Shaw66

I wasn't here much after the Bengals game, and I never saw this thread. I have read nothing but the quoted post. But, I have to say, this is right on the money. Absolutely. I can't say I agree with every individual recommendation, but there's nothing there that I'd argue with very much. The offense underperformed in 2022. Which is a bit harsh, because the offense was one of the best in the league in a lot of ways, but it still underperformed. As we see and hear all the time, Allen is the best on the planet, at least physically, and he has the brains to be the best mentally, too. We learned today that he is by far the favorite in 2023 MVP betting. Not Mahomes. Allen. If you have that weapon, then your offense has to be great. In 2022, the offense was very good with an underperforming offensive line and with at best, mediocre coaching. Dorsey has to be much better, and the offensive line needs some better players. In particular, it needs some guys who can dominate physically. There are none on the line now. When the Bills have an offense that consistently builds first-half leads of 10 to 14 points and goes on from there, the current defense will be more than good enough. I would say that yes, no one should expect the 2000 Ravens, but we should expect an offense that dominates at least as well as the 2023 Chiefs, if not the 99 Rams. And in defense of the current whipping boy, Gabriel Davis, I'd say that he is just fine as the #2 to Diggs's #1, so long as the offensive line gives Allen the time he needs and Dorsey gives Allen the creative offense that he needs. Mahomes won the Super Bowl by throwing balls to wide open receivers who are NOT known for getting separation. His last two touchdown passes were 100% scheme and 0% talent. Even Gabriel Davis would have caught those balls.

You know, I haven't found it too bad around here. I realize now, however, that I have maybe a half dozen posters on my ignore list, and over time that tends to turn down some of the more angry or antagonistic rhetoric. Using the ignore list has some long-term effects on how you join this. And, if you haven't tried it, understand that you can see that these people have posted, and you can click right there to see the post. It works well. I try not to ignore many people, because I find that they have good insights into the game. We all do.

Like I said, McDermott is a top-5 winning coach. Career winning percentage of active coaches, he's top 5. Over the past six years, the length of his head coaching career, he's top 5. LaFleur has been a head coach for four seasons. McDermott has a better winning percentage over that period. Sirianni has been a head coach for two seasons. McDermott has a better winning percentage over that period. Belichick had only a slightly better winning percentage in his first six seasons in New England. Look at Belichick's first six seasons as a head coach, including Cleveland, and McDermott is way ahead of him. I said winning, and he's top five. Definitely. You'll say, yeah, but Super Bowls, but like I've been saying, if you tell me that my coach is going to be top 5 for the next 20 seasons, I am not replacing the guy. If you're replacing him, I'm betting you sold all your Apple stock in 1993, too.

I doubt there are five coaches who have won as much, and winning isn what its about.

Rock - Man, that's right on. I think people are having the trouble you say. This is a 48-year-old coach who already has won more than most. He's going to do this for another 20 years, and he's going to have Josh Allen for the next 10. If he retires at age 70 never having won a Super Bowl, he will be - BY FAR - the single winningest coach in the NFL never to have won one. This is a guy who projects to be one of the all-time great coaches in the league, and that's how he was seen when he was in the head coach market. Now, people will argue with what I've just predicted and sure, there are arguments to be made. But in light of what he's accomplished with this team through six seasons, the notion that the guy's style of play is out of sync with the league and he should be replaced is just silly. It's as silly as saying that Allen's been here for five years and hasn't won, so it's time to move on from him.

I hear what people are saying about McDermott, Frazier, need for an offensive guy, etc., but I think that's taking too short a view. We all tend to have a tendency to want the flavor of the month. Right now there's a sense that offenses are taking over, and that's what people want, a sense that McDermott's style of D doesn't fit, all of that. But that stuff comes and goes. Innovation in the NFL is driven by defense. The coaches who best can figure out how to stop offenses are the coaches with long-term success. The defenses always catch up. The teams that win Super Bowls play good defense throughout the late season and playoffs. Defense is the long-theme in the NFL. McDermott has one of the top defenses in the league. It's tenacious, and it succeeds by limiting the yards and points it gives up. If you have that every season, then you're always in the mix. If you're an offensive coach, then you're success is almost by definition to a period in time. You succeed on offense by figuring out how to beat the best defenses. You need be creative, come up with something new, and if you do that - great, that's to your credit, but now the defense is changing and you have to be creative again, and again. It's very difficult to stay on top. It's part of Reid's success, that once he got the right QB, he was smart enough to ride through changes in offensive strategy. I don't have a problem, at all, being in the playoffs year after year, waiting for the offense to come together, or the injuries to fall right, or whatever. Steelers had a defensive dynasty, always try build the right offense at the right time. I'll take that.

I hear that. It's not even the same ending, except the same in that there was no Super Bowl. Some fans are just tired. I felt it this year, too. Some of that is, literally, my age. And I've come to enjoy watching the games without getting terribly upset at the outcome. For me now, it's more these are my guys out there trying to figure out how to get it done, working as hard as they can to get it done. I watch and I'm proud. I'll watch next season, for sure, and I expect I'll see one of the better teams in the league, and I'll go into December knowing my team has a shot. From Thanksgiving, I'll watch to see if McDermott can build a winner. It will be interesting to watch, and if it all works out, one year or another it will be magical.

Well, I agree to a point, but it's understandable. What happens every year at this time is people are looking back on the season and talking about what didn't work. Only time that won't happen is if the Bills win the Super Bowl. So, what didn't work? The defense and the offense let the team down in the playoffs. Why? Well, that's what people are talking about. Not very productively, in my opinion, because I think the problems are much more nuanced than people here seem to think, but that's just my opinion. I am amazed, however, that people think McDermott is the problem. He's probably a top-five head coach, and people are complaining about him be too soft, or too oriented to the defense, or something. I don't get that at all.

Defensive coach and HOF QB worked pretty well in New England.

That's what I understand. But when you pay a hospital bill, you're paying ALL the expenses of the hospital, including the cost of sending the director of human resources to LA for a conference, including hotels and meals. You're not just paying for the nurse to sing Kum Bai Yah.

100% goes to hospital, which means it pays the hospital's bills which means it pays the salary of the CEO which means your donation is paying administrative costs, including dinner meetigs, etc. etc. Don't be fooled into thinking your money is going 100% to sick kids.

I don't think there's a law that that information be made public, but all well-run charities do it. I didn't find it on the website for Wilson's foundation, but that isn't unusual for a small charity like this. You can get a lot of answers from the return, and from organizations that try to evaluate the worthiness of charities. Hamlin foundation probably was a private foundation, because most of the mo e came from him. Not any more. His is for sure a public foundation now, and someone is going to have to start paying attention to it.

Thanks. I agree. An organization that size shouldn't need two exe s earning that kind of money. And spending $800,000 on a gala seems way out of line, too.

So, one of the trustees of Wilson's foundation is Larry Estrada. He is also a trustee of the Seattle Foundation, which has $1.5 BILLION in assets. Here's his bio from the Seattle Foundation website: This guy probably makes $500,000 a year at Goldman Sachs. He's a high-profile guy at a major US financial institution. Does anyone really think he's on the board of WIlson's foundation so he can scam it out of, what, $10,000 a year? Does anyone really think a guy like this is activity participating in some fraud with Wilson? It's absurd.

You're correct about this. The extent of ignorance about nonprofits is remarkable, and it comes out on this board whenever there's a report like this. Notice that this article doesn't say how much anyone in the foundation actually got paid, other than one friend of Wilson's being paid $100,000. Directors of many nonprofits are not paid anything, and this report doesn't say how much, if anything, all of these directors are paid. The report also says the foundation had revenues of $7.5 million but distributed only $2.8 million. It DOESN'T say the rest of the money went to Wilson's friends or others. It's quite possible, in fact likely, that the Foundation is making grants over time; if they passed out all the money immediately, the Foundation would close up shop unless more money came it. And if they're in the business of giving scholarships, they want to build endowment. In other words, there are plenty of reasons why they might not have distributed the whole $7.5 million. Plus, where do you think the $7.5 million came from? Almost certainly, the biggest portion of the money came from Russ and his wife, probably a million or more, maybe several million. Do you think Wilson is putting all that money in just to waste it? And if you do think that, whose being defrauded by this foundation? Wilson, that's who. So, he's making charitable donations to defraud himself? Are there fraudulent charities? Sure. Is the country awash in fraudulent charities? No. There aren't weekly reports in the news about charities stealing from people. Charities do good work.

This. The comments here are simply so ignorant, it's kind of hard to believe. I mean, person after person posts something that suggests there is no point in hiring the guy. What do they think McDermott is doing? Just adding a buddy to play golf with? McDermott has an organization plan for this guy. He will have specific duties, and those duties will relate directly to improving the team's defense in ways that McDermott believes are necessary for the team to get better. Do I know what the guy's duties will be? Of course not. But to suggest that the only reason for this hire is to bring over a buddy from Carolina or to have someone else to blame is remarkably stupid.

I'm in the cannibis industry, too. Exclusively on the buy side.

I'm 76, a mostly retired lawyer with a wife, three kids and four grandchildren. Who we really are is an existential question. We are living beings experiencing moments of joy, sorrow, just moments passing one after another that we try to attach some meaning to. There's no understanding them. Better just to appreciate each of the moments. They're all precious.

Wow! Glad your doing so well. There's some medication that they use that is supposed to be very effective with stroke patients if they can get it into you in the first few hours or maybe even a day. Since you were in the hospital, I'd bet you got it and that it contributed to what sounds like a great recovery. I'm happy for it. If you don't mind talking about it, could you explain to us how it feels to be aphasic. I understand the frustration level is huge, because your brain is thinking but you can't find words to say what you're thinking.

As I understand it, it largely is not correctable. It's caused by brain damage suffered as the result of inadequate blood flow. That's why CPR from the very beginning is so important; CPR keeps some blood flowing to the brain until they can restart the heart. With inadequate blood flow, brain cells start dying, and those cells cannot be regenerated. Apparently, the patient can't make progress in the first few days and weeks, bringing damaged cells back on line, but after that it becomes very difficult. People with aphasia essentially have to train other, unused brained cells to do the work of the cells that have died. Training brain cells is pretty easy in infants - that's why they're language and intelligence grows so fast in the early years, but it's pretty difficult in adults. People who make progress usually work very hard, with good speech and language therapists. It's much difficult, long-term work than coming back from an ACL repair or something like that. The tissue around the knee repairs itself, and rehabilitation is mostly about getting that tissue reconditioned. What Kim is trying to do is more like not fixing the ACL and trying to train other muscles to compensate. Progress is slow, and patients tend to get discouraged. She's blessed with serious personal determination, a supportive family, and essentially unlimited resources. I wish her well.

Bills fans should have a song to sing to Kim before every game. Or maybe at halftime. Just to say hello and to let her know we're thinking of her.

Me too. I so wanted her back, because she's been such a big part of the Bills and so important to Buffalo. It's terribly sad.

Lamar Hunt, or whoever ran the Chiefs at the time, said firing Marv was the dumbest thing he ever did as an owner.

Now, I'm just down to repeating myself. Of course, what you say here is correct. If you have the wrong QB, a good HC and GM will get a different one. If you have the wrong DE, they'll get a different one. If people around him the organization, or smart football people around the league, are saying you can't win with that defense, and the coach doesn't change defenses, well, then the owner has to get a different HC. That's true. But it's not like the Bills are the only team in the league playing 4-3, or the only team in the league that tries to get pressure on the QB rushing only four, or that avoids cover zero. A lot of teams do what the Bills do, so I don't think the Bills have a failed, outdated defense that McD stubbornly sticks to because, well, he likes it. Have you noticed that all last season and all off-season people here were pounding the table to get rid of Edmunds because he wasn't a run stuffer and he wasn't tough enough, and all of that has gone away because he made a few more tackles this season? I think we have to recognize that these complaints about McDermott and Frazier, although present a bit in earlier seasons, have become the flavor of the month. The Bills had one of the best defenses in the league, but this season, for reasons I don't completely disagree with, McDermott and Frazier are taking the blame. Well, that's all well and good. If McDermott is so stubborn that he won't change things that have been demonstrated not to work, fine, he will have to go. However, McDermott is a self-defined lifelong learner who is into continuous improvement. Staying in the same place, let alone going backward, is not acceptable in his personal world. When he came to the Bills he instituted a management system, from the top of the organization to the bottom, of regular and continuous evaluation, correction, and improvement. Everyone in the organization, including Beane and McDermott and Frazier, is evaluated regularly, is given feedback, and is expected to learn and improve. Everyone has a plan of improvement that is established cooperatively between that person and his supervisors. McDermott has said repeatedly that he is subject to that system and that in any case, he does it as a matter of personal habit. The whole point of the system is that people, players, coaches, sales people, cafeteria people, will continue to improve in their jobs, from day to day, week to week, year to year. In that environment, both organizationally and personally, McDermott will not continue to do things that are not working. He has, for example, studied the 4-3 and the 3-4 for 20 years, and I'm sure he understands more about both systems than any person posting here. He knows the strengths and weaknesses of both, and he prefers the 4-3. He can explain his reasons for preferring it, and he can agree with us that he might be wrong about his preference, but he doesn't think so. When it becomes obvious that the 3-4 is better, McDermott will switch, because he learns and because winning is what matters to him. So, too, his 8-man DL rotation, and his preference for zone pass defense, and every other strategic choice there is to be made on a football field. McDermott will not continue to do what doesn't work, and he won't permit Frazier to continue to do what doesn't work. So, yes, we all can sit and say Frazier isn't getting the job done, and that means either Frazier or McDermott or both need to change or be replaced, but that is not something McDermott and Beane and the Pegulas don't already know. And the Bills have in a place a management system the whole point of which is to identify and address issues exactly like that in order to improve. So, yes, you've set forth the problem nicely and as usual, I agree with just about all you say and admire how you say it, but I'm not stressing over it. McBeane will deal with it. If I want to play DC for a minute, McD's DC, I know I'll be running 4-2-5. I'll have Hyde and Taron Johnson at safety, White and Elam at the corners, Benford or Jackson in the slot. I'll probably get help from some rookie DB. I'll have Edmunds and Milano and an 8-man rotation on the Dline. I'll be figuring out how to get more pressure on the QB in my system, and I'll be working with Beane about tweaking the personnel, again, in that area. I'll be studying film and understanding how the Bengals and other teams have been getting receivers open for medium-range completions, and I'll be tweaking the scheme to make that tougher. I'll be figuring out how to change the mix of zone and man how to get more stops on third and seven and third and eight. If people want to come on here and say they would prefer a different defense, well, fine, but as I said, people's preferences are just that. If they want to proclaim, as many do, that they're right and McDermott is wrong, well, I'm sticking with McDermott.

Ayjent - Great stuff, as always. Thanks. I really like the first paragraph. "Imposing its will" is the key and as you say, that's what's lacking in the playoffs. Well, missing this year. I thought the Bills were more than tough enough against the Chiefs last year - there were other problems. And I agree that down the stretch of the regular season, they didn't have it. But just like against the Chiefs, the previous season that wasn't a problem. Going into the playoffs in the 2021 season, they were the team no one wanted to play. So, I think the things you're commenting on, although perhaps being somewhat true in early seasons, really are phenomena that troubled the Bills this season. And as I've said, I think their inability to pull things together this season were the result of a lot of different things, in some cases unique things, that the Bills just couldn't overcome. I agree about your analysis of the defensive line, and I've said here myself. They need some guys who WIN; instead, they seem to be loaded with guys who read and react, particularly Rousseau. He really needs to crank up his intensity. I never paid much attention to Von Miller before this season, but he knows how to play the position. Not every play, not by a long shot, but every once in a while on the snap he absolutely explodes on the OT and knocks him off balance, then creates from there. Doing that once every ten plays or whatever puts the blocker on the defensive, and it allows Miller the opportunity to attack all the other way he attacks. Rousseau needs to do that to - instead, everyone knows he's just going to come across the line and look to see what's happening. Did they play too much soft coverage this season? Looked like it. The thing about all of this, from my point of view, is that McDermott is smart and determined, more than any people we tend to meet in our day-to-day lives. He works and studies all the time. He knows the coverage was too soft. He knows the pass rush didn't work. He knows the defense didn't impose its will. He sees all of that stuff and hundreds of other things, and he know what he wants to do about it. Frankly, I think if you asked him about the soft coverage, he'd tell you exactly why they played that way, and he probably has to do with having substandard safety play late in the season, White being off his pre-injury game, and Jackson and Elam being vulnerable. I don't know that, but isn't that the kind of reason that you would expect a smart guy like McDermott to have for playing a defense that he knows was not aggressive enough? Especially, when he's playing a quality QB like Burrows and he knows that none of his defensive linemen are going to get home, he's not going to play press coverage if he doesn't trust his corners or safeties. Whatever the answers are, McDermott has literally made it his life to learn them. He knows if Frazier is a problem. He knows if Dorsey is a problem or just needed to get a year under his belt. He knows where his personnel is weak, and he's told Beane. None of which is to say that he'll figure it out. I'm haunted by memories of George Allen, who has absolutely glorified by the press has a determined, detail-oriented coach who would lead Washington to the Super Bowl and more, and he couldn't do it. Just being like McDermott isn't necessarily enough. But, as I also said before, there is nothing that any of us sees that he doesn't see, he knows which things he needs to fix, and he almost certainly knows better than any of us how to fix it. So, like you, I'm not replacing him any time soon.