HappyDays

What do you think McDermott's record would be with Alex Smith as his QB over the last 5 years? Reid was 50-26 with Alex Smith so a 65.8% win percentage. McDermott with Allen over the last 5 years (since he became elite) is 61-22 so a 73.5% win percentage. Is it fair to say we lose an average of 3 more games per season with Alex Smith instead of Allen? If anything that feels generous. But running with that that would put our record at 46-37 over the past 5 years which is a 55.4% win percentage. That's our ceiling with a QB that Andy Reid was taking to the playoffs every year. An all time great QB absolutely makes Reid a better coach. The weird thing is that an all time great QB hasn't led to the same outcome for McDermott.

Mostly yes. Defenders are always going to punch at the ball. He made a big mistake trying to run horizontally instead of running vertically away from the defenders or just going down, and then he just got careless with the ball. Either way it's undebateable that our defensive scheme and play calling and overall play was not remotely good enough in either game. We forced two punts over two games. The Chiefs once again had historically elite efficiency against us. It's the same story we see in every single playoff run. I'm honestly at a loss that anybody could think it is going to change at this point. I know we can get past KC but it's not going to happen through the defense. 40 points per game. That should be the goal.

Hot take - they were very bad against Baltimore too but Lamar and Andrews made crushing unforced errors. And we probably would have given up 4 straight TDs to start the Chiefs game if Mahomes didn't randomly drop the ball. Let's stop with this fantasy that the defense is ever going to perform at a championship level. We're either going to run up the score or it's never going to happen for us.

Why not? We basically scored 30 points against them with Mack Hollins as our best WR. Why can't we get closer to 40 with a big infusion of pass catching talent?

I don't dispute that coaching was a problem on our final drive, but talent is the great equalizer. That quick TD drive at the end of the 1st half was capped by a 34 yard downfield completion. The end of half drive against Baltimore featured an 18 yard DPI on 3rd down. The problem is the respective targets on those plays were Hollins and Coleman and neither of them have proven to be consistently reliable downfield targets, so we need more there. A lot more. Because on the drives when we didn't have those downfield completions it was really really tough sledding. It took multiple 4th down conversions, multiple fumble recoveries, a ridiculous individual effort from James Cook at the goalline, etc. to sustain those other drives. And when you live in that low margin for error world, you leave yourself at the mercy of the officials and of an inexperienced pass catcher having to make the critical play of the game. If you want to remove the random luck factors you have to impose your will with consistent explosive offense.

Yeah and it's worth noting that in our regular season matchup we defeated two of his blitzes by throwing downfield to Cooper 1v1. Both of those completions turned into TD drives. But by the time we got to the playoffs Cooper had inexplicably become a non-factor. We need that 1v1 boundary mismatch to have a chance. Ideally two of them. That has to be the focus of the offseason IMO. I know everyone else is hoping we trade for Maxx Crosby. Not me. I'm hoping we trade for DK Metcalf or some similar move. We can't get past KC with ball control. We need to completely overwhelm them and run up the score.

I was talking about Kincaid. Beane said he needs to get stronger this offseason to have a bigger impact. And yeah that's fine, it's a physical position, I just think his mental game is where he's really lacking.

I found it interesting they called out his physicality. To my eyes that wasn't the problem this year. Maybe as a blocker but not as a pass catcher. The problem was mostly mental and technical IMO. He doesn't do a good job of finding windows in zone or detailed route running to separate in man. He doesn't read leverage well with the ball in his hands. So sure go pump some iron this offseason but mostly I think he needs to watch some Travis Kelce film, compare it with his own, and learn how to make himself available to his QB. Make sight adjustments, subtly move to match Allen's movements and eyes, etc. The game needs to slow down for him.

I'm somewhere between minor disappointment and nonchalance about it. The whole operation in all three phases was not good enough when it mattered. Fire Smiley or don't. Whatever. I have basically no thoughts positive or negative about anything that was said today. Either these guys are going to make the necessary changes to get us over the hump, or they will continue to waste Allen's career. I don't expect them to prostrate themselves in front of the media or explain their entire offseason plan. Just get it done.

Good news is there are zero excuses next year. A lot of bad cap space is coming off the books, Allen will likely be extended to lower his cap hit, all the coaches are back, the core of the roster will all be back, and we have a lot of draft picks. This was a rebuild/reload year. Okay, fine. Next year has to be the one then.

Hmm that's disappointing. Oh well.

Yeah I am extremely disappointed with how he ended the season. After the stretch of Tennessee and Seattle I was ready to take a victory lap over my support of him because it looked like he had really started to figure things out. But he ended the season playing worse than he did in game one. Hopefully we can chalk it up to the injury but it's concerning to see a player regress that much and never turn their trend line back around.

Yes a few things jump out from this game. A few plays KC is in bunch set and all our guys are lined up at the exact same depth which creates easy rub opportunities. That's coaching not talent. On Worthy's TD Hamlin gets manned up 1v1 against him. Ok so yes that's a talent discrepancy but the obvious mismatch happens because of coaching. Our final offensive series was not about talent at all, it was Spags beating Brady on 4 consecutive plays. Mahomes had the highest success rate per dropback of his entire career and this is not close to the best offensive cast he's had around him. Mahomes was able to scramble and get out of the pocket almost at will, while KC successfully contained Allen - Mahomes scrambled 6 times, Allen scrambled 1 time. All of this points to a much larger coaching gap than talent gap. We just got through our 8th season with McDermott and what has improved since his 1st? More 4th down aggressiveness I guess? You'd think he'd have some of the finer coaching details down at this point but there's no improvement year over year.

Joe Marino confirming Allen broke his throwing hand on the 2 point conversion at the end of the 1st half: Just insane the amount of injuries he had to play through this year.

I don't want to take anything away from his performance, but on his TD he was manned up 1v1 against Damar Hamlin. I mean that just can't happen. Massive coaching failure.

I hate that this is accurate. My fear last draft was that we'd take a safety in the first two rounds. It happened and it looks as bad in hindsight as I thought it would. My fear this draft is we'll take a DT who profiles best as a run stopper in the 1st round. It does unfortunately seem to line up with this regime's priorities. I just can't accept using your most valuable asset on a run stopper. That does nothing to get us over the hump. If we go for a legit pass rusher ok I can live with that.

Thanks as always for putting in the work Gunner. I'm going to be disappointed if we take two DL to start the draft, especially starting with a DT that doesn't seem to have any high end traits, but I'm kind of expecting it. Seems like that's where the value is projected to be and we know Beane will invest more there than anywhere else on the roster. I'd feel a lot better if that 1st pick was Mike Green but there's been some buzz about him this week in Senior Bowl practices and I expect him to ultimately end up in the top 20, maybe even top 15. Every team needs explosive pass rushers. Isaiah Bond strikes me as too Curtis Samuel like and I don't think that Beane will want to give up on that contract this early. No surprise to anyone on here - I would go WR with that 1st pick. I haven't done anything more than read some draft profiles of players expected in that range, but Matthew Golden who you have going right after our pick seems like a great fit. Speed, separation, route running. He gives us everything we're missing outside right now. You read the negatives on him and it's "run blocking" and "focus drops." I can more than live with that if he is consistently making himself an available target for Allen.

Remove the Garrett part of it and I'm in. Whatever we'd spend on him, use it on more offense. I've gone fully in that direction at this point. On defense I'd re-sign Benford, let Rousseau play out his 5th year option before deciding if he's worth an extension, and fill in holes with mid and late round draft picks. Score 40 PPG and it won't matter.

You say this but we've never gotten average playoff defense. So for the current regime it's not easy, it's impossible. I believe that with Josh Allen an A+ offense is possible. We came close in 2020 but they weren't ready to go all the way yet. I think the new mature Allen with a similar supporting cast and a much better run game could be A+. In any case I'm now fully convinced that's the only path to glory so that's what I'd shoot for regardless of how feasible it is.

So this is the usual counterargument, that the offense was fine we just need the defense to be better. I was making that same argument myself after the 13 seconds game so I get it. But I was wrong then. Basically where you're coming from is we have an A- offense and a D+ defense, so we need to raise the defense to a B- and then we'll win. I'm saying forget the defense. Make the offense an A+ offense and make the defense irrelevant. Because no matter how much we've invested in the defense over the years, we still end up with the same result. I sincerely believe that we could spend every single cap dollar and draft pick on defense this year, and still in next year's playoff matchup against KC they will punt no more than twice and the game will come down to our offense having to score with no time remaining. That's how our last three playoff losses against them have gone. So I've accepted that's always going to be the game script under this coaching staff. The solution is not to try and change the game script, but to try and change the outcome within that game script. So adding to the offense is the only possible solution. 40 points per game. That has to be the strategy.

I agree but I think they have the strategy backwards. If we come into the game knowing for a fact our opponent won't punt more than twice, we need to punt no more than once. And like you said our offense as currently structured has a way too low margin for error. And so the game ultimately comes down to the officials spotting the ball correctly on one of our five QB sneaks. We can't leave it up to the officials. We have to control the game ourselves and that starts with explosive offense.

And I don't even mind having an offense that commits to the run. Having an offense that can do everything well is obviously the preferred outcome. I just don't like how everything about the offense has become about small ball including the passing game. We have maybe the most gifted thrower in the history of the NFL and we intentionally built our passing offense to almost exclusively take place within 5 yards of the LoS. KC had to run their offense that way last year, and they spent their offseason signing Hollywood Brown and drafting Worthy. They made it a point to try and build a downfield passing offense again. We went the opposite direction. Then when we traded for Cooper to open up that part of our offense, we never committed to actually using him. And like you alluded to this offensive philosophy has gotten our QB killed. Seemingly every four games or so Allen had some kind of injury pop up, including the game that just ended our season. We can't have a defense that can't get more than two stops against the Chiefs, and also an offense that can't afford to make a single mistake because it relies on 10 play drives. That is the opposite of complementary football. I miss the days where a false start or holding penalty or drop didn't immediately end a drive, where we would be in 3rd and 15 and I'd think "we got this." Most of all I hate that I feel like I made this exact post word for word last offseason and here we are again. The "everybody eats" mentality failed to get us over the hump. 40 points per game. That has to be the mentality from now on.

Yeah I've been saying this for two offseasons now. Build an offense that can just steamroll opponents all the way to the Super Bowl. That's the only way we're getting it done. Hopefully everyone can see it now, including the people making decisions for the team.

Actually the biggest issue we had in the playoffs was throwing the ball downfield. It showed up in the Ravens and Chiefs games. We're asking the offense to execute 10+ play mistake-free drives with multiple 3rd/4th down conversions against extremely well coached defenses. It's too much to ask. Our two easiest TD drives against KC happened because of two big completions to Hollins downfield. We have Josh Allen - that ability should be the identity of our offense, not something we dust off a couple times a game. Beane totally blew it. We were having the exact same conversation at this time last year and all he did was add a gadget/slot WR in FA, and then in a WR heavy draft he took exactly one before wasting his next three picks. We've never made KC punt more than twice in a playoff game. So the standard is set - we need an offense that punts no more than once. We do that, we almost certainly win. Do anything it takes this offseason to have that caliber of offense.