BADOLBILZ

The more commonly held belief is that having been Brett Favre's QB coach 20 years prior gave Reid a blueprint on how to best handle Mahomes. Favre was the comp. I definitely reject the idea that Reid had finally evolved into an offensive mind. That's not on point at all if that was the point you were trying to make. It doesn't sound to me like you were very aware of Reid's past or watched enough KC football in 2017 and 2018 to hear this stuff over and over and over...........you just box score scouted and saw that KC's offensive numbers were up for a couple seasons.

1. KC was a good place to land.........but optimal? No. Optimal would have been New England........he'd likely be a two time SB champ by now. Or LA Rams where he could have perhaps teamed with McVay for a couple decades. Pittsburgh......is definitely a better drafting and developing organization than KC and they are great at drafting WR's. As you pointed out though.........Mahomes was going to be good just about wherever. KC has also done a good job throwing the kitchen sink at winning since he arrived. Not every organization would have done that. The timing was definitely right in Andy Reid's career...........when Reid was in Philly they did the exact opposite with McNabb.........they tried to win and stay $30M below the cap every year at a time when the cap was much lower. Reid was at the point in KC where the early exits were wearing out his welcome. It was good timing. 2. The hope in Buffalo is that Allen v. Mahomes becomes the marquee matchup at QB in the league. It's a stretch until Allen actually meets and beats Mahomes in a big game........and there are a lot of talented young QB's elsewhere as well.............but I am definitely glad Mahomes didn't end up in a few different places.

Yeah Reid had already been every kinda' HC..........except a champion........until he got Mahomes.

1) I don't think I'd characterize Reid as evolving as a HC thru 2017. He was still enigmatic offensively...........he had years in Philly where he had no receivers but still made his QB's look good.........then he had years where his offenses inexplicably underachieved. He was no "genius" he literally went a punchless 4-12 with effectively the same talent that Chip Kelly then went 10-6 with and lead the NFL in big plays with. He was consistent at 3 things.........fielding competitive teams one way or another.........then getting upset by lesser talented teams in the playoffs..........and of course his terrible clock management. His evolution was getting a GOAT-like QB. 2) As for that Bills defense.........they went into that Chiefs game coming off the worst 3 game defensive stretch in team history. But all that Chiefs talent failed to take advantage of all the Cedric Thornton's and Phil Humber's and Eddie Yarborough's in that lineup. It was a pretty shocking turn of events. 3) I have no problem with people saying that Mahomes was put into a good situation..........but the point is SO overstated. Do you suppose in some other market there is a fan saying.........."well you know Allen had a great situation because Brian Daboll was a national championship winning OC who worked alongside Tom Brady for 8 years and then put together this great passing offense that allowed Josh Allen to lead the NFL in passing yardage thru 10 weeks in 2020! Of course he's great......he had it made!" If you ignore A LOT of the other facts about Daboll's history.......as many Bills apologists do with Reid......then what's wrong with THAT narrative?

The attempt to diminish what Mahomes done by over-hyping what the Chiefs had to offer.....and essentially talking down the Bills organization......is pretty absurd. Andy Reid was a good head coach with a very long history of choking in the playoffs.........and a passing game genius he was not...........most of his Philly teams and early KC teams were successful primarily because of defense. One of his Chiefs teams was the only team in modern NFL history to go an entire season without a WR scoring a TD. So it's not like Mahomes lucked into Bill Walsh or Don Coryell as a HC. And as for the "elite skill players".............they didn't look so elite when a cut and paste Buffalo defense went into KC in 2017 and shut them down when the Chiefs just had "very good" QB Alex Smith at the helm. And that team had Kelce and Hill in their primes and even had the NFL's leading rusher in Kareem Hunt. They went out to get Sammy Watkins because the overwhelming opinion was that they just didn't have enough playmakers. The reality is that Mahomes elevated EVERYTHING in that franchise..........he took very good players in Kelce and Hill and opened up the entire field for them..........he makes throws to both of them that nobody else can and often into windows that don't exist anywhere else. Mahomes' gift is the ability to make every throw that any NFL QB has ever made from every platform it's ever been made from. He's a compilation of all the best passers before him. That simply isn't as dependent on the weaponry as you think. The Chiefs are wise to keep his cupboard stocked.........but he was going to be great anywhere. As good as Josh Allen is now..........he simply hasn't been able to make all of those throws. So how GREAT would Allen be if he could get the ball over the top of the defense and deliver long bombs like handoff's like Mahomes? How GREAT would John Brown and Stefon Diggs look if defenses had to seriously respect the nine and post routes the way they do against Mahomes? How open would Cole Beasley look with 2 deep safeties on every play? The point isn't that Allen isn't excellent............he is excellent.........but Mahomes is unique and he wasn't going to be held back much or for very long anywhere.

And it doesn't get more entrenched than "trust the process". I love me some Josh Allen but any process that leads a QB starved team to first pass on Patrick Mahomes clearly isn't "the" process..........it's "a" process.

When Morse came out of Missouri he was a pretty good right tackle prospect.........if he's not a center here I think he's done in Buffalo because of the contract.........but if he moves on he might try a position change because you just can't protect your head with one arm between your legs at the snap.

This thread is an interesting dissection of the overzealous mindset. 1) The first response was the quintessential "shout down". 2) Then we have people who are consistently defensive of any criticism of the organization as a rule......but openly admit to being emotionally harmed after reading the article. 3) Then you have another faction the "well Mahomes wouldn't have been as good here" or "the organization felt the same as I did" crowd. If you have a mindset like these...........you may very well be a fanatic.........but you are going to be very difficult to have rational discussion with. 1) The reality is.........it's just a game.......if a hypothetical presented by an article like this has the power to anger or depress you then it's because you let it........it's certainly not the author's fault. 2) And why does it matter if an owner who has proven he can be the steward of total incompetence(Sabres/Rex) wanted to pick a QB and the football people did not? We've long known it was an epic mistake to pass on Mahomes........the wrong guy wanting to make the right call doesn't make it any worse. 3) Accepting the mistake and learning from it(why it happened etc..) makes the fanbase more knowledgeable and that's always a good thing.......being a better educated consumer makes it harder for the seller to get away with substandard work. And this is where the "they see things like I do" mindset is an "L" for the fanbase............presuming this like-mindedness......as far too many fans do with regard to new hires or personnel decisions........it just takes away any objectivity. And when the organization knows that you will go into default acceptance they then know they can just re-package the same mistakes over and over if it suits their level of interest in winning. And then you are susceptible to what Ralphy gave us for most of his tenure as owner.

1) The Bills are legit SB contenders the same way that Manning's SB winning Broncos were and Flacco's SB winning Ravens were. The Steelers and Patriots were much better all around teams than those Broncos......but injuries to those teams opened up a path for a team with woeful QB play...........and on the flip side Flacco just got red hot and the Ravens upset Manning and Brady. And the other SB that Manning won in Indy they got there because half the Patriots team was ill with the flu. If ever there was a postseason that could go sideways for the teams with the highest SB odds, it's THIS one. 2) The story about Pegula wanting to select Mahomes was out there immediately after that draft...........it was discussed here. @thebandit27 talked about it, among others.

Not blinking for a couple weeks..........yikes........sounds like he's toast.

Yeah they also may be thinking about cutting ties with Morse after the season to save the $5M to help re-sign the healthier and better center............and his salary probably has injury guarantees if he is still not cleared in late March........which would be a concern if he gets another concussion. They already more than doubled down on their cap issues at the DT1T by cutting Dareus and signing Star to that fat contract.............getting Eric Wood-ed again by Morse and having to pay Feliciano at the same time would be disappointing.

He doesn't deserve it. Underachiever...........and changing teams was a mistake if he wanted to make it too the HOF..........he had just made a nice transition inside in Buffalo and could have been so much better in that Cottrell/Wade defense in the late 90's. Instead he made himself look like something of a journeyman even though he played pretty well in ATL and INDY. This is probably his best chance though.........the greater appreciation of athletic LB play........a lot of people might say he'd be even better in today's NFL and that's always a good look...........and as for his past legal troubles, the 2020 focus on mistreatment of black men in the judicial system and kind of a quiet backlash against perhaps overreactions in the "me too" movement.........and the fact that so many people have much bigger fish to fry than nitpicking the character of NFL HOF'ers..........it's probably his "Harold Baines" window right now or never, IMO.

Yeah and IMO Feliciano is also a much better center than he is a guard. Additionally........with improving the run game a priority.......you have to wonder if Morse is going to be more tentative at the point of attack. It's not like the play he got hurt on was an unexpected hit.........it's standard operating procedure for the Patriots LB's to try to blow up run plays that way if they anticipate a combo block coming. It isn't out of the question that Feliciano/Winters might be better than Morse/Feliciano.........and that's knowing that Winters is just not good.

I am so glad Brady decided not to go out on top. It's really made for a lot of enjoyable prime time NFL games this season.

The list of huge one year jumps for QB's is long.........they used to call it "the light coming on". Unless it's just limited to Bills QB's I wouldn't even put Allen in that category...........he's made big strides but he was one of the more accurate short to intermediate passers last season and stopped turning the ball over mid-season 2019 etc.......yeah he freaked out in the second NE game and missed some layups and later in the second half of the wildcard game............but he was a good QB on a very positive trajectory and had some fantastic games last year.

I am sure there would be a nice list of players that could have been franchise QB's today.............but the pool of available talent has been opened up by the opening up of the passing game. A guy like Kyler Murray.....a legit high first round pick in MLB.......he takes that multi-million $ baseball contract 12 years ago. Patrick Mahomes is probably steered into MLB as well. There was no way a guy like Charlie Ward was turning down easy back-of-round-1 NBA money back in the mid-90's to earn his stripes at QB in that NFL.......in today's dollars he made the equivalent of $50M in his 11 year NBA career............but nowadays with all the advantages that athletic QB's have it would have been a no brainer to go NFL and be great and potentially earn 5-10 times that instead of just a be decent NBA player. The passer freedom and earnings potential has just opened up the game to a much broader group of players so the pool of talent isn't as limited as it was 15 years ago.

I would have to think on the more recent guys but the 3 Chris's from the late 80's and 90's are the one's that come most quickly to mind. Chris Chandler.......aka "Chris-tal Chandelier" Chris Miller Jim "Chrissy" Everett They would have absolutely feasted in this NFL..........I mean those guys could deal the ball...........they just couldn't deal with getting more violent hits in a rough start than good QB's get in an entire season now. All three of them might have played into the 2000's with todays protections as well.

That guy appropriately coined the term "the NFL stands for Not For Long".

Maybe the smartest thing that McBeane did wrt their QB choice was to select the guy with the highest ceiling. The days when just having a competent QB made you a threat are kinda' gone..............the studs are inheriting the new NFL. They should have taken that approach with the WR position and drafted Metcalf to pair with Allen.........but I digress.......

The difference was that defenses could always adapt to previous rules changes. Defense's came up with schemes to combat a greater emphasis on passing........like the zone-blitz in the mid 90's........that was designed to address the west coast offense but it was even more of a killer blow to the big meathead down-field passer prototype. And then teams started throwing huge dollars into their pass defenses in the 2000's................CB and pass rusher started collecting the kind of athletic talent that used to gravitate to the RB position. The real savvy vets like Brady and Brees and Manning who could get the ball out quick could adapt to the faster athletes and complex defense's. But the young studs, specifically Rodgers and Roethlisberger, who played a more exciting downfield passing style of game? They were taking a beating and having to play thru a lot of concussions. It was bad optics and just plain bad for business and the future of the sport. So the decision was made to take away the defense's right to be violent. And taking that degree of violence out of the pocket and middle of the field for receivers...........that just took the lid off of the passing game. The next season 7 QB's had top 25 all time passing yardage seasons.........now it's pretty common to have a 5,000 yard passer lead the league and to have young QB's playing well right away. As the passing game has grown and young athletes see these positions can be played relatively safely and great contracts are doled out.........more talent is coming into the league at QB.........which is increasing the odds of hitting on these selections, IMO.

There was a point in Miami when Tannehill was the league's worst deep ball thrower. It was comical. Every team was just daring him to push the ball downfield. Now he is among the best...........he can really drop a deep ball in a bucket to get over an opposing defense. Allen's improvement has been pretty systematic and probably as linear as one could have hoped for a 3 year process.............last year he really advanced his short to intermediate accuracy..........this year his big improvement is basically all the things that are associated with the game "slowing down" for him.........awareness, pocket presence, decision making. So far, his work on improving his deep ball throwing hasn't yielded the desired results though. They are at the point where they might just want to run 40 yard out passes and let him pipe it in on a line(like only he and a select few could) rather than try to get over the top of a defense............case in point the TD throw to Diggs last week.

That pic is with pads. I saw him at minicamp without pads a couple years ago and was taken aback......... he literally looked like his neck and head were 1/3 of his height. Like 4' tall + 2' of headneck.

Gary Anderson..........by far the most successful career of a 7th round pick by the Buffalo Bills.

I am a little more to this side than where @GunnerBill is. Yeah you gotta' be a good teammate and play your role in the Bills defense and he's been a really good story of perseverance. But this defense really props up it's CB's........on MOST teams Levi would be a 5 alarm fire as CB2, IMO. Given the rich history of UFA CB's plucked from McDermott defense's it will be interesting to see if Wallace attracts much attention this winter.

Yeah I think they have to be concerned with the hits he was taking. Earlier in the week Tua basically said he didn't know if he would ever be the same player he used to be physically. And today we saw that. He doesn't move well.........there were plays where MOST young QB's can get away from the rush or get to the edge running the ball.......but Tua........who used to be quick and fast.......couldn't. The biggest concern with him was obviously that he has had a myriad of ankle/knee/hip issues...........I mean it was thought by many that they would basically redshirt him this year to get his hip as healthy as possible..........so I wouldn't be very surprised to see them go back to that plan.