Shaw66

Very clearly inside out and down the middle. First thing McDermott did was get two safeties and let Gilmore go. Middle. Next season it was Allen and Edmunds. Then it was Oliver and Morse. Middle, middle, middle. All the while they were filling in at wideout with the best they could find, without making it a priority. Even Brown and Beasley weren't top-talent guys. When they were comfortable up and down the middle of the field, they went after Diggs.

Long-winded is my trademark.

The lesson that I drew, the only lesson that interested me, was watching a team that played with sustained competitive fire. They weren't up for every game, but they were so competitive that they could turn it on almost at will. They were focused, determined and highly skilled. They played with controlled fury. What I liked about the show was that it gave an inside look at that intensity. All I was talking about in the OP is that it's that kind of intensity that's necessary to win. McDermott wants that kind of consistent, long-term intensity. His method is to fill with the team with guys who have it inside. As you say, Rodman had it. Jordan had it. Jordan could lead Pippen there pretty easily - after a while it was second nature from Pippen, who seemed to have it just being around Jordan. McDermott wants guys all over the roster, burning with that kind of fire. That's what he and Beane go looking for. You get the point in last couple of sentences. If you don't have it, Beane and McDermott aren't very interested in you. Talent's not important to them if you don't have the fire. If you have the fire, then talent matters to them a lot. That is why, as you say, they liked Diggs. FIre and talent.

Fun interview. Thanks for posting.

Sorry. You weren't following what I said, because I wrote in shorthand. McDermott's primary character filter is competitive and intense hard worker. That's what he and Beane are looking for, and Diggs fits that model exactly. McDermott doesn't ask for choir boys. He does, however, expect that you will be serious enough about your goals that you won't be misbehaving.

Choir boy is your take on McDermott. McDermott's is intense and competitive.

Top 10 in 2021, if not earlier, assuming the 2020 season is played.

Josh has to be better. No one knows if he will get better. One's definition of drops may be fun to talk about, but who cares? Josh has to be better.

I agree it's not an issue. I mean, he has to complete more passes - for sure, that's an issue. But I'm not worried about. Every time I watch replays of all the beautiful balls Allen threw last season, I wonder why people complain about his accuracy. Allen is a great thrower, plain and simple. He has to understand more of what's going on on the field, he needs for the game to continue to slow down for him, play after play. I'm certain he will and it will.

That isn't correct. The reports have been very clear that Diggs was one of the most intense, competitive team oriented guys at Maryland and in Minnesota. There's a reason why Diggs is in Buffalo and Dez Bryant and DeAndre Hopkins are not.

What I said about Tyrod was that if you could tell me that for so long as he continued to have seasons with a passer rating like he had his first season, I would take him as my quarterback. His passer rating that year was 99.4. That would have made him 6th, 6th, 11th and 11th in the league the past four years. Unfortunately for Tyrod, he never did it again. I'm not saying Benjamin wasn't a mistake. Well, mistake is the wrong word. Is was an attempt to do something that didn't work. Every GM attempts some things that don't work. Calling it a mistake is no different than calling a swing and a miss a mistake. Sure, it cost the Bills something, but they were trying to make the playoffs and they needed help at receiver. Still, I think we agree more than you say.

I'm not sure you disagree with me. You just say it better.

You may remember (I don't) what it was that you and I seriously knocked heads about several years ago. We were back and forth in serious disagreement about Taylor or someone or some thing. I'm amused how we've come around to seeing things almost exactly the same. That kind of experience is what's fun about being on a forum with some quality posters. One substantive point that your post reminds me of. People bash the Kelvin Benjamin move, as though it was a big-time A+ team building failure. They forget what it was, and what Beane TOLD us it was. It was a mid-season attempt to add some firepower to an offense that seemed to be limiting the Bills' run at a playoff spot. Beane saw that he needed help and went out shopping. You're unlikely to get a star in that kind of a search, and Beane knew that. You're more likely to get something that looks like damaged goods. He took a swing and he missed. It just isn't that big a deal. Beane admitted that last season, same situation, he went shopping again and tried to convince the Vikings that Diggs was damaged goods. It didn't work; Diggs was and is too good a talent for a team to give up on him mid-season. The point is that no GM and no coach makes all the correct personnel decisions. They can be evaluated over the longer-term, not on a case-by-case basis but on a collective basis. It's pretty hard to argue that collectively Beane's been doing anything other than hitting singles, doubles and homers.

Maybe I'll respond to both of your posts, both of which I think are very good. I'll start with this one, which I agree with. I agree completely that there's a difference between having a system, which McDermott clearly has, and a system that translates into high level success. And I agree that I believe McDermott has both, even though he obviously hasn't had the success yet. I agree with a point some, maybe you, have made, that the question about McDermott is whether he has plateaued as a coach and if not, when will he. Unless he shows he can do more, he won't get where he needs to go. Before I talk more about that, let me say that there's nothing in the OP that says McDermott is going to be a big winner. It's simply a discussion of the approach that McDermott is taking. It's a discussion of the thinking behind the decisions to let some people go and to acquire certain kinds of personalities for the team. There's also nothing in the discussion that says that every personnel decision Beane and McDermott have made is correct. It's a discussion of their approach to team building. You are correct, however, because you pay attention to what people say, that I think McDermott IS going to be a big winner. I think the Bills are on the road to being the next long-term successful franchise, right behind the Patriots run, and even possibly as good as the Patriots run. Why do I think that? A combination of things. I agree with what is often said, that the culture of the franchise has to be aligned properly from top to bottom. I think the Bills have that. They have long-term committed owners who are solidly behind the men running the team. That includes a willingness to pay them, so I don't think it's likely that either Beane or McDermott will be leaving any time soon. They have a coach and a GM whose objective is sustained, long-term excellence; they aren't interested in a sprint to the top followed by a rebuild. They want to get good and stay good, like the Patriots did. To do that they need a QB who has all the right attributes: Competitiveness, brains, work ethic, personality and leadership skills. They got that. The owner, coach, and GM also have to have patience, and they have that. Patience while everyone in the organization learns how to have that kind of long-term excellence. So, for example, I'm not surprised that McDermott's teams haven't had the offensive flair or spark we'd like, because McDermott has spent his entire coaching career up until Buffalo learning about defense. He demonstrated that he learned a lot about defense, climbing the ladder in Philadelphia, then Carolina and now Buffalo, where very quickly he built a very good defense by getting rid of almost everyone he inherited. It took him years to learn defense like that, and it's going to take him some time to become excellent at offense. Why do I think he will become excellent at offense? Because he has the characteristics he wants in his players, competitiveness, brains, hard work. He has detailed written goals prepared for him by Beane, McDermott himself and others in the organization. He will do what he's always done, which is to work and study until he achieves those goals. Belichick's Browns teams regularly ranked in the high teens and twenties in offensive points and offensive yards, and his Patriots teams weren't consistently good offensively until his fifth or sixth year there, so the fact that McDermott hasn't done it in three years really doesn't worry me all that much. If it takes him three more years to figure it out, his QB will just be coming into his prime and they'll be set for a ten-year run. So I have a lot of confidence that it's happening, right before our eyes. Astute fans, like you, will sit back, watch it, enjoy it and appreciate it. I just think I'm a little bit ahead of you in seeing that it's coming. Call it optimism if you want, but I don't think it's optimism. I think it comes from analyzing and seeing that the Bills have put all the pieces in place. It didn't happen exactly by design. We've been lucky to get the right owners, the owners figured out what to look for in a coach and found it, and together they found the right GM. There was luck involved throughout. We could have gotten Bon Jovi. McDermott could have come out a year earlier. Carolina could have figured out they should fire Gettlemen and promoted Beane, Allen could have gone earlier in the draft or been a bust. So, sure, it was luck or happenstance or whatever one might want to call it. All I know is that it's all come together now and unless something unexpected happens, it's going to be a beautiful thing. Before people start blasting away, let me say that I see that the weak link in all this is Allen. I fully believe that Allen will be a Hall of Fame quarterback. I've said before, he strikes me as being most like Elway. I think Beane will keep doing his magic, and I think McDermott will get better and better at what he does. The question for me isn't whether McDermott will plateau; the question is whether Allen will. I don't think so, but he's still pretty far away from where he has to be. I think that tune will begin to change this season. I think the combination of his continuing growth and the addition of serious firepower at the offensive skill positions will move Allen up into or near the top 10 QBs this coming season. After that, I expect him to be regularly part of the MVP discussions for many season to come. But, as I say, that's just me.

I think this demonstrates a serious misunderstanding of what McBeane have been doing. They told us what they would do, and they've doing it. They didn't get Kerley and Benjamin and those guys because they thought talent wasn't important, and somehow they "aren't delusional anymore." These guys have never been delusional. What they've said, and what they've done is fill the roster with players who have the kind of personal characteristics they were looking for: Intense competitors, hard workers, guys determined to get better, family guys with serious personal values. They've been very clear about this. They don't care how talented a guy is; if he doesn't have those personal characteristics, they don't want them. So they cleared guys like Watkins and Dareus out. Plain and simple. They understood that by changing up the roster in that way they would drain the roster of some serious talent and they would not be able to replace it immediately with the same level of talent. They told us that. But McDermott explained that if you keep guys around who don't meet his character standards, they tend to infect the team, and as long as they are there infecting the team, you can't build the culture you want. So they cleaned house and filled the roster with the character they wanted, to create the culture. Once they got the culture they wanted, they began replacing players who fit the character mold and who were more talented than the guys they have. They didn't didn't think that Kerley was good enough and then suddenly discover that talent was important. They knew all along that they needed talent. They just believed, and told us, that they were going to build character and culture first. They did exactly what they said they'd do. And they aren't done yet. There will be another talent upgrade next year. My point in the OP was about only a small part of it, which is that part of the character criteria is the guy has to be an intense competitor. They guy has to be desperate to win. That's important to McDermott because he understands that the roster is so large that there can be no equivalent of a Jordan, no superstar who drives the entire team to be excellent every day. As someone pointed out, that's why McDermott is constantly talking about veteran leadership in every position room. Within each position room you can have a guy who pushes teammates like a Jordan did, because it's a small enough group.

Thurm - I agree with this. I think the NFL is about coaching, not about talent, and it's clear that the Bills have won with coaching. The whole point of the excitement caused by the off-season is that this is a well-coached team that has now added some premier talent (Diggs), some solid starting talent (defensive acquistions), and some promising rookie talent. Win with coaching. Win a lot with coaching and talent.

That may not be sportsmanlike, but it doesn't mean Brady isnt an intense competitor. Words actually have meaning. You can't just change what a word means because you dont like Brsdy.

You're talking personality. You're correct. Jordan didn't whine. I was talking competitiveness. Both of them were off the charts in that category.

I agree. I have to admit that as the years have gone by the memory of just how impactful he was has faded a bit. And what an enormous star he was. Everyone DID want to be like Mike. The show gives a great look inside his life during those years. The amount of pressure he was under to be Mike whenever he left the house or the locker room was incredible. And through it all he was patient, smiling, and then still able to perform on the floor in unbelievable ways. But what impressed me the most, and what got me thinking about what I wrote, was the level of emotional intensity the whole team brought to the game. They worked so hard, every day, because they couldn't stand losing, and they couldn't stand it because Jordan made them that way. 60 Minutes did a show on him once, and they covered his fantasy camp. Forty-something wannabes playing ball for three or four days, with Jordan and others coaching drills. Every camper was guaranteed at least one three-on-three game with Jordan on his team. The report said no matter what happened, Jordan never lost. Never. He hates to lose. He admits it. He admits it isn't always pretty. It's just the way he is.

You're absolutely correct. And if you thought I was comparing Jordan and McDermott, you more or less missed the point. I had written enough, so I didn't want to confuse the point by talking about Brady. Brady IS Jordan, in terms of competitiveness. But when I watched the Patriots it was clear that Brady couldn't demand the kind of performance from all of his teammates that Jordan could with his team. The nature of personal dynamics is such that no one can drive the performance of 30 or 40 individuals the way a basketball player can drive eight or ten. When Jordan was doing his job, he was on the floor, side by side with his teammates. Their play together is in a significant measure personal - Jordan's looking you in the eye expecting you to be here or there, expecting the ball to arrive here or there. It's a one-on-one relationship. A quarterback may have that kind of relationship with his offensive players, but there's no such relationship with his defensive players. Just can't be done. Brady went as far as he could down that road, and it helped drive the team, but he never had anything like the impact that Jordan had. The point is that in football, the individual players have to bring the intensity themselves, because it isn't possible for anyone, including a Brady, to get all the players to be committed at the necessary level. It just isn't possible. And that's why in looking for players, McDermott and Beane aren't interested in any guy who doesn't have the natural competitiveness, intense natural competitiveness, of a Jordan or a Bird.

I don't really no the new players, but "vocal and got there the hard way" is what we're talking about here. McDermott would have loved Fred Jackson.

I disagree on both of these points. McDermott is intensely competitive. He works every day to improve particular skills that he and his staff have identified for him to work on. He's going to improve as a coach, year after year, for the next 20 years. He doesn't know any other way. He is nowhere near his best coaching abilities. Hughes doesn't have anything like the intensity that Murphy has. Murphy has white-hot intensity, and McDermott wanted him on the team because of it. Murphy's problem is that intensity alone isn't enough, so he's at risk of losing his job every season.

Excellent point. Wish I'd thought of it. And that's why Trent Murphy is on the team. You see it in the youngsters, too. You see it in how Singletary and Moss run. Knox has it. Fromm has it. McDermott wants intense guys who also will commit to the team.

I’ve been watching The Last Dance on ESPN. It’s the ten-part documentary about Michael Jordan’s career. It’s a great collection of behind-the-scenes film over Jordan’s years with the Bulls, with plenty of candid comments from Jordan and others about his personality. After watching one of the recent episodes, I could see more clearly one of the central parts of Sean McDermott’s team-building philosophy. Jordan is and was extraordinarily competitive. I’d heard about his competitiveness before, and it’s on full display in the show. He has a burning desire to win. He gambles, he competes in coin-tossing, he plays table tennis, he invents personal affronts to fire himself up. Everything is to win – for Jordan there is no other way to play. Jordan came to understand that for his team to win championships at the highest level, the entire team had to practice and play with the same desire he had, and he made his team do it. Every day in practice, Jordan played hard, and he was in the face of his teammates to play hard, to play like his life depended on it. He demanded intense competitiveness of everyone: Scotty Pippen, Horace Grant, B. J. Armstrong, everyone. Steve Kerr hadn’t been on the team when the Bulls did their first three-peat, and Jordan decided that Kerr didn’t know what it took to be a winner. Jordan began pushing him, harassing him in practice. Finally, Kerr lost it and punched Jordan in the chest, and Jordan punched Kerr in the eye. After practice Jordan admitted to Phil Jackson that he was wrong, and he called Kerr and apologized. After that, they were fine. Jordan was merciless with Scott Burrell, who had enormous talent but wouldn’t, couldn’t play with the fire that would make him a great player. Jordan was merciless. Other players talk about how bad they felt for Burrell. When asked whether he liked Jordan, B.J. Armstrong struggled. In the film, you can see how much fun they all had around each other, laughing and joking. They were great teammates. But in the end, Armstrong admitted that everyone was afraid of Jordan. You didn’t want him to target you. What you can see on the show is that Jordan raised the level of play of the entire team by demanding competitive excellence. He was merciless, but he got away with it because he also was fun to be around and because he held himself to the same standards. There were plenty of times when his teammates thought he was a jerk, but they were willing to put up with it, because they knew he was making them all better. What’s fascinating is to see how fierce competitiveness translated into championships. The Bulls played for years with unmatched intensity and commitment to excellence. They came at you with a killer instinct that Jordan demanded of the team. Watching this display I could see for the first time why it is that Brandon Beane and McDermott value certain personal qualities above all else. To win consistently, an NFL team has to play with the intensity and the competitiveness that the Bulls had in those years. They have to be determined to execute their jobs with ruthless efficiency under just about the most difficult circumstances imaginable, short of being in an actual battle. They have to play with excellence and non-stop ferocity. NFL rosters are too big for one player to will the rest of team to play like that. In the NBA, a Jordan or a Magic or a Bird, by virtue of being the best player and the hardest worker on the team and if they have the right personality, can bring everyone else along with him. In the NFL, that isn’t possible. First, the leader pretty much has to be the QB, but the QB can’t be the most physically intense player on the team. His job is to avoid some of the contact that the other guys need to relish. So, occasional leap over a linebacker notwithstanding, the QB isn’t playing the same game everyone else is. Second, no one has the personality to keep 40 different guys happy and willing to put up with the relentless demands of the lead dog. Third, although the QB may be the leader of the team, it’s hard for him to demand intensity from the defense. He just isn’t around them enough, and he doesn’t really understand the game they’re playing. So, turn the clock back ten or fifteen years. A young Sean McDermott, working with the Eagles and later with the Panthers, is studying how to build a winner. That’s the amazing thing about McDermott – he’s been studying how to be a winner for a couple of decades. He can see that when teams succeed, one characteristic they always have is intense competitiveness. If they aren’t intensely competitive, when the chips are down, they lose. And they lose not just because they don’t have enough fight on the field; they lose because the competitiveness isn’t there every day on the practice field and in the position rooms and at the training table. They lose because they don’t want it bad enough to focus on doing what they need to do every day. McDermott realized that the only way for an NFL team to have that intense competitiveness is to fill the roster with guys who already have it. He knew what that intensity looks and feels like, because it’s the intensity that successful wrestlers have. He has it. He knew from watching his wrestling teammates that the very best didn’t get their intensity from someone else; it’s inside them. And so, McDermott came to understand that a core principle to NFL success is to fill the team with guys who have it. In Beane, McDermott has a GM who understands the same point. And that is why they have told us for three years now that they are looking for players who want to compete, who love to compete, who hate to lose and who are great teammates. They still need leaders, but the leaders can’t do the job on a football team unless the whole team burns with the desire to win, burns so much that they are willing to do what needs to be done, every day, to win on Sundays. Beane and McDermott have now bought together a team full of guys with that fire in them and with the understanding that success comes from working together. These guys look around the locker room and see a bunch of other guys just like themselves. They all want it. They see it in their coach. They see it in their quarterback. It’s powerful. GO BILLS!!! The Rockpile Review is written to share the passion we have for the Buffalo Bills. That passion was born in the Rockpile; its parents were everyday people of western New York who translated their dedication to a full day’s hard work and simple pleasures into love for a pro football team.

Bait. Seems like it may be about how great Sammy Watkins is, but I can't really tell.