HappyDays

The Chiefs OL is ridiculous. Mahomes comfortably sitting back and going through his reads. The Eagles fierce DL isn't even getting close.

These are the two best OLs in the league. 49ers 3rd best. No coincidence that is 3 of the 4 last teams.

What is your take on Jalin Hyatt? He's the speed receiver I've fallen in love from this draft. The only knock on him appears to be that he played in a college offense so it's hard to project how well he will translate to the pros. I remember with Watson the fear was somewhat similar in that he played against small school competition.

No I think the offense was designed high to low most of the time. It felt like Dorsey read somewhere that the team with more explosive plays tends to win the game and used that single data point to construct his offense. Very rarely did I see designed reads to Cook/Hines or Knox. To be fair Allen's elbow injury may have made it more difficult to rely on shorter throws down the stretch. It was noticeable after the injury that he was missing short and intermediate passes which I know he can hit in his sleep. Go back and watch the Lions game, it is extremely obvious. And we now know that that injury was more significant than the Bills let on and persisted through the whole season. Allen has spent years refining his mechanics to hit some of those shorter throws which don't come naturally to him, and suddenly had to change those mechanics halfway through a season. We like to think of our favorite football players as gods but human beings are affected by things like that whether they're open about it or not.

It really isn't though. "Most valuable" by its definition has to factor in the team around the player. We all know it's really decided based on stats and usually goes to the QB of the #1 seed in one of the conferences. You could argue that the primary reason Mahomes had better stats than Allen and ended up with the #1 seed is NOT the talent discrepancy between the QBs, but instead the discrepancy between their supporting cast and their coaching. Football is the most context driven sport. It isn't like basketball or baseball where one great player can single handedly take a game over. Coaching also matters more than in other sports. QB can take over a game more than any other position obviously, but the result of any given play or game or season is about a lot more than the QB. I don't think their skill position players are a lot better. If you had me compare it all, Chiefs have a slight edge in skill position talent, a large edge in OL talent, and a laughably enormous edge in offensive coaching.

I'm not comparing us to other teams. I'm comparing us to other contenders. Of the real Super Bowl contenders, factoring in skill positions, OL, and coaching, Allen clearly had less to work with than the other QBs. If our defense actually played to the level of its heavy investments then it may have worked out just as well, but since they consistently fall apart in the playoffs this means Allen was playing with less from his supporting cast and coaching, and also had no defense capable of slowing down top offenses. Mahomes, Burrow, and Hurts all got more from their offense AND from their defense once the playoffs started. We're past the point of debating MVP accolades. I don't care about that. I care about the Bills winning a Super Bowl. For that to happen they need to get Allen the kind of help that his peers on other contenders get. It's too late to get him better coaching so we'll just have to hope Dorsey figures it out next year. As far as skill positions and OL that needs to be Beane's primary focus this offseason.

Yeah I edited it right after I posted it. I think we would be the best possible candidate for Ben Johnson too. Come start your head coaching career with Josh Allen and Stefon Diggs. I know we have gone back and forth on McDermott's future here, but I will say Ben Johnson being available next year colors that conversation for me. I agree with you that trading picks for Sean Payton or hiring Jim Harbaugh is not a good enough outcome to justify moving on from McDermott. But if you have a chance to get the brightest young offensive mind in the NFL? Then yes I think potentially moving on a little too early is worth the swing.

I have said my preference after next season if we have another disappointing playoff exit is to hire Ben Johnson as head coach. One year with Detroit and he designed one of the most creative offenses I've ever seen, and got Jared Goff to perform at the best level of his career. My biggest fear is that we give McDermott too many chances and Ben Johnson goes on to become the next Kyle Shanahan with another franchise.

I don't think they're the same tiers. Kelce will go down as arguably the greatest TE in history. Diggs will go down as one of the best WRs of his era. I love Diggs but he is not clearly a Hall of Famer at this point. Kelce is a no brainer 1st ballot selection. I don't think you can throw those two in the same bucket. JuJu when he was the #2 to a great #1 option in Pittsburgh had 917 yards as a rookie even though he missed 2 games. His 2nd year he collected 1,426 yards. They tried to make him the #1 WR and that did not work, but as the #2 target to an elite #1 target he had proven himself before he came to KC. Davis on the other hand had 599 and 549 yards his first and second years respectively, and hit a career high of 836 yards this past year. Davis was a fun fantasy football debate in the offseason but otherwise he is an afterthought to most of the wider NFL community. He has yet to prove himself capable of producing as a #2 target in a high volume passing offense. JuJu has already done that. So again, not the same tier.

Hines played 11% of our offensive snaps since the trade. McKinnon played 47% of offensive snaps for the Chiefs. This is a Dorsey vs. Reid stat, not Allen vs. Mahomes. Why we refused to use the explosive RB we traded for, couldn't tell you. Why we refused to throw the ball to the pass catching RB that we spent a 2nd round pick on, couldn't tell you. It goes to show that for all the talk of comparing talent, the biggest discrepancy between Allen and Mahomes this past season BY FAR is coaching. Mahomes got Andy Reid, whose experience designing plays and calling offenses goes without saying. Allen got a first year OC and first time play caller. This commonly gets ignored in the discussion. So if you want to say the offensive weapons are a wash, okay, but there is no argument whatsoever with the offensive line and with the coaching. Why is there even a debate if their situations were comparable? It is not close. I would love to see what the Bills offense looks like for one drive with Case Keenum at QB starting at the 2 line. If anyone here thinks he leads us to a TD, I'd like to hear your reasoning.

Allen definitely became noticeably less accurate on short to intermediate throws from the Vikings game on. Driving the ball was not a problem, but placing the ball was.

Now imagine if once Reid got Mahomes he made it to one AFC Championship game and that was the extent of his accomplishments. That's where we're at right now with McDermott and Allen. If the same kind of disappointing playoff exit happens next year I think it is fair at that point to call for a change. Having an elite QB changes everything about the evaluation of the coaching staff. The clock on Allen's career is ticking. If McDermott can't even sniff a Super Bowl appearance after 4 years of elite QB play, we have to try and replace him with someone that can. The alternate view is that we thank McDermott for making the long awaited cultural turnaround, and for whatever role he played in obtaining the elusive franchise QB after a two decade wait, while acknowledging that he is not the guy to finish the job. If we have to replace him after next season some people might consider his stint here a failure. I wouldn't. He was the right man for the job coming out of the slapstick Rex Ryan regime. He did what the franchise needed and got paid I would think tens of millions of dollars for his efforts. We like to think of football teams as more than just corporations, but that's all they are. Sometimes a failing corporation needs a turnaround specialist to come in and whip it back into shape. That specialist doesn't usually stick around to take the corporation to the next level once his job is done. Maybe that's what McDermott is.

It was the throw that ended the drive right before Diggs' outburst. I believe it was either a corner or a post where Diggs was running towards the sideline and Allen threw it too far past him. This is off of memory, I don't have the heart to go back and find the exact play. I think right after the play we saw Allen make a little motion with his hand like he wanted Diggs to run the route a different way but I could be conflating two separate plays.

Mahomes Teller Hodgins One of these things is not like the other.

Well, I had an issue with it before it happened. Experience matters in any career. It was entirely predictable that once we got to the playoffs an inexperienced offensive play caller against a highly experienced defensive play caller was going to be a mismatch. I worry that we wasted a season of Josh Allen in his prime on Dorsey's training wheels. Best case scenario he takes a big step and ultimately gets hired away to be a head coach. Do we then let the next first timer in line do the same thing? As long as McDermott is here he needs someone with experience calling plays. My #1 desire was Doug Pederson. Obviously that ended up not being possible. I would have been okay with Joe Brady. I think he was more of a fall guy in Carolina and he had experience. Pep Hamilton is another one I would have looked at, he ended up in Houston. Right now personally I wish we could get rid of Dorsey and hire Frank Reich but there's pretty much no chance of that happening so I guess we're stuck. I'm no expert on all of the available names. I just want someone that has done the job before because our window is going to close fast.

I would bet any amount of money that Davis' next contract will exceed Hodgins' next contract. I don't even like Davis that much but if you are just looking at stats to try to prove Hodgins is a better receiver than Davis you are not using sound analysis. Hodgins will perennially live on the edge of a 53 man roster/practice squad. Davis will perennially be a top 4 WR for some team.

This is bad. And I 100% believe you. It makes sense with what we saw against the Bengals, Diggs laying into Allen on the sideline and Allen just staring straight ahead ignoring it as if he's been through this a thousand times before. It's hard enough for an NFL offense to function without the QB having to worry about how one of his targets will react to any given choice he makes. It's why the Chiefs got rid of Tyreek Hill, they didn't like that he was demanding the ball which put pressure on Mahomes to force throws to him instead of taking the best available option. I really don't like where this is heading.

Somebody made that up. The mic'd up audio that we usually see after games caught what Diggs said, but of course the Bills will never release that audio. I have it on good authority he said "What is your excuse now Josh?"

For me personally my frustration stems from the fact that we finally have an elite QB after a two decade wait and the prime of his career is going to be gone before we know it. So the stakes have gotten much higher. I suspect that many fans feel the same way, consciously or not. The 13 seconds debacle was the epitome of this - our QB had arguably the greatest performance in playoff history but got screwed over by his coaches and teammates (mainly on the defense). So everything is coming to a head now and yes frustrations are boiling over.

Yes. McDermott is the head coach, not Allen. In that situation you sit Allen down and say "Look I know Dorsey is your guy, but I need to do the right thing for this team at this stage of our championship window." If he's scared to have that conversation with Allen he is not the right person to lead this team.

Diggs needs to take it down just a notch. There's a fine line between being an ultra competitor who hates losing and being toxic to your team. Airing his feelings publicly is not the right way to handle his frustrations. Someone else on here can probably verify this but what Diggs said to Allen on the sidelines in the Bengals game was "What's your excuse now Josh?" Apparently Allen had missed that throw a couple times in practice and told Diggs he would hit it in the game, but didn't. So Diggs laid into him. Which IMO is not the right way to handle it. Try to raise your QB up, don't hit him below the belt when he's already down. I'm sure Allen and Diggs are still cool but come on man.

He made a big mistake hiring a rookie OC. Josh Allen and Stefon Diggs in their prime deserve better. A sixteen year old driver doesn't start with a Ferrari. As a defensive minded head coach McDermott needs an experienced OC that he can mostly leave alone. It felt like they never really considered outside candidates. Dorsey "earned it the right way" so here's the keys to your Ferrari young man. I never got the sense that Dorsey was connecting plays together and he did a poor job keeping his star players under control. That's where his inexperience became a problem. And yes McDermott has to own that mistake.

I just looked on Spotrac. There would be a $12 million dead cap hit this year and a $26 million dead cap hit in 2024 if we traded him this offseason. So nevermind...

You know what, I don't think a Diggs trade is 100% off the table if they decide he's a little too demanding about his role. That's why the Chiefs traded Hill. He was demanding the ball so they were forcing plays to him instead of just running the best offensive play to beat the defensive coverage. They decided it was better to get a big haul for him and let Mahomes run the offense without Hill's demands in the back of his mind. I wouldn't personally trade Diggs but it's not off the table. BUT if we did trade him we would need to get back a 1st rounder obviously, and then find a way to get DeAndre Hopkins so we still have a #1 WR. Then use one of our 1sts to draft another WR. If we pulled all of that off I could see myself coming around to it. Still don't think it is actually going to happen though.

Hodgins is their slightly better version of Duke Williams. He is producing because they have no one else to throw the ball to. This is not a Wyatt Teller situation where we mistakenly let a legitimate top tier player go to another team. If Hodgins was here we would still have a big need at WR next year. He's just a placeholder.