BADOLBILZ

It made sense to go with Oliver when they did. It made no sense to pass on Metcalf for Cody Ford. Might have seen a big jump in Josh's passing LAST year had they taken DK. Also Ford being used as a guard last summer helped push Wyatt Teller off the roster.........so there is that. I understand people who say that is all hindsight but when you reach for needs early in the draft...........especially at positions of modest $ value like guard or even right tackle........sh*t happens. At least he is better than Cyrus Koundjio I guess.

Unfortunately for Marty he is the patron saint of upset losses against the spread in the playoffs. Vegas has a line stat that ranks Marty as the all-time underachieving coach in the post season with 4.3 wins below expectation. And he was 0-8 in 3 point games in the playoffs..........which the "modern equivalent" would now be 1 score games...........in which McDermott now finds himself 0-1. That 0-8 is amazing and probably impossible to do without some bad luck. I agree that it really mostly came down to being out-quarterbacked........10 of his 13 playoff losses were to future HOF QB's. But he did very often have the more talented team overall..........he was very good at working in conjunction with his GM's to accumulate talent. He had excellent personnel in Cleveland, KC and San Diego.

I'm told the hardest hit Peyton Manning ever took was falling down the stairs at the Big Tree. Definitely an "if those walls could talk" kinda' place back in the 90's.

1) We can agree on that. I believe he is now 1 for 13 on challenges. "Often wrong" is *probably* an understatement though. 2) He is also 0-6 versus his chief rival and the best gameday coach in the league...........and "on paper" he should have won at least a couple of those........he has been clearly outcoached in all of those games. Which is really the point........ the bar is set very high in this division. Some lament that but I think that's a good thing. "On paper" he should put the broom on Belichick this year and the psychological edge gained by overtaking the best organization in the NFL should allow them to bypass other steps in the championship process. FWIW..........I clamored for Marty to be the Bills HC when they had chances. Ralph just refused to acknowledge his existence. Something went down there, I always assumed he must've had a relationship with one of Ralph's daughters or something when he was a player(and simultaneously actively preparing to become a coach).

I mean, on the road, in the playoffs if you are conceding the run mid-way thru the 3rd quarter via personnel and scheme decisions with just a 2 score lead against DeShaun Watson.......when your offense has stopped being a threat soon after you pumped it's brakes........you are asking for the momentum to get flipped. It's an emotional game. The team takes on the identity of their coach and his decisions. I am sure you would agree with this as a general statement........it's kind of why you have been so supportive of his hiring from the outset, is it not? Then why wouldn't it matter in an actual game? It matters. Yes, they should have still won the game. Execution is almost ALWAYS the reason a team ultimately loses. And the Texans didn't pitch a perfect game from that point on out.........they dangled the victory out there like Shady dangles the ball after catching a screen pass. But plain and simple...... McD is not good on gameday. He's gotta' get better in that regard or Josh Allen just needs to go Mahomes and drag him past that. That's not a massive indictment.......Andy Reid needed Patrick Mahomes to ease his burden to overcome his tendency for in-game playoff misfires. Being a great decision maker in the moment as well as otherwise being a high quality football coach are not necessarily two things that naturally occur very often.

Yeah if you are looking at his Chargers years then the Schottenheimer comp I am talking about is before your time. Like I said, by that time Schotty and his teams in the playoffs were a charicature of the previous failed iterations........ like Marv's teams in the Super Bowl after XXV. Marty in Cleveland and KC didn't so much get "conservative" in the playoffs as he was just trying to do what worked in the regular season. Predictability + intensified playoff effort from the opponent yielded diminishing returns. And when things that normally work do not.......those players get nervous. But like I said...........if he had John Elway instead of Bernie Kosar then things would have been different. Elway dragged a much more conservative Dan Reeves to 3 Super Bowls with a lot less talent than those Browns. As for McD.......I think he did choke in the playoff game last year. Not being more aggressive trying to score before the half and then not being aware and reactive to the Texans switching their offensive focus to the run in the 3rd quarter were killer in-game mistakes...........and the latter was the result of the former.........not threatening to expand the lead gave the Texans the peace of mind to be patient and take what the defense was giving them. THAT is where the game turned. He coached the Texans off the mat. Like I said though..........I expect he learned his lesson from that.

Yeah he should round into form at some position about the time he hits free agency. Ford is a prime example of the flawed logic of over-drafting a tweener OL......tweener as in not a sure-fire first round pedigree but more potential than most third day picks. Ultimately since all but the exceptional ones usually take 3+ years to develop now, the math is not in your favor wrt getting on-field returns commensurate to the value of that draft pick before they reach free agent status.

The Titans should get draft pick fines or something painful but not game result related. There really is no reason to forfeit games. And I can't see the $ hungry NFL wanting to give away ANY telecasts and the millions associated with each of them. Players certainly want to get paid too. Obviously. No sense cancelling games just to make sure that the 7 month offseason(way too long as it is) is compromised. Stretch the season by a few weeks.

Marty-ball used to be not-so-secret code for conservative football.........especially in the playoffs where Marty coached his usually much more talented teams into surprisingly close games and put them in unnecessarily pressure packed situations where they were then more worried about losing than focused on winning. It eventually took on a life of it's own with the Chargers where his teams just panicked in the playoffs. I am not sure that McD will continue to fall into that trap............I think the lessons learned and analytics gathered from decades of guys like Marty and Cowher and even Andy Reid having teams underachieve in the playoffs should and will serve as motivation for McD to not coach his team into unfavorable circutmstances. I hope anyway.

I go back to that Patriot/Ohio State douche Mike Vrabel getting ultra-defensive with the media last week when people suggested his team might be "to blame" for their covid infections. Pretty obvious now that they were at the very least tempting fate with their carelessness. He deserves a good smack from the league.

He's got "the gleam" of a modern-day Marty Schottenheimer. McD is clearly not yet good in the heat of the battle on gameday itself......and Marty never was either.....but they both leave no stone left unturned in between and get consistent effort and focus and respect from their players. Marty was clearly a notch below the all-time greats and mocked a lot here on TSW for his playoff choke jobs.......he had a number of moments like McD's Houston meltdown........but if he had the better QB he probably gets to multiple SB's. I have also been consistent with my Elway comp for Allen.........which I find interesting because Elway foiled Marty so many times in big games. Give Marty John Elway at QB in the 80's and things might have been very different. Bill Cowher is also a good comp. He eventually broke thru when he got a young, future HOF QB.

It's appropriate that Yolo got this scoop......because Yolo was head over heels in love with his Ohio State QB Haskins in 2018. He openly lamented how much better of a prospect Haskins was than Josh Allen. I think it was like "I'd trade Josh+ for him NOW". Trust the process. Trust but verify(and then hire a private investigator and run like 20 surprise inspections) anything related to Urban Liar.

Oh I agree that they blew it with Rodgers.............they should have been much more aggressive in their offseasons years ago...........they tried to ride him and not mortgage any of their future and that wasn't fair to the fanbase or him. They played it like the Pats played the middle of Brady's career. But Mike McCarthy is no Bill Belichick..........so that plan failed. I think the thing with the Packers is that they have pretty much spent the proceeds of that Rodgers lottery ticket. And they know it. Love isn't just a replacement he's also an insurance policy for Rodgers the next couple of seasons. IMO just a very shrewd, forward thinking decision. But in full disclosure I think the analytics would support the idea that it would be wiser to just select the best available QB with your first round pick every year than do it any other way. To me it's kind of like teams employing the shift in baseball.........years ago the idea seemed ludicrous.......and it shouldn't work but because of the nature of the game(rules designed to allow QB's to utterly dominate games) and the people involved(a lot of meatheads) it absolutely would. In the past few years we have been spoiled by an influx of athletic, big armed QB's and the employment of rules and systems that make it easier for them to succeed. But in the past the incoming QB pool has dried up for long periods of time. You just can't pass on a potential franchise talent when it's available.

The flip side: The 2017 Bills made the playoffs with just ONE of their first round picks on the active roster in Jacksonville............that year's pick Tre White. You are just wrong if you think that it makes ANY sense whatsoever to pass on a guy you think could be a franchise QB. Lot's of ways for the personnel department to make up the kind of talent you think they passed on........and only half of all first rounders even get their 5 year option picked up.....probably less at the back end of round 1......... so what you think they were relatively assured to get was at best a 50% proposition to start with. But hey they could have gotten their version of an off-the bus starter like Shaq(who happened to be out injured at the end of that 2017 season......and not missed).

Always take the QB. I know some people are pretty slow on the uptake about this..........but if you aren't drafting a QB with that pick...... then a first round pick is the most overrated means of acquiring talent. It's basically a lottery ticket and yet some teams still select positions like LB and RB and OG and such trying plug holes and win their $1 back........even forgetting the time value of said spent dollar........ instead of going for the jackpot. But hey you can't say "this team is wasting (insert all-pro guard)'s career" if you have a top quarterback.

There are definitely a lot of folks who can't process the success without giddy nonsense/hyperbole or trying to find people/things to remain angry at.😆 It's not very process-like but it's not their fault.........the organization was so poorly run for so long that it created a whole generation of people who don't' know what it's like to have a contending NFL team in town. Gotta' remember that it's a product........it was always fair to hold it to a high standard even if you remain a loyal consumer when it didn''t meet that expectation. Trust THAT process. I can actually remember during the 51-3 rout of the Raiders in the 1990 AFC Championship game thinking about how fun it was being on the precipice of a dynasty and feeling like that team could very well go on a run like the 1970's Steelers. I was ready. I never stopped being ready.

Yeah they need to find out what they have in Edmunds outside..........the light first turning on for a MLB two and a half years into their career as a starter happens basically never. Problem is that with the bad shoulder he's not likely to be able to show what he can do as a pass rusher this season........which was what should have been his calling card by now. But still he needs to not be thinking too much on the field because his brain clearly isn't wired for that MLB job.

Dodson might be ok. Generally speaking MLB's either have that ability to mirror the RB and anticipate where the ball is going or they do not. People here once compared Edmunds to Brian Urlacher...........and then when he was awful against the run they tried to make excuses about how the 3 year college LB Edmunds needed time to learn the position. But of course Urlacher wasn't even a LB in college and was playing like an all-pro in the middle immediately as a rookie. You got it or you don't. Julian Stanford was just as good as Edmunds when he had to play for him while Tremaine was out with a concussion too. No drop off. He is probably clinging to the fringe of the Panthers roster they might be able to re-acquire him for a 7th or something.

Yes Beane created more dead cap money in one offseason than any other GM in NFL history. At the same time they spent a good deal of money very poorly in free agency that offseason. Hell he burned $3M on a 2 week tryout for a WR that summer. His cap management, personnel choices and contract structuring improved dramatically the past two offseasons. The only personnel area where they haven't gotten more personnel-efficient is their decisions at 1T..........cutting Dareus to grossly overpay Lotulelei and then tripling their money down on Vernon Butler to make up for the lack of impact from Lotulelei........and despite all of that their run defense was their achilles heel on D last year and is their greatest weakness now. Fortunately Josh Jacobs is banged up this week but if they get trampled on the ground in Las Vegas I do expect that Beane will make a move there though.

I know it's in the nature of the apologist to try to forget the bad decisions..........but 24 months ago the Bills had arguably the worst offense the NFL has seen since the NFL merger. It was the result of many bad decisions made. The argument that they couldn't have done better in so little time is foolish............they inherited a top 10 scoring offense that had nearly set the record for fewest turnovers in a season. The choice was made to tear it down. The new regime 2017 Rams started out that January with a worse roster than what McDermott inherited. They had been over-matched talent wise in the Bills/Rams game of 2016......their cap situation was not great either because they were coming off of a Bills-esque regime misfire. Their organizational identity was "pathetic offense". But they made aggressive and mostly correct, insightful moves and became a SB contender immediately...........with a pinball machine numbers offense from the get-go and were on their way to a SB while the Bills offense was bottoming out in early 2018. The narrative from Bills fans at the time was that the Rams would be on the down-swing by now because of all the bold moves. But that was wrong. They are obviously still a SB contender and are likely to continue to be for a while. The two teams chose to re-build in two different ways but beyond that there were far more swings and misses........fundamentally flawed decisions..... from McDermott and Beane.........the list is long. But they have learned and adapted from their mistakes and it took 4 years to get to now where the Rams were in 2017(and now)............ really a threat to go deep into the playoffs.........and that is because they learned and adapted. It really is their strength. What they may have lacked in foresight in certain areas they have at least been able to turn into a positive.

I agree. You could see where they brought some bad ideas with them from Carolina..........undervaluing quality of the WR by stocking it with lumbering targets was a prime example. After that yielded astonishingly poor separation numbers and near historically bad offense for their first couple of seasons they pivoted and began to do what works. We have had regimes in the past that wouldn't have done that. Carolina got to a SB with Philly Brown and Ted Ginn as the top WR's that season..........they challenged for and won division titles in other years without being very aggressive with regard to adding WR personnel. Guys like Tom Donahoe, Dick Jauron and Buddy Nix probably stick by that methodology because they had examples where it worked. Hell Polian and Butler probably would have. It has frustrated me as a fan because I knew that lessons learned coaching/administrating in Carolina's division........while New Orleans was re-tooling........weren't going to be enough to win the AFC East away from New England. And so far McD is still 0-6 versus Belichick. But their willingness to pivot from what doesn't work has me optimistic that there is much more to them than what they had shown at their previous stop. Which might be the first time ever that we can say that about a Bills HC/GM combo.

You aren't playing the odds then. The NFL isn't going to want to refund 1/4 of their tv money and the players.....with an average 3 season career span....... aren't going to want to take pay cuts. The NFL has a 7 month offseason and "training period" and they can probably use as much as 5 months of that if necessary to complete their season..........they are much more likely to explore stretching out the season than leaving massive amounts of money on the table.

Diggs has illustrated the difference that having high quality WR talent can make for your QB/passing offense. It's another case where McBeane seem to have learned from their earlier mistakes, which is encouraging.

The premise of the OP is wrong..........the Bills didn't get Josh Allen with the picks acquired from KC. At the time I am sure McDermott thought KC might be in for a down year and that they might get a top 12 kinda' first round pick from KC in 2018........otherwise no way you trade back that far if you think you will just get a pick in the 20's. That won't move the needle much to get you up to the top pick in the draft to select QB1. Ultimately the Bills got Tre White and Tremaine Edmunds with the capital they acquired from KC for the Patrick Mahomes pick. White is going to be a really good player for another 5-6 years. The jury is still out on Edmunds. He is one of the most "impactful" coverage LB's in the league because of his size/wingspan/speed.......he deters the use of the middle of the field in the passing game. But he is also a shoddy tackler and borderline horrendous against the run and just disappears as a playmaker for weeks at a time. In addition to his lack of instincts whether he is physically stout enough to hold up in the middle long term is also a concern. Anyone suggesting this was anything less than a lopsided trade is grasping for straws. As to your second point...........our hope here is that Mahomes/Allen turns into a Marino/Kelly situation where the Bills ultimately win much more in the playoffs and head-to-head. That's a lot to ask considering Mahomes hot start.....but that's how it actually went down with Marino/Kelly. Before Kelly ever threw an NFL pass Marino had set most single season NFL passing records and taken his team to a SB. That's how they can ultimately overcome handing an AFC rival the MVP of the league in a lopsided trade. As you say though, the Chiefs are not doing their part to undermine Mahomes by drafting poorly the way the Dolphins did with Marino.

Are you SURE @Shaw66? As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti, sure? I mean this board are gonna be chapped if the Bills meet the Ravens in postseason and the era ain't ended yet. And if La-mar ends up raising the Lo-mbardi before the Bills you are going to wish you only suggested a Skelton for Mario swap.