Shaw66

Chiefs were outstanding. And for those people complaining about Davis not being a good enough #2 and not drafting a Tee Higgins or whatever, Chiefs lost Tyreek Hill and no wideouts left from when they won the Super Bowl. Didn't matter. Great coaching and tenacious defense wins.

As the Bills lost to the Bengals in the AFC Divisional Round, I wasn’t ready to step off the ledge. I hoped they’d win, but I expected they wouldn’t. I hoped a truly competitive playoff team would emerge in January, but I hadn’t seen much evidence of that kind of dominance in December. It wasn’t their year. I guess I’ve mellowed. Worst case, I’m losing interest, but I don’t think that’s the case. I had tickets and a hotel in Atlanta, and I had a hotel and a rental car in Arizona. I was interested. For now, however, I think less than I used to about what went wrong and what needs to be fixed than in past years. I have developed a healthy respect for all of the things I don’t know about football, and I no longer can pretend that I see that one thing the Bills need to fix to get over the top. If it were easy enough for a guy sitting in his family room to figure that out, someone in Orchard Park would have done it already. What it takes to win a Super Bowl is a complex, almost unknowable combination of factors, many of which are completely or largely outside the control the General Manager and the coaches. The extreme example was the COVID pandemic season, when the rules that governed practice, travel, and schedule all changed and kept changing throughout the season. Teams had to figure out on the fly how to accomplish the training and preparation necessary to play the game at a high level under circumstances they’d never seen before. Even short of that extreme, the variables are constantly changing, and each team is challenged to respond. Coaches keep experimenting with approaches to offense, trying to find ways to move the ball consistently and score, and as they do, defensive coaches adjust their approach to defense. What works changes from year to year, even from month to month. Players come and go, with a quarter to a third of the players on the roster changing annually, and as the players change, the things the team can do effectively on the field change. The process, from April through February, is like 75 people trying to complete a giant jigsaw puzzle while the picture being built is changing before their eyes. In that kind of environment, just getting to the point where your team is one of the half dozen that have gotten good enough to compete in the playoffs is a major accomplishment. The winner will be the team that can keep growing and building a team that can play at increasing levels of physicality. The winners also invariably talk about how the team is a family, how much they care for each other. Some people think it’s a cliché, but it’s said so regularly that I’m sure it’s true. The winners must come together, not just physically and technically, but emotionally, as well. It is amazingly difficult and unpredictable, and every year the winning players and coaches are justifiably proud of what they’ve accomplished. And there’s no shame in falling short. The Bills fell short. I think the emotional roller coaster of the Bills’ 2022 season was too much to overcome. That is, it simply couldn’t be expected that they could accomplish all of the technical things – the training, the study, the learning, the teamwork, the offense and defense growth and development, the insertion of inexperienced players, like Hamlin, Jaquon Johnson, and others into the lineup – all of that and more, while struggling with the extraordinary events of the 2022 season. The Bills were central to or lived through three national news stories: the Topps murders, the blizzard, and Damar Hamlin. Those events were, at the least, big distractions, and more likely difficult and draining once-in-a-lifetime emotional challenges. And they lived through Kim Pegula’s health issues and the death of Dawson Knox’s brother. On field, what went wrong? Plenty, I’m sure. Josh Allen didn’t have an MVP season. Teams figured out how to slow down the Bills’ offense and how to attack their defense, and the coaches didn’t implement strategies and tactics to counter what opponents were doing. Losing Micah Hyde for almost the entire season was a major blow; he more than anyone else is key to the Bills’ defensive scheme. Losing Von Miller for the late-season and playoff run hurt the pass rush, as did the failure of Greg Rousseau, Ed Oliver, and others to develop as defensive threats on their own. The offensive line was not nearly effective enough. If I had to point to one factor in the Bills’ playoff loss to the Bengals, I’d say “pass rush.” The real difference in the game was that Joe Burrows regularly had time to throw, and Josh Allen didn’t. One play stands out for me: I believe it was Allen’s incomplete pass deep to Diggs up the left side on third and four, the Bills’ first possession of the game. Allen was flushed out of the pocket to the right, found Diggs, and threw. Diggs was open, but Allen threw the flat deep ball that we saw a lot from him in his early years. He had plenty of room to throw to open space toward the middle of the field, and Diggs could easily have adjusted to get there. The right throw would have been completed for a big gain or possibly a touchdown. Allen didn’t have time, and when QBs don’t have time they rush their throws. Under Sean McDermott, the Bills are enjoying great success. There is no reason to complain about him or his abilities, not yet. Ten, thirteen, eleven, and thirteen wins in the past four seasons, four and five in the playoffs. Andy Reid won his first conference championship game in his sixth year and didn’t win another one until more than ten years later. Zac Taylor has already lost a Super Bowl and a Conference Championship game. Sean McVay is looking more lucky than good. Kyle Shanahan doesn’t have a Lombardi. The sports news media, particularly one Associated Press article after the Bengals game, made a big deal about the Bills going “all in” to win the Super Bowl this season. That’s simply wrong. Brandon Beane and Sean McDermott have always been very clear that their objective is sustained, long-term success. The Rams went went “all in” last season, trading for Von Miller in his free agent season, signing Odell Beckham, and it paid off for them. Then they collapsed. The Bills signed Miller to a six-year deal, with the likelihood that he’ll play at least three. The Bills made no short-term plays to win it all this season. The Bills have become a dominant team in the NFL, a team that should be in the mix to win the Super Bowl for years to come. It didn’t happen in the 2022 season, and that’s disappointing, but it’s easy to see that things simply didn’t fall together the right way this season. Now, they’re in the process of building for next season.

I agree with what you say. I don't think it's a reason to change the scheme. I think it's a reason to adjust play calling and to tweak assignments in certain situations. And in the playoffs, they need to turn up the intensity.

I think it's an interesting question, whether the scheme is finished or whether it has continued to evolve. I agree, it seems to have become predictable, what the good coaches do is continue create changes that cover the holes. The result, if you do it well, is that after 5-6 years you have a defense that can do a lot of different things well. If it doesn't evolve, it just becomes beatable. One reason I think that the schemed may continue to be a good scheme is that the league still is a passing league. Having seven mobile guys playing behind the line seems like a good approach. But it has to adjust.

Well, I'd say there are multiple differences. There's a thread about physical toughness, and that stands out, too. But I think you're right. Neither the defensive nor offensive coaching is creative enough.

I don't know what you're talking. There is no GM in the NFL who will say, "well, the guy is worth $8 million a year, but because he was drafted in the top 10 we'll pay him $11 million." At this point Oliver, like everyone else, is a piece of meat, and his value will be determined by how good each team thinks he is. No one will value him based on his draft position. OLIVER may think he's worth more because of his draft position, but no GM is going to pay him for his draft position. No one.

Of course. But to suggest, as the post to which I reacted did, that underperforming his draft position is reason not to keep a guy is wrong. As you say, you might not keep the guy if his price is too high for your payroll structure, but that's a completely different question than where the guy was drafted. It's simply about how much you're willing to pay for a particular talent.

People always make this argument, and it drives me nuts. Where the guy was drafted is completely irrelevant to any discussion of his future with the team. All that matters is that you get the best 53 guys on the roster you can, given your cap situation and the players that are available. If Oliver is one of the best 53, it makes absolutely no difference where he was drafted.

Remember that!!?! Ryan Nassib! People actually thought a mediocre quarterback playing for a mediocre coach on a mediocre team was the answer.

I didn't know you had been a mod. I can only imagine. Easy to see why you quit. I survived in the job only because I took a low-key approach. I thought of myself as a near-sighted referee who forget to bring my glasses to the game. You had to be way out of bounds before I could tell it was time to blow the whistle. Like I said, it was like the WWE.

That's interesting. I had a good time there and a lot of good discussions with people, high quality discussions. But it was chaotic. There were plenty of good threads ruined by nonstop name-calling and nastiness. I suppose if you had the capacity to ignore it, it wasn't bad. Plus, I guess I didn't like it in part because I was mod, and trying to get people to be halfway civil was an impossible task. Sometimes, I thought I was refereeing WWE matches. I guess I can see that some people liked watching that stuff.

I think you have this wrong. I was a mod on BBMB, and the Bills wouldn't give us authority to deal with the bad actors. As a result, there were days when it was pretty chaotic, and there was a lot of misbehavior. People said a lot of nasty stuff to each other. Moderating isn't easy, and the moderation here isn't perfect, but the mods here have authority and exercise it in ways that keep the place civil and keep the conversations going and on point. You can tell the moderation here is good because (1) there's active discussion and (2) people aren't leaving.

Actually, I think there was a lot of thought put into. The Bills are all about two things: winning on the football side, and making money on the business side. The Bills were making more money on social media, and they figured out that the message board wasn't doing anything for them. It wasn't driving business for them, at all. It wasn't selling advertising. Nothing. And from time to time, some poster was unhappy and complained to the Bills about what he thought was mistreatment. On top of that, they saw that if they imposed stricter rules (something the mods wanted), they would irritate more people. So, they saw no upside to maintaining the board. It also didn't make sense to announce the shutdown in advance. That would just engender a lot of complaining. So, they decided the best thing to do was simply to pull the plug without notice. One morning, it just wasn't there.

Frankly, it really was like being refugees. The culture here was different, we were greeted warmly by some and with a little hostility by a few, as if we were refugees from the Bulgarian mafia or something. But we learned the ways of our new homeland, and all is good now. It's a great place for Bills news and discussion. And the mods do a nice job keeping things in order.

Well, I guess you got your answer. A lot of BBMB refugees ended up here. I spent twelve days in an open inflatable raft to cross the ocean and get here. I was warmly greeted when I came ashore, by a lot of fat, hairy, old guys holding beer cans.

I don't know the league well enough to know that he's top 3, but it wouldn't surprise me. I thought he was very good in 2021, and he was better in 2022. But that doesn't matter. The question is where does he help the team most? The defense is driven by safety play, and the pass defense fell off this season. Yes, White was out, but it appeared to me that the problem much more was the safeties. Hamlin wasn't nearly as good as Poyer or Hyde, and J. Johnson was worse. Someone needs to anchor that position for the next several seasons, and T. Johnson is exactly the right talent. Tough, smart, solid tackler, good pass coverage guy. The Bills don't have a lot of capital to spend on free agents this season. If they move T. Johnson to safety, promote Benford to nickel (and assuming Hyde returns), they have the backfield covered without spending an additional nickel. That allows more room to sign free agents at other positions without weakening the defense.

I agree. Smart. Excellent tackler. Solid cover guy. Hr is a good chess piecce, perfect as a safety.

Hyde and Taron Johnson at safety. Bedford to slit corner.

Just gotta say that what is always said about the playoffs is that you have to learn how to play in the playoffs. Jaguars were the poster child. Playoff winning teams don't drop a half dozen passes. They don't turn it over twice in the fourth quarter. They take advantage of opportunities the opponent gives them. Jags were none of that. Given that the Jags were so mediocre, it also means the Chiefs are beatable. Chiefs had a lot of trouble scoring.

I agree. As I thought about, I've had several issues with their system. Only game in town is right.

Thanks. My paranoia is showing. I'm sure it's not easy to put together a system for selling 60,000 tickets under these circumstances.

Is there no public presale today because the Chiefs screwed up didn't get their season ticket holders information about how to buy tickets? If so, giving them extra time is unfair, both to Bills fans who wanted access to those tickets and to the general public. It's not their fault the Chiefs can't follow the instructions.

That's interesting. My first take was to think you're nuts, but your explanation makes a lot of sense. Not only in the run game, but in the passing game, as well, because he will bring a different take to the development of the offensive line. The problem is that the job for the Bills is that the OC also has to be creative in the passing game, and I'm not so sure Roman can fill that part of the job.

I think it means they know Lamar already has decided to leave, and without Lamar, Roman's offense will fail completely. I think it means they know they have to move in another direction.

I was there and rarely watched the clock. But one time the Dolphins were in the huddle and the play clock NEVER started.