SoTier

I wrote specifically about teams that have had losing records for decades with few, if any playoff appearances much less playoff wins. The Bills went 17 seasons without a playoff appearance. The Lions went 30 years or some ridiculous number of seasons without a playoff win. The Jests haven't made the playoffs in 14 seasons, and only have 3 playoff seasons in the last 20 years. All these teams replaced GMs and coaching staffs multiple times, including bringing in proven people who won elsewhere. They also frequently had rosters with decent talent, including some superstars. Even the claim, "well, they don't have a franchise QB" doesn't work; Matthew Stafford wasted most of his career putting up big numbers for the Lions but never winning a playoff game. Stafford took the Rams to a Lombardi in his very first season in LA. The constant with all these was/is the ownership. Within a couple of years of Hamp taking over the Lions, they became a NFC power house. The Commanders made the playoffs the first season after Snyder was forced out. The Bills situation was a little more complicated because Pegula retained Russ Brandon, Ralph Wilson's surrogate, and put him into a similar role after the Rex Ryan debacle. The season after Brandon was fired for non-football reasons and Beane was put in charge, the Bills made the playoffs and never looked back. Unless they change the ownership, perpetual losers have no real chance of turning things around.

Actually, the reason that the Lions have become a powerhouse in the last three or four years is because they changed ownership. Sheila Ford Hamp took control of the team from her mother. Prior to Hamp taking up the reins, the Lions wallowed in perpetual bottom feeding for decades just like the Jests under Woody Johnson, the Raiders under Mark Davis, the Commanders under Dan Snyder, and the Bills during the last decade plus of Ralph Wilson's ownership. Sometimes the owners or their surrogates meddle in football decisions. Sometimes ownership has higher priorities than winning football games. Sometimes an owner isn't a good judge of the personnel he or she hires to run their teams. As long as Woody Johnson is the owner of the Jests, the chances of the team rising above mediocrity isn't likely to happen, no matter who they hire as GM because the owner's proclivities tend to undermine success on the field.

The defensive decline happened after Saleh was fired. He was an excellent defensive coach, and his defensive players loved him.

IMO, Rodgers was the main reason the Jests failed to make the playoffs this year. Not only had his physical skills significantly diminished from his top years in GB, but he's an egotistical ass who wanted everything his way and who never took responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else's fault when things didn't work out.

First off, are you Rex's mom? Wife? Sister? Dude or dudette, your statement is absolute hyperbole. Bill Belichick took the Patriots to the Super Bowl 9 times between 2001 and 2018, winning 6. Belichick's Patriots teams won the AFCE 17 times during that period, including 11 times in a row between 2009 and 2019. Andy Reid has taken the Chiefs to 11 playoff seasons in his 12 seasons as HC in KC, including 4 with Alex Smith as his QB. With Mahomes at QB, Reid has coached the Chiefs to 4 Super Bowl appearances with 3 wins plus 2 more conference championship appearances. As for short-term coaching achievements, Sean McDermott's 2017 wild card playoff team which broke the Bills' 17 year playoff drought with Tyrod Taylor at QB certainly qualifies as a more significant coaching achievement. Certainly Sean Peyton taking the Broncos to the wild card in 2024 with rookie Bo Nix as QB is another more outstanding coaching achievement than Ryan's. I have no doubt that I could name a dozen outstanding one or two single season coaching achievements that easily surpass Ryan's since 2001 if I bothered to research them. Rex isn't even a blimp on the radar of "greatest coaching achievement of this century".

I'm picking with my heart not my head, but what the hell ... it's an extra divisional game which is even more iffy than a regular division contest plus Lamar and the Ravens have frequently come up short compared to their regular season play in the post-season.

My guess is that Aikman and Buck subscribe to the old axiom, "if you can't say something nice about somebody, praise his versatility ... and ignore the fact that his poor play is contributing to his QB running for his life."

At least part of that is because the DBs aren't close enough to the receivers to hold or interfere with catches. 😁

He needs to sell the team. If Woody just "steps down" or "steps away" (as he is supposed to do to become an ambassador), his son(s) and other minions will run the team according to Woody's general wishes. Woody Johnson has owned the Jests for all of this century. He's picked the GMs and likely had significant input on hiring HCs. He's known to exert his power in player personnel decisions, too. The Jests have the longest active playoff drought in major professional sports ... 14 years. I think that Carr would be a definite upgrade in the locker room, which could very well have resulted in the Jests having more wins than they do now. Carr's former teammates have all loved him. As others have said, Rodgers is an egotistical ass.

I understand that. It's why the Stillers are my second favorite team. Back in the late 1960s and 1970s, the Bills fielded teams that were horrible. 1 or 2 wins seasons seemed to be the norm. The only decent years they had were the first couple of years under Lou Saban when they had OJ, Joe Ferguson, Bobby Chandler etc and even made the playoffs at least one time. I began rooting for the Steelers, especially against the Raiders, in the playoffs. I still root for them if their winning doesn't impact the Bills . You nailed it. I had just turned 19 when the Jests beat Baltimore in SB III. I'll be 75 in a couple of weeks. It was a different world then. Richard Nixon had not yet been inaugurated POTUS. Neil Armstrong was 6 months from stepping on the moon. The cell phone you used 10 years ago was far more powerful than the computers NASA used to send the astronauts there and bring them home safely. The first Earth Day wouldn't be celebrated until April 22, 1970, and Ohio National Guardsmen wouldn't kill 4 Kent State University students protesting the US invasion of Cambodia a few weeks later on May 4, 1970. I remember the Jests' SB win as well as the Fish's perfect season. I also remember 0-for-the-70s, sonny boy.

There wasn't really a proper reaction emoji to this ... not much need for a "too bizarre for the real world" emoji. Even the Bills in their deepest, darkest years of the Drought, never f'd up picking a great QB when they had a real opportunity to grab one. - In the 2004 draft, the Bills wanted Roethlisberger but the Stillers took him 2 spots before the Bills' turn. The Bills traded back into the first round to take Losman who was the only other QB considered a first round prospect in that draft. IMO, with a different FO and better coaching than Dick Jauron, Losman might have become a decent starter. - In 2017, the Bills swapped their first round pick (#10) to the Chiefs for their 2017 first rounder (#21 IIRC) plus KC's first rounder. The Chiefs drafted Mahomes, but the Bills used their draft capital to take Allen.

Why do so many Bills fans have to hate on former Bills players? You sound like a bunch of embittered high schoolers dissing their exes. Just move on.

Even badly wounded, Detroit's D is still considerably better than the Giants' D.

They also have a game to lose in the race for the #1 seed, so sitting Mahomes against the Texans makes real sense. The Texans have a mean defense -- they are one of the leaders in rushing the passer I think -- so it's really risky to put a gimpy QB out there against them. Giving Mahomes 2 weeks makes him much more likely to play well in the final two games.

Really? How can you possibly know that with any kind of impartiality? Statistics, which we use so extensively to measure QB performance, won't work because of the differences in the game.

I "watched back in the day", and your statement is simply untrue because of the differences in the game today and back in the 1990s simply make comparisons of the QBs of those two eras impossible. Kelly was drafted in the great QB draft of 1983 (41 years ago) along with Elway and Marino. Marino was the last of the QBs to retire, lasting until 1999. That was 25 years ago. The game today is much different today than it was in the 1990s just as the game in 1994 was light years different from how the game was played in the 1950s and 1960s. What was/is valued -- and needed -- to be a great QB in the 1960s or the 1990s or the 2020s means that it's likely that few QBs could be successful if they were somehow transported to thirty years to the future or the past.

The next three weeks should enable the Bills to get all the youngsters/subs on both sides of the ball some real game experience.

I would prefer that the Ravens be a wild card, so they have no chance of hosting a home game, so I'll root for Pitt. The Stillers are my second favorite team, too. If KC is the #2 seed, then I want the Ravens to be the #7 seed. If the Bills are the #2 seed, then I want the Ravens to be #5 or #6.

If the Stillers have Watt and Pickens, the Chiefs will have a struggle whether Mahomes plays at 100% or not.

If the Vikings FO guys are smart, they've already decided to re-sign Darnold and let their rookie QB sit another year. He's not going to spoil sitting another year ... as Green Bay has shown with both Rodgers and Love, and that team is really good now, so carpe diem. The Bills also let Stephon Gilmore walk in FA in 2017. He went to make All Pro with NE and won at least one Super Bowl -- and not for just being on the team.

I think that Miami's real problem is philosophical: they've put all their eggs in the single basket of a high powered, precision timing passing offense. The Fins' aim is to get a big lead and never look back. That works pretty well against poor teams. It works decently with some middling teams, but it falls apart when they face talented, well coached teams. The Fins' inability to beat good teams is a fact. Miami didn't lose to GB on Thanksgiving because Tua didn't like the cold; they lost because the Packers derailed their passing game. The result would have been pretty much the same if the game had been played in Miami.

The Ravens defense is not nearly as good as it was last year. They lost some key defenders in FA as well as their DC, Mike Macdonald. Their pass defense is abysmal which is why they have 5 losses and are chasing the Steelers in the AFCN.

CBS News always has positive stories in the last 10 minutes or so of their nightly news, so I frequently flip there to see that part of the news which is why I caught the original airing of the piece on Davis.

I think if they can stay healthy (ie, about like they have been in the last couple of games), the Bills have a real chance to win it all. It could be worse. You could have predicted the Jests winning the Super Bowl and Aaron Rodgers winning MVP. 😁 I actually don't think that anyone on TSW predicted that but others, including some in the national media, jumped on the Jests bandwagon big time. OTOH, I doubt that many of even the most positive Bills fans, thought they would be 11-2 at this time in the season.