BigDingus

I'm glad he admitted to the mistake, but it'd be less frustrating/worrisome if it wasn't such an obviously glaring mistake to begin with. Yes, people learn from mistakes, but most people wouldn't need to make this mistake to "learn" from it. This was something the average armchair fan could've avoided with ease. It's like slamming your face into a brick wall & realizing it hurt, then saying "well now I know & learned from my mistake!" You don't really need to do that in order to know it would hurt. Sometimes you can learn from other people's mistakes without doing them yourself.

Mike Williams was so long ago, as was Dockery. They go for 1 guy every now & then, but ultimately rely on hand-me-downs, journeymen & late round guys they hope turn out. We had a pretty decent run-blocking O-line for a while, but it's never very balanced. O-line is one of those positions where I always feel like you can afford to invest in & improve. The year we went & got Levitre & Woods really seemed like we were heading that way. We weren't planning ahead though in recent years.... as we relied on an old (but playing well) Incognito who we were paying on the cheap, then ran into bad luck with Woods. Then we trade our LT out of all positions, and you see what we really have invested lately with what remained. We were content tredding water, and never wanted to fortify the group. We could've easily invested in another guard the past several years, signed an above average RT to balance the other side of the line. Every year I keep thinking they'll finally decide to draft a beast O-linemen that'll anchor our unit for years to come... the next Joe Thomas or Zach Martin or Alex Mack. It just seems that'll never be the case though.

Yeah, the 49ers supporting cast is so dominant. You could plug a cripple in there & post historic numbers! http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/25151421/nick-mullens-puts-historic-numbers-nfl-debut-49ers-cruise If he just kills it through the rest of the season, it will be extremely depressing that yet another team lucks into some random godsend QB while the Bills can't find one if they were gifted an entire draft class of them by the league.

? I appreciate it. Been using this avatar for ages now (love Butters/Professor Chaos)! And yeah, I know there's no way we'd draft a QB in round 1 next season. That's why I think McDermott will just double down on Allen instead of hedging his bets. I'm not saying it's wrong to try to surround your young QB with good skill position players, but usually it comes at the expense of the line, and nothing really changes. It also rarely works out that some high profile WR or RB just comes in & elevates our QB to some great level. And whether it's Marshawn Lynch, Lee Evans, Willis McGahee, CJ Spiller, Sammy Watkins, etc. it doesn't mean a damn thing if the QB isn't good and/or the line can't protect for s***. Just once, I'd like to see us spend several high picks on O-linemen, pay some good money on some FA linemen, and just build from there. At least our crappy QB's will have some time to throw, & our usually pretty talented RB's will have some production.

Are we pretending that Allen or Anderson don't give us just as good a chance as #1 overall as Peterman? Either way, unless the Raiders or Giants start winning, we're unlikely to get #1 overall. Top 5 though? Definitely. Who would we even take #1 overall? Probably nobody, just trade back & hopefully snag as many O-linemen & WR's as possible.

As much as I like Carr, I wouldn't. If we hadn't already dumped 2 draft's worth of maneuvering & picks into Allen I'd say yes. But seeing as how we are going to be a top 5 pick barring a miracle, I'd rather just draft another QB straight up & keep the rest of the picks. But if there's one thing we know about coaches it's that they will double down over & over rather than attempt to hedge their bets (when it comes to first round QB's they've drafted). Hell, I'd be happy if they drafted a QB every draft at this point. Anything to increase the odds that we luck into our franchise guy one day.

"All that said, of all this mishandled the QB situation talk, still awaiting a realistic outline of how it should’ve been handled.Keep McCarron (over a fifth-round pick)?Sign Keenum (and outbid Broncos)?Sign Bridgewater (and bet on him being healthy)?" I don't really think that's a fair point..."Awaiting a realistic outline?" I've seen countless discussions from experts & fans alike laying out much better plans than what we actually did. Here, I'll give some options that would've been infinitely better than what we did. 1. Since it begins with the offseason & your obvious plans to draft a QB high in this draft, you could've done a number of things differently. A) If you wanted someone other than Allen, you already let the Jets outbid you for the #3 spot, so you got beat there. B) If you wanted Allen from the start, you knew he was a project pick, and would benefit from having a veteran mentor & sitting the year. 2. Which leads to A) keeping the veteran you have on the roster in Tyrod Taylor, or B) signing another one that knows & accepts his role, someone like Derek Anderson. Did that happen? No. 3. Ok, so you sign McCarron instead. You know your only other QB other than your rookie is a 2nd year 5th round pick who became an interception meme. Combined games started between the trio was what, 4? At least McCarron showed he was capable enough of starting, is young enough to have some upside, and you got him at bargain bin pricing. Nope! Trade him for a 5th round pick, throw in the other 5th round pick INT machine as the starter, & have your project rookie as the #2. 4. So now you've already started the season backed into a corner. You're one injury or bad game away from having just your rookie QB & nobody else. Peterman plays like Peterman, doesn't even make it 1 game. A clear sign of decision making failure right there. It also adds another layer to the failure, as it casts doubt on your ability to even judge QB's, and here you are having just invested a ton picks into a rookie QB this past draft! You somehow thought this guy, Nathan Peterman, was so capable that you not only didn't need a veteran on the roster, you traded your backup plan before the first game! Yet we're supposed to believe you're the one who knows QB talent, and how to put that talent in a position to succeed? Good luck Josh Allen. 5. Alright, so at least we now know that you can't trust Peterman, Allen is the starter, and injuries can happen at any moment. So what would a smart coach do in that situation? Sign another QB immediately! But no, we gamble, trotting Allen out there week after week to get destroyed while looking completely out of his league in the process. We sign one 4 games later, but then shocker, Allen eventually gets hurt. In comes Pick-6 Peterman. Peterman does his schtick, McDermott finally realizes he has royally f'd up. Guy that's been there for a couple days now has to be starter. 6. In this whole time, QB's have been signed by various teams. Veterans on other rosters could be targeted for trades. Yes, that includes players like Teddy Bridgewater. "But is he healthy enough?" He's been cleared many times, was active last year, played well in the preseason, and wasn't expensive. It's a better option than what we've got, and funny enough, the same things were said about another Saints QB in Drew Brees before they signed him. 7. To top it off, McDermott gets another fail for assembling this garbage WR corps & O-line KNOWING he's going to invest heavily in a rookie QB! Talk about putting them in a position to fail, this is more like putting them in a position to get destroyed & lose all confidence. But hey, at least we had a veteran there to help lead, help the other young QB's keep their head on their shoulders & help them understand what they're seeing out there...oh wait. McDermott mishandled the QB situation by also mishandling the other critical positions on offense. And yes, it was VERY obvious we'd look like this! At some point I'm just going to go through the offseason posts & threads and show how easy this was to see coming. Just as easy is knowing it will inevitably lead to the OC getting blamed/fired, and this whole playbook Allen is learning thrown out the window...making half of what he learned this season worthless. It's like they went step by step through the "how to ruin a rookie QB" manual. There's plenty more to break down. But I've already come back & forth to this post a dozen times already while working on other things. Rather just finish it now, be told by eternal optimists that everything is better than it ever has been (like they did all offseason) and come back later.

So when one (or both) inevitably get hurt, who do you think they will pluck from the golf course next? Is Vinny Testaverde still alive? I'm sure he wants another shot at glory!

Nope. Never lived in the area, or even the state. Grew up in Northern Virginia, then moved to Dallas when I was 16. Lived in Texas the past 15 years, but a Buffalonian at heart

Poor guy..... I really hope the rest of his life is fulfilling, because football has done him dirty.

Nah. Red Helmet, red jersey, red pants, red socks, red cleats. If we can't beat em, overload them with color & blind the cameras. It'll make it so fans won't know for sure the passes were incomplete, or that we got stuffed behind the line. It gives us hope!

Is that convention center massive or something? I've never known convention centers to hold more than 15-20k people at best. How is that any help to the Bills? I guess I'm missing something

Landry Jones.

Even if we were 0-16, other butthurt, overdramatic fans in bigger markets will always vote their team as the worst.

I like where your mind is at! Throw in a Logan Thomas + Terrelle Pryor wrinkle, and how will anyone ever know which threat to defend!?

We're really playing 4D chess while everyone else is playing checkers. McDermott & Co. next-leveling the s*** out of these coaches! Last week it was WC & flea flickers, this week it's left footed punters. Maybe next week we'll put Shady out at Center, snapping to Ivory.

He's right. Nearly every year since he was fired I've written him letters to be the HC of my Madden team. For the life of me I can't play beyond the "Pro" difficulty. I figured with the wealth of knowledge Gregg has at his disposal, he could at least get me to "All Pro," so I can stop getting rekt online.

Anquan Boldin & Percy Harvin retired just to get away from us. Unless we draft them or scrape them up off the streets, it's unlikely we'll get anyone decent. That's why you gotta give TO credit. Nearing the end of his career, he not only played out an entire season here with our poor QB's, he managed to be our receiving leader that year too.

Yeah, I made the mistake of going to a Bills home game against the Pats once too. For a while there, I thought I lucked into the greatest experience ever...as the Bills were up 28 to 3 (or close to that) at half time. I remember my fiancee & I were going crazy with the fans in the seats, thinking holy s***, the Bills are actually going to beat Brady and I'm here!!!!!! Little did I know they would go on to score something like 40 unanswered points to open the second the half........How in the hell we allowed them to not only come back, but to blow us out after being up that much still blows my mind. I wish the ***** guy was there that day, as I would've taken that ***** & broke it off up Brady's ***.

To be fair, except for one series of plays in the 2nd half, the refs were pretty lenient & didn't flag the Bills anywhere close to what we're used to seeing. Still angry by the Benjamin call, but I get it's technically the rule. Doesn't sting as much since he made up for it with that big catch, but still.... And didn't Edelman get flagged for this call? I'm probably wrong, but either way I thought the game was pretty evenly called.

Haha I was just editing my comment as you responded. Yeah, I just read up on it again and realized that. It's really some BS the way they were pretty much bullied to leave Buffalo even though the team was doing well financially.

That sounds great, really would love to have experienced the atmosphere of an NBA game in Buffalo. I imagine a team there now would have a similar level of support that fans of the Spurs or Jazz give their respective teams. I thought the owner of the Braves traded teams with the Celtics owner, then moved the team to San Diego/LA? At least that's what I remember reading from Wikipedia. Never heard of Darien Lake though, but after googling it, surprised to see it's still around! Edit: Nvm, just read up a bit on it. Can't believe that even though the team was profitable, maintaining the league average in ticket sales & attendance, and getting good ratings on TV, outside politics pretty much forced the team to leave. Of course, other expansion teams that came around during that time still hung around, but Buffalo got the crap end of the stick

I paused the TV & went back to that seconds after I saw it. I just asked my wife "did that guy just type that out moments before the game knowing he'd be on TV?!" Out of all things he could've put, with basic font, text and on just a piece of printer paper with landscape orientation? I really wish I knew WTH he was thinking. Sean Penn...really? Really let politics affect you that much? I'm guessing your political views inspired that comment too?

Since I'm half convinced it's my bad luck that drags the Bills down, I'd move on to becoming a Patriots fan to ensure they never win another Super Bowl, or even a playoff game, ever again. Still so hard to imagine Buffalo having 3 major pro sports teams, especially an NBA team. Did the city just not care about NBA at the time? Even though the city is much smaller now, there's no way I could see the current population not being supportive of a team if they still had one.

For the first time in my life, I want a Bills QB to do well not for the Bills as a team, but for them as a human being. Peterman already has had to deal with so much, just for failing at a game, that any more failure could ruin the guy's head permanently. He probably didn't expect his life to take this turn when he was at Pitt playing football, dreaming of improving his life & getting drafted to an NFL team. Now his life his the butt of jokes, and his name is synonymous with interceptions. Hope it goes well for him, if even just this one last time.