hondo in seattle

Not amongst the 5 best. He's among the top two. I love good RBs and have been watching them with awe for decades. And I've seen most of the contenders play: Walter Payton, Barry Sanders, Emmit Smith, Bo Jackson, Eric Dickerson, and so on. OJ was, IMHO, clearly better than any of them. The only guy who competes in my eyes is Jim Brown who I've only seen in highlights but those highlights, along with his statistical dominance, are impressive. Jim Brown and OJ would average 8 yards a carry against today's coverage LBs and pass-first defenses. My dream Bills backfield: Josh at QB, OJ at HB, Cookie at FB. And then let's have Eric Moulds and Andre Reed at wideout. We'd be unstoppable.

It was a different era when OJ played: the best athletes became RBs, Heisman trophy winners and first round draft picks were RBs more than QBs, rules didn't protect QBs and favor the passing game like today, and defenses were built to stop the run. And OJ shined like no other. When he rushed for 2003 yards, the next best guy in that heavenly year of the Golden Age of Running Backs gained 1144 yards. OJ nearly doubled the next best guy at what was then the most important position in football. It was freaking superhuman, barely believable. Off the top of my head, the only comparable achievement in all of American professional sports was in 1920, when Babe Ruth hit 54 home runs and the next best guy hit 19.

To quote Jim Morrison, "The future's uncertain and the end is always near." Andrew Luck retired at 29. Maybe Josh pulls a luck. Then again, maybe he does a Brady and gives us 10+ more good years.

I confess I'm no DL guru but I've had the same concerns for the same reasons. Maybe someone who's an expert at DL play can answer the question.

I think Beane is a good GM. But I'm afraid that 20 years from now, I'll look back on the 2020s and reminisce that the primary reason we didn't win a Lombardi is because Beane was a good GM, but not quite good enough.

I hear you but all I care about is whether a player practices hard, plays well, and is a good teammate. How they go about their negotiations is irrelevant to me as long as it doesn't involve a long sit-out.

Agreed. He might deserve a mention though if the thread title was, "Most Frustrating Player..."

McKelvin was good at shadowing receivers but had terrible ball awareness. He'd often be draped all over a guy and allowed a big reception anyway just because he didn't know where the ball was. That's how I remember him.

I don't have a good memory, but you make me wish it was worse because, unfortunately, I remember all those guys.

I don't disagree with much that Monos says. But I don't know how much I value the perspective of someone who recently served as Director of Player Personnel for the San Diego Fleet in the Alliance of American Football. It would be better to hear the thoughts of a personnel guy who served as an NFL GM and had some hardware.

You're probably right. He did last 10 years in the league somehow. My take is probably more emotional than objective. I just remember the frustration of him looking like a human turnstile.

Peterman has to head the list but Corbin Lacina also comes to mind.

In the 2024 NFLPA poll, the players rated the training staff a 'B' and the strength coaches an 'A.' They didn't seem to see a problem. But maybe something's happened since then???

Philly didn't roll out some schematically innovative defense never seen before in the annals of professional football. They just executed their simple plan well because they have good coaches, and more importantly, good players. There's nothing here for McD to copy. But hopefully Beane starts getting us championship-caliber players.

I'm willing to forgive McD for 13 seconds. I don't know what really happened. And, in any case, we took the world champions to overtime in a tightly contested game that could have gone either way so obviously we did a lot of things right. As head coach, he deserves the blame for whatever went wrong in those 13 ticks of the clock but he likewise deserves credit for the many things we did right that season and game. Where I find fault with McD is with coordinators. We only have three, and it seems we replace one every year. It'd be better to find good ones (like Reid finding Spags) and then stick with them until they're hired away to be head coaches. But McD seems to have trouble finding good ones. Offense: Dennison, Daboll, Dorsey, Brady Defense: Frazier, McDermott, Babich ST: Crossman, Farwell, Smiley, Tabor

I hear you but what do you expect McD do? Fire himself? Fire Beane for not giving him better talent? Fire the trainer for not keeping defenders healthy?

Santa Clara because I currently live nearby. LA because the weather is nice and there's so much to do there and so much to eat (i.e. great food scene). NO because it's a unique city with character.

I went on a self-imposed exile from sports media. I committed to not visiting TBD, or any other sports site, until after the Super Bowl. I didn't want to read about who to blame for the Bills loss or wallow in the misery. I filled my time with reading, writing, meditating, hiking, cycling, and other healthier things. This is my first post in weeks.

Weirdly, I feel much far more calm and confident than I was last week against the Ravens. Intellectually, I know the Chiefs at Arrowhead in the playoffs is a huge mountain to climb. But intuitively I feel like this will be an easier win for the Bills than the nail-biting, high-blood-pressure-inducing victory against the Ravens. Hopefully, my intuition is right. If not and, the gridiron gods forbid, we lose in an epic rout - I'll deal with that when it happens. But I'm expecting the best today, not fearing the worst.

I have a lot of respect for Walsh and the influence he had on the game. But he didn't invent his offensive philosophy out of nothing. He took Sid Gilman's ideas and evolved them. And I'm a little dubious of "coaching trees." For example, John Rauch who went 7-20 as his time as a coach with the Bills and yet has an even more impressive coaching tree than Walsh. Walsh work for Rauch so Walsh's entire tree falls under Rauch. And Madden worked for Rauch too, so the Madden tree also belongs to Rauch. Most the coaches today can trace their tree back to Rauch - or a bunch of other coaches. Coaches move around so much that they can all trace back coaching trees back to most any tenured coach of the 1980s.

But Tyler Dunne told me that McDermott is a tyrant who micromanages his subordinate coaches who all hated him and wanted to leave.

You're correct. For simplicity's sake, I was assuming PATs were a given (100%). From an analytics perspective, taking the PAT or going for two is actually pretty much a toss-up as you laid out. From a coaching perspective, it's situational: how much do you trust your kicker if you kick, your offense if you go for two, or your players in general if you plan on taking it into overtime.

I'm not as old as Pete, but at 66 my professional "energy" is the same as it's always been. I can't run as fast or as far as I used to. Not even close - though I am taking the husky for a 12-mile run with 2,000 feet of elevation gain in the Santa Cruz mountains today. I can't do as many push -ups or sit-ups. But I speak with the same passion that I did when younger and can work long hours without flagging. I'll guess Pete can too. As far as Xs and Os are concerned, I always thought Pete was pretty good on the defensive side of the ball. My bigger point is this: being older doesn't necessarily mean being less capable. These things do go hand in hand sometimes but not all the time. Some seniors are very sharp and energetic.

Imagine we have a time machine and go back to 1920 to watch the Akron Pros tie the Buffalo All-Americans 0-0 in the last week of the season. But we change history: we allow overtime (not a thing back then) to make sure the first year of the NFL has an undisputed champion. What are the chances of Buffalo winning in OT? Based on the best, most consequential evidence (i.e. the scoreboard), each team has an equal ability (or, in this case, inability) to score. It's a 50-50 proposition. Generally speaking, overtime games are toss ups.

So it's exactly like flipping a coin. Even now, a game goes into OT when after four quarters only when each team has demonstrated a perfectly equal ability to score. So who comes out in overtime is a 50-50 proposition unless one team had a significant injury late in the game.