Livinginthepast

I thought about this a lot since the start of the season. It seems to me impossible that Pro players do not know how to tackle, yet with this defense we see it a lot. It also seems weird that some of these players missing the tackles are young, fast guys in their physical prime. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that the defensive scheme (soft zone often) puts them so far from the players they have to tackle, that their angles are bad which makes it much more difficult to get good initial contact on the offensive player. The older guys? they know how to tackle but are athletically washed and slowed down by time and injuries and sadly also out of position.

Very true and it worked best when Dabol was the OC with Allen. Since then its been Allen on his own doing it with one hand behind his back because of his amateur hour OCs. Is it still possible for the offense to get out to a big lead? Yes but far less likely with sputtering schemes of Brady. As soon as a team hangs with us because we cant do anything on offense and our defense gets tired from being on the field, the game becomes much more difficult.

This is the huge elephant in the room that most Bills fans seem to think is verboten to talk about. McD is responsible for the poor defense because they didnt bring in the best people to interview (Hell did they bring in anybody to interview? Dont remember?). Why? because either Beane or McD felt too threatened by losing control if that person had a different philosophy. So they sacrificed the team success for ego. Which is pure selfish idiocy. As soon as a HC does this, the team is toast. Whats even worse?? They did practically the same thing on Offense, first with Dorsey (a terrible internal hire) and then with the junior intern Brady. Daboll pushed Josh to be the best and I think a competent DC would do the same for our defense by abandoning schemes that repeatedly dont work and holding players to account.

All true and the last point is intriguing!!

We really need normal service restored for the Bills. The last 2 weeks the team has embarrassed themselves on both sides of the ball. A loss here would be devastating for our chances at the 1 seed but an unimpressive ugly win would be also distressing, especially after having 2 weeks off to prepare. They absolutely need a solid win with no bad penalties.

I think this is a good question overall about McD what does he actually bring to the table for the Bills? He doesn't make decisions on Offense, His defense is bad but supposedly handled by someone else, His in game decisions are usually poor. His pre game rah rah speeches sometimes contain questionable motivational content. I guess he brings a stable environment and is a nice guy? Maybe a man of faith for the religious players on the team?

I think he might be more washed than Cooper. I also think that its Brady thats the issue so getting any WR is going to lead to nothing unless you have Josh call his own plays or Brady maybe plays some more Madden 26 and adds to his playbook (written on a napkin).

Can they be worse than what is happening now? On the other hand if the scheme is flawed like many have been saying, their possible effectiveness will be neutralized by Babich's inability to use them.

The young fans dont know what it was to have a revolving door of clowns at HC and GM as the drought was. I really appreciate having competent grownups at both positions like McD and Beane. That being said I dont take offense when people criticize them as not being good enough. I think there is ample evidence so far on McD not being able to get us to a SB. I also think Beane deserves some heat for whiffing on some picks and free agent signings. He has also inexplicably overpaid some players on this team not allowing us much wiggle room in the cap. There's no point sugarcoating these justifiable criticisms.

I think Maye is a good solid QB and it pains me to say that as he is on the Pats (an organization that deserves to be bottom dwellers for a decade if there was such a thing as karma). He also seems to work well with McDaniels who has tailored a nice offensive gameplan for him. That being said I find it infuriating that we made it as easy as possible for him to beat us 2 weeks ago. Just like we made it as easy as possible for Penix (who is middling talent) to beat us last week. Why is it that teams were able to make Josh look terrible on occasion in his first 2 years by using sophisticated defenses and mixing things up to confuse a young QB (Belichick did this among others) but Babich and McD could not? I honestly think that if we replaced Babich with a real time AI DC we would probably do better than currently even with the injuries and lack of talent on the D. Same goes for our offense.

It seems in the NFL over the last couple of years that unless you kick a FG on the last play of the game that you run the risk of losing even with less than a minute on the clock. Maybe its something to do with the new kickoffs increasing field position or the fact that defenses play too much soft zone /prevent but it seems like no game is really over until it really is 00 on the clock.

Have to say though that Darts almost game winning drive was probably the luckiest and least deserving I have ever seen.

Giants had that game, then the Broncos had that game, then the Giants had that game. Then the Broncos won that game

OMG Giants are still going to blow this??

I was watching the Titans game earlier and I think they just conceded the game before halftime when they had it at their own 40 with 3 timeouts and just ran out the clock. I guess the new coach McCoy is about as bright as his fired predecessor.

Vrabel is undoubtably a douche but he seems to get the most out of his teams. They will probably kill the Titans but maybe by some kind of miracle, Tennessee gets the fired coach bounce.

Are you saying that its impossible for an NFL OC (with all the help/spotters he has) to make adjustments IN GAME? against a team that blitzes on almost every down? That's literally part of the job description. And if Brady is too blind to see it (which is impossible), McD should have been all over him to do so at halftime at least.

And good coaches make adjustments in the game. Brady froze in the headlights.

The stars would have to align for us to win a SB with this crew. Seriously, you would need the following: 1. Superman play from Allen (this is the most probable circumstance as he does this with regularity) 2. A great offensive system (currently unattainable with our high school quality OC) 3. A great defensive system (currently unattainable with our high school quality DC and HC. In addition the big plays seem to have evaporated). 4. A bit of luck (sometimes possible for the Bills but usually not so much) 5. Bad luck for our opponents (sometimes possible) 6. Staying clear of injuries (with this current team this seems to be impossible). We also dont seem to have any depth at most backup positions and the drop off is huge, that's clearly on Beane. 7. Key injuries to opponents best players (Well Lamar is out but golden balls Mahomes never gets hurt) 8. Playoff games where our HC doesn't have to make life and death decisions (we all know how that goes) 9. Get into a game or games where the worst officials in sports (the NFL refs) don't make an incompetent or bias calls against us and our team doesn't take boneheaded suicidal penalties. (this one is the least likely of all to happen) 10. Playing at home for all possible games until SB. (doable but contingent on other points above). McD and co had their best shot in 2021 but 13 seconds happened.

Still really pisses me off. Fun guy, solid player, great attitude and made several clutch catches where others failed, but you know who needs those kind of players?

Most competent OCs would find ways to punish blitzing teams like the Falcons, but not our little Joe, he looks at Josh getting hammered by blitzing defenders as a test of resilience!

I couldnt help but think watching that game how superior both defenses were to ours in their pass coverage and even with that both defenses were being picked apart by two vet Qbs. It also points to how much better the offensive game plans and schemes are to our amateur hour Brady show. Both QBs looked like they were playing in 2012 not 2025!

Another example of dumb coaches in the NFL. Sure its an uncommon play but you dont allow the QB to set up to throw and all his receivers all that time to get into position and make a catch possible. Yet time after time you see teams do this. McD and co have been especially bad at this. What's even more incredible is that the Bengals coach did it against Rodgers when he is the absolute master of the Hail Mary throw!! How dumb can you get!

This is correct but the fact that Brady did almost nothing to counteract the non stop blitzing with screens or draws was ridiculous. And on all those blitzes, how did the receiving corps not get open ?

Ok since you dont seem to understand the gist of my point despite my repeated explanations: 1. I DID NOT say the refs cannot confer about a flag so why are you bringing that up repeatedly? They dont normally confer about THIS penalty (illegal shift) because it NORMALLY gets called during the play because thats when its SUPPOSED to be called. Its a LIVE BALL foul. They would be more likely to confer to cancel a penalty in this instance not to impose one. And how exactly is it in the rules that NY can insist to the field refs that they call a late penalty? Does that seem legit to you? 2. I DID NOT say that the refs SHOULD NOT have called the penalty. If the Lions broke the rules (illegal motion) then flag them for a penalty. The reason that many people are upset by this flag coming so late is that it should have been called as soon as the ball was hiked. It also should have been called by multiple officials as it should be obvious. Just like a player in motion towards the LOS. Calling a flag so late for that penalty is at best unprofessional and at worse incompetent officiating. 3. You want me to " Just admit that you wanted the Chiefs to get screwed by a missed call." Huh?? That's a bizarre takeaway from my point especially for someone on a Bills forum. I would just like the Chiefs to be officiated at the same standard as every other team in this league. And right now it doesn't look like they are.