SoTier

Hardly. I just don't like giving handouts to billionaires when they repeatedly fail to deliver what they promise. The 2018 Bills were NOT entertaining at all except for Josh Allen's heroics. Moreover, the Buffalo Sabres have rarely been entertaining since Pegula purchased them. If Pegula wants money for his new stadium -- which likely will price out many of the Bills long-time faithful just like what happened with the Jets and Giants -- then he needs to prove he can deliver a reasonably entertaining product rather than a team that gets blown out by 20+ points in every fourth game, that can't score more than 1 offensive TD a game, and is out of the playoff hunt by October. Isn't that just about the same excuse that supporters of the Bills trading away Marshawn Lynch used? Hopefully, this won't be another case of the Bills parting with a future All Pro just because they didn't want him around.

In his first 5 years as HC, O'Brien has a 42-38 win/loss record, made the playoffs 3 times by winning the division, and had 4 winning seasons. The Texans went 4-12 in 2017 because Watson was injured 7 games into his rookie season. O'Brien's three QBs before acquiring Watson were Ryan Fitzpatrick, Brian Hoyer, and Brock Osweiler. O'Brien may not be as good as he thinks he is, but he's a decent HC. Moreover, the Texans didn't fire their GM in order to promote O'Brien but because they thought they had "their guy" already lined up. I have no idea who in the Texans' organization is responsible for the roster, but it may be that the ownership was dissatisfied with the GM's inability to improve the OL, which had been a problem in 2017 and wasn't any better in 2018 as Watson also suffered a serious injury last season which hampered his play in several games, including the win over the Bills. Mocking Texans' fans isn't probably the best course for Bills fans. The Texans have had 7 winning seasons, 5 playoff appearances, and 1 playoff win since they joined the league as an expansion franchise in 2002. The Bills have had 3 winning seasons and 1 playoff appearance during that same time period.

Only in the minds of individuals who cannot tolerate the fact that not every Bills thinks McDermott and Beane are the next Levy and Polian.

I'm not "wallowing in [my] misery". You asked why I wasn't optimistic about the Bills having a winning (or better) season in 2019, and I explained exactly why. You couldn't deny my facts, so you attacked me. Again. What else is new? So, it's all right for you to justify your optimism by recalling the mostly uncompetitive Bills teams from the 1970s (40+ years ago), but I can't justify my skepticism of the McDermott-Beane regime by pointing out the similarities between moves made by the current HC/GM and moves made by various Bills regimes since 2000. Got it. I'm glad that the Bills made the playoffs, but I'm not anointing McDermott anything special because only did that 2017 team lose 4 games by 20+ points and had a point differential of -57, the 2018 team fell off a cliff and managed just 6 wins, 4 more blowout (20+ points) losses, and a point differential of -105, which is the third worse point differential since 2000 behind Gregg Williams' 3 win 2001 season -155 and Chan Gailey's 4 win 2010 season -142. Doug Marrone's and Mike Mularkey's 9-7 squads that missed the playoffs in 2014 and 2004 had positive point differentials: Marrone was +54 and Mularkey was +111. Making the playoffs despite 4 blowout losses and a negative point differential says "luck" to me far more than it does "skill", but you can worship McDermott for it if you want. Ungrateful punk? I paid taxes in Erie County for 20 years, so my county taxes have funded the Bills for that period. I've been a NYS resident for my entire adult life, so my state tax dollars have funded the Bills for about fifty years. Wilson and Pegula are in the business of providing entertainment, and that entertainment product has pretty much sucked except for a few years in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Now Pegula is coming around looking for more taxpayer $ for a new stadium. Well, for those taxpayer $, I think I should get more than 1 playoff season and 3 winning seasons in two decades. To quote Springsteen, you sound like "a dog that's been beat too much".

If you want to declare Josh Allen a HOFer already, be my guest. I'll wait until he at least plays more than 11 games. Realistic assessments of Allen -- or McDermott or Beane or any of the players they brought in, including Benjamin --- are not allowed in this thread ... or in TSW (aka The Kool Aid Zone) in general these days. At least you're honest. I loved JP Losman, too. Unfortunately, all the fan love in the world doesn't make a QB great -- or even successful. That's on the QB.. Hopefully Allen can overcome his shortcomings as a QB (and he does have them despite the narratives of some posters in this thread) far better than Losman, but at this point we don't have any idea if he will be able to do so.

If will, drive, and leadership were all it took to become a great NFL QB, then Allen would undoubtedly become one. Unfortunately, that's enough. He has to develop the physical skills and learn to make good decisions under pressure in order to become a good enough QB to consistently lead his team to wins. It's a tall order for Allen because he came into the NFL so raw and unprepared, and bnumerous first roundQB prospects who had excellent physical skills and were much more "NFL ready" than he was have failed that same test. At this point, nobody really knows just how good he can be, but he probably has to show significant improvement in order to have a better career than guys like Tannehill or Bortles.

Oh, I don't know ... maybe because the Bills only won 6 games in 2018. Maybe because McDermott's teams have been blown out by 20+ points 8 times in 32 games (25%). Maybe because the Bills OL and WR corps weren't NFL caliber units in 2018, and while these units have been upgraded significantly, questions remain how productive the offense will be because nobody knows how well Allen will play in 2019 -- and he definitely needs to improve significantly if the Bills are to have a winning season.

I don't have to defend my opinions to you or anybody else. I don't continually ask you why you pretend that badly McDermott and Beane didn't mismanage the QB situation in 2018?

Yeah, because anybody who dares to have any doubt about anything about the current Bills is "an idiot". They are perfect. Got it.

Why do you continually accuse posters who DARE to think that McDermott and Beane just might not walk on water want the Bills "to fail"? Unless Allen has a HOF quality career, he's likely always going to be somewhat unfavorably compared to Mahomes by Bills fans unless Mahomes' career is somehow derailed. It's like the Niners passing on Aaron Rodgers to take Alex Smith -- passing on greatness for decent. Decent can be pretty good but it'll never be great. Maybe you should start your own forum where only McDermott/Beane cheerleaders are allowed to post since you so deserve to be happy yourself.

I don't think formal team organizational structure is nearly as important as is the talent/philosophy of the person(people) actually running the team whatever the title he holds along with how the ownership influences the team. Which is worse? Not having a GM or having a GM who's a glorified talent scout? The Bills have not had a GM with actual GM power (ie, choosing his HCs as well as controlling the roster among other duties) since Tom Donahoe was fired in 2006, although they've had guys with the title (Nix and Whaley). The results haven't been very good. I'm not sure how much actual control of the team that Beane has. He didn't hire McDermott since he was hired after McDermott was on board, but I don't think anyone really knows how much control to hire HCs or to build/shape the roster he has now or will have in the future. Beane was able to bring in his own scouting staff (and likely other staff we don't hear/know about), which is something that neither Nix nor Whaley ever did (which might mean that they didn't have power or didn't do so simply because they came out of the Bills organization).

IMO, ignoring the OLs makes this article worthless. A good OL is the best support a team can give a QB, whether he's Tom Brady or a rookie.

Except that young QBs who have two successful seasons, the second one significantly better than the first, just don't seem to crash and burn. Some -- perhaps most -- don't ever get much better, but they don't fall apart. The only two I can think of in the last ten or fifteen years who might fit this description are Josh Freeman and Jameis Winston, but they were never as good as Mahomes or Watson. Mahomes and Watson were both excellent franchise quality QBs in 2018. If one or both don't ever get any better, they'll still be better than most of the QBs currently in the NFL.

The nonsense was you attacking another poster for daring to rate the Bills current WR corps as being of significantly lesser stature than most other teams' WR groups before the season starts. NOBODY knows how anything in the upcoming season is going to turn out but EVERYBODY makes predictions, you included, and it's all based on taking what teams/coaches/players have done in the past and guessing what they'll do in the future. I'm sure that if the poster had claimed that the Bills had a top ten WR corps now that they added Beasley and Brown, you wouldn't complain that "they can't be [one of the best] in the league in a season that has not started." The Bills WRs were so poor last year that they could improve significantly and still be in the bottom third of the league. Beasley and Brown could both have career years and the WR corps as a whole could still be a bottom feeder unit if Jones and Foster don't play well. If the Bills had chosen to keep Cordy Glenn, they would have had two decent OTs. They could have played Glenn at LT and put Dawkins at RT, but McDermott and Beane either never expected that without Incognito next to him, Dawkins' play would plummet or they didn't care. They could have also invested more than 1 late fifth round pick and some UDFA and waiver wire refugees in the OL in the 2018 draft. They might have also tried to work with Incognito ... like not demanding he take a pay cut. It seems to me that they might have wanted to push incognito out the door once Wood was gone. Maybe they only kept him because he was Woods' buddy. "Encouraging" Incognito to retire might have very well been the right call but not doing so could have been a possibility. FTR, the Bills did not have a "terrible cap problem" in 2017 until they traded Dareus, lost Wood to injury/retirement, and then traded Glenn and had to eat the remainder of the guaranteed portions of those contracts. They might have incurred dead cap money because of trading Taylor, too. I think it would have been pretty hard for Beane to promise to "fix" a problem that didn't exist when he was interviewing for the GM position.

The original quote was "culture beats strategy" not "culture beats talent". Gase was the guy who brought up the idea that "culture beats talent" in one of the quotes . In regards to the Pats, they are not and never have been on Belichick's watch, a talentless squad. They start with the GOAT QB, Brady. They had the leaague's best TE last season. Edelmann is a beast. Gilmore was an All Pro at DB. Rookie RB Sony Michel ran for 900+ yards in only 13 games. Stephen Gostkowski made nearly 84% of his FGs and 49 of 50 extra points. Moreover, Belichick is a master strategist, and has been for his entire career, going back to his days in Cleveland where he got the most out of the limited talent he had. In the 1991 Super Bowl, his defensive strategy stymied the much more talented Bills offense As you noted his 2018 Super Bowl team was much less talented than the Rams, but even Rams HC Sean McVay admitted that Belichick out-coached him. Belichick has out-coached just about every one of his contemporaries, except Tom Coughlin when they faced one another in the Super Bowl twice. IMO, Belichick is the poster boy for "strategy trumps culture and talent" because he's built his career out-strategizing most of his opponents. Does he create a "culture"? I think if you consider an intolerance for mistakes and a dedication to doing whatever is necessary to win to be "culture", then Belichick creates culture, but if you think "culture" means selecting a certain type of player who behaves in a certain way, that's not Belichick. Over the years, he's proven tolerant of numerous players who marched to their own drummers on their own time as long as they marched to his drummer when it came to football.

I was suspicious of both at the beginning of last season, but both Watson and Mahomes showed that they're the real deal. If you're suspicious of both or one then I think you haven't watched them play very much. They both played so well in their second seasons that they didn't look like kids who had played fewer than 10 games and 1 game respectively as rookies. They are scary good. If Mahomes had only thrown 25 TDs, it would have been as many as veteran Alex Smith had thrown in 2017 with the same offensive cast ... and commentators and fans would still be raving about the way he played, especially his improvisation, accuracy, arm-strength, and decision making. McDermott and Beane chose to essentially gut the team, especially the offense, rather than build on what they had. That decision has impacted all the players that were on the Bills in 2017 as well as those who joined the team in 2018. That's the fate of all prospects who get drafted -- they have to sign with the team that drafted them, and that can often play a pivotal role in their careers, and especially QBs who need so much support. I think that Allen will never put up big passing numbers with the current regime because a high-powered offense does not seem to match their philosophy, but they seem to have learned some lessons from last year and have gotten Allen much better support than he had last year, starting with an experienced QB coach. That Allen didn't get a chance to sit and learn at least for half a season or even a full season, which would have probably been even more beneficial to him than it was to Mahomes, also rests squarely on McDermott and Beane. They traded away Taylor. They chose to acquire McCarron rather than Barkley. They choose Peterman over McCarron. They chose to wait a month to sign Anderson after Peterman proved incompetent rather than signing Barkley immediately after the season opener. Given how bad the OL was and how raw Allen was, the Bills -- and of course Allen -- are lucky he didn't get permanently injured last season. Let's all dispense with reality and pretend that Beasley, Brown, Foster, and Jones are just as good as AB, Cooper, Beckham, and Edelmann. Let's pretend that Brian Daboll is Sean McVay's older brother. Let's pretend that Sean McDermott is a younger version of Bill Belichick. Maybe in some alternative universe all those are true and you'll be happy, but they aren't true in this one. Only Garrett fits the description because he was the only one with the same team for consecutive years. Both Belichick and Carroll were out of the HC ranks for several years before coming back to find quick success in their new gigs: Belichick spent four years as Bill Parcells' DC after his HC stint in Cleveland. He coached the Pats to the AFCE title and their first Super Bowl in his second season. Carroll coached USC for 9 years and was out of the NFL coaching ranks for ten years before he was hired for the Seattle job in 2010. He took the Seahawks to the playoffs and won his wild card game in 2012 -- with a rookie QB. In 2013, Carroll's fourth season, the Seahawks won the Super Bowl. Both Belichick and Carroll's losing records as HCs occurred more than 20 years ago BTW. Maybe if Watson consistently had a pocket around him for a reasonable amount of time, he'd develop more pocket awareness. The Texans' OL was probably worse than the Bills in pass pro last season. If the Bills OL doesn't consistently give Allen enough time in the pocket this season, he'll probably garner the same kind of criticism. I don't think that it's simply coincidental that QBs on teams with good pass protecting OLs seem to develop more pocket awareness than do QBs on teams with poor pass protection. On teams like the Patriots, Eagles, and Cowboys, even their backup QBs seem to be better at that.

This. He seems to have figured out that he should hone what he did best, which is being a DC, and he's been very successful at it. Like many successful people in many endeavors, he's not a particularly a decent person.

Thanks for the effort it took to accumulate the stats and create the index, but I'm not sure what, if anything, it proves because you are comparing QBs from totally different eras -- and even different leagues -- as well as comparing QBs who were backups with long term starters and those that played for the Bills for more than a decade with those who played only a few games. How would Joe Ferguson, Drew Bledsoe or Doug Flutie have done if their teams had had as much talent as the Jim Kelly's teams had had? Conversely, how would Jim Kelly have fared on the 2004-2005 or the 2010-2012 Bills teams?

If you checked the scores of all the games of the top ten scoring defense teams in 2018, I'm sure you would find a similar pattern where several bad games raise the teams' average points against. The #1 Scoring Defense, the Bears, gave up 30, 31, and 38 points but still averaged 17.7 points a game. The Ravens, Titans, Texans, and Jaguars, the other top 5 scoring defense teams, had 2 games each in which they gave up 30 or more points. None of the top 5 scoring defenses gave up 40 or more points even once. Truly good defenses simply don't give up 30 or more points, much less 40+ points, in a quarter of their games.

I disagree. A more appropriate art comparison would be comparing a Renaissance masterpiece to an Impressionist or Cubist masterpiece. Different eras produce different genres with a tiny fraction of the art within each genre eventually becoming a masterpiece. What we consider "classical music" today was a tiny part of the music of its era, that part which was both intended to appeal to the aristocracy, a very sophisticated audience, and which was good enough to endure. A lot of the music that the aristocracy enjoyed at the time hasn't survived because it wasn't good enough. Ordinary people of the time listened to different music ... some of it centuries old traditional music (folk music) and some of it more modern tunes created by contemporary musicians for singing, playing, and dancing in both public and private. Almost all of the popular music from eras contemporary to classical music "masterpieces" hasn't survived, either, but some it -- especially melodies -- have become part of today's popular music.

This post is just silly. It's a perfect example of a Bills fan pretending that all is rainbows and unicorns in the Bills universe. The reality in the NFL is that ... Round 1. White is the only 2017 draftee who has developed into a truly good NFL player. However, to get him, the Bills passed on two QB prospects who seem very likely to become great QBs. Passing on a top QB prospect to take a DB prospect to replace the top DB that they didn't re-sign is easily the most "Billsy" thing about the 2017 draft. Round 2. Zay Jones remains a borderline bust. He was the fourth WR taken in 2017, and hasn't shown very much. He was only a starter last season because the Bills had nobody better in a WR corps that wasn't NFL caliber by any standard. The addition of modest FA veteran WRs may push him out of the starting lineup. Round 3. Being the best starter on one of the worst OLs -- if not the worst -- in the NFL doesn't say much about Dion Dawkins, particularly since his play regressed from "adequate" as a rookie to "poor" as a sophomore. Dawkins will have to improve significantly to remain a starter in 2019. Round 4. Matt Milano has been a decent starter on a modest defense. He's undersized, so he might or might not be a starter on most other NFL defenses. It would depend largely upon defensive scheme and talent level. He's the second best pick for the Bills in 2017. Round 5. Nathan Peterman was not merely a wasted draft pick; he was one of the few draftees taken on Day Three who could be described as a bust. Nobody really expects QBs taken in Round 5 to ever be more than an adequate backup so being bust is a special distinction, but Peterman was far worse. He was easily the most incompetent backup QB in 2017 and 2018, if not in the last decade or more. Both Dawkins and Jones are probably saved from being cut because of their lack of top competition and their low rookie contract salaries. If the Bills had better players in their units or if they were more expensive, they might both be out the door. Neither would be good enough to make numerous other NFL rosters or to be starters on most other NFL teams.

Statistically, Bills defense was 18th in the league in scoring, which puts them in the bottom half of the league. Plain and simple, too many times in 2018, the Bills defense gave up Red Zone TDs rather than holding their opponents to FGs. If the Bills are to be considered a great defense in 2019, they have to make it much harder for teams to score on them, especially in the Red Zone.

My point was that cheering an injury to a key player pn a hated rival means nothing if your own team is uncompetitive anyways. Through virtually the entirety of the twenty first century, the Bills have made their own misery, and splitting with Pats when they were swept by them would have resulted int the Bills making the playoffs only once in 2004 and it was only in 2002 that beating the Pats at least once could have given the Bills a winning season and possibly a playoff berth depending upon tie breakers.

Well, Brady's injury seemed like good news at the time but it didn't actually help the Bills. Even without Brady, the Pats beat the Bills twice and finished last in the division after losing 2-6 in the second half of the season after starting 5-3.

I would never cheer that an opposition player was injured. That would include Brady. That's just not the kind of person I am. I would applaud -- and maybe stand if it was an opposition team's star player -- as the player was taken from the field in the cart just like I would a Bills player.