when you promise love and trust in a sport that has survived on fear and accountability as the primary motivators for all of its existence.

The challenge of building a program on "love" is that you then have to trust 53 players to do the work in the offseason and off-the-field and then be in the right mindset on game day. The only control you have is the practice setting. When you lead by fear.........like Belichick.........you are in their head 24/7/365..........it's much less complicated. There have been a lot of abuses of trust by the players on this team since the end of last season. Some players obviously didn't put in the work last offseason. Then they were one of the teams that were the LEAST on the same page with vaccination status. And they clearly don't feel like or care enough that they will be held accountable for mental errors or simply not showing up prepared and the right frame of mind to play. It's a tough game. Everyone in every field hates competition and the fear of losing their job...........but there is a reason why commanding respect and performance thru those tactics has been the most successful form of leadership in football. McD has made his job more complicated by going this route. Now he's gotta' figure out how to keep it together.

McKenzie became a Buffalo Bill because he was a horrific fumbler on special teams with Denver. He has mostly avoiding issue this season but when you were THAT BAD...........people always worry about you falling off the fumble wagon again. I don't trust the ***** either. That said.........would like to see him used on offense. In addition to the misdirection they've used him on they should have been using him out of the backfield all season to add some speed to their run game and give them a RAC threat on RB screens. I'm not giving up on this team but very disappointed that the coaching staff hasn't used their continuity to their advantage here by making their offense and defense more complicated to defend. It's like they have never practiced a 5 man D Line to guard against a "run-only" game plan or a series of plays where they just run the QB in the event of the wind being so outrageous they can't throw the ball at all.