The Frankish Reich

Very early returns: "better than the Bills"

Wasn't Gilliam inactive for the game? We had some good drives with that set this season. It's a mystery why Dorsey didn't mix it up more.

Yep. That's the inconvenient truth. 28 year old CB coming off a very serious knee injury. I think he'll be better next season, but I don't think he'll be anything like the shutdown corner he was close to being a couple years ago. In defense of Beane: this is what happens when your team is good. Based in part on cap considerations, you sign guys to extended contracts in which the team gets excess value in the early years, and the player gets seriously overpaid in the latter/decline years.

Well, that's certainly a glass half full take. Maybe I'm just a glass half empty guy, but my fear is the opposite: free agent/trade prospects for MIA/NYJ (Brady to Miami: I'd be surprised if it doesn't happen) will be less likely to be scared off by the Bills dominance since the Bills suddenly don't look so dominant.

Thanks for the post. This is what I’ve been saying: one good starter, two marginally acceptable starters (who really should be backups, including Morse at this stage of his career), 2 sub-replacement level players who amazingly continued to start all season long.

Well … no. I’ll still take Josh over Burrow, but raw talent isn’t the deciding factor here. Steve McNair had a lot more “raw talent” than Peyton Manning or Tom Brady. So did a lot of other guys who won’t be in the Hall of Fame or anywhere near it. Reading defenses, using good judgement, getting rid of the ball quickly — those skills are real, and even if you want to limit the idea of raw talent to physical attributes, the all-time greats usually have more of the intangibles than they do of physical attributes.

You really had to go there (the CJ Spiller reference)! I see what you mean though. Chan did get great value out of Spiller at the start. He knew how to get speed backs into the open field, which is something Dorsey basically never did.

Interesting, and that may explain a lot - taking a bend/don't break defense by design and making it even more passive in the postseason.

Well ... Tre, Hyde, and Miller are 3 of your 4 or 5 (Milano, Poyer) best players on defense. Frazier did a fantastic job holding it together during the season, and I'm not really sure that the secondary we were putting out there in the playoffs could have done better with lots of blitz action, etc. Tyreek, Waddle, Chase ... we would've been burned deep, and more than once. So was it the best possible defensive scheme? No, in retrospect it wasn't. But the loss of some major playmakers out there had a profound effect.

To this day that trade is still the biggest head scratcher in the Bills’ long history of head scratching moves. There was a reason it looked like McBeane were in over their heads in their first year and a half or so.

People don’t like to hear it, but Miami does (did) too. And will again IF they have a healthy Tua or another good (not even great) QB next year.

The part that makes me laugh: pre-season, and even well into the season, it was common to hear analysts say “the Bills have the best (or deepest) roster in the NFL.” Now all of a sudden we have Allen, Diggs, Milano, and a bunch of scrubs.

The players are generally there because they fit the scheme. The scheme first, the players second. And yes, it is a fine scheme and a tremendous group of players to execute it. It’s a scheme that got us to 13-3 and very nearly the top seed in the playoffs. It is also a scheme that allowed A lot of more marginal players to be hidden when stars (Hyde, Von) went down. Does it work well against high-powered offenses that don’t make many mistakes? No. We’ve seen that. But short of making wholesale changes to personnel (and particularly since we’re likely to have less, not more, in the way of impact playmakers over the next couple seasons with no Von, Poyer, and maybe Hyde), I don’t see a realistic option to change things. My realistic (partial) solution: plan on the Chiefs/Bengals/even a healthy Dolphins to hang 30 on is, and try like hell to get to 35 on offense. Shootout or bust, at least for now.

And even if he doesn’t retire, if you don’t waive him you run the risk of him missing time — maybe a lot of time — with his 7th official concussion. I like him, I like what he did for the team in his first couple years, but it just looks like time to bite the bullet and move on. I like Risner. I’ve seen a lot of him given Broncos saturation here in Colorado. He seemed to take a step back this year, but it’s difficult to say for sure since the Broncos offense was such a crap show in general. I think his best days may still be ahead of him.

The old favorite. What, it’s wrong to ask questions? it’s not wrong. But it is stupid.

Now it all becomes clear to me! (says every mega conspiracy theorist ever) But how are the Illuminati involved? The pope? The deceased queen?

Was it safely secured in the garage next to his 2014 Toyota Minivan? This is Mike Pence we’re talking about, not Classic Corvette Joey.

Old hat for dedicated PPP readers!

Gotta be, right? Joining the family business. I think the loss of Crowder was bigger than we realized. This offense was best when Beasley was still Beasley. McKenzie is a neat gadget player but never really learned the slot. Shakir may someday, but he didn't get the chance this year; that's on McD and Dorsey. This junior Florio is also right when he says Cook and then Hines were brought in to get the RBs involved in the passing game, but that was never really implemented. The Hines addition in particular suggests a disconnect between Beane and Dorsey, maybe Beane and McD too? We barely used him. It's Offense 101 that an aggressive pass rush is best slowed down with screens and draw plays. Where were they? Of course. A stupid comment in an otherwise perceptive tweet storm. As far as defense: I mentioned this before. It's the Billy Beane/Oakland A's thing -- "my [crap] doesn't work in the playoffs." The Frazier D is a great regular season D since you play average or below average offenses most of the time, particularly now in our division. Make most teams matriculate the ball downfield and they WILL make mistakes. Busted plays, penalties, dropped passes, and of course INTs and fumbles. Do that against a top offense and you just create 10 play/75 yard drives. Look at the Bengals yesterday: 2 (count 'em ... TWO) penalties. No turnovers. Every offensive drive but one a sustained/lengthy drive. They just don't beat themselves. So the Frazier offense (like the Billy Beane baseball roster) is a wonderful thing for getting to the playoffs with a high seeding. Once you're IN the playoffs you may need to change it up a bit. And he never does. It worked (barely) against the Dolphins last week because Skylar Thompson put together one nice drive but you knew he couldn't put together the two in a row that they needed. The Bengals? The put together half a dozen in a row just taking what Les gave them, 8-10 yards at a time.

Right. Even setting aside whether McD is the right HC going forward, Florio mentions something I hadn't thought of before: you bring in a new OC and Allen has a big year; that new OC is probably getting a head coaching gig somewhere else the next season. So there is a real bias toward hiring offensive-minded head coaches, and that makes a lot of sense in today's NFL. Not a "nonfactor." Cook had a fine rookie season despite a painfully slow introduction into the RB rotation. Shakir: same as Cook. Early season reps = late season/playoff big plays, but they never really got them. Benford and Elam had their moments, Benford early, Elam late. Both look like keepers to me. And Matt Araiza certainly made an impact ...

Right. The defensive playmakers other than Milano were out or playing hurt. Miller, Hyde: out. Poyer, White, even Jordan Phillips (his shoulder injury ruined his great interior pass rush): playing hurt. Now Simms has a point about the defense going forward. Miller may be effectively done - what will he have left in 2025 if he even does come back? White may or may not make it all the way back. Hyde may never play again, or play effectively again. Poyer will be gone. So that leaves Rousseau, who really seems to be dependent on having Miller on the opposite side at this early stage in his career.

True. For me ... I've been a hardcore bills fan for over 5 decades. At this point in my life of fandom, I find that it's just as important to enjoy a season -- the ups, the downs, the kind of narrative that unfolds from September to January -- as it is to have the season end triumphantly (after all, that's never happened in my life). This season just wasn't as enjoyable from a pure entertainment standpoint. Lots of close games, sure, but a little flat compared to 2020 and 2021 (and really flat compared to the bizarro "we broke the playoff drought in the most unexpected way" 2017). I think some of that may be the lack of Sunday afternoon games, but some is also that the team lost just a little bit of that youthful fire that made it so compelling the last few years.

This is huge. I remember when Russell Wilson broke out in Seattle and everyone said -- correctly -- that their huge advantage was not just having a really good QB; it was having a really good young QB on a cheapo 3rd round contract. Just another way in which competitive balance is always the equilibrium in the NFL

That's the thing. The Bengals drives against the Bills INCLUDING the canceled game (which didn't count in the stats, but that actually was played for about a quarter): - 7 plays, 66 yards, TD - 5 plays, 79 yards, TD - 10 plays, 72 yards, TD - 6 plays, 14 yards, Punt - 14 plays, 65 yards, FG - 6 plays, 44 yards, end of half (Bills saved by the bell) - 12 plays, 75 yards, TD - 5 plays, 61 yards, FG - 8 plays, 29 yards, Punt - 2 plays, 0 yards, End of Game So, not counting the garbage time "drives," the Bengals had: - 7 of 8 drives moved the ball at least 44 yards. The 44 yard drive resulted in the end of the half, so you could say 6 of 7 drives gained at least 61 yards. - again, not counting the garbage time or end of half drives, 6 of 7 drives resulted in points It was total domination. I am a Leslie Frazier defender, but ... here, the Bills saw what the Bengals were going to do to us on January 2. And then seemingly changed nothing, and let the Bengals do it all over again 20 days later. This wasn't close, and at least from the defensive standpoint, the January 22 game was a resumption of the January 2 game, nothing more or less. If the defense was exhausted and out of gas on January 22, I guess it was exhausted and out of gas on January 2 too.

did he tweet that if we'd kept the picks we could've had Justin Jefferson, the first seed/bye week this year (because Jefferson single-handedly beat us for the Vikes), and draft picks to trade for some other need, and that he could've been whining about Kirk Cousins last Monday instead of the Bills offense today? Please read and advise.