Logic

I'm not sure about cap space implications, but... Signing Ndamakung Suh (who recently said he wants to play this season) and attempting to acquire Adam Thielen, DJ Chark, or Darius Slayton would be the moves I'd be looking into. A linebacker would also be lovely, I'm just not sure what teams are realistically looking to trade away good WILL linebackers who are better than what the Bills already have. If there IS such a team, maybe one looking to sell off some veterans for draft picks, then by all means, do it. But echoing what others have said in this thread, Jewell ain't that guy.

Nothing says "mature, nuanced discourse" like drawing absolutes, calling the head coach a name, and accusing the person you're talking to of "drinking the kool-aid". Nice chatting with you. Have a lovely evening.

Yeah the way they won 13 games last season, losing the other 3 by a combined 8 points, showed how much McDermott had lost the team. Couldn't be clearer.

Lavonte David and Devin White. Those two plus Antoine Winfield Jr patrolling the middle of the field could make for a long night for the Bills offense.

My responses are bolded. Put simply, I respect your position that it's time to replace McDermott, and I respectfully disagree. We need to see how this season plays out, in my opinion.

This question seems impossible to answer because we don't know who would be available. Take Ben Johnson, for instance. He seems to be a popular choice around here lately. He just pulled himself off the table after being interviewed for a head coaching position this past offseason, stating that he'd rather remain OC for the Lions. The tough part, ultimately, is that we don't know what coordinators would make good head coaches. I believe that it takes more than just Xs and Os to be a good head coach. I look for leadership, first and foremost. And that kind of thing is hard to gauge for us as fans, without knowing what these meeting rooms look like or what qualities of leadership these coordinators do or do not have. To answer your question the best I can: I am starting to believe that I would prefer that the Bills had a very astute offensive mind running the show. I believe that the current NFL is dominated by forward thinking offenses, and it's hard for me to buy into the notion that the Bills will ever truly have that as long as McDermott is head coach. Further, even if they DO get an offensive coordinator who is forward thinking and innovative, he'd likely be poached after a year or two. Up until very recently, I've been fine with a "defensive guy" being head coach, for two main reasons: One, I felt that his leadership and culture-building trumped whatever he lacked in offensive prowess. Two, I feel that pairing a consistently elite defense with a great quarterback can still be a championship recipe in the modern NFL. The thing that has started to change my mind on these factors is, as to the first point, that for all the "leadership and culture-building" McDermott offers, the Bills have far too many "wakeup call" games per year, where they look unprepared and uninterested. And as to the second point, the "consistently elite defense" folds when it runs into truly elite offenses, particularly in the playoffs. So if your culture and leadership aren't producing detail-oriented, consistent, complementary, winning football, and your bread and butter (in McDermott's case, defense) isn't showing up in key moments, then what exactly are you bringing to the table? For these reasons, my stance on McDermott definitely being the no-doubt-about-it guy to lead the Bills has begun to soften. ALL OF THAT HAVING BEEN SAID...how do you possibly fire a guy who wins you the division and gets you to the playoffs every single year, whose playoff record is not bad overall, when compared to his contemporaries, and who is currently leading a team with a winning record and a legitimate shot at another division title? You can't do it. That's why, despite everything I just stated, I still feel that it's premature to discuss firing McDermott at this moment in time. Talk to me again after the season, and once we know what replacement candidates are available.

Thanks for this post. I believe that if Sean McDermott were to be available this offseason, he'd be hired VERY quickly by another team. He is the Bills' all-time leader in winning percentage as a head coach, ahead of Hall of Famer Marv Levy. He has led the Bills -- who hadn't made the playoffs for seventeen consecutive seasons -- to the playoffs in five of his six seasons as head coach. He routinely posts double digit wins. He coached the Bills to a 13-3 record last season despite absolutely unreal levels of challenges (which I won't go into here, as everyone knows by now). Even now, as we all sit here and feel like the sky is falling, the Bills are 4-3 and a game back from the division lead. I understand that he has overseen several playoff failures. But I think Bills fans often forget that it's hard to even GET to the playoffs as regularly as the Bills do, and it's no guarantee that that success can be replicated so easily by another head coach. Think of the Chargers. Very good quarterback, good offensive skill players, some elite defensive players, and yet, they routinely fail to be playoff contenders. People tend to assume that with a roster like the Bills have, the head coach position is "plug and play", and [insert flavor of the month coordinator here] would DEFINITELY be an upgrade over Sean McDermott. Well, not so fast. Be careful what you wish for. In short, I think it's more than loyalty that keeps coach McDermott employed. I think it's the fact that he's been wildly successful. While I maintain my concerns about Ken Dorsey and, if the offensive ship isn't righted, would support potentially moving on from him in the offseason...I think it's too early and not yet reasonable to suggest replacing Sean McDermott. Talk to me again at the end of the season, but as it stands now, he has proven to be a very good NFL head coach.

This has been my concern about Ken Dorsey as offensive coordinator. I'm actually NOT too worried about his gameplanning or playcalls. I don't always love his personnel usage and I don't always feel he maximizes the talent on his roster, but even THAT isn't my biggest concern. No, my biggest concern has always been -- and remains -- that he doesn't actually know how to coach Josh Allen. He doesn't know what buttons to push, and when. He doesn't know the things to be in his ear about, to emphasize and de-emphasize. He doesn't know how to hype him up when he's too low or calm him down when he's too high. Brian Daboll had a great relationship with Josh. He seemed to know how to do all of these things. I don't actually think Daboll was worlds better as a PLAYCALLER than Dorsey is. I just think he was way better at coaching Josh Allen. The way that Josh's decision-making and his seeing of open targets in the middle of the field seem to have regressed, his funky rollercoaster of mindsets from game to game...all of this seems like coachable stuff, and I fear no one is doing it, or at least doing it effectively. Not Dorsey, not Brady, no one. Nothing I've seen this season has changed my mind on this, and in fact, this season has only reinforced this notion.

I added in the release year specifically because I figured someone would come back at me with B!tch's Brew, which is......fair. Not CORRECT, but fair. 😝

My feelings about this can best be summed up by the song title of track one of Miles' Davis's best album, released in August, 1959. That album's title, incidentally, also aptly describes this uniform combo. The jazz people know what I'm talkin about. The rest of you are uncultured swine.

1. Ben Johnson's lack of ability to incorporate a talent as electrifying as Jahmyr Gibbs into the gameplan until injuries forced his hand has been a sight to behold. 2. It may be due to head coach Dan Campbell's input, but the Lions offense is primarily a power run team. If you like the idea of the Bills running on 1st and 2nd downs and generally being one of the run heaviest teams in the league, perhaps Johnson is for you. 3. Even if we agree that Ben Johnson IS a good offensive coordinator, good offensive coordinators do not always make good head coaches. 4. Sean McDermott has the second (or is it first by now?) highest winning percentage of any head coach in Bills history. He also has one of the top five winning percentages in the NFL over the past several seasons. I believe he's second only to the Chiefs and Andy Reid since 2020. 5. Be careful what you wish for. Fans tend to equate "new coaching hire" with "automatic improvement", but that's simply not a guarantee. They old saying "it can't get much worse"? Well, it absolutely CAN get worse. 6. I'm not necessarily even opposed to a coaching change in the offseason if this Bills team falls vastly short of expectations, but can we at least wait to have that conversation until the team doesn't have a winning record, just one game back of the division lead? 7. I need a drink.

Right, because if there's one thing we know about Brandon Beane, it's that he's unintelligent and out of touch with reality. He really ought to listen more to the geniuses on this message board 🙄

I understand the Prisoner of the Moment stuff to a degree, because Knox has had a few key drops lately. However...any kind of notion that this somehow makes the Bills offense better seems ridiculous to me. Drops or not, Dawson Knox is a good player for the Bills. A good all-around tight end, and likely the Bills' best blocking tight end by a significant margin. Losing him hurts in the run game, it hurts personnel multiplicity, and it hurts depth. This does NOT make the Bills offense better, and it seems foolish to suggest that it somehow does.

They've had these before. It's not that big a deal. People in this thread are -- surprise, surprise -- overreacting and making this seem like a bigger deal than it is. Would folks rather that the players DIDN'T feel some urgency and take it upon themselves to assert some leadership and try to right the ship?

Thank you for that. It sounds like a very frustrating game to watch. To go down by two scores to an inferior opponent, scratch and claw all the way back and take the lead...only to watch the putrid Pats offense march down field easily for the game winning score. Like I said above, I think I might be glad I missed this one.

Thank you to all who replied. Patching together some of the better responses, a pretty clear picture has been painted. To me, it sounds like while the coaching/scheming was not perfect, it was execution that lost the Bills this game. A combination of being whipped in the trenches, dropped passes, penalties, and mistakes. Add that to the Pats likely playing with much more fire and urgency due to being 1-5, and you have a recipe for disaster. Even so, it sounds like it took the Pats driving down field in a 2-minute drill to win the game, during which the Bills defense folded too easily. Thanks again, everyone. Glad I missed this one 😅

Yeah how could they NOT have foreseen an ACL tear on turf. Clearly should have seen that coming from a mile away. Totally a predictable and not at all random injury 🙄

I missed the game yesterday. I never, ever, ever miss Bills games. On the rare occasions that I do, I used to be able to record them and watch them back later. No longer a possibility. I already watched the highlights. I already read some of what's in the media about the game. What I'm looking for is a sober, accurate recap of how the game really went from one of our many great posters here, who can keep emotion out of it to some degree. Not angry shouting and over-simplified Monday morning quarterback diatribes or crazy nonsense. I realize this may be an impossible task on this forum after a bad loss. But...I'm just very curious how this game went and how it wound up with the outcome it did. What did the offense do well and not do well? Was Dorsey's playcalling and personnel usage diverse and interesting, or was it static and uncreative? Was the pass protection any good? How was the run game? How did Josh play? How did the defensive line do without Ed Oliver? Did Von Miller make any impact? Did Dorian Williams look decent? How did the corners play? Elam? Why were the Pats able to score so many points with such a moribund offense? Any input and reasonable, non-emotionally-tinged information or recaps would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Fair question. I think that Josh Allen is a no-doubt-about-it top five QB. Probably top 3. He is on pace to have a Hall of Fame level career. One championship will make it a no-brainer. I think that Josh Allen can sometimes be beaten mentally. Certain defenses and defensive coordinators know how to get into his head, make him question what he's seeing, not trust his eyes, and overthink things. We've seen it against the Jets. We've seen it two years in a row against the Jaguars. We saw it against Wink Martindale and the Giants. The Steelers gave him fits the first two times he played them. Josh Allen's greatest opponent is his own mind. When he's feeling confident, gets into a rhythm, and trusts what he sees, he's nearly unstoppable. That's not hyperbole -- when he's in that zone, he very literally CANNOT be stopped. When he can't get into a rhythm, is lacking in confidence, is not trusting what he's seeing, he becomes his own worst enemy. He starts pressing and overthinking things and the offense grinds to a halt. So to answer the original question succinctly: Josh Allen is elite, and may go down as one of the greatest of all time. He is not without weaknesses, though, and his primary weakness is the ability of the opposition to beat him mentally via quality defensive scheming and by making him question what he's seeing.

If I ever need to laugh, all I have to do is think of the first few minutes of The Jerk. "I was born a poor black child..."

Here's the good news: New England is actually NOT that good at running the ball this year. They are ranked 26th in rushing yards per game. The best defense for the Bills this Sunday will be a good offense. Get off to a fast start (no small ask for this team lately), score early and often, and take the running game out of the equation. Oh, and the Thursday night opponent, the Bucs? 28th ranked in rushing yards per game. It won't surprise me if Ed misses that one, too, and they focus on getting him right for the long haul.

It's funny how quickly the narrative changes. I seem to recall an awwwful lot of hand wringing and whining and crying when Williams was drafted and then it was announced that he'd be a WILL. The way people carried on, you'd think no starter in the NFL ever gets injured and misses time. Lo and behold, a quarter of the way into the season, Williams is called upon to play, and looks good, and here we are. I'm sure all of the people that absolutely ripped Brandon Beane apart for picking Williams will be trickling in aaany minute now for mea culpas.

Using serial killings in the 70s and 80s to justify extra-legal traffic stops in the 2000s is weird. Even THINKING to draw that parallel is bizarre. Usually I have no choice but to begrudgingly admit that you are making good points or making good sense, but this definitely isn't one of your stronger outings.

Buy: The Bills freshman and sophomore linebacker combo is going to be just fine. Terrel Bernard ALREADY looks the part. Dorian Williams shows flashes of insane athleticism and great instincts. He's green, yes, but I think he's gonna be a good one. Suddenly the "unnecessary" drafting of a Will linebacker in the 3rd round doesn't feel so unnecessary. Sell: The notion that Kaiir Elam is a bust and can't play good NFL football. I'm not saying he's a world beater, but whenever he has a few consecutive weeks to get on the field and get his feet wet, he shows steady improvement. He had a few beats against the Giants, but he also had some good plays. Guess which ones get highlighted and talked about more? Hold: Ken Dorsey is a good offensive coordinator. There are weeks -- Vegas, Washington, Miami -- where he looks like a top five play caller. There are weeks -- London, SNF -- where his scheme looks static, unimaginative, and slow to adapt. The Bills being the 3rd ranked scoring offense points to Dorsey being a pretty good play caller. The misuse or under-use of guys like Harty and Kincaid suggests that he doesn't maximize his personnel. Dorsey is a bit of a Rorschach right now, and I'm eager to see what his next three weeks against good defenses, and after two straight bad games, will look like.

Zero times, Bill. Zero times. Now please explain how your question is relevant whatsoever to the discussion.