fridge

It goes both ways, brother. Criticism of Taylor is not unwarranted, despite your personal opinion.

Jesus, no. The OC at a .500 Syracuse team is not what I'm talking about.

Yep. For me, this is great news!

Wow. Head Coach bares no responsibility, but QB coach does. You live in a weird world sometimes.

jw is in a group chat with t pegs. we know this now. Here's the quote from the article, but still click on the link above to give jw those sweet sweet numbers:

The above carefully omits that he went to the playoffs once in four years with Philip Rivers as his QB. He's hardly a QB whisperer. No idea why we need to pretend he's not a complete crap-shoot of an OC. You can't cherry picking a couple of above average seasons and act like he'll do that (one of them, mind you, is being a QB coach...), and that he won't field an offense like his past two seasons.

No, I get it. He definitely had some runs in the last few years. I'm trying to stay positive, it's just that I don't know a lot about the guy, and reading through a lot of his history I see as many causes for concern as I do highlights. I don't hate the move, and it's probably the least opinionated I've felt about a HC in the last 5 or 6 (HA!). Was he a hot candidate last year? It sort of feels like we're hiring him with the whole, "this past season never happened, but..." mentality - something I'm not a huge fan of, to be honest.

Okay...I'm not trying to pick you apart, but these aren't exactly amazing resume bullet points for this guy. 1. Coaching Kyle Orton's best year should not be the top highlight of any potential OC. 2. That offense was...well, I remember the Bills picking Tebow off 4 times in the first half once...let's just say it was fluky at best. I'm not sure how brilliantly he "customized his offense," but rather they ran a ton of college plays to help Tebow out. 3. Yeah, I'm aware he was the QB coach of a team that went to and lost the superbowl, but I mean, really...that's reaching isn't it. That was almost 15 years ago now. Great, more excuses. I realize you can't just grab a guy with a ton of highlights off the street, but I was hoping for and would lean towards some fresh faces. These loser retreads are getting old.

So he fielded a worse defense than Rex did last year... That's wonderful.

Can anyone explain why McCoy would be a good OC? I'm really skeptical on this one. What has he really done? He was a complete failure as a head coach and his offense in Denver wasn't exactly memorable (definitely not in the passing game)... so what is it that we see here that would make people upset that he's going to Denver?

I honestly feel like I'm living in a dreamworld. The McDermott hire is what it is. It's not the guy that I wanted, but I see why he was hired. Norv Turner and Mike McCoy as potential OC candidates though...is this for real? Can anyone explain to me why I should even be remotely excited for these coaches that I distinctly remember as being complete and utter failures?

obligatory:

Yes, I have. Have you? He has never even remotely lost control of the room like Whaley did. Just because Bill doesn't have an outwardly glowing relationship with the media, doesn't mean that he loses control with them. He has half the reporters too scared to even ask him a question, for fear that it will be too dumb. A complete reversal from our situation. No idea why people keep bring that comparison up.

Is this in reference to anything specific? Out of context it's kind of difficult to follow what he's insinuating.

Ah, good call. I didn't catch that.

Here's a fun little contest to try and guess the new head coach: buffalohype.com Seems simple enough, and there's a raffle with a $250 prize.

Well said. This is a wonderful recounting.

Sure, it does seem logical. Just like it seems logical for the owners to fire the coach without talking to the GM about it first. Very, normal, logical behavior.

You're saying you're proud the team is letting the GM be in charge of the HC hire. That's how far we've gone. Just doing things the normal way gets us excited. It's a joke.

None. It's been proven time, and time again. It's a mess. I'm starting to think they make it so confusing on purpose. Constantly changing everyone's roles, constantly saying one thing and doing another, it's all part of creating a separation between their lack of success and their individual accountability. It's the reason they've gone with the rinse-repeat HC and QB carousel. It's a mess. They treat their press conference as a marketing piece. They over-think and over-calculate the simplest decisions. Russ Brandon has sat himself next to Whaley or the HC at nearly all of those PC's and today he didn't because there would be accountability and god-forbid someone actually call him out.

I don't hate Whaley, but I finally got around to watching the PC... This whole thing is a mess. Some people are calling the media vultures, and I have to disagree. The Bills do not have an apparent hierarchy and it's maddening to try and figure out who is responsible for what. The GM didn't hire or fire the coach, which is absolutely insane. To me, it's alarming the lack of control the GM has. I can only imagine Brandon brought this organizational workflow with him when the Pegulas assumed their role. A tactic in longevity is removing accountability and I will again assume that's the handy work of Brandon. Even Whaley being quick to correct people that Brandon's lack of involvement in this HC search is only because of his increased duties within the PS&E is a joke. It clearly came from Russ himself that it needs to be stated that way. This whole franchise is a mess organizationally and I expect no difference until the Pegulas bring in someone from the outside and give them real power AND accountability. I wish there was a hidden camera so we could see the reaction on their face when they learned about our current operational structure. Until then, I truly will expect nothing but the same.

Glad to see you're back. No idea where we'd be without your constant negativity.

Tyrod has handled this type of thing with much less class than EJ ever did. Not sure that means anything, but I do think EJ is a better natural leader. Tyrod is more of a lead by example type, which is hard to do when the team is ranked 30 in passing.

Serious question... how come none of our snarky journalists have ever followed up on the "robust analytics department"? They ask a lot of probing, annoying, sometimes rude questions, but I genuinely think the analytics charade is worth commenting on. In all of his infinite marketing shill-ness, Brandon tried to use a buzz word, "analytics" -- and shove it down our throats in a couple interviews, including an end-of-the-year press conference. They even sent out a nice press release when they hired a number cruncher from Xerox. My question is... in such a transparent "marketing only" move, how come he didn't get called out for it. What's his excuse? The Pegulas bought the team and we no longer moved forward with that? What, they didn't want a robust analytics department? Many of the great Russ apologists will defend this as nothing important, or say it has nothing to do with football, but to me it absolutely does. It's not just the lying that bothers me, but it's the fact that actual analytics is something we've been behind the curve on for so many years. It's annoying to trot out a buzz word or a phrase because you think it will sell when that buzz word actually represents something the team dearly needs.

Some of you have just been trolled by a 91-year old. Impressive, really.