Shaw66

Would be interesting to know what the starting lineup would have been if Ford had been available, instead of down for the season. We were speculating earlier in the week about whether Feliciano was taking Morse's job. WIthout Ford, McDermott had little choice.

I think you're correct about these things. The level of stomach upset this article has caused, or this discussion, is really surprising to me. I read the article, quickly, I'll admit, and got no impression that it was any kind of hit job on Allen, McDermott or anyone else. It's just some history that Dunne wrote based on some conversations he had with guys who were involved with managing the team at what is now an interesting point in the history of the Bills. I agreed with the post that recited the Michael Jordan draft history. If you're a team that passed on Jordan and you sucked for the next ten years, well, yeah, then it's fair to sit around and talk about what a monumental screwup that was. But if you skipped Jordan and built a winner with other players, it's fun to talk about the what-ifs. We all can argue about whether the Bills have built a winner - some might say it's too early and some others might say it's only a matter of time, but the Bills are much closer to having built a winner than maybe any of us imagined. And I think that is exactly the perspective that the article takes. It's not suggesting the Bills are doomed because they passed on Mahomes; to the contrary, to the extent it talks about the present, it acknowledges that it looks like the Bills have something special happening. Mahomes looks like an extraordinary talent, once in a generation or once in a lifetime, maybe the absolute GOAT, and from that perspective, anyone who didn't take him blew it. But dozens of fan bases are in that situation with Mahomes or Jordan or Brady or name a few others. I really don't think that's the point. The only question is "how is your team doing," and in the case of the Bills, the answer is "just fine, thank you." It may be a Bills thing, borne of decades of failure, including the failure of Kelly's teams to take the final step, and even the failure of the Bills to make it to Super Bowl I. Even in the Bills' greatest eras, they didn't quite make it. Then, on top of all that history, we had the drought and the scorn of pretty much all NFL fans outside of Bills fans. Nobody treated the Bills like they were relevant, and it continues to be somewhat true with the Bills at 7-3. I think some Bills fans may have come to believe all that crap from around the country and from the press, and it shows up in threads like this. If the Bills are a top team for the next ten years, which I think they will be if McBeane stay, and if Allen is a top 5 QB for the next ten years, which I think he will be, and if the Chiefs and Mahomes are there, too, which also is a good bet, no one is going to be sitting around bemoaning the fact that the Bills didn't take Mahomes. No one. Do you think there are any Colts fans who, when they reminisce, are saying "Heck, the Colts should have passed on Manning and taken Charles Woodson instead, then taken Brady a couple of years later"? I mean, that's ridiculous. This is just an article about history, and interesting little period of history. It's not an article that is anything more than incidentally critical about anyone, including McDermott and Allen.

No need for a time machine. Just ask JoshAllenReceipts. The source of all truth.

I don't know that the Saints were going to take him. At the time of the draft, no one knew that. What the article says, and I think it's correct, that there was some expectation that he might fall. Not that he would, just some expectation that it could happen. The Bills didn't value him so much to take him at 10. They would have been willing to take him at the back end of the draft. That's all. They didn't care that he might not be there. He wasn't on their list of people they really wanted. How does that not make sense. Whether the Saints or the Chiefs were rebuilding has nothing to do with it. They were where they were in their team building activities; the Bills were in a different place. All this article says is that there were credible reasons why this organization chose to do what they did. The reasons make sense, those reasons were directly related to the plan that McDermott had to build the team, and the plan worked. It all makes sense.

That's right. Success isn't measured by your misses. It's measured by the hits. The object is to be successful. It's a fool's game to think the object is to be mistake-free.

That's really interesting. Hadn't ever thought about it, but I'd guess that tackles actually are less likely to get hit in ways that would cause concussions. He's gotta really want to play to take a big pay cut and move to tackle. His family could tell him to hang em up. Interesting thought.

That's interesting. You're right, he sat Mahomes. But the signal was absolutely clear from day one. No question. Smith was a lame duck the day they picked Mahomes. But Reid wasn't a rookie coach. He had a major reputation in the league, and most importantly, he was already with the team. He didn't have anything to prove to his players. McDermott was a rookie coach who maybe hadn't even MET all the players. I'm enjoying talking about this. I can't say I'm sure all of this is correct, but I think it's all plausible - the notion that McDermott had a plan and an order in which he wanted to do things. What's interesting, of course, is the case of Arizona, where you had a young, rookie head coach who wouldn't take the job UNLESS the team agreed to bring in HIS rookie QB. Now, there was no really established QB there, like Taylor was in Buffalo (established in the sense that he had the confidence of the team), but still, he took the risky path - he bet on the QB. McD isn't a risk taker like that. McD is a slow and steady wins the race kind of guy. Step by step, don't get ahead of yourself. It all makes sense to me.

Sure does sound that way. I never saw him as a physical stud. Not a road grader for sure, and not the most powerful pass protector at center. He is an excellent thinking center, and he had the speed and agility to get downfield. This sounds like the Bills have concluded they need more than that. Almost like the plan is to give Allen and Feliciano the rest of this year to get ready for the playoffs and next year, and in the off-season look for more help in the interior.

I don't think so. Watkins and Darby were different because of timing. McDermott had been with the team for two months when the draft happened. He'd had virtually no time on field with his players, no way to build relationships with them, no way to really convince them that he's the leader and they should follow him. By drafting a QB, he's saying that Tyrod's out, sooner or later, and in the NFL lately it's been sooner. Tyrod was a leader. He had plenty of friends on the team. Before McD had had a chance to build any relationships, he didn't want to take the risk that he'd lose the players' confidence by dumping their friend. By the time Watkins and Darby left, McD had had the time with the players he needed. He'd been very clear from the beginning that he's about a certain methodology, a methodology that requires total commitment to the game and to the team. He'd been clear that he believes that that kind of commitment is what makes football teams superior. By each guy committing to each other guy, they're stronger. So by the time he pulled the trigger on Watkins and Darby, McD had concluded that Watkins and Darby weren't that kind of player. And he'd concluded that he had several others who were the right kind, including, I think, Taylor. Taylor was really hungry. McD knew that the guys who understood and accepted the commitment would see why Watkins and Darby had to go, maybe even welcomed it. I don't disagree that he was clear from the beginning that he was going to rebuild. He and Beane kept saying how it was going to take three or four years to get the building full of the people they want. Rebuilding and win now aren't mutually exclusive. Everyone knew in the middle of the first season that a lot of changes were coming. McD wanted a culture with a winning attitude, and he knew that it was difficult to build a winning culture if from the get go he's saying to his team "you aren't the guys I'm gonna win with." He wanted to say to his players "we're going to win now," and he understood that he couldn't preach winning now by dumping his starting QB for an untested rookie. Instead, he gets a certifiably outstanding corner who will be crucial to improving the defense, and he spends a year pounding "commitment" and "winning" into their heads. He was, it turns out, exactly right. He leveraged the leadership of Kyle Allen - a guy who oozes "commitment" and a "winning" - and took the team to the playoffs. He said to his player, "we're going to win AND this team is going to build to be better," and they bought it. Throughout - not chasing Mahomes, the Watkins Darby moves, turning decades of losing into winning - McDermott was doing it by careful leadership and decision making.

I think you're misconstruing what he's saying about Whaley and Monos. What he's saying is that they liked Mahomes the same way everyone else thought the league loved Mahomes - as late first round, early second round pick. Intriguing arm talent and personality, but a guy who looked like he was just the product of a system, not a star in his own right. There were doubts that he could translate his college success to the pros. Whaley and Monos were saying that there was more value in trading back and maybe getting him anyway. They weren't saying he was great. If they were saying he was great, they would have taken him at 10. Heck, if you think the guy is great AND your owner thinks he's great, why in the world would you trade? It is, in the opposite direction, what happened with the Bills and Allen. The Bills traded a lot of trade capital (which they could afford to do because of the KC deal) to move up. With whom did they trade? Denver who like the Bills a year before, needed a quarterback and somehow convinced themselves that they could get better value by trading back, getting some good picks, and still having a QB fall (Allen or Rosen) to them. Exact same choice. Mahomes didn't fall to 27, and Allen and Rosen didn't fall to 12. Bills didn't get Mahomes, Broncos didn't get Allen. Twenty years from now, when people are writing about the history of this golden age of quarterbacks, part II, the stars of the history are going to Mahomes and Allen and one or two others, and they will write about the irony of the Bills trading back and missing Mahomes and then trading up to Allen.

BRAVO! One of the all-time great internet forum posts of all time. As they say, with all jokes there's at a little bit of truth in there somewhere. Nicely done.

I don't know that I actually felt that way, but the association with Rex certainly didn't help his candidacy. I admit to not knowing much about Lynn at the time. The league obviously knew about him - it took the Chargers no time to go get him. It is fun to speculate what the Bills might have been like with Lynn and Mahomes.

Oh, my, what is all this nonsense? Anyway, I'll say this about Mahomes: I'm not ready to call him the GOAT or any other farm animal. Mahomes has a great arm, a great array of throws, and he has shown excellent decision making and judgment under fire. All great characteristics. He also has a great coach and great skill position players. He needs Reid to hang around for another ten years. I think it is very likely that Mahomes wouldn't have been Mahomes in Buffalo, at least not as quickly as he's risen in KC. For the last three years, no one has gotten as many easy throws as Mahomes. What Mahomes brings to the table is that besides all the easy throws he gets, he's able to make some incredibly difficult ones. On most other teams, including the Bills three years ago, he would have had to make a lot more really difficult throws. If the Bills were in their third year of Josh Rosen hadn't yet made it over .500, I'd join in the chorus lamenting the trade down. But the Bills are in their fourth of a head coach who knew exactly what he was doing, and the Bills are in their third year of Josh Allen, and I am absolutely, perfectly, fine with that.

Thanks. You state it well. And I agree about the conspiracy theories, the smokescreens, and all that. Every week, they're just trying to figure out how to win this week's football game, that's all. They have dozens of decisions every week - who plays, who's inactive, who comes of the practice squad. They think about it, talk about it, make a decision and move on. They can't spend hours contemplating every decision. In this case they probably simply decided that things had been going pretty well in the interior line and the bye week was the right time to do any repositioning. That's a football decision.

The other thing about this article that I find interesting is McDermott's approach. He didn't want a QB at 10 because of the signal it would send to his team. He wanted his team to believe they could win now, and drafting a QB at 10 would say they were starting over. McDermott in fact knew he was starting over, but he wanted the rebuild to start in the following year. The first year was about establishing culture (which is something he said at the time). Taking Mahomes at 10 would mean Mahomes pretty much had to start, and that says "REBUILD!!" White and 10 and Mahomes at 27 says "Mahomes is the future, but Tyrod and White are going to win for us now." It's very interesting, but not surprising, that McDermott was that strategic about that draft. Plus a certifiable offensive genius for a head coach. I think Mahomes and Allen are the Manning and Brady of their generation.

That's not what the article says. It says Whaley and Monos wanted to trade down and get Mahomes at 27 or get a QB the following year. That was their recommendation to the Pegulas. Terry was the one who wanted Mahomes so badly that he'd do it at 10. So Monos is admitting that he and Whaley may have had it wrong and Terry alone understood what Mahomes would become. It's also very interesting to think that if the Pegulas had chosen Anthony Lynn, he would have taken Mahomes.

I'm late to the party here, and haven't read the entire thread. What I've seen is a pretty interesting discussion. I don't study the oline, and I don't have opinions about who's playing well and who isn't. But the thread title and some of this discussion about Feliciano being better at center makes me think that the "football decision" McDermott made was driven by the upcoming bye week. He had Morse coming back, and he knows that an extra two weeks without contact certainly is a good thing on the concussion front. He also liked, apparently, the way things were going with Feliciano at center. He'd also had a lot of disruption on the oline, with Spain dropping off the earth, Ford moving then getting injured, Feliciano coming back, Morse going down. So his "football decision" may very well have been that for the Cards game he wanted continuity. The continuity may have been more important to McDermott than any improvement he thought he might get by having Morse, Ford and Feliciano in the interior line spots. By keeping Morse off the field, McDermott got the continuity and then got two weeks to rework the oline one more time, so that he can come out of the bye with his three best players in the positions he wants them in, all healthy and ready to go. That's all just a hunch on my part, and someone may have said something similar in this thread. If so, sorry for piling on.

Right. I agree about declining abilities, and I also have always though that Brady had his success because he truly was the perfect match for Belichick's genius. This season he's demonstrating that without Bill figuring out how to attack every week, he's not nearly so effective. I'll repeat something I heard Brady say about 10 years ago. First half of one season, he was having a below par season. Then he got hot, and he was just eating defenses alive. Someone asked him what happened. He said that he and Belichick have a two-hour film session every Wednesday afternoon, talking through the offensive game plan and how to attack the defense. That season, the Pats defense was struggling and Bill was skipping the Wednesday meetings with Brady to work extra time with the defense. When he got the defense back on track, he resumed the Wednesday meetings with Brady, and Brady's game went back to his HOF play. Last season, Brady was an old QB playing for Belichick. This season he's just an old QB. Yes, it's all about the wins, but points for/points against and how you end games both are indicators of how dominant you are. If every game is being decided in the last two minutes, more of your wins are dependent on luck, and luck can change. If you're counting on creating a turnover every week to preserve a win, you're not a dominant team. The Pats were steam-rollering the Bills - if there were 10 more minutes in that game, the Bills would have lost, because they absolutely could not stop the Pats offense.

I agree about these things they call power rankings. Whether it was true then or not, when power rankings first began (I think in college basketball), they attempted to do some sort of comparative data analysis, strength of schedule and other stuff, to figure out which teams were better than others in an environment where the teams weren't playing each other or many common opponents. There was some attempt to determine the relative strength (or power) of each team. The whole idea quickly deteriorated into what it is now - someone's list that is there only because we like to see it.

Some interesting stuff here. I think you're right about Allen last year and this - the team carried him last year, and he's been doing a lot of the carrying this year. I know you're a "rookie contract" guy, and I get the logic - you can buy a lot short-term talent with that extra $25 million every year. I don't like that approach, primarily because there just aren't that many guys who are likely to win you a Super Bowl. Wilson, Mahomes, and Wentz (even though he was injured). Watson might have done it. Lamar maybe. Murray maybe. Allen maybe. As you say, it's easier to play QB as a rookie in the NFL than it used to be. I'm sure that's a temporary condition. The best, sustained QB play still comes from the veterans, because they understand what's happening on the field. Right now the NFL is dumbed down for those rookie starters, but it's because the defenses haven't completely adjusted to the running QB. As the adjustments continue, the running QBs will be less of a threat, and then they'll be stuck again, having to play from the pocket. On the other hand, if you sign a good QB to a long term contract, you have superior talent behind the line of scrimmage every year for the next 10-15 years. Yes, you have $25 million less to spend, but here's where your own argument gets turned against you. Yes, with $25 million I can sign a Clowney or Hopkins, or I can sign five stud position players. But without the $25 million, I can sign a bunch of free agent role players, undrafted rookies, etc. I have a much simpler position to teach them than the position you have to teach to your rookie QB. I can keep throwing Milanos and Boettgers and Wallaces out there endlessly. With your approach, every few years you're looking for someone to play the most difficult position in all of sports. With my approach, I'm just looking for ordinary guys to be role players.

Well, I have to back track a bit. After watching Brady last night, I would take Allen over him right now. Sure, Brady sees and understands more about what's going on on the field, and that's really important. But Allen handles pressure in the pocket much better, and he throws the ball well more consistently than Brady. Brady's throwing to Evans, Godwin, Antonio Brown, and Gronkowski. Those guys should be lighting it up, and last night it looked like Brady was the one holding them back. Tampa Bay wins that game with Allen at QB.

I'm at the point where I think that anything the Bills get out of Milano this season is pure gravy. The guy's been so banged up, it's hard to expect anything like 2019 out of him in the next six weeks. If he can get back, that's great, but I'm not counting on it. And I don't get the people here - not you - who don't want Norman back. He played with a lot of heart - he really bought into the team, I think. Wallace may be the better all-round corner, but when the Bills run into a pass-happy team, like the Chiefs, I think Norman's cover skills would be a big plus. He's clearly more creative back there than Wallace.

Thanks. That's a fair explanation of what Elway may have been thinking. Especially the Vance Joseph part - if you don't have confidence in your head coach, it's risky making a big bet on a top pick at QB. Still, I like the aggressiveness the Cardinals showed - get Josh Rosen, pull the trigger pretty quickly when it's clear he isn't the guy, change your coach, go after Murray. Granted, all the pieces fell in place for Arizona, but it still took courage at the top of the organization to be that bold. On the other hand, I was struck again last night by this point about the importance of the QB. The announcers at ESPN, who talk too much but aren't horrible, were talking about how Aaron Donald may be the best player in the league, and then said that Jalen Ramsey maybe can make that claim. For me, that's all so much nonsense. There was no question at all last night that Jared Goff was more important to that team than Aaron Donald. With Goff playing well, that team can compete, whether they have Donald or not. Heck, the Bears maybe have two of the five best defensive linemen in the game, but it makes no difference because they don't have a QB. A theme I've been talking about lately is that an NFL team needs four things for long-term success: Good owner, good GM, good head coach, good quarterback. All the rest is just clay that the GM acquires and the head coach molds. McVay is no doubt thrilled to have Aaron Donald playing on his defensive line, but if he and his GM are any good, without Donald they'd just have different solutions for their defensive problems. Which is not to say that talent at the other positions is irrelevant - it sure looks like the Bills have a raw talent deficiency on their defensive line. McDermott can coach 'em up all he wants, but it doesn't look like he can get the performance out of them that he needs. But that just means that Beane, who's generally done a good job acquiring talent, didn't get quite enough on the d line this year. He'll work on it in the off-season. That's completely different from leaving your head coach with Daniel Jones who, I agree, looks like an NFL starter but not like a QB you want to build your future on.

I hate the Brady love. Sometime in the first half, one of them said "Brady doesn't care which of his receivers catches the ball," as though that's part of Brady's greatness. Like, other NFL QBs are standing in the pocket thinking, "no, I don't want to throw it to Jones."

Yes, it's fun. It's weird. It's been so long, I really had forgotten what it's like to talk about a good team. As little as three years ago, the usual conversation was about "holes." Bills have this hole to fill, that hole to fill. Frankly, by the standards of those days, left guard is a hole. Linebacker is a hole. Tight end is a hole. But when you have a good team, the collective effectiveness of the team covers the holes. Having a QB who can do the things Allen is doing covers holes. As for Allen, I'm at the point where I believe I'm watching season three of a Hall of Fame career. Better than Kelly. Way better than Kemp and Fergy. We're being rewarded for all those years. The Lamonica trade. So much of the 70s and 80s. The drought. This is the reward.