Shaw66

I broke out my blue Bills polo shirt to wear to the Acropolis today. Through the mobs of people, an excited Buffalonian shouted, "GO BILLS!!!" We're everywhere.

I agree about this. They haven't been intense enough in the okayoffs, and I'm sure McD knows that. And I fully expect to see more aggressive play calling on the defense, all season long. It adds to unpredictability, and McD likes that.

I don't think there is anything that McDermott doesn't get. McDermott sees what wins in the playoffs. Last season he didn't have the personnel to play any other way. As I said, I think if he has his starters in the playoffs next season, you'll see a different style of defense.

I think this analysis is correct. The data about Jackson and Elam point out the bend-don't-break nature of McDermott's defense. It's always frustrating to see how easily the Bills give up yardage, but at the end of the season the frustration has to be tempered by the fact that, on average over time, McD's defense stops teams better than others. The problem is that in the playoffs, you're not playing the averages - you're playing one game, and you have to stop people. Now, maybe the answer to that is to get White back healthy. When White's back in form, he can take his man man-to-man, especially if the offense lines up their #2 guy against him. When that happens, the Bills can double the other side, and with that defense the Bills get more stops, which is what's needed in the playoffs. Also, we just have to wait and see about Elam. He had good cover skills coming out of college, and we didn't see him stand out much in that area. Frankly, I think in college he didn't need much more than good cover skills, and he probably never learned much of anything about more sophisticated defensive backfield schemes, which the Bills run a lot of. He struggled with the defense most of last season. I'm hopeful that this season he'll be more comfortable in the defense, which will also make him more comfortable when he's in man. And I'm not counting Benford out, either. Bottom line, though, is that it's tough to win in the playoffs when your defensive scheme is bend-don't-break and your corners are mediocre, as this chart shows about Elam and Jackson. White-Elam-Johnson-Poyer-Hyde are the guys I want on the field in the playoffs.

I've refused to read this thread but I do check in from time to time just to see what's being said. Has anyone mentioned the fact that there were more than 100 NFL head coaches who had the job for four or fewer seasons. Who's to say how many of those would have made it to a Super Bowl? Bottom line is that there simple isn't enough data to prove much of anything on this subject.

My phone showed me some Yahoo article that said something like the Bills are under the most pressure to win of any team. So, it's more than a few Wahoos here. Still, like you, I think it's a lot of Ballyhoo.

I think this is a good take. The only way the Super Bowl is relevant is if there is some fan uprising, a revolt of sorts, but the only relevant part of a fan revolution would be decrease in ticket sales. If they're competitive and selling tickets, McBeane probably are safe. As others have said, may times, all this "hot seat" stuff is just something to write and talk about during the off season.

I'm travelling and not on here much these days. I wanted to reply to this thread when it began, and I have no idea at all whether this has been discussed in the 36 pages available to me: I'm a big supporter of Beane and McDermott. I have a lot of confidence in them. I will be proved right or I will be proved wrong. However, I do not think their contract extensions answer the "hot seat" question. There is no salary cap for coaches and GMs, which makes firing them different from cutting players. Cutting players costs money AND impairs your ability to build by creating dead cap money. Cutting coaches and GMs just cost money. Most owners can afford the lost money much better than teams can afford the dead cap. If the Pegulas get tired of the McBeane show, I don't think the extension will keep them from making a move. I don't think they will make a move, because I don't think they'll get tired of the show. Instead, I think they'll be celebrating a Super Bowl win, and there will be more extensions to come.

In case no one else answered, the answer is no, the thread still shows up. I know from personal experience. From that perspective, Einstein has done a valuable public service and should be commended.

Having struck out twice in earlier opportunities to buy, I passed this time around. Good to see that someone got tickets.

And this shows, despite what Goodell says, how much respect they have for the people who fill their stadiums every week.

I was told to log in at 10, and I did. I had tickets in my basket, I'm not sure what time it was, but it wouldn't complete the sale.

Had tickets in my basket, too, but it wouldn't complete the transaction with any card I tried. Total BS.

Thanks.

Interesting point about the dline. It's high quality quantity, in that there six or eight very good football players there, but unless and until the real Miller returns, there's no true high-end quality. I guess the difference is that the great players are just a problem to handle one on one. The only way to deal with the great players is with double teams. The Bills have a bunch of dlinemen who are very good, but none who demand double teams. That's what Miller was supposed to be, and he was. When (if) he returns to form, then all of those other very good but not great guys become very effective.

I agree with a lot of this. It's all a mess. Some of it is driven by people like us, who have an insatiable appetite for information, so the publishers are desperate to give us something, anything. If they don't, we go someplace else where they do. The result is that we get more and more crap in the news, inaccurate information, rumor passing as news, etc. Add to that the fact that the publishers are in it for a profit, so they're always trying to reduce expenses. Good editors, therefore, are a double problem - they hold up the publication of the crappy news that we all get sucked into reading, and they cost money. Goodbye editors. And it's not just newspapers; it's books, too. Since you can self-publish your book, the real publishers can't afford to spend a lot of time and money with one or more editors who actually will help make your book readable. Think about the Diggs issue for just a minute. Start with the premise that none of us knows what's going on, because the Bills have been quite tight-lipped about it. Just like Dawson Knox's brother, Kim's illness, Josh's elbow. We don't find out what's going on until after the fact. So, it's a given that there's no news. And, in fact, the only news that would be meaningful at this time of year would be if Diggs were cut or traded. If that happened, we'd find out immediately. So, why are we reading stuff that we know has no substance to it? And even if it did, and we got an in-depth article from verified sources that Diggs is unhappy about A, B, and C, and he's talked to D, E, and F, etc. So what? There is only one question: Will Diggs be in the Bills lineup, with a good state of mind, on opening day? And there is only one answer, which won't be known until kickoff. Still, we keep getting sucked into reading that stuff.

Well, it's more than that at this time of year, but fundamentally your right. They take last year's analysis and tweak it based on what they think about the off-season, etc. Same as anyone else. If you watch their analysis over the course of a season, it gets increasingly better, because the analysis increasingly is driven by the current year's data and less by their predictions.

Yes to all of this, and if Williams can make the jump to the NFL to replace Edmunds, watch out. I don't have any idea, really, whether he can play in the NFL or how soon, but his style of play fills in exactly the things that I always thought were missing in Edmunds: effectiveness as a blitzer, aggressive, attacking tackler in the run game. If he is those things and isn't a liability in pass defense, watch out. McDermott will have a field day with him.

I agree about Harris, and I was more excited when they got Murray. If the oline solidifies, there's a good chance that one of those two guys will punish teams in a way that will take the pressure off Allen. And I also expect more from Cook, because it seemed to me the Bills were awfully comfortable letting Motor walk. And as to the bolded part, I agree. I think we're looking at a highly motivated team, just based on how last season ended, and I think a lot of the disrespect we're hearing right now is not being missed by the players.

That's true. But the data they use, and the analysis they use, generates surprisingly good results. Their process compares teams and players in positions in a very clever and detailed way, so by the second half of the season, they have surprisingly good takes on which teams are playing well and which aren't. At this time of year, their analysis is largely looking backward and making some projections about which players will be good. That's when they become just another website expressing their opinion. So, what his analysis really means is that the Bills were one of the very best teams in the league last season, and based on their assumptions about players (White, Poyer, White, Miller, etc.) they should be very good again this season. It's a pretty logical conclusion, but it's not worth much more than the colculsions any one of us reaches about what 2023 will be like.

Come on. I'll admit, I opened this thread because I wanted to see who it was who was calling himself the Rockpile Report. I did. There's a selfish part of me that doesn't want anyone using my tradename. But there's also the lawyer part of me that knows that I'm probably going to lose that legal battle. And there's the lawyer part of me that also doesn't want to be standing in front of judge who's looking at me and saying, "Really? Really? You think you're somehow entitled to exclusive use of the word 'Rockpile'?" I mean, thanks to people who have come to my defense, but there are better things to talk about than the fact that some guy wants to call his podcast the Rockpile Report. Like, does this kerfuffle last week about Diggs really worth talking about. I click on the podcast to hear his point of view, and I kept clicking forward in the podcast. Every time I stopped and played it, all he was talking about was how he takes lunch breaks and stupid callers on WGR and what he's drinking. I gave up. At least when you read the Rockpile Review, it's actually about the Bills. I'll be on vacation for a few weeks, but I certainly don't expect to miss much Bills news. I wouldn't want to miss McDermott getting fired.

When players are consistently wide open in the NFL, it's almost always attributable to game planning. Kelce and Hill were wide open in the last 13 seconds because of good planning on the Chiefs part and bad planning by the Bills. Planning and play calling. An ordinary NFL receiver, which is what Davis is, doesn't get open like that because of talent. He was open because the Bills had plays they knew would work against particular defenses the Chiefs ran.

YOU said I said that. I didn't say that. I said that McDermott contributed to the game plan, whatever it was. Obviously, the Bills had figured out something that was getting Davis wide open, and the sum total of ten months of leadership and input from McDermott was in some way part of what led to that plan. The Bills scored 36 points, gained 438 yards, had no turnovers and were penalized 15 yards. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever to say the rest of the team stunk.

The value of a head coach cannot be measured by one play, one player, one series, or one game. The head coach is the captain of the ship, the chief executive officer of a company, the general of an army. The head coach's job is to build a human machine to do a job. That machine has 100 or more human parts, each with a distinct job to do. The head coach starts working in Januray or February to design and build that machine. A big part of the job is delegating parts of the design and construction to other people, because the head coach doesn't have time to do it all, or the expertise. It's a difficult, complicated job, and very few people have even the basic abilities to do it. It requires a combination of brains, energy, determination, leadership, communication, and several other things. Then, in September, he has to start running the machine, pulling all the levers, pushing all the buttons, to get the coaches to get the players to do all the things they need to do to win games. The team is playing against other teams that have done the same thing, and by definition at the end of the season, 31 of 32 head coaches have failed to win the Super Bowl. So, the task is complicated to a very great extent by the fact that there are 31 other head coaches trying to do the same thing. It's also complicated by the fact that the parts of the machine aren't hunks of metal or plastic, they are human beings, and they fail for unexpected reasons. It's further complicated by the fact that every week, the machine has to operate differently, has to adjust to the weather, to events, and to the machine you're playing, and that machine is adjusting, too. The head coach doesn't know what he's going to get from week to week, and neither does the opponent. Sean McDermott spent an entire year building a machine that lost to KC in the final 13 seconds. But it was a machine that could generate touchdowns, seemingly at will, by letting Josh Allen throw the ball to Gabriel Davis. It also was a machine that made some mistakes (mistakes being something to afflict every football team, because these are human beings, not manufactured parts). The machines Sean McDermott has built for the past few seasons have been some of the most successful winning machines in the league. They haven't been perfect, but by the standards of the league, they have been very successful. In makes no sense to think, as you seem to think, that McDermott's job performance can be evaluated based on what worked or didn't work in one game. As I said before, you're blaming McDermott for everything that has gone wrong and giving him credit for nothing that's gone right. Sean McDermott has the fourth best won-loss percentage of all active NFL coaches. He is 8th among active coaches in playoff game appearances, and six of the seven coaches ahead of him on that list have been head coaches for two to three times as long as McDermott. He has posted those numbers because he is very good at building football machines. To suggest, based on what the Bills did in one game, that he should be on the "hot seat" or anything like that ignores the reality of the job McDermott has and how he has performed in that job.

Oh, I misunderstood. I see now. McDermott gets blamed for everything that goes wrong and no credit for anything that goes right. Guy should have been fired midway through his first season.