Logic

How many Super Bowls did Philip Rivers win? Dan Marino? Dan Fouts? How many seasons did Peyton Manning play before he reached his first Super Bowl? How many seasons did the great Drew Brees play before reaching a Super Bowl, and how many did he win in his 15 year career? If you'd rather stay more recent, why hasn't Justin Herbert sniffed an AFC Championship game yet? Deshaun Watson was a top QB prior to his scandals. Where are his Super Bowl appearances? Just having a great QB, in and of itself, is not an automatic entry ticket to a Super Bowl.

I was with you on this whole post up until the final statement. Saying he's "undeniably" behind the curve....I just can't agree with that. You list four coaches that went to Super Bowls, but you don't mention the dozens from the past five years who didn't, and who had much worse results than McDermott.

Fair. The important thing to remember is that "better results" are never guaranteed by any change undertaken. The Eagles fired Andy Reid after 13 years without a championship. He has brought his team to three Super Bowls and won two in the 10 years since. On the other hand, the Eagles themselves have made it to two Super Bowls and won one without him -- though they're on their third head coach since Reid left. If the bar for "fire-worthy offense" is set at "win a championship", then even if that goal is not met for, say, five to seven consecutive years, then most NFL head coaches ought to have been fired by now. Mike Tomlin, John Harbaugh, et al.

And you did that effectively with your initial post, in my opinion. I apologize for not replying to it more directly or thanking you for it. It was a quality post. I more so was just feeling the need to vomit up my own thoughts on the matter. In particular, I feel that going into each season from here on out thinking "Super Bowl or bust" -- and declaring McDermott a failure any year that he fails to win a championship -- is an unhealthy and unreasonable way of thinking. We should HOPE for a championship, of course, and we should expect to compete for one every year. The window is wide open, primarily because of Josh Allen. But there's a big gap between "I know we're contenders every year, and I expect the team to reach the Super Bowl" and "If the Bills don't win a title, McDermott has failed and/or should be fired". I know it's a cliche that makes people roll their eyes, but...it's HARD to win in this league. It's REALLY hard to win it all!

The problem seems simple to me: After so many years in the NFL wilderness, the Bills finally got good. They finally got a franchise QB and a good defense and a good front office and coaching staff. They ascended from Wild Card loss, to AFC Championship loss, to narrow, improbable Divisional round loss, and then on to 2022, where the entire NFL world and Vegas anointed them Super Bowl favorites. All we heard for months was how they had the best roster in the NFL, how they were shoe-ins for the Super Bowl, the best team in the AFC, etc, etc. Last we saw Josh Allen, he was throwing non-stop fireballs, and the Bills looked unstoppable. All of this created the expectation in Bills fans that it was "Super Bowl trophy or Bust!" from here on out. Well, funny thing about that...it's only "Super Bowl trophy" for one team every year, and it's "bust" for the other 31 teams. Unfortunately, the path to a championship is rarely a linear one. That is, there are usually ups and downs. Leaps forward and steps back. Unexpected setbacks. Random, unpredictable factors of chaos that make a mockery of the best laid plans. Things like, oh, I dunno, the star quarterback throwing on an injured elbow all year and a player's heart stopping in the middle of the field in front of all his teammates. I'm not here to make excuses, only to point out that many Bills fans seem convinced that ANYTHING less than a Super Bowl championship must mean that coach McDermott is a failure. That's ridiculous. Patently absurd. He's a top 10 coach in the NFL by any measure, and probably more like top 5. If the Bills fired him, he'd have another head coaching job instantly. Does he need to be better in big postseason games against elite opponents? Yes. Would I love to see some fresh blood brought in on both sides of the ball in terms of assistants and coordinators? Sure. But despite all of that, is McDermott a very, very good NFL coach? Of course he is.

You're correct that he said "talent level" and not "weaponry". But in my mind, saying Allen didn't have a high enough talent level around him is the same as saying he didn't have enough weaponry. If the poster was not referring to the level of talent surrounding Allen, or meant something other than "he needs a better supporting cast", then I misunderstood him. I agreed in my post -- and agree with you -- that the talent level at OL for the Bills is nowhere close to KC's. But the talent level of the skill players around Allen is comparable to the talent around Mahomes (and some of the others listed), IMO. I also don't think the OL is catastrophic. It's average to below average, and nowhere near the level of KC's, but it's not "league worst" or bottom barrel, in my opinion. I maintain that the Bills had enough horses on offense to be better than they were the second half of the season, even with Allen's injuries. I also admit I could be dead wrong.

Funnily enough, I feel the exact opposite. Diggs Knox Davis McKenzie Cook Hines Shakir That should be enough weaponry to produce. Who did Mahomes and his league leading offense have this year? Travis Kelce and a bunch of guys. You're telling me that Juju/MVS/Watson/Moore/Hardman is greatly superior to what the Bills have at WR? That McKinnon and Pacheco are greatly superior to Cook and Hines? I'll give you the offensive line. That I agree with. Mahomes has an elite line, Allen does not. But weaponry? I just don't agree that the Bills didn't have enough of it this year. Instead, I believe that Dorsey did not utilize the personnel he DID have effectively enough. Cook and Hines should both have been used heavily in the passing game. They're both mismatches against linebackers. Cook, Hines, and McKenzie should all have had their speed and quickness used to stretch the defense horizontally, even if only as pre-snap eye candy to give defenders a moment of pause. Knox is an athletic freak and should have been featured much more in the passing game. Davis should have been used in the slot more frequently, as he was the past two years, since he's proven more consistently that he can beat safeties and undersized slot guys than outside corners. In short, while the Bills' weaponry can definitely stand to improve (as can the protection), I believe that Dorsey's lack of creativity is what held the Bills offense back at times in 2022. He needs to get better moving forward. I believe he can, and I hope he will.

Some of the finest coaches in the history of the NFL placed great importance on special teams. Our own Hall of Famer Marv Levy, Bill "Greatest Of All Time" Belichick, etc. You can call their thinking outdated if you want, but....last I checked, special teams is still one third of the game of football.

Absolutely. And there's a little kid in that video that surely caught at least some peripheral damage. And yet, I LOLed.

Sometimes I think the degree to which I enjoy "people getting injured" videos is a real indictment on my character.

Watch the Bills win the Super Bowl amongst other Bills fans Attend the Super Bowl parade in Buffalo Thailand Vietnam Laos Cambodia India (again) Road trip across Canada Banff National Park Snorkeling in Belize Costa Rica Residence in a monastery for at least a month Snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef Live in another country for at least a year Guess I better get to work.

I hope your contention that Anarumo has aged out and will remain DC of the Bengals for years to come is incorrect. Anarumo is a really great defensive play caller, I hate going against him, and I wish he would've moved to the NFC. I have never spoken to Anarumo or Gannon about leading a football team, and I have no idea what their bona fides are in that department. I DO know that if I were choosing between the two based solely on their respective performances as defensive coordinators, I'd pick Anarumo in a landslide.

Bills had the sixth hardest end-of-season strength of schedule in the league in 2022 and finished 13-3. Even IF that proves to be an accurate forecast, I'm not worried. Bills are elite.

To be fair, we looked pretty organized under Dorsey, too. The calls almost always got in on time. There were very rarely delay of games, too many men in the huddle, burned timeouts, etc. Those things are marks of a disorganized offense. My principal concern about Dorsey is his lack of creativity and his unimaginative use of personnel. Things like the lack of usage of Cook and Hines in the passing game, lack of usage of Hines AT ALL, lack of "easy looks" for Josh, etc. Like if you watched the Super Bowl, you saw both quarterbacks have a host of wide open receivers due to scheme. Easy layup decisions and throws for the quarterback. There aren't NEARLY enough of those in the Bills offense. I also wish that he would use the speed at his disposal (Cook, Hines, McKenzie) to stretch defenses horizontally, and would use them as eye candy more often to give defenders a second of hesitation. All in all, I have plenty to gripe at Dorsey about, but disorganization was not on my list. Lack of creativity and poor personnel usage definitely were.

I feel like it's revisionist history to think that Daboll was ALWAYS a great play caller. Whether you want to look at his offensive rankings in his pre-Bills years or his first couple of years in Buffalo, it took him time to improve to the point where the Bills had a top offense and he got hired away as a head coach. As recently as the midway point of the 2021 season, there were many Bills fans who couldn't WAIT to ship him out of town. Go back and read gameday threads from 2021 if you don't believe me. As such, I think it's reasonable to believe that Dorsey can improve in year two as a play caller. We've heard from Josh Allen how much of a perfectionist Ken Dorsey is, and Allen has spent a lot of time with him, so I take him at his word. I'd bet he's already hard at work trying to figure out how to get better next year. I doubt he'd be on McDermott's staff if he wasn't that way. And if you say "well sure, Logic, Dorsey might get better, but can we afford to wait? Allen is in his prime NOW!", I'd reply that it's not as if we had the 22nd ranked offense this season. The Bills offense was top five in PPG and DVOA. Dorsey ALREADY came pretty strong out of the gate. He obviously needs to improve, and I think it's reasonable to believe that he might. Note, I'm not saying he'll definitely be the guy. I found his lack of creativity and his personnel usage incredibly frustrating for portions of the year, including the Bengals playoff game. It's possible he never improves. But it's also unreasonable to think that he can't.

100% this. Spot on. Unless it's AC/DC with guest appearances by Aerosmith, ZZ Top, and Bruce Springsteen playing Elvis's guitar, we hear a bunch of shouting at the clouds and fist shaking at "those damned kids with their hippity hop music". At least that's what it ultimately amounts to. I thought it was a fine halftime show. Not earth shattering, not an all time great, but fine. A talented person sang some of her hits and there was some cool pageantry. What do people want, exactly?

With all due respect, The bolded statements were the only two things you really needed to say.

Say more.

I'm waiting for Bruce Springsteen tickets to come down. He's playing here in two weeks. Re-sale market has tix at about $175 a piece right now, but there are A TON available. It's a staredown between scalpers and buyers. Who will blink first? If I can get in the door for $100 total, I'll probably do it. I'm not like a HUGE Springsteen fan, but he's firmly in the "gotta see him once before he stops touring" camp for me, just as Elton John, Paul McCartney, and Paul Simon were (all of whom I saw in the past few years).

When your team puts up just 10 points in a pivotal playoff matchup, and two of the major roster deficiencies that led to that failure were guard and wide receiver depth, and when two guys that we drafted in Wyatt Teller and Isaiah Hodgins are playing for other teams instead of fixing those deficiencies, due almost solely to a hesitance to trust young talent.....how can it not be at least a little bothersome?

One of my absolute favorite (and most original) presentations of Grateful Dead music happening today. Russo may also be one of the best drummers on the planet.

Daboll doesn't bother me. People have selective amnesia, but right up until the last four games or so of the 2021 regular season, people were ready to run Daboll out of town, too. Truly. Go back and look at some gameday threads from his entire tenure here and you'll see a whooooole lot of Daboll hate. McDermott is a good head coach. Playoffs five out of six seasons. 13 wins two out of the last three seasons. Consistent playoff participants. STILL top two in Super Bowl odds entering next season. As such, he was never going anywhere, so Daboll's exit was always an eventuality. Hodgins bothers me a little bit more. I'm okay with losing good players sometimes. When you're a good, deep team, you lose good coaches and good players. That's what happens. But Hodgins, in particular, feels like he's part of a bigger trend of our coaching staff not trusting or giving a chance to rookies and youngsters quickly enough. Wyatt Teller, Isaiah Hodgins, Khalil Shakir, Kaiir Elam....I'd like to see the coaches give these players a little more leash and a little more opportunity to work through their lumps on the field. Had they done so with Hodgins, he might have been a productive receiver for the Bills instead of the Giants.

To some degree, I have always felt the same as you. That the Bills have been an absolutely enormous part of my life, have taken up countless hours and dollars, and that I'd give just about anything to see the Bills just win one title. That life somehow won't feel complete until it happens. Losses, particularly really BAD losses, would upset me for an inordinately long amount of time afterwards, negatively affecting the rest of my week until the next Bills game. Last year I was diagnosed with a potentially fatal illness. I beat it, for now. I'll be damned if it didn't put something as small as football -- and my obsession with it -- into perspective. Life is incredibly short. Too short to be so negatively affected or absorbed by something like a sport. To think that I'd waste even one moment that I could be enjoying a fall evening or having a laugh with my wife, simply because the team I like to watch lost a game...it's not worth it. Like Von Miller said: Don't let the game beat you twice. That is, the first loss is the game itself, and the second loss is that it takes away from your day-to-day after the fact. Don't get beat twice. After a loss, go take a walk, reflect on the things in your life for which you're thankful, watch a funny movie, listen to some music you love, hug your wife, pet your dog...It's easier said than done, but life is short, and it's just a game.