Shaw66

The offense will be multi-dimensional this season, I'm confident of that. Whether both dimensions will be a threat is tougher to predict. If I'm Taylor I'm REALLY pissed if the Bills trade Watkins.

Oh. True, if you're talking about constant improvement of field position, 3 and outs are relevant. But I'd rather have some sustained drives for scores and some three and outs instead of two first downs and a punt on every drive. Wins are what matters. Points scored and points allowed are next most important. "Constant improvement of field position," whatever that means, is way down the list of important stats.

10th in points per game, and that's the stat that really matters. Plus, I think when you run a run-first offense, you have a lot of possessions where you run twice and you're third and seven eight or nine. Tough to convert those. It's another way to look at the same statement most of us make over and over - Bills need a more balanced attack, with more passes per game. It's hard to win consistently when everyone knows you're going to run all game, every game. It's another lesson to be learned from the Pats. They crush an opponent with passes one week, and the next week they run 40 times for 195 yards and throw 22 passes. When you can run AND pass, the defense has to prepare for everything, and that's when it's feasible to take what the defense is giving you.

I live 400 miles away and go to most of the games. I can't always find people to give the tix to if I'm not going. Where do you donate them? That's a good solution.

Of course? Why wouldn't I? I love being at the games. Great excitement, always interesting things to see. Nothing better than being with 50-60,000 people who care about their team and let the opponent know we're there. Love it.

True, but there are two counters to that. One is that kickers age differently. Their careers are much longer, so Hauschka is still in his prime. The other is that when you have All-Pro talent, which is what Hauschka is, you aren't going to get much discount if he's still in his prime and he's had just one off year.

I suggest Peter King look up the stats. Hauschka is the third most accurate field goal kicker in history, and over his career he's succeeded on more than 50% of his attempts over 50 yards. Yes, Hauschka struggled last year, but he's been a great kicker, he isn't too old, and the Bills have made about the 10th highest paid kicker in the league. It just isn't all that unusual.

How is this not a rebuild? I'll tell you, but you have to promise to use the word "rebuild" in the way that it is typically used in reference to sports franchises. A rebuild is when the leadership of the team actively releases players, including good players who have multiple years left in their careers and who will play someplace else. It's an active decision to turn over the roster more rapidly that it would ordinarily turn over from the draft, free agency, cuts and retirements. It's a drastic change in personnel because the decision has been made to start over. The word also implies that management is consciously making the team worse in the short-run because they've decided the fastest way to get good is to start over. Yes, using the the word "rebuild" in the generic, general English language sense, the front office has been rebuilt. But when sports fans talk about rebuilding a team, they're talking about the roster, not the front office. There has been nothing, at least not yet, that is anything like a roster rebuild in Buffalo. Woods, Goodwin and Brown were pretty normal free agency departures - the Bills would have like to keep them, just not at the prices they were asking. They didn't leave because there was a conscious decision to start over. This isn't a rebuild. Doesn't mean that there won't be one. A new GM and a new coach could decide in January that a thorough roster housecleaning is the best way to go forward, but they certainly aren't going to do that yet. You aren't going to cut talent at this time of year, because your opportunity to get talent is very small. All the good talent has been drafted or signed already. For example, a rebuild could result in guys like Incognito, Dareus and Hughes being cut. Imagine the headlines on ESPN and imagine the free agency frenzy that would start if those guys were cut. The league would be frantic to sign those guys. But the Bills would have no opportunity to replace them, because no other teams are releasing talent. It's very unlikely that a coach or GM would cut a bunch of guys like that at this time of year. Now, I could imagine McDermott deciding in August he's fed up with a player, like a Dareus or a Hughes and just cut him, but that's not a rebuild. That's just a coach getting rid of someone he considers a bad apple. So if there's going to be a rebuild, it'll be a 2018 rebuild.

I'll reply to your ignorance once and give up. If you read my post again, you'll see that it's very clear that I was talking about 2017. I know they hired Rex, but I'm not talking about that. We were talking about the quality of the Pegula's 2017 decision making because YOU said there was not reason to get excited about they did. I'm sorry you can't keep up with the train of thought long enough to understand what we are talking about. So once more, we're talking about what the Pegulas have done since the first of the year. You said it wasn't anything important. I said they fired a dysfunctional coach, they fired a GM a lot of people wanted fired, they hired one the most highly rated coaching prospects to be HC. Their HC hired a very well respected collection of assistant coaches. They hired a bright young well respected GM candidate, and that's been followed by the hiring of several apparently qualified people to work under Beane. Now, even you understand that no one actually knows if these guys will end up winning a lot of games for the Bills. But I asked you to tell us, with all your brilliance, why it's so obvious that these were all the wrong choices. Presumably that means you know who would have been better choices. So I'll ask once again, what is it that the Pegulas would have done that at this time, May 2017, would be obviously so much better than what they actually did. And I looked back several pages and didn't see the answer to that question, despite your statement that I would.

man, I haven't worried about any of this at all. I suppose there's some question about whether the line can handle it, but I don't see why not. They're generally pretty mobile. And I have no concern about McCoy whatsoever. The guy understands finding daylight and going to it. He understands patience. Last season I imagined him running behind the Steelers line, in place of Bell, and my guess was that he'd be even better at that running style than Bell is. What I really like about those stretch plays is that they put the whole backfield in motion, including the QB. It allows for floating pockets, rollouts. It isolates pass rushers, so they are easier for a mobile QB to avoid them. I think opening up the offense this way is going to fit nicely with the Bills personnel.

I agree with OP. That's WHY the Bills could be better. However, McD is totally upproven, so it's hard to say for a fact that he WILL be better than Rex. Too many variables. I also agree that strength of schedule is not very useful. In my experience Bills fans at this time of year always say the schedule is tough. You can't tell by looking at last year's record. It's about how good the Bills are, not how good the other teams are. No one plays the Browns four times.

But from what we've read about Dennison, he isn't picking a scheme to fit Taylor. This is Dennison's scheme, and he thinks Taylor can run it.

As for running the ball when at the line of scrimmage. I think the running game relies a lot on stretch plays. Don't some QBs run the read option off the stretch play and take the ball outside when the linebacker crashes? If so, this an offense where Tyrod running will make a difference. That's what it sounds like to me. The tough part is getting into the right play at the line. After that, it's take the snap and do one prescribed thing with the ball. He probably has one post-snap read; if he sees a key one way he throws to his primary. If he sees the key the other way, he throws to his secondary. That's what it sounds like.

I think you guys need to listen more carefully to what Dennison said. He said the QB in his offense has to make pre-snap reads to get the team into the right play. He doesn't have to make a lot of post-snap reads. The play and the matchups that are apparent at the line of scrimmage determines where the ball is going. It doesn't have anything to do with Tyrod seeing the field scanning the defense as the play evolves, etc. It's come to the line, see what the defense is, take the snap, throw the ball. It's how KC and a lot of teams play. He said he knows Tyrod can do it. How does he know? Well, he didn't say, but he had him in Baltimore and he's worked with him for a couple of months. He's probably watched Taylor work out. He knows Tyrod CAN do it; it's just a question of whether he WILL do it. So discussion about whether this is coachable, which Dennison answered, really isn't relevant. Obviously it's teachable - take the ball and throw it to THAT guy. The QB just has to get the team into the right play. Although at first in response to the question about whether this is a competition, he said everyone competes, late in the interview he admitted that one of their objectives will be to get Tyrod a lot of reps. Tyrod is the guy. We'll see if he can do what Dennison wants.

All you can do is evaluate the Pegulas on what they did with the opportunities that they were presented with. You talk like the Pegulas have been failures in 2017 because they haven't won a Super Bowl. Well, winning a Super Bowl, winning the division, making the playoffs all are things they couldn't do anything about in the first five months of 2017. What they were presented with was a dysfunctional coach and they fired him. What more could they do? Check that box. They had a field of head coach candidates to look at. They hired, from the perspective of the spring of 2017, the best candidate. He didn't go someplace else, like Chip Kelly a few years ago. There was, on paper, no better candidate. Will he succeed? We don't know. It isn't knowable at this time. So what more could the Pegula's do? Check that box. They had a decision to make about Whaley. For a variety of reasons that aren't really known to us, they fired him. Most people thought that was the right thing to. At least from the perspective of what Whaley had accomplished in his tenure, it wasn't obviously a bad move to fire him. Check that box. They hired one of the top candidates to be a GM, acknowledged around the league as a guy who would be a GM someday. He has experience. He has a working relationship with McDermott, which is a plus and a change, apparently, from life under Whaley and the previous head coaches. Check THAT box. They hired guys to work for Beane, ALL of whom are highly respected around the league and are potential GM candidates. One of them spent several years working for the Patriots, which is a plus. Based on the field they had to choose from, they couldn't have gotten more qualified people. Check THAT box. What is that you think the Pegulas could have done in the last four months that would have made their performance as owners better than what they did?

It happens all the time? I don't know what you're talking about. Can you cite some examples of guys who rewrote their existing contracts to take less money. I can't think of any, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. There are free agents whose teams tell them to take what's offered or move on to some team that will pay him more, but that's different. Who does that? A much more plausible explanation is that you sign the best guy available to you and keep looking. That's what you do at EVERY position, and AB is no different. The Bills are in no hurry to turn the team over to Peterman. You play the best player you have until you find a better one, doing that always with the knowledge that the best player you have may improve or drop off. What you don't do is decide today that the guy who is your starter next year has to go. That's not how you think about any personnel decision, unless you have a criminal or total non-performer who HAS to go.

Nice job by Sully. At least he's recognizing that he's always negative. Here's something he said that bothers me, not so much about Sully but about everyone who comments on the Bills, including us here: "I'm a little confused about the structure," I said. "McDermott and Beane both answer to Pegula, but the new Sabres coach will answer to Botterill. Can't the Pegulas pick a model and stick with it? They make it up as they go along." That's just a lot of BS. We all seem to think we're qualified to criticize every aspect of the Bills organization. Look, teams organize themselves in all different ways. Most of the teams don't win the Super Bowl. Teams that DO win the Super Bowl are organized in different ways. Sully, and others who question this kind of stuff, never coached a football team, never was a GM, never owned a team, never did ANYTHING that would make his opinion about the management structure meaningful. It's just BS. Listen to the Peter King interview on the John Murphy show. For about five minutes he stumbles around talking about whether the McDermott/Beane combination will result in breaking the playoff drought. He struggles to say something meaningful and all he says is "how the hell do I know?" He says different combinations have worked or not worked in different settings. No one knows. He likes that McD and Beane worked together, but that doesn't mean anything in terms of wins when the season starts. McD was a great hire or a bad one, Beane was a great hire or a bad one, the reporting structure is a great one or a bad one. No one knows.

I don't completely agree with what you say, but I do agree that it's a reasonable way to look at it. I doubt that's how the Bills are looking at him. It's only another opinion, but Peter King said on the John Murphy show that he expects the Bills are using this season to decide whether Taylor is the long-term answer. That's what I think is happening.

I didn't say TT is the long-term answer, although I think he might be. Have to wait and see. And I think Bills' management agrees with that view or they would have dumped TT and moved aggressively on the QB search. They didn't do that. Instead, they traded down from 10, which they could have used to get a serious candidate for the long-term position. Trading down hedged their bets, giving them a chance to see Taylor under the new system and putting them in position to move on a QB next year if necessary. That's smart management (give the credit to Whaley and/or McDermott). That's what teams do all the time. If you have a good player who's not all you need at the position, you invest in him to see whether he can take a step or two to a higher level. If you cut guys because they aren't performing this year, you see a lot of those guys performing well someplace else in a year or two. Taylor is clearly in that category.

You may be right that no one rebuilds in that way any more. One thing that makes it hard to do it is the restriction on trading players for draft choices. It's much harder to stockpile draft choices now. You may be right about the cascading effect, but that effect will only take the franchise in a different direction than Whaley would have taken the Bills. Either GM would have been replacing players at a substantial rate - that's what teams do, especially teams that aren't winning. So I still don't think it makes sense to talk about rebuilding - every team is rebuilding almost every year.

Right. I think there are occasional rebuilds, where the team has a fire sale on players. Trades a few, cuts a lot, trying to build cap room. Also acquiring a lot of picks. That's where you consciously empty to roster to start with a clean slate. And you're right about QBs. When you have the right one, the concept of building is easier, because you're looking for players who fit your QB. The right oline, the right receivers, etc. When you don't have a QB, you're trying to get good players, whatever they look like. There's no anchor, as you say. I'm hoping Taylor emerges as really good, because I'm ready to build around someone. If it isn't Taylor, we're waiting at least another season before we have that anchor, maybe more.

That's NOT a rebuild. Almost EVERY roster in the NFL is rebuilt over three years. Lots of guys come and go from the roster over three years. For example, the New England Patriots, who won two Super Bowls in the period from 2013 to 2016: how many guys from 2013 were still on the roster in 2016? Out of 53 roster spots, 16 guys were on both teams. And Blount left and came back. 70% of their roster turned over in three years. Every team is constantly turning over its roster. If you call that rebuilding, then every team is rebuilding all the time, and the word is meaningless.

Good comments. Thanks. I agree with all of it. I have really incomplete memory of historic rosters and I didn't look back. But you got the point, which is that the Bills' roster was weaker back then and rebuilding was necessary. As for how much talent the Bills have, there was one article last year and I believe more than one, that ranked the Bills roster near the top of the AFC. What those articles said is that the Bills have a huge question at quarterback, but comparing the other 21 spots across the conference it was hard to find teams that compared favorably. Now, in hindsight, it looks a little different. Oakland and Miami, for example probably were viewed by those writers before the season as weaker but probably weren't viewed that way at the end of the season. My point is only that I didn't make up that idea about the Bills' 2016 roster; it was in the national press. Finally, where you say "overall mixed," I agree that was and is the right conclusion. But when you're comparing rosters across the conference or league, we all tend to forget that there are very few teams, if any, that can say anything better than "overall mixed." In the modern era, the only way you can be strong across all 22 positions is if you've had incredible success with recent drafts and undrafted free agents. They only way you can be strong across both sides of the ball is if you've gotten a lot really good players cheap. That happened to Seattle. If you look around the league, I think there always are one or two teams like that, where everything has fallen just right. However, those teams can't stay together, because free agency and the cap causes them to lose some their of talent and weak spots start showing up. So the fact that the Bills had some weak areas in their lineup last season is not inconsistent with the notion that they had one of the better lineups. That's because just about all teams have weak spots. This is interesting. The roster isn't being rebuilt, but the football office is being rebuilt. I think whether Gilmore is a major loss is really an open question. Tre'Davious COULD be the answer, but I think the change in defensive backfield philosophy changes the skill set you need back there. Gilmore would have been less valuable in the zone that McDermott seems to like to play than in a defense that is playing a lot of tight man coverage. That is, if Gilmore had stayed, I think a lot of people would have thought he was having a bad year, because he wouldn't have been making plays that made him stand out. Plus, it doesn't take long to make a splash in the league at corner. Darby was really quite good as a rookie, and White seems to have a similar skill set. So I'm taking a wait and see approach at corner. Frankly, I'm more worried that going away from man coverage will hurt. Certainly against the Pats. Brady kills zones.

I'm really surprised by the negativity about the Bills. Here's why: The Bills had, in my opinion, some of the worst coaching in the NFL for the past two seasons. I mean, really. The penalties two years ago, the horrible defense giving up 200 yard rushing games last season, the ugly game plans, or lack of game plays. I mean, it was horrible. Still, the Bills were essentially a .500 teams. NOBODY is saying that the Bills had a horrible roster and the only thing that saved the season was the brilliant coaching job. I know that changing coaches and changing to new systems and all of that takes some getting used to, often a full season. But if McDermott can be a quality head coach, even his first season can be better than the job Rex was doing. The question is whether McDermott can do it. I have no idea whether he can. However, I do know that even an average coaching job from McDermott will me much better than what we saw from Rex, so the chances of McD going .500 during his first season are better than many of you seem to think. Most years they're accurate for most teams. That's what Las Vegas wants. But that doesn't mean than any particular line is accurate for a particular team that season.

Which means you think the vote of the general wagering public is evidence of the actual quality of teams. You think because half the bettors are over six and half under six, that six must be an accurate representation of how good the Bills are. You didn't pay attention to what I said. The 6 isn't determined by a vote. The 6 is determined by Las Vegas to get to the point where half bet over and half bet under. In a sense, it bears NO relationship to how good or how bad the team is. Suppose I'm a Las Vegas oddsmaker and I know what no one else knows; that Tom Brady has a serious illness and will not play any of the 2017 season. Do I lower the over under by two or three games because I know the Pats won't win as many as they would have with Brady playing? No, I don't. Why? Because if I lower the over under by two or three games, EVERYONE will take the over, and that's bad for Las Vegas. That means Las Vegas has to cover all those over bets, and Las Vegas doesn't want that risk. . So there's an example that demonstrates why the over under is NOT a measure of how good a team is - it's a measure of what bettors without good information think.