Logic

Sometimes the feel of the game can be seen or sensed better with the eye than with stats or analytics. Whereas last week, and in the weeks that preceded it, it felt like a struggle for the Bills to move the ball until deep into the third quarter, this week, it did not. Whereas the past few weeks, they lacked rhythm and identity, last night they did not. Josh Allen also specifically looked better. More comfortable, more decisive, and had the quickest time-to-throw of his entire career. He was fully in command. I don't think many would say that about the past few weeks. Because of the offense taking their foot off the pedal to some degree, switching to more of a ball control, bleed the clock mode, and taking a bit of air out of the football, the metrics wound up being what they wound up being. But the eye test and the gut feel watching last night's game both tell me that the offense was significantly better, more comfortable, more effective, in a better rhythm, and that I'd bet the players would all say the same thing.

Most of the players have already been mentioned. As a couple others have said: Dorsey and McDermott both deserve game balls for the offensive and defensive gameplans, respectively. The 3rd and 1 shotgun on the goal line was infuriating, but that's the only thing I can ding Dorsey for. The rest was good. McDermott's defensive gameplan was great. The chaotic movement at the line, the double a-gap stuff...we haven't seen that kind of attempt to confuse the offense, at least to that degree, this season. I thought it was a masterful defensive gameplan. I also thought he managed the game well at the end. It was not his fault that the drive that led to 8 points in the 4th quarter for the Bucs went the way it did. He didn't commit the two 4th down penalties. Even so, they drained almost the entire clock away. So yeah...the offensive and defensive coordinators did a fine job last night, and after all the kvetching (much of it justified) about them all season long, they deserve their kudos for last night.

This isn't rocket science. The Bills have five safeties on their roster. Hyde and Poyer start. Rapp plays in three-safety sets and is next man up likely at both safety positions. Cam Lewis, the fourth safety, is a standout special teams player and provides positional versatility that Hamlin doesn't offer. Hamlin is a pure free safety. He doesn't play nickel corner like Cam Lewis. He's not as good a special teamer as Lewis. Ergo, he will be inactive most of the year unless injuries hit at safety. This happens across the league. Not every player gets to be active every week. Why aren't you asking if Alec Anderson or Germain Ifehdi deserve to be on the team?

Yeah I felt it was pretty palpable that they made the decision of "hey, let's burn clock and play call control" instead of "let's keep attacking" once they built a two score lead. Didn't love that. The thing is, they can still do the tempo and "getting to the line early" stuff and ALSO bleed the clock down to 01 before they snap it. They need not be mutually exclusive. If they somehow come out against the Bengals NOT executing this same basic plan (tempo, getting to the line early, spreading things out), I'll be very discouraged. They've been looking for a clear identity on offense all season. This is it. It's clear as day. I hope they see it, too.

Yeah it was bad. It was ugly. One can only hope it's something they will work on.

Give him a minute. He's 34 and coming off a torn ACL. Let him round into form. He will. Give him a minute.

I was pleasantly surprised and, at times, almost shocked by the Bills offense last night. It was like night and day from what we've seen the past few weeks. Things that stood out: - Felt like the 2020-2021 offense again. Spread, tempo, quick decisions - Speaking of quick decisions, at one point the broadcast showed that it was Allen's fastest EVER time-to-throw in his career. Impressive. - THAT was the Khalil Shakir we all thought we would be getting on draft day. If he can be THAT guy moving forward? Huge. - The biggest surprise of all: Gabe Davis! I have NEVER seen him look like that in a game. To be moved around like that, to be featured, to be making contributions in the short and intermediate game like that. Where has THAT been his whole career? As I said with Shakir, if Gabe can be THAT guy moving forward? Huge. - Kincaid and Cook. Youngsters showing up and showing out. - Actually, the offensive production mostly belonged to younger guys last night. Cook, Kincaid, Shakir, and even Davis is only 24 years old. Youth movement on offense. Love to see it. - Well-called game by Dorsey. Didn't love that they sort of called the dogs off in the second half and got more conservative. Hopefully almost losing the game will teach them not to do that any more. - Getting Josh Allen to the line early -- like with, say, 20 seconds on the play clock -- is key. The players spoke about it throughout the week, and then sure enough, they made an effort to do it last night. I hope it's here to stay. The Bills are a different offense when this happens, and Allen is a different quarterback. He looked fully in command last night, fully confident, and fully in rhythm. I think the tempo and getting to the line early were big reasons why. All in all, returning to their offensive roots + spread formations + getting different targets involved + tempo + getting to the line early + confident Josh = very fun viewing. Oh and, by the way: When the offense is actually producing and moving the ball, the rest it gives the defense allows the defense to look MUCH better and more effective. And speaking of defense, let me just say: I really, REALLY hope that that chaotic craziness that the front seven was showing before many plays last night is here to stay. The double A-gap stuff, the simulated pressures, all of it. Awesome. Great gameplan by McDermott, too.

The Isabella thing seems like one of those situations where everyone talks all day about a surprise roster call-up, only for that player to get like 4 snaps all night. I think it's as simple as this: with the tight end depth chart suddenly so thin, the Bills are gonna lean into the spread looks tonight, and therefore want to have more healthy bodies at wide receiver. Basically, they have a roster spot open for a pass catcher due to Knox and Morris being out, and rather than call up a player like Joel Wilson and continuing to try to run 12 personnel with inferior players, they're calling up a receiver instead and going a different route in terms of how they attack defenses. Even so, I don't expect Isabella to actually play much on offense. Time will tell.

No reliable source with this. The account that posted it is a professional spaghetti thrower, nothing more. Tony Pauline, who is vastly more reliable than Random Twitter Guy X, says Ravens are the clubhouse leaders and the Cowboys are a dark horse. No mention of the Bills. It would also be absolutely bizarre for this team -- with its needs at CB, LB, DT, outside WR, and even TE now that Knox is on IR -- to trade for a RUNNING BACK. That's the LEAST of the Bills' problems.

I think it's simple: Elam was a physically gifted cover corner in college. The book on him was that he was a god man coverage corner (albeit a bit handsy), but struggled in zone coverage and with effective tackling. I believe the staff felt that they could teach him what he needed to know about zone coverage and could coach him to be a better tackler. It's easier to teach a good man coverage corner to play zone, theoretically, than to teach a physically limited zone corner to be effective in man coverage. Unfortunately, Elam never quite seemed to learn his zone responsibilities well enough to earn the trust of the coaches. Also unfortunately for him, he had a player drafted alongside him in Christian Benford who excels both in knowledge of his zone responsibilities AND as a tackler -- two of the most important aspects in McDermott's defense. Personally, I expected Benford to have the early edge, but Elam to catch up the more he learned. The only problem is he never DID quite seem to learn, leaving him as a schematic mismatch for the Bills defense. The hope in attempting to trade him would be that there's a team out there that plays more man coverage and feels he'd be a good fit for what they ask of their corners. I warn Bills fans: if they DO manage to trade Elam, it's likely to be for a frustratingly low return. Think no better than a 5th round pick, and even that might be lofty.

Beane's philosophy with 1st round picks has pretty much always been to take big swings at supremely physically gifted athletes and trust that his coaching staff will develop them into quality pros. Sometimes it works: Josh Allen, Greg Rousseau Sometimes it doesn't: Tremaine Edmunds, Kaiir Elam No team hits on 100% of their 1st round draft picks. No one. Yes, the Elam pick was a whiff. No, there's no spinning it any other way. But no, it doesn't need to be some huge indictment on the GM or the coaches. Sometimes, players bust. It happens. It's part of football. Beane and the coaching staff helped limit the pain of the Elam pick by finding, drafting, and developing Christian Benford. Yes, you'd rather that the Elam pick had hit as well, but it didn't. That's life. That's the draft. Let's not turn simple arithmetic into complex algebra. You win some, you lose some.

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?