Shaw66

I wasn't as deeply into the Bills in those days as I am now, but I remember reaching this conclusion, too. Flutie was exciting, and I liked the idea that he could emerge into something like Mahomes - an unconventional guy who is just such a good athlete and such a winner that he's going to make plays for you. But when I left that dreamworld, Johnson was the obvious choice. Just doing my part to get to 100.

This thread is crazy. We've talked about all kinds of things. I find it interesting that according to some people McBeane got BOTH of these things wrong: They didn't pay Watkins $14 million or more (SEVENTH IN THE LEAGUE) for mediocre receiver performance and lousy locker room presence. They did pay Lotulelei $10 million (13th in the league and $4 million less than Dareus) for mediocre defensive tackle performance and good locker room presence.

You didn't ask me, but I never understood it. I try to understand the logic in movies that they make, and one reason I like McBeane is that they seem to have good reasons for doing things. This one I never understood. Watkins may have been less than a great team player, but he wasn't a cancer. He just seemed not to realize his potential. I always say it's better to keep good talent a year too long than to give up on talent a year too early, so I would have exercised the option and tried to get him to be the guy we all hoped he would be. Turns out that wouldn't have helped much, because he wasn't stellar for either of the next two years and would have left in free agency. Still, I thought he was worth the continuing investment.

Well sure. We can always bring it down to one play like that. I'm sure you understand the point.

I agree it's a pretty good discussion. I've said that in a couple posts. That doesn't change the fact that some people in the discussion steadfastly refuse to give McBeane positive grades for anything. This current discussion that trading Sammy was some kind of calamitous mistake is a good example. There were perfectly good reasons why that happened, and there is no evidence that having kept Sammy would have changed the fortunes of the Bills in any material way, and yet some people continue to point to it as some major failing. You want to argue about a player who has had success, like Mahomes, fine. I get that. But arguing that McBeane are failing because of Watkins is stubborn or stupid. I will listen to that argument when Sammy has a legitimate 1000 yard season, not before. I dont think there is even a 5% chance McBeane are in trouble if the Bill's are 8-8 this year. They have been completely clear that they're building for the long term and there's no evidence that the Pegulas aren't on board with that. The Pegs could grow impatient, for sure, but I think that happens only at 6-10 or worse.

Some people aren't looking for that evidence very hard, because they won't acknowledge the evidence all over the place. Still, you're right about the QB. Do everything else right and get the QB wrong, you're nowhere.

It's what happens when some people can't understand that it's possible to be doing a good job at a task without yet having a lot to show for it.

I have referred often to what Ernie Accorsi says in his book GM. It's something like "you cannot win with three prima donnas on your team, it's possible but not likely with two prima donnas, and it's possible with one." The evidence of that is on view year after year in the NFL. Who trades an OBJ? A coach and a GM who understand that they need to build a team, and guy with OBJ's attitude makes it very difficult. Th stories earlier this year about Aaron Rodgers and Mike McCarthy are another example. Rodgers has made it very difficult to win in Green Bay. So bashing McBeane for unloading Watkins and Dareus, particularly, doesn't make sense to me. It's bad for the team to ask the coach to focus his attention on the personal wants and needs of individual players. Coaches need those players to show everyone else how to behave. Those have both to be the MOST talented and have the best work ethics, not the worst.

I think it's kind of funny that people don't see this simple fact. Sammy was one of the most coveted receivers in the draft in the last 20 years. He was as much of a can't-miss receiver prospect as the league sees. Other than an occasional flash, he hasn't performed. Robert Foster's occasional flashes in 2018 were as good and as numerous as Sammy's. The problem with the NFL, something some fans have trouble recognizing, is that the NFL doesn't give you anything as a player - you have to earn everything you get. And it doesn't matter how good you were in college, you have to earn it in the NFL. Sammy never earned it. He had the talent, but he never did the work to be as good as he could have been. He admitted it a year after he left Buffalo. People are still in love with the IDEA of Sammy. Sammy the guy with speed, great moves, punt-returner type elusiveness, excellent hands, tackle breaking ability. He had it all. He just never put in the work to be what he could have been. Now, like a lot of guys after five years in the league, those really top-end attributes have been muted by age and injury. He still has enough to be a really valuable receiver, if the work-ethic and commitment to team and excellence finally emerge. I can understand the logic of complaining when you trade away a high pick, an identifiable talent who later becomes a star elsewhere, like a Marshawn Lynch. There reasons he had to go, but maybe he could have been salvaged in Buffalo. But I just scratch my head when people try to prove that a coach and a GM are doing a bad job when they give up on a failed superstar who can't become a consistent starting receiver for the best QBs in the league. Do we think Julio Jones would be the number 3 guy in Kansas City? The simple fact is that through this point in his career, Sammy has underperformed his promise - badly - and has done nothing more than dozens of journeymen NFL receivers. He just happens to get paid more than those others.

Absolutely. They don't have to be media darlings. But they need to be able to stand up there and handle the questions that legitimately must be answered by the CEO. They fell down badly in those couple of months.

I dont remember all these details bit it sou.ds mostly correct. As I wrote yesterday, I think McD essentially had an option to pull the trigger on Whaley. McD worked with him for a while and decided he wanted a new guy. Also decided he would wait to get a QB. I think you're absolutely correct about Terry not getting out in front of the entire mess surrounding the.coaching change. I think the Pegulas got their PR education during that month. I think they saw how important PR is to maintaining an environment within which the coach and GM can do their jobs. So they put on their big boy pants and straightened things out, including going to the Buffalo News and telling them they'd had enough. McDermott obviously worked hard to develop relationships with the press and Beane did, too, when he arrived. And the Pegulas became more visible as the people in charge. It all seemed to me to be a good example of the Pegs growing into their jobs.

Well, I've never bought this theory about Beane calling any shots on the Bills 2017 draft. I just don't think the Pegulas would risk tampering claims, or whatever the charge would have been. And if you believe the way the Beane hire was reported, when the Bills DID approach Beane, McD was part of a sales pitch that suggests that Beane didn't have moving to Buffalo as his priority. McD had to convince him to take a shot. So, if he was on the fence AFTER the draft, he certainly wouldn't have been feeding draft information to the Bills before the draft. But, the timing of it all IS intriguing, so if when the history is written ten years from now it comes out that Beane was in on the 2017 draft, well, that will be very interesting. And that, my friend, describes the ideal way for those changes to have come to pass - the three of them talking about what they can do and the three of coming up with this. If that happened, and if it continues to happen, that's simply ideal.

Belichick is a football savant, yes, but he's a football student, as well. He spent his most important years in his coaching development strictly on defense. He hadn't yet brought his football mind to bear on the offense until he became a head coach. His study of the offense may have begun when he was young, but his mastery didn't arise until several years of success in New England. Not arguing, just thinking through who he is and how he got there. I think you're right about how the decision was made. Not unliike the decision about how to use Lorenzo Alexander in 2018. The coaches went to him and asked him, and they worked out a better way to take advantage of his talents on the field. I hope it was Daboll who noticed. It IS part of his job, a key part of his job, but that doesn't mean he thought of it. For all we know Allen went to him and asked for more speed at wideout. Still, as I think you suggested earlier, at this point I don't care where offensive inspiration comes from this year, so long as it comes.

This, but it's pretty good evidence that McD simply was not prepared to pull the trigger on a QB in 2017. You know Reid wants to make a big move, so you know it's almost certainly for a QB. Everyone knew that both Watson and Mahomes had talent (along with some questions), mid to high first round talent. Same thing Allen had the following year - talent and questions. Why did McD trade away from one opportunity and trade up into another? It means he had the courage to make the call; he just wasn't prepared to make it in 2017. Now, you can argue that he just misevaluated Watson and Mahomes but (1) that would have been pretty hard to do and (2) that would have been Whaley's call, in all likelihood. Much more likely that McD wasn't ready to pull that trigger because he wanted a new GM there to make the decision - he didn't trust Whaley. As I've speculated before, I think McD had kind of an option on Whaley - I think when he was hired, the Pegulas asked him about Whaley and McDermott said he wanted to work with him through the draft and then he'd tell them. Then, probably sometime before the draft, he told the Pegulas that he wanted a new GM after the draft.

Thanks. On McDermott, the objective is to be a master of the game like Belichick. He didn't know a lot about offense when he became a HC. He's still known as a defensive coach, but there's no doubt he's the master of the offense, too. That's where McD needs to go. As for Daboll, I guess I'd never tied the second half offensive strength back to the switch to more of a speed lineup, which was quite apparent when it happened. That's a good observation. I'm not suggesting that it happened one way or another, but it would be interesting to know whose idea it was to go the speed route. Did McDermott tell Daboll he wanted more speed, did Daboll tell McD? Did Daboll have trouble convincing McD? Did someone else on the offense suggest it to Daboll? Regardless of who gets the credit, that's one example of the offensive creativity that's necessary - look at what's working and what isn't, and make changes so it works better. That kind of thinking is necessary both on a macro team identity level and on the game to game planning level, as well as the micro playcalling level.

I think McD would tell you it has to be about him, not Daboll. If McD isn't the leader of the offense, over the long term your offensive is only as good as the OC, and as soon as the OC is identified by the league as a star, he's gone to a HC position. McD has to install a system (or master a system someone else installs) for the team to have the long-term success he wants. Short term, of course, if Daboll does it without McD, I'm happy. Just so long as someone does it. I don't have a lot of reason to have the confidence in Daboll and the others as you do. I think it's purely wait and see. As I said, I think there's enough talent across the lineup to put competitive (at least average) talent on the field.

Again, I don't Xs and Os, but I think you're right. I like the comment from Beasley that sounded like he's getting to run the whole route tree from different positions - he likes the complexity of what the Bills are doing compared to the Cowboys. Frankly, if Daboll hasn't learned enough from Belichick and Saban to do this, it will be disappointing. I think the personnel is there, in the sense that it's good enough so that they shouldn't get blown out. There are just too many experienced offensive linemen on board for a coach not to be able to find a pay to put together at least decent run blocking and decent pass protection. There's enough wideout talent to get people open and complete passes, if not with devastating effect, at least to be able to move the ball and score some points. Shady and Gore SHOULD be able to do some damage, and I'm personally excited about Singletary. I think he may very well have that special skillset that will let him have at least a few successful years. Allen showed enough at QB last season to be able to build on it. The talent just isn't that bad. The question is whether the coaching will be above average, or below.

I watch a lot, but I'm not expert in Xs and Os. But I'll say this: I think McD's defensive thinking is WAY ahead of his offensive thinking. I'd guess that McDermott spends a lot of off-season time studying offense, because he knows that's where this team needs more leadership. This point about the pass defense is a good example. I don't know the details of what the Bills play back there, but it's been obvious for the whole defensive back seven last season and at least for the safeties the past two seasons, that they've been give a defense that is difficult to throw against and that they've gotten very good at executing it. Guys rarely get beaten badly. Receivers rarely have a lot of open field after the catch. I admire it, because Belichick's back seven have been like that for a long time. I don't know if the fundamentals of the D are the same or different, but I know the results in Buffalo look a lot like results in NE. The pass defense just doesn't give you a lot. Obviously, the Bills have shown more or less no offensive mastery like the pass defense. The question is whether McDermott can develop the knowledge and leadership skills to help Daboll get that kind of excellence out of the offense.

I think the blowouts reflect a bigger problem than you say. It's unusual, I'd say very unusual for a supposedly solid team, a team that may be building but is fundamentally sound, to get blownout more than once or twice in a season. You're not fundamentally sound if you're getting beaten badly for more than a quarter of the season. Jauron couldn't win enough, but he didn't let games get away from him. (And, by the way, I agree that the Pats game late in the season was a blowout in a sense. The Pats were in control, everyone knew it. That shouldn't happen, at least not very often. I remember when the Saints came to Buffalo 8 or 10 years ago and shut down the Bills. One of their coaches or players said after the game something like "We could have played another two hours and they (the Bills) wouldn't have scored on us.") In his second season, McDermott should have had a team on the field that knew what it was doing well enough not to get dominated more than two or three times. In fact, I think he had the players. Not to win 10, but to be in just about all games and to find a way to win seven or eight. Maybe it was poor scouting, maybe it was poor game planning by coordinators. I say this I guess because there were other games where the Bills were well prepared and the players fought and executed and still maybe lost, but didn't look lost on the field. That tells me they players were good enough to compete, and the coaches let them down. That's why I was happy to see McD make some changes. Something was missing. And that really is my concern for the future. Despite the whole debate here about where they are and how they got here, I like the players. I like them now, and I like the fact that the overall talent on the team will get even better in 2020. What troubles me is whether these coaches, and ultimately whether McDermott, can get athletes to be competitive every week, athletes who are physically good enough to compete. Somebody clearly wasn't getting that job done from week to week in 2018, as demonstrated by the blowouts.

I hate this "held accountable" stuff. How should McDermott be held accountable? Should he be fired because he didn't draft Mahomes? Head coaches get fired because they aren't successful over time. What qualifies as success and how much time they get is determined by the owner. One thing is sure: none of them gets fired for one mistake. Not drafting Mahomes is one decision out of thousands that gets tossed on the scales when McDermott's performance is weighed. I expect that five years from now the narrative will be that two teams each got a great QB as the result of one trade.

All your examples are before free agency rules and salary cap. In that rea it WAS possible to win in the NFL on talent. I think the Lelly Bill's are, as you say, the perfect example. But that hasn't been true for the last 20 years, except for the Seahawks, who hit some draft home runs that let them succeed for a few years with superior talent. That is not a good strategy for building a winning franchise - that strategy requires that a Russell Wilson fall into your lap so you can get great QB play at bargain basement prices. Bill Belichick, Andy Reid and Sean Payton say hello. Their talent keeps changing and they keep winning. Reid won with Alex Smith, so don't say it's all about the QB. We're about to find out what kind of coaching skill the Bill's have.

Fair enough. Our difference is that I am convinced that the game is more about coaching than talent. I think the Bills had more than enough talent on offense to be better than they were, and it was the coach's job to implement a scheme where ordinary NFL talent can fill in and succeed in a scheme playing beside good players. In other words, I think the coach's job is to get more of the talent than the sum of the parts. Any decent coach can get the sum; more than the sum is the added value that coaches bring. I don't think Dennison brought any added value.

One of the things that sold me on McDermott, and I'm mostly sold on him, was that he actually fired Dennison. By the end of the season, I wanted Dennison out of there, because of his total lack of creativity. I thought McDermott was too forgiving, to much a believer in the process, to can Dennison after only one season. When I saw that McD had pulled the trigger, my view of McD went up. It said he has objectives and he isn't afraid to to make hard decisions when objectives aren't being met. That offense should have been better than it was, and McD knew it.

That's a fair assessment, except that neutral is failing. ANY decent coach will get the sum of the parts. That's just giving the guys an offense to play and seeing that they execute as well as they can. If you're not adding anything, you deserve to be fired at this level. He had Tyrod Taylor, LeSean McCoy, Dion Dawkins, Eric Wood and Richie Incognito. Bills were something like 29th in yards and 27th in touchdowns. Dennison didn't add anything, and he got what he deserved.

I'll be there. Waiting for someone to invite back the next week to see them beat the Giants. Then I'll be at the home opener. 3-0 when the Pats come to town. I'm ready!!!