The Frankish Reich

5th down poetic Justice

There is something to that comparison.

Pretty sure that in the same situation the Bills would’ve tried to draw them offside then punted. Fortune favors the bold.

Yea. That is aggressive all right.

True. But people forget how good McNabb was in his peak years.

True. HOF head coach who also happens to be the best OC in the game. But as for personnel: they lost their best receiver this year. Before that they completely retooled their O line overnight. They lost their best RB a few years ago when they cut him (for good reason). They are turning guys like Pacheco into significant producers. They are really good. And Mahomes is really, really good

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.