BADOLBILZ

The Bills were like 18th in yards per carry allowed last year.........and are 21st this year(tied with Baltimore among others). They weren't stout last year when they had healthy starting LB's and a $50M 1-tech. But don't worry they get Star and his $11M remaining guaranteed back next year and then the rushing attacks around the league will be sorry!

The Spain experiment ended poorly and wasn't cheap. Feliciano was a good, inexpensive pickup but he hasn't played a snap this season yet and I suspect if they cut him today he'd probably end up on someone's practice squad like Spain is right now. Those guys filled a role but they weren't exceptional. Lorax was an NFLDPOY candidate. Brown lead the NFL in tackles. Poyer and Hyde were instantly one of the top 10 safety tandems in the league. There is a difference between adequate and exceptional.

Correct I am changing parameters and I already indicated why I don't see Daryl Williams in the same light as I would view a guy like Lee turning into a success story. What I am looking for is an indication that the Bills scouting is showing any superiority over the average franchise. We aren't seeing that. Another example is Jordan Phillips..........a talented but very underperforming player in Miami..........but in his case they had the early waiver claim so the entire league didn't get a shot to sign him. They have had some hits. But he Bills personnel department under Beane has not been very efficient. They miss too much. They waste a lot of cap room......but in modest increments so there aren't the huge mistakes visible.........but ultimately it has limited their flexibility with the cap a lot more than you would like to see just 2 years after clearing the books.

History is written by the winners, dave. We usually over-rate the skill of the winners and underrate that of the losers. At the time of the Bills runs, their rosters were viewed differently than they are now in light of their losing. The Bills were deep. Nobody was twice as talented as them. That's ***** ludicrous. We look back on players like Mark Kelso and Jeff Wright with disdain because they were the relative weaknesses on the Bills roster..........but they were better players than highlight makers James Washington and Leon Lett who we remember as being big matchup advantages for Dallas because better coaching and preparation put them in places to succeed on those Sundays. Look at Wright versus Lett.........Wright had 10 more sacks and 100 more tackles in a shorter career playing in a 3 man front. He was very good at what he did. Derrick Thomas was a great pass rusher. Do we throw out his career because the Bills ran the ball down the Chiefs throats and forced Marty to bench a future HOF'er in his prime in the AFC Championship game? The Bills had a whole host of sh*t going on that caused them to lose those SB's..........and frankly most of the issues were related to the stewardship of the team. Not the talent.

Yeah I would put Williams a different category. He was an All Pro recently and was just available for one year on the cheap because of an off year recovering from major injury. He was also a flyer on a player they knew which they have generally not had good luck with. As good as Williams is his performance is more than off-set by those albatross cap hits sustained by the acquisitions of busts like Benjamin, Lotulelei and Klein etc.. Brown was available because he just never came close to living up to the expectations based on his draft status and athleticism..........which is more comparable to where Lee is right now.

It would be a terrible loss and since the Pats schedule gets much easier than the Bills the rest of the way.........being one game back in the loss column would have to be a huge boost for that rag-tag roster. If Belichick coaches them from behind into a divisional playoff race after starting 2-4 and having the lead dog start 4-0............that would be another kick in the nuts to a Bills franchise that hasn't been in serious contention for a division title in decades. It's a must win and should win game. And for all the people who complain about expectations coloring the perception of the team..........welcome to having a contending team.........this is what it's like.

The offseason where Doug Whaley scored Lorenzo Alexander for peanuts he also had another absolute bargain signing...........the enigmatic but athletically gifted Zach Brown. Also age 26. He ended up going from being a disappointing reserve in TN to leading the NFL in tackles for the Bills. Beane is long overdue for a score like that............a player every team had a chance to sign but didn't who then turns into a very good player for a couple seasons or so. So while Lee has hard-earned his doubters........it's certainly not out of the question that he could put it together.

Yeah I suspect they have gotten a call on Murphy from someone like the Colts with lots of cap room that went along the lines of: "How about we take his salary off your hands for your 2020 3rd rounder and we send you back a 2020 7th rounder and a conditional 2021 6th rounder?". Maybe Beane counters with a 5th. End of conversation.

Hell if Marv just had enough pull to keep them out of the bars all week they might have won a couple of them. They loved Marv because he let the superstars the asylum..........off the field.........in training camp.........in return they gave him the illusion of control so that they didn't end up with a disciplinarian. The upside was that Club Marv was an atmosphere where the players weren't getting beaten up and that helped them get to 4 straight Super Bowls. As fans we would rather that they would have just went 2-0 or something like that...........but so many of those Bills had very long careers and therefore made a lot more money than they would have if they would have been burnt out by Parcells/Gibbs/Jimmy..........so though they got no rings......I think from a player perspective Marv was berry-berry guuud to them.

The Skins were the best team the Bills played in those SB's........they would have kicked the ***** out of both of those Cowboys teams. But they weren't even more talented than the Bills.............the Skins were just that much better coached, prepared and focused. They were a team on a mission..........the Bills were a bunch of talented football players with a bunch of different agendas loosely assembled around a soft HC and poor coaching staff. As I said the two best performers in that SB were journeyman players...........Mark Rypien and Kurt Gouveia. As for the Cowboys just being too fast for the Bills..........well the Bills were faster than the Skins on both sides of the ball and special teams........didn't matter because they executed and the Bills did not. Saying the Cowboys were "twice as talented" as the Bills roster is ridiculous. Again.......start with the Bills fielding 5 HOF'ers to the Cowboys 4.............then look at the other players.........those two rosters were closely matched and in many cases the Bills players had longer and much more productive careers than their Cowboys counterparts. It's easy to forget how long guys like Phil Hansen and Henry Jones and Marcus Patton started and played really well in the NFL. I really don't get your contention that the Bills were no comparison to the talent of the Redskins and Cowboys in those two SB's. They flat out choked and played far below their talent level in those games. Hell, they were 12-0 against the NFC in the regular season during that SB run.........they weren't perfect and Polian deserves scorn for not adding a big NT or dumping Norwood sooner............but being a loosely run operation is why they lost........their lack of discipline and mental toughness came home to roost in the SB.

Yeah probably because it's not one of the newer aspects of the CBA. Ralph was notorious for assessing his teams chances in preseason and if they looked bad he would OK the release veterans like Dwan Edwards and Langston Walker..........because being active week one guaranteed their salary.

Wrong. He was on the roster week 1.........at which point it became guaranteed. They can only shed it by trading it now.

Yeah I remember at the time there were metrics that had Aaron Williams rated as the worst starting CB in the league. And he was scrapping with critical fans online like crazy. Moved him to safety........where he always belonged.........and he was a very good player and became a fan favorite. They are going to have to replace Hyde..........if not next year, then the following..........and it shouldn't be mission impossible. In the two offseason prior to Beane's anointing as GM.......Doug Whaley and McD scored big with dirt cheap defensive UFA's Lorax and Zach Brown and Hyde and Poyer..........Beane just needs to get some of his own. He's not gotten good value at all in UFA his first few offseasons.

I think he's one to watch for a potential second half breakthrough. He was totally invisible early in the year and I think he has shown that he doesn't have much interest in being their 340# double-team drawing 1T that they have lacked since trading Dareus.......but Butler does have the potential to make plays from the 3T.

Joe Gibbs was an incredible coach. He won SB's with 3 different QB's. IMO he was the best head coach of that 1980-2000 era. They were clearly the better team than the Bills.......but not the more talented one. The Bills starting lineup featured 5 Hall of Famers........the skins had 2. And many other matchups all over the field where you would take the Bills players career over that of their counterpart on the Skins. They had a talented OL but for chrissake so did the Bills. Gibbs just coaxed the best out of that roster.........he got great football out of guys like Mark Rypien and Kurt Gouveia.........who on that day they played better than any of the Bills HOF'ers.........but they weren't the more talented players. I recommend revisiting those rosters.

I think the Bills had the more talented team in the first 3 Super Bowls. The Washington team in particular was a lot of journeyman and players past their prime. The Cowboys team in XXVII was young and should have been vulnerable to a seasoned and primed Bills team that had yet to be picked on in free agency. The Bills by far had the lesser coaching staffs in all 4 SB's though. The other staffs had to orchestrate the season so that their team peaked for the playoffs and they had teams of comparable skill to go against in the NFC playoffs.........so those staffs had battle hardened teams going into the SB. Levy just had to roll the ball out there against the feeble AFC.........and even then they had some too-tense moments in the playoffs.

You are correct. They were free to franchise Gilmore but chose not to. He would have brought a nice return in trade if nothing else. They then drafted a CB in round 1.........which was right out of the Bills post-John-Butler roster churn textbook. Efficiency with personnel chips has not been a strong suit of the McDermott and McBeane era(deference to Beane not *technically* being GM for first 4 months of 2017). Luck has most definitely been on their side though............the Bills literally had the chance to draft Mahomes, Watson, Allen and Lamar Jackson in the first two seasons with McBeane.........opportunity unprecedented in Bills history. If they mess this up they have nobody to blame.

The sample size of what you are talking about is too small to determine definitively yet that QB's are going to be easily replaceable. It's gotten easier to play QB but it's not the first time we've seen crazy spikes in league QB performance. The year after Goodell basically legislated vicious hitting out of the pocket and the secondary........I think it was 2010.........7 QB's immediately threw for passing yardage amounts that were top 25 seasons all-time. It looked like this would really help all those frightened QB's that couldn't play up to their arm talent.......and that everyone would be able to have a good QB soon...........but as defenses adapted the changes really only served to extend the careers of the QB's on teams in the "have" category. The disparity got worse. So I think it needs to play out for a while yet before we can say that QB's are overpaid relative to their impact.

Bills fans are less demanding than most fanbases and the local media is easier on the Bills than they would be in larger markets. We get to 4-0 here and we have fans who are so in shock by the success...... after decades of making excuses for the teams failure........that they have no idea how to handle it. Yeah, real tough crowd. We have a very vocal minority of fans here though who complain incessantly about Bills fans being too negative.......it's very heavy on former WNY'ers. It's pretty weird but I think there is flight guilt and they think that being aggressively defensive of the Bills and Sabres business decisions positions them inside the community more than they would be if they were just that guy who left for perceived greener pastures and still watches the team from afar. It's a minority but they are vocal and that angst is misdirected at a fanbase that really has been very forgiving and supportive in the absence of much success from the local pro sports businesses.

I put a lot more stock into turning around moribund franchises......which is why Kox is #1 and Saban #2. Levy fell in just as the Bills were getting to the point where they were too talented to deny success..........and while he did pull it together and manage the personalities.........that was one of his few strengths. Knox turned programs around the way McDermott is trying to do here..........including hiring the underrated people who ultimately helped build the foundation for Polian, who gets just a little too much credit for the foundation of the roster that made it to 4 SB's. The scope of what Knox brought to an organization was just so much broader than what Levy did at his only successful NFL stop. And let's be honest here........Knox never had a QB like Jim Kelly and his Rams teams were impeded by Roger Staubach and Fran Tarkenton......HOF'ers. But like I said it's not a GREAT list. Bills have never had a GREAT HC. And fwiw..........Marrone may have got to 9-7 because the Pats were resting........but he most certainly turned around a very sickly franchise and he hired two very successful DC's in two years. Mularkey inherited a team that was talented and the coaching job he did in his second season was tragically bad. Marrone never had that problem in Buffalo and he took a team to a conference championship game elsewhere. I would take that over anything Mularkey and Jauron could spin cobble together.

Rex Ryan's defense was sold as not needing studs except for at CB. But as you mentioned with McD's defense.........you still needed certain types of guys. The Bills didn't have a Jim Leonhard to run Ryan's D. The current Bills don't have a Luke Kuechly. People might hate to hear it.......but now that the Bills are near contender status the weaker side of the ball is the one McD specializes in...........not unlike what happened with Rex. Obviously Rex was a total turd but the point being that flexible coaches have a better chance to succeed in the long term. When McD came in he turned a top 10 scoring offense inside out for a scheme specific coach with a very different approach in Rick Dennison. By contrast, whenWade took over he hired Joe Pendry..........who was unspectacular at prior stops(as was Dennison) but a much more versatile football coach who then changed the offense to fit the players he had. The nice thing about McD is that I wouldn't put it past him to learn that maybe he could use a change in defensive philosophy and go to school on it. At least he has shown a willingness to adapt. Rex did not. And Wade was very stubborn about his shortcomings too........they were just more related to his preparation of the team and his sideline work.

1.Knox 2.Saban 3.Levy 4.Phillips 5.McDermott 6.Marrone Right now he is closing in on Phillips, but not there yet, IMO. Phillips really lacked the attention to detail to be a stud HC.......but he was also a "take what I have and make it work.....and build my schemes around the talent" coach......which is extremely valuable. McDermott totally botched his first OC hire and he doesn't adapt his defensive scheme to his players.......he has to have HIS players. That has lead to them creating unbelievable dead money to clear the decks and then pretty much spending it all again and still not having nailed it. He is 0-6 versus his top rival and his record versus winning teams is atrocious.......so obviously he is this close to the top because this list kinda' sucks. The Bills have never won a SB of course but they haven't even employed a HC who would go on to win a SB elsewhere as a HC. That said McDermott is so far more organized than Phillips it's not funny. With the pandemic limiting workouts the Bills are having more injury issues this year but prior to that he had really turned the strength and conditioning department into a huge advantage. Wade Phillips was totally slack on this and his teams were constantly nagged by soft tissue injuries.

And people don't understand that Edmunds job in this defense is to tie up and physically molest would-be blockers.......forcing the action to the last line of defense............the second level of strong safeties. That puts a lot of pressure on would be HR hitting ball carriers. The turf monster or Poyer. Business decisions. Circle beats the square. It's a chess game out there.

Yeah Brady is easily on one of the top 5 rosters in the NFL. He is set up to succeed.

Will Fuller please. He is averaging 15.8 yards per reception......not an anomaly for a guy with a career 14.6 average. That makes him an ideal John Brown replacement(he'd benefit from 4-6 weeks on the shelf). And Fuller is a guy who would under different circumstances probably fetch a late 3rd rounder.........but his expiring contract, an injury history that makes him unlikely to be re-signed in Houston and $5M still due this season should reduce him to something like a 5th round value. To me, as far as the bigger and more commonly discussed names he is probably the biggest potential bang for the buck for the Bills.......who really need to get back to putting up 30 points per game more than anything else, IMO.