Shaw66

I like this. And to add on to it, even thought it's a McDermott thread, is that I've always thought that although Josh won't ever be Peyton, I think it's quite likely to be, and maybe outperform, Elway. They are just so similar in style, athleticism, arm, onfield attitude, everything. I think Josh is better, physically and pure arm strength, but he's in the same period that Elway was in his career. He's now being forced to learn, really learn, how to run a game. It took Elway to the end of his career to put it all together. If Josh can there in the next couple of years, he'll be fantastic for years.

Ah, yes, "they." Obviously, Schoen was on the correct side of that decision, not o correct. My cousin was a Giants fan. I told him it was a mistake. He said, "When you have a chance to get Jim Brown, you take it." I didn't get it, but he thought Barkley was that special. Maybe he would have gone after the next Bronco Nagurski, too.

One of Joe Schoen's first big tests. You've got a monster player at a position that teams don't like to sink a lot of money in. He's a guy who's started 16 games only twice in five seasons. How do you manage it? One thing I like about Beane is that he has the courage to evaluate, make a decision, and stick with it. He offered Edmunds less than he could get in the market, and he didn't back down. He offered Oliver, who knows, maybe less than he could have gotten elsewhere and Oliver took it. Schoen's got a fan base in love with Barkley. (If I were a Giants fan, I'd have been screaming then and now that he didn't take Allen.) Tough decisions.

I think that's a good way to start an analysis of McDermott. By football Head coach, I'm sure you mean his abilities when it comes to football, because leadership is one of the necessary characteristics of a good head coach. As for football acumen, I'd probably give him an above average, because it's hard to win that much being just average. But I get your "average" grade. What encourages me is that good coaches keep learning football stuff, year after year, and McDermott is a dedicated learner. His football knowledge five years from now will be significantly better than today. I think I've told this before, but one night Scott Van Pelt asked Lebron James what he, at age 37, would say to the Lebron, age 25. Lebron said, "I'd say, 'you don't have a clue.'" Point is, sophistication about the technical details of these games keeps growing.

You aggravate me sometimes, but one of the things I like about you is that you get the point. You would argue that with a different oline, Allen could be the best. But you say "could" because you understand that it's more or less unknowable. I mean, who knows, really, why Allen's performances are inconsistent compared to the very best QBs? Might be oline, might be Dorsey, might be Allen. And you acknowledge that in the second quote, when you say, "are you sure? Answer: no, none of us can be sure. What's really aggravating about posters is when they are unwilling to acknowledge that none of us, including ourselves, really knows. In my opinion, @GunnerBill knows more about the game and about the Bills than anyone posting regularly these days. I'm inclined to believe most anything he says. But not everything. Occasionally, he'll say something that doesn't make sense. When someone replies and explains the point, Gunner readily agrees and adjusts his thinking. His knowledge is great, but it's his willingness to learn and change his opinion that makes him a must-read around here.

Others have said this, and it's true. The ignore feature works very well. I have about ten posters on "Ignore," including one who was added minutes ago. I put people on ignore who I find I end up in arguments with, instead of discussions. They are typically very knowledgeable Bills fans, but they go round and round, simply disagreeing with whatever you say and not actually having a discussion that tends to educate both. What I really like about the Ignore feature is that while you're in a thread, you can see whether one of your Ignored users has posted anything, and the system lets you reveal that posted, take the poster off ignore, etc. It's very easy. So, while I'm reading, if I see that an Ignored user has posted, and because I know he's knowledgeable, sometimes I'll click to see what he had to say. It works really well. Sometimes it leads to me taking the user off Ignore. Try it.

Like I said, you're ignorant. I explained every one of your objections here, and you still raised them. Bye-bye.

Because you spend all of your time studying sub-atomic particles, you can be excused your ignorance, but it's ignorance nonetheless. Scientists who work in the field have shown conclusively that traumatic events have serious, long-term, psychological effects. In some instances, it's called post-traumatic stress disorder. They've also shown that multiple traumatic events has more serious cumulative impacts. For example, children who experience one serious traumatic event typically recover; children who experience three or more are quite likely to have serious, long-term negative psychological issues. This particular group of men, more so than most pro football teams, is closely attached to the community. A mass murder of the kind that took place in Buffalo affects many people in the community for a long time, including many people who did not witness the event and did not lose a loved one. I live in Connecticut, and the community of Newtown has not recovered from their mass shooting, and that event took place ten years ago. They are not close to recovering. On top of that, the team's owner, a virtual family member, had a major health care incident. The brother of one of the players died. The community suffered a snow storm in which more than 40 people died. And finally, one of their teammates nearly died, in the field, before their eyes. It was an unprecedented emotional year for a football team. Other than the Marshall plane crash, I can't recall anything remotely similar, in quantity of events and magnitude of events. It's ignorant and insensitive of you to sit comfortably at your keyboard and dismiss it all as nothing.

And someone pointed out that all of the bonus money is taxed in the home state. It's complicated. In NYS he would pay less than 11 and more than 5.5%.

Listen to Dungy talk. Listen to McDermott. They are two entirely different personalities.

EVERY team has a lousy record when their star quarterback has a bad passer rating. Does that.mean that EVERY team should replace their coach?

That's just your guess.

Those guys feom the past underperformed because they didn't have McDermott. On McD's team now, they'd be excellent.

McDermott is not Dungy, and this comparison is really dumb. Dungy was laid back, nice guy, everything-was-okay kind of guy. McDermott is intense, demanding, and holds everyone accountable. As I've said before, McDermott would have a head coaching job within days after the Bills fire him.

That's right. Who knows what will happen? 11-6, 12-5 may be most likely, but anywhere from 14-3 to 9-8 certainly is possible. But predicting 9-8 doesn't make a lot of sense. That's predicting a lot of injuries or total coaching failure or a half dozen teams getting remarkably good. This things are unlikely.

The NFL is hugely unpredictable, but I like your analysis. It's a logical, straight-forward way to look at what's likely. Could the Bills go 9-8? Of course. Almost every season, some team that most fans projected to be a Super Bowl contender falls apart, like the Rams did last season. Happens all the time. But four or five or six other teams that also were picked to be contenders actually turn out to be contenders. The Bills have to be near the top of the list of any rational prognosticator. They were the favorite last season. Their roster was judged by many to be the best in the league. So, what's changed? Their QB is still in his prime, they have improved their receiving corps, they've made moves that should upgrade the offensive line, they have better running backs, they've added talent to the D line, they get Hyde, Poyer and White back, healthy, and their rookie corners have a year's experience. It's really hard to think that the Bills will be worse than last season. They should be better. Now, their schedule looks like a monster, but that's just unrealistic. The Chiefs, the Eagles, the Jets, the Dolphins, the Bengals, the Cowboys, the Jaguars, and the Chargers are not ALL going 12-5 better. By the end of the season, several of those teams WILL be 9-8 or worse. I mean, did the Jets roster actually get BETTER than the Bills? Does anyone really want Tua over Josh? Maybe the Bills will finish third in the division. It happens. But it's quite unlikely. They're too good, and they're too motivated.

I agree. And your point about the elbow is correct. I wasn't making a judgment about those things. The statistical difference in passer rating may be significant. I don't know. My point only was that it isn't enough to say, "well, the Bills have a star quarterback, so it must be the coaches' fault." There are a lot of reasons this team hasn't won as much as we wanted. Allen could be one reason. I don't know.

Much better. This was done by someone who actually knows the team. The ESPN version was done by some intern who asked ChatGPT. The only mistake I saw was that they have some guy named Vacant listed as the defensive coordinator!

I just jumped in and dont know if someone said this, but it's not 11% of the contract. I assume 11% is the NYS highest tax rate. He'd pay NYS tax only on the games he plays in NYS, so that's half his games. So, coming to Buff over Tenn would cost him 5.5%, not 11%.

I agree. Almost any simplistic explanation of why 60 players and 20 coaches didn't combine to win a game is almost certainly an inadequate explanation. What Cowherd had to say was simplistic. It's just another example of how much of the media works these days: pick a subject, decide on a take, and go with it. Whether it makes sense doesn't really matter.

I agree. And I want to add something to discussion that has been nagging at me when I first saw it a few weeks ago. I don't recall the thread where this discussion took place, but someone dug out passer rating and other performance data splits on Burrow and Allen in 2022. I think Mahomes' data was there, too. Among other things, the data showed that Burrow's passer rating rose incrementally from the first quarter to the fourth quarter. Allen's dropped off in the fourth quarter fairly significantly. Mahomes was better than Allen, too. There are multiple things of significance in that information. First, of course, is that there could be a lot of different reasons why Allen's performance tailed off in the fourth quarter - it's a team game, and any number of things could contribute to Allen's decline. Second, whatever the reason for Allen's decline, there simply is no question that you'd rather have a QB with a passer rating of 105 in the fourth quarter than 89, which is in the ballpark of what the difference was. There's simply no question that your team is likely to have greater success if your team has a quarterback who's very efficient in the fourth quarter. Third, this kind of information really undermines the argument that you've properly challenged here - that is, if the team has an elite quarterback, the coaches should be winning Super Bowls. Who's to say that the problem isn't simply with #17. Maybe the coaches are doing it all right, and #17 just isn't getting the job done? Now, I know there are all kinds of rebuttals to that, some of which I agree with, particularly it's Dorsey, it's clock management, it's the offensive line, but none of that is the point. The point is that there's elite and there's elite, and to blindly lay the problem at the feet of the GM and coaches isn't looking nearly closely enough at what might be causing the team to fall short. Maybe the only reason the Chiefs are winning Super Bowls and the Bills aren't is that Mahomes is simply better than Allen. I suppose that thought will cause some people to say, "Well, then that's reason enough to put McDermott on the hot seat, because he's the one who decided he didn't want Mahomes." Those people will flame away. They're the people who, when the Bills win the Super Bowl, will complain that they didn't beat the spread.

Happy birthday! Thinking of you often.

No, not too high. And I agree with what you say. Acknowledging it's difficult doesn't automatically translate into an excuse. There's a difference between an explanation as to why something happened and making an excuse. For any team, the answer to the question "why didn't you win the Super Bowl" is "we weren't good enough." There are a lot of explanations for why one team or another wasn't good enough. There are explanations for the Bills, too. What people mean when they say that an explanation is an excuse is that they think the team is using the explanation to make it okay that they didn't win. One thing we know for sure is that the Bills - the owner, the GM, the coaches, and the players, do not think it's okay. They aren't making excuses for themselves. They're trying to do something that is very difficult, and they're going to keep trying. Fans can complain if they want, but I'm not complaining. Yes, the Rams won a Super Bowl, and almost immediately they weren't competitive. The Bills are competitive every season, and they intend to stay there. I can support that.

Well, yes. But we are talking about Cowherd's critique of the Bills and why they haven't succeeded. His take was uninformed and naive. He essentially said the reason the Bills have failed is that they already had a really good defense and they kept acquiring more defensive players. That's naive and uninformed for two reasons: (1) if they didn't need to acquire more defensive players because their defense already was good, well, then they don't need to acquire more offensive players, either, because their offense already is good, and (2) they actually drafted someone who looks like a good interior offensive lineman, and they signed a free agent who's been a solid starter for several seasons. So, sure, he can complain all he wants, as we all can, about the fact that the Bills haven't won a Super Bowl, but he deserves to be called to task when he says stupid things.

There's good stuff here to comment on. First, I agree very much it's on Dorsey. Davis is certainly good enough, and the supporting cast of wideouts certainly are good enough, also. They're all playmakers. And Short might surprise. I agree that we can't expect a lot of yardage out of Kincaid, but I think it's likely he will have impact beyond his yardage. If he catches some balls early out of the slot, he's going to force defenses to play differently. All of it, however, depends on play design and play calling. That's on Dorsey. I think he was inadequate last season, and the question is whether he actually will make real progress growing into his job. As for your final point (bolded), I have to say that that kind of comment always bothers me. I think it ignores how incredibly difficult it is to win a Super Bowl. Every season, we hear the winners talk about how hard they worked, how everything fit together just right, how they all love each other. It's really, really hard. If it were easy, KC would have won four in a row by now. It's six months of brutally hard work, with injuries, surprises, etc. Really difficult. It's not like the Pegulas sent McBeane out to the store and they forgot to get milk, and then next year they forgot the milk again. It's more like they sent McBeane to the store and they failed to bring home a rare vintage cabernet from 1953 - sure they've got a really nice car to drive to the store, but it still doesn't mean that they're going to be able to find that one bottle of wine. Send them out next year, they still might not find that bottle. Winning the Super Bowl is more random than we'd like to think. You can do pretty much everything right, and do one thing wrong - pick one decision in those 13 seconds, and you don't win. Of course, it means that someone else did enough of the right things and you didn't, but the difference between those two performances is tiny, and it's very difficult to be the winner, even once. It's not going out to pick up a quart of milk.