Shaw66

I get it. I saw it. But his first game back was telling. He wasn't even pretending to compete. The Bills very clearly had a plan for him, a plan that had a schedule of how hard he work. They used his first month back as preseason. And the consistent reports are there most players take more than 12 months to recover. I'd guess that if you asked the Bills, they'd say his progress through the end of the season was what the doctors and trainers said they should expect. They no doubt hoped for more, but that wasn't there. Bottom line, I don't think the 2023 playoffs showed a Von Miller whose recovery was complete.

First, I have to say that I doubt Logic's bolded language is true. I don't think Beane was surprised at the cap number. We were, the media were, but I doubt Beane was. The cap is based on a formula, I'm sure a complicated formula, but the the owners and GMs have access to all, or most, of the data that goes into the formula. They know what the TV contracts are, for example, so they know what the revenue is. The owners have good projections. So, I think Beane's been planning for a number like this all along. Furthermore, six months ago or more, when Beane didn't necessarily know where he would be, he had the beginnings of a plan to deal with the cap. He has it every year; it's something GMs and their staff do. But, regardless of whether he got a pleasant surprise or not, I think you're correct about what you're saying. I don't if Morse or White or anyone goes, I don't know who gets extended. What I know is that Beane and McDermott intend that this team be very good, like top five good, season after season, and the only way to do that is to rotate players through the system. You have to get rid of veterans you like and be smart about getting younger guys to fill their places. So, I agree, that any of White, Morse, Douglas, or some others could be gone. I'll be a little surprised when the news breaks, and I'll wonder what the plan is, but there will be a plan, and they will develop or acquire people who move into the lineup. It's been several seasons since this team has gone into the season with unfilled holes. The Bills have quality guys at every position. Some of them guys you'd like to see replaced by upgrades, but even those guys are legitimate NFL starters. The only way to continue having quality everywhere is to constantly replace aging guys with younger guys, and being smart about how you acquire the younger ones.

I think you're too quick to write him off. I take the optimistic view, and I don't think it's too far-fetched. The optimistic view goes like this: He's played essentially the entire season for just about all of his career. 15, 16 games, year after year. The timing of his injury in Buffalo cost him half of one season and practically all of last season. It's usually the second season back that players really recover from their ACL repair. Tre was the same, injured at about the same time of year. There's very little evidence that he's breaking down. When he signed in Buffalo, he said he intended to play all six years his contract. He's a really serious competitor. He has a good body. His play in 2023 improved from game to game, with his best game, as you said, being the second last of the season. All of these things, and that's a lot, suggest that there isn't any good reason to thing he's done. He may be done. Lots of guys drop off the cliff like that. Absolutely possible. But he has all the hallmarks of a guy who, absent further injury, will return to form. I wouldn't bet against him.

This is an interesting point, but I'm not sure it's correct. I think there's a benefit to turning over the roster, year after year. When you keep all the same guys, the "book" on a team is really good - the book that says how you can attack them When you turn over the roster, even though you lose some quality players, you change your style of play to match, to some extent, the players you have. As your style of play changes, if you have good football players, you present new problems to defenses. The Chiefs have done a good job of that. Get your quarterback, a few stud, core guys, and then don't be afraid to move one from one talent and acquire another. The constant change makes your team better.

Douglas was in the league for four seasons before he was showing enough to become a regular starter. I just don't see why anyone should conclude that Elam won't be able to show the same improvement over four seasons. That's particularly true when he was hampered by injury in his second season. It's the curse of draft position. If Elam had been drafted in the fifth round, people would be calling him useful depth. But he was drafted in the first round, so people treat him as an unequivocal failure. It just doesn't make sense to do give up on Elam and thankfully, McDermott understands that.

This is the kind of comment that I've grown to distrust and that I try not to make. You're free to have your opinion about Elam, of course, and to say what you want, but after reading this forum all through training camp last year, I have developed a healthy respect for how little we all know. Last summer it seemed everyone was screaming about middle linebacker and no one was saying Bernard could be anything more than a modest liability. I tended to agree, because the little that we saw of him in 2022 was not encouraging. Every time I find myself thinking Elam is a bust, I think about Bernard. Elam's a first-round talent, and he was injured most of 2023. If he's healthy and not playing in September and October, okay, that says something, but I'm not reaching any conclusions about him before then.

Thanks, Gunner. I agree about Beane. He says a lot in these interviews, and often just a little bit more than he intended. Too bad about Douglas, because he was such a solid addition. But I agree that Beane using past tense probably means something, and the cap savings is simply to important to pass up. Peeling the onion one layer deeper, Douglas leaving probably says something about their thoughts about White and Elam. Benford's got one side, but the other side is still open. And they always seem to take a corner take in the late rounds. Receiver is no news. Either in free agency or the draft, there's a quality receiver coming from somewhere. And what Beane said about skillset isn't surprising, either. That's how they got to Kincaid. It makes much more sense to put the targets on the field and then design the offense to utilize their strengths than to evaluate the 2023 receiver room, decide what skills are missing, and search for those skills. Safety is an interesting position. I don't think you meant literally "not good in shorts." At every position, in their world, the guy has to be "good enough" in shorts. Too slow is just too slow. But I get your point and agree with it. In McDermott's D, the safeties have to understand everything and process quickly. If you think about how much geography a player has to think about at the moment the ball is snapped, tackles have the least and safeties have the most. Players at both positions have to think fast, but the safeties have a lot more to think about. I watched a few minutes of the the Lions and Chargers from week 10 yesterday. Goff hit St. Brown on a deep crosser, and the replay Romo pointed out how the safety broke in to respond to an underneath threat. It was very easy to see how no amount of physical talent was going to make up for the wrong decision as the receivers came off the line. It's also what drives all of us crazy when a Bills safety or corner is there for the tackle but not close enough to break up the pass - at DB, McDermott values brains over closing speed. The difference is obvious when we compare a corner like Dane Jackson to a linebacker like Dorian Williams. The problem with drafting a safety in the first round is where you're picking. The truly special talent, good brain and good in shorts, never lasts late into the first round. The difference between the guys who are left that you might take in the first round and the guy you can get in the later rounds just isn't that great in terms of his contribution to the team. Thanks for the report.

He owns the history to the only audience that matters - his team. His players are completely behind him - we heard it repeatedly after Hamlin's problem. He doesn't have to own to the fans. He has no obligation to say anything to the fans.

And Tyrod Taylor is elite, too? When did Josh start coaching that top-10 defense?

Yeah, I know. I've said a variety of things about Josh for the past couple of years, things I think he needs to be better at. Those comments always draw immediate reactions, suggesting I'm some kind of traitor. And it's kind of funny that my comments about McDermott being the best choice for head coach draw reactions suggesting I'm an idiot. Just the nature of people discussing stuff.

I don't tell people they're wrong because they don't believe in McDermott's mindset. I tell them they're wrong because if you have a coach who's won as much as McDermott has won, he is more likely to win a Super Bowl than almost any available head coach. It's very hard to win a lot of games in the NFL, and McDermott has made it look easy. The other available coaches either are coordinators who have never been head coaches or are guys who have been head coaches and who haven't been able to win as much as McDermott has. As some have put it, he's closer to winning it all than any other guy the Bills could hire. He is like Shanahan. I think the smart bet is to bet the guy who's already having a lot of success compared to everyone else trying to do the same thing. I get that people say the Bills need an offensive minded head coach. I don't agree the focus needs to be on the offense, but I get that argument. But even so, the guy has to be able to do the whole job, and there are very few coaches in the league who are doing the whole job better than McDermott. And I get that some people think he's the next Schottenheimer. As I've said before, Reid was the next Schottenheimer before he became Reid. Pete Carroll had failed twice as an NFL head coach before he was as old as McDermott is today. People change, they grow, they develop, especially people who model their behavior based on a growth mindset. I think McDermott has a much better chance of being the next Reid than the next Schottenheimer.

Hah, I try not to say bad things about Rex, so in those years it was hard to say much at all. It's a measure of how desperate ESPN is that they hired him as analyst. He rarely has anything useful to say. I'm pretty sure that Josh in fact said post-game that he needs to be better at sliding in the pocket. That is, if he'd perceived in real time what actually was happening, he would have moved to get himself to a better place to make the throw. And in fact, that's how these guys think - is there anything I could do better, anything, and how do I learn it? I thought it was great self-awareness. And, in the process, he didn't throw his lineman to the wolves.

Yeah, I do jump to his defense, because I like to think that I've grown to understand a lot about how he thinks and how he approaches his job. And I think his approach has been largely right. I don't criticize like some people here do, because I know I don't understand the nuanced details of offensive and defensive football strategy. I'll see things that I'll question and write about, but I don't presume to understand. For example, I've said here often over the past couple of years that I question whether McDermott's effort to load the roster with swiss army knives really is the best approach. In the thread about Groot, I said that he's one of those guys who is very good in all the categories, and Oliver too, but that sooner or later you just need a flatout playmaker - a Chris Jones. But, yeah, in general, I plead guilty. I write about the current Bills head coach in a positive fashion. Hell, I was on the Jauron train for a lot longer that most. Gailey, I backed him. Even Rex a bit. That's what I do.

Yeah. Interesting. 1. I decided not to be impressed by the winning percentage thing. Seeing your comment, I looked at the list. First, looking just at the list of guys who coached seven seasons, there are about 22 coaches, and McDermott, McVay, and Shanahan are on the top of that list in winning percentage. That's impressive. Of the coaches who coached 8 seasons or more (that is, everyone who's ever coached more seasons than McDermott, McVay, and Shanahan, there are 96 guys. McDermott being 15th in winning percentage isn't quite as impressive as one would think: It's true that getting to 15, his name is with some names like Halas, Shula, Lombardi, and Paul Brown. However, he's also with a lot of guys who won a lot but never won championships. 2. Yes. I always had a sense that that committee had coaches who were respected around the league, but I'd never understood it to be as big a deal as Flores says.

I think that if his job didn't require him to talk to the media, McDermott wouldn't talk to them at all. His job, the business side of his job, requires him to talk to the press. But his real job, the football side of his job, does not involve any obligation whatsoever to talk to the fans. He's just trying to win football games, and talking to the media and the fans contributes essentially nothing to winning football games. Now, we can argue about what it is, exactly, that the business side requires be done with the media. The owners, who ARE the business side, say this, and pretty much only this, to the head coach: "Manage the media as necessary, and don't get us into any controversy." That's the job. Guys like McDermott and Belichick work hard to do that - keep the media under control without causing a stir - in a way that maximizes their time and ability to do their football jobs. Their owners don't ask them to do more than that, because from a business point of view, nothing the head coach says in a TV interview is going to increase revenue. That is, talk as much as you have to while you're out there, but then get out, because we only have downside when we talk to them. The fans tune in because they like our product, not because some coach is a very interesting story teller. Okay, we can say, well, we're the customer, and we buy the products you advertise, and you have a duty to us to give us some honest insights into what's going on. The simple fact is that that is not true. It's like saying we're all customers of Amazon and therefor Jeff Bezos has a duty to tell us his business strategies. There is no such duty. I just thought it was amusing that you are an active participant in a thread about what McDermott said in the media and then you declare that you don't care what he says to the media.

That's funny. I appreciate that point of view. But this thread is about what he said to the media, and you're talking about something else, which is whether he's the right coach. Good thing to talk about, but that isn't what I was talking about. I was talking about his approach to handling the media and why it makes sense, even if we don't like it. If you don't care what he does with the media, that's okay with me.

Well, I don't agree he called it because he wanted Damar to have a moment. I don't know that you're correct about his heart and his head, but at least what's going on his head is the right question. That is, he can try as hard as he likes, but if he isn't capable of thinking well enough about all the things he needs to think about, he'll never win. As someone said, "I'll become the CEO, I just haven't done it yet." Well, maybe I just don't have what it takes to be CEO. It's a fair opinion to say, "I don't think he's smart enough to win it all." I think that statement is fundamentally different from, "He hasn't won it all, which is evidence that he isn't smart enough to win it all." When Pete Carroll got run out of New England I was convinced that he simply was unable to be a successful head coach. As we know, his history did not control his future. Come on, Deek, try to stay on the subject. The subject here is how McDermott deals with the media, not how he coaches the team. I get that we're all unhappy with the outcomes so far, and I get that you and many people are unhappy with the job McDermott has done. There's plenty of room to argue either side of those points. But that isn't the subject here. The subject here is that some fans don't like the amount of disclosure that McDermott makes. The amount of disclosure has NOTHING to do with whether the team wins or not. The amount of disclosure simply has to do with how satisfied we, the fans, are with what we're hearing. What we are hearing or not hearing is completely irrelevant to the team's success.

This the ultimate, fundamental point. There are two different worlds: the world the team (coaches, players, owners) operate in and the world the rest of us operate in. McDermott's duty to take responsibility for what he did or didn't do lies COMPLETELY in the world he and his team live in - his team has a right to see him take responsibility for his mistakes. He has absolutely NO duty to the rest of us in that regard. It's the same thing when the media ask players about next month's big matchup against the Chiefs, and the players say they're focused only on next week's game against the Panthers. We all cry "BS!!!" but in fact it's the truth. In the players world, if they're thinking about next month, they aren't thinking about next week, and in their world all that matters is next week. The problem does not lie in what McDermott says or doesn't say. It lies in what we expect from him.

He has to let Josh make his own decisions about what Josh says to the press. McDermott cares about what Josh says, and what others say, to the team. The truth is that talking to the press is all downside and no upside. When Josh talks to the press, he runs the risk of offending one or more teammates, but there's pretty much nothing he can say to the press that will improve his relationship with his teammates. What do you think Josh is supposed to do, or McDermott for that matter? Say, "It was my fault"? Should he say it in response to everything that went wrong? Well, no, he can't say it with respect to everything, because he knows and we know that it wasn't always his fault. Okay, so he should say it was his fault only when he actually believes it was his fault. So, on the long ball to Diggs, when the press asks Josh what happened, he says something like, "Well, we're all disappointed we weren't able to complete that one." Which means, of course, since he didn't say it was his fault, Josh thinks it was Diggs's fault, i.e., he throws Diggs under the bus. You see, McDermott's policy about keeping all of his judgments to himself and in house means he never has to dis his players in public, and that's the right thing for coaches to do. We just don't like it, because we want more information, but McDermott doesn't really care how much information we want. What he cares about is winning, and winning requires a completely together locker room, and you can't have a completely together locker room if the coach is explaining to the public what his players or coaches did wrong.

You see, your mindset is wrong. He HAS shown ability to get there, he just hasn't gotten there. Those are two different things. How do I know he's shown the ability? Because his teams have won a lot of games, his teams have pulled out a lot of wins, his teams have succeeded more than just about all the teams in the league over the same period. So, he HAS shown the ability. He just hasn't done it, yet, which is exactly the point that he makes. Every single thing of importance that has been accomplished in the history of human existence had never happened before it was accomplished for the first time. The fact that it hadn't been accomplished did not prove that it couldn't be accomplished; it proved only that it hadn't been accomplished yet.

You guys are just unhappy with (1) the loss (whichever loss we're talking about at any particular time), and (2) the frustration over the loss that causes you to want to blame someone. If McDermott explained exactly what happened in 13 Seconds, people would criticize him for making the wrong choices. He doesn't explain, so people criticize him for not explaining. Can't you see that McDermott's right about this? He's damned if he does, and he's damned if he doesn't, and talking about it only prolongs the focus on the history. Anything that takes the focus off getting better today is a waste of time. McDermott owns the past lives with it, and works to get better. It isn't very satisfying to us, because we'd like to understand more about things that happened, but enhancing our understanding doesn't make the team better.

Of course, he shared with the class. The class is inside One Bills Drive. You're not inside, and he didn't share with you.

You know, that interview explains a lot, while saying pretty much nothing at all. I particularly liked this: It drives us all crazy, the fact that he says practically nothing about the biggest plays, the biggest mistakes, the biggest things to go wrong. But Graham gets it. "McDermott simply doesn’t see any competitive value in being chatty." Everything McDermott does, he does with a purpose. Everything. Talking to the media is part of his job, so he does it, but he understands that no part of talking to the press will help make his team better. He knows what happened in 13 Seconds, but taking that discussion outside One Bills Drive won't make the team better. Talking to the media is just time away from actually working on making the team better. He is very much like Belichick in that way. It's frustrating to everyone on the outside, the fans and the media, because he doesn't say anything, but his job is not to minimize our frustrations. We learned a lot about McDermott when he arrived and quickly removed the pool table from the team clubhouse. He was asked why the ping pong table stayed and the pool table was gone. Ping pong develops eye-hand coordination and other skills relevant to football performance, pool doesn't. It's all about focus on the game. And I was interested in this: Whether it's good or bad, it's important to remember that McDermott is a disciple of the continuous improvement, lifelong learning gurus. I bought one of those books, a book by a woman who studies and promotes the concepts. The book opens describing some research that found that a simple attitude change makes all the difference in what kids accomplish. When faced with a problem they tried to solve and didn't, kids generally had one of two different reactions: They said either "I didn't do it," or "I didn't do it yet." And here it is in McDermott's final comment. "It hasn't happened yet." Earlier McDermott says you've only failed if you've stopped trying. And this is why I have confidence in McDermott, and why I think people are wrong when they say he's locked in on his style of defense and won't change. Resisting change is not at all how McDermott operates. McDermott's philosophy is to embrace change whenever change is necessary, and he and the people around him are constantly asking themselves what has to change. That's how he operates. He's changed coordinators, he's changed players, he's changed styles of play. He just hasn't won the Super Bowl - yet.

Exactly. It's really different now. Losman vs. Edwards. My, my.

This is either the last Rockpile Review for the 2023 season, or the first for 2024. I’m not sure, and that’s as good a place to start as any. I’ve mentioned before that my attitude about the games and the seasons seems to have changed over the past year. I love watching, I love the winning, and the losing doesn’t bother me all that much. It’s an odd feeling, because I used to fret about the losses for days and remember details for weeks or more. Not any more. Now, when the Bills lose, I just move on to what’s next, both in my personal life and in my Bills fan life. For the 2023 season, I didn’t feel compelled to write about every game, or to write about the end of the season. The game was the game, everyone saw it, a lot of people had interesting comments, and it didn’t seem necessary to add anything. We all saw the drop or the interception or the mismanaged clock or whatever, and we all saw Josh Allen. I often felt that I had nothing to add. (Except, of course, it always feels like there's one more thing to say about Josh.) And then the Bills lost to the Chiefs. I was there, I drove home the next day, and by then, I didn’t have much to say. Sitting in the stands, it’s often easy to lose details in the flow of the game, details that somehow stand out better when I watch on TV. Plus, I hadn’t seen why Allen’s throw to Shakir was short, so I had nothing to say about the most important play of the game. And so, no Rockpile Review. Then, the Conference Championship games and the Super Bowl, but all of that was just of casual importance to me. The season was over, and I was ready to move on. The only interest I had in the Super Bowl was that the Chiefs blow out the Niners, preserving for Bills fans the cheap thrill of claiming that the Bills were the second best team in the league. Overtime or not, I still make the claim. Then, two weeks went by, and it seems to me like it’s been a month or two. A month or two since Mahomes did what he seemingly always does, unless someone like Bass does something like Bass did, in which case Mahomes doesn’t have to be Mahomes, he just takes a knee. From here, how and why the Bills didn’t do what we wanted, needed, them to do doesn’t matter to me all that much. It’s time to move on. New season, new roster, same hill to climb. I won’t speculate on free agents coming and going, and I certainly won’t speculate on the draft. That’s for Beane and McDermott’ I’ll be curious to see the products of their work, and what it tells us about their approach to 2024. I expect I’ll like the roster, and I expect the Bills to compete for the Lombardi. The 2024 Bills will be better than the 2023 version. In the meantime, there’s nothing for me to do in the dead silence that is the world of football at this time of year. When does training camp open? 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.