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SoTier

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Everything posted by SoTier

  1. This is simply untrue. The Bills were last in Red Zone defense. They were 18th in scoring defense. They were 16th in rushing defense. They were 26th in sacks. Their 2nd ranking for total yards was at least partly a result of the short fields they gave opponents. Their 1st ranking in passing yards was also slanted because opponents had short fields and didn't have to throw as much because they had big leads. The Bills defense was decent, probably somewhat above average, but it's got to get a lot better in the Red Zone and against the run to be good enough for the team to contend because they don't have enough talent on offense to win many shoot outs, especially with the top teams.
  2. Bills 2018 season says differently. The Bills lost 47-3 to the Ravens, 22-0 to the Packers, 37-5 to the Colts, 25-6 to the Pats, and 41-9 to the Bears. That's a -149 point differential in 5 losses (-28.9/ game). The Chargers were up 28-6 at the half and coasted the rest of the game to win by "only" 11 points. The Bills were down 24-6 to the Pats in the second game when Allen threw a TD to Jones with about a minute remaining to cut the losing margin to "only" 12 points. The Bills only had 3 "close" losses in 2018: 20-13 to the Texans with Watson playing with a partially collapsed lung, and to fellow bottom feeders the Dolphins (21-17) and Jets (27-23).
  3. I'll gladly eat my crow if that happens because I'd love nothing better than the Bills to reprise their "Glory Years". Unfortunately, I don't think it will happen, even if Allen becomes a true franchise QB, with McDermott as HC. I can see Allen becoming a QB somewhat like Matthew Stafford --- very talented but "never winning anything" simply because the coaching he gets and the team around him are never quite good enough to win a lot of games despite his individual heroics. I think that McDermott is entirely too conservative in his mind set to have sustained success as a HC in today's NFL. Defense may win championships but a team can't sniff a championship without having an offense that can run with the big dogs at least most of the time. Beane, at least so far, seems to favor the big risk, big reward scenario, taking chances on signing a FA like Morse with a history of concussions or going all in on a first round QB from a small school with tons of physical talent but in serious need of lots of molding to become a good NFL QB. If his gambles work out, he's golden, but unfortunately, individual gamblers seldom come out ahead in the long run, whether they're playing Texas Hold 'Em or betting the ponies.
  4. You can choose to give McDermott and Beane a pass because they chose to gut a team -- couldn't find any salvageable talent on the offense -- that had gone 24-24 over the previous 3 seasons, but I'm not. It wasn't necessary as the spectacular successs of several new HCs who inherited under-achieving teams with worse records than the Bills has shown. It's just one more poor decision on the part of McDermott and/or Beane.
  5. I didn't say first time HCs. That's your stipulation, not mine. They were new to the teams they came to and won with. Actually, Bledsoe was a pretty good QB. He was an Pro Bowler 4 times IIRC. He led NE to their lone Super Bowl appearance before the Belichick era as well as several other playoff seasons. He still holds Bills passing records from his short stint here, and he was easily the best QB to wear a Bills uni since Kelly retired. He threw for more than 44,000 yards. I think that McDermott needs to show better than he has so far if he would merit continuing as Bills HC. Regardless of his win-loss record, his team needs to at least be within spitting distance of having a positive point differential and his teams can't keep getting blown out every fourth game. That means that his team has to get better on offense in general and the defense has to significantly improve in the red zone. -105 point differential. 4 blow out losses that would have been 5 if not for the Chargers mailing it in in the second half of the second game. Failing to score as many as 10 points in 5 games. Giving up 30 or more points in a quarter of their games. That sounds like a disaster to me. The only reason to watch the Bills last season was to watch Allen's heroics but call it whatever you want. I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything. I state my opinion, frequently in response to other fans opinions that I don't agree with. Obviously, some people here don't like to hear/see the Bills criticized in any way, shape or form -- see the knee jerk trashing of any media maven who expresses an opinion other than that the Bills are playoff bound this season -- unless they're the ones doing the criticizing. I'm sorry that my skepticism of this latest Bills regime -- owner, FO, coaches -- interferes with your fantasies for the Bills, but that's your problem not mine.
  6. Well, lucky for the Bills Denver grabbed Mike McCoy before the Bills. IIRC, he was rumored to be McDermott's first choice for OC. And yes, McDermott pretty much ran the 2017 draft as Whaley was a lame duck who was fired immediatedly after the draft. Beane wasn't hired until May or June 2017. Furthermore, Beane doesn't come from a player-personnel (scouting) background, so if you don't believe McDermott has considerable say in who the team keeps, gets rid of, or brings in, you are lying to yourself. As I said in a previous post, McDermott and Beane have mostly hits on defense but they have had mostly misses on offense. They failed to hire an additional coach with actual experience coaching QBs despite spending a fortune in draft picks and talent to move up to grab Josh Allen. McDermott doesn't get a pass from me because his team won more games than the Cardinals and a few other bottom feeder teams in 2018. That's a pretty low bar to set for a team, not being the worst team in the league. McDermott's Bills squads were -54 in point differential in 2017 and -105 in 2018. While they were 2nd in yards given up, the Bills were 32nd in red zone defense and 18th in scoring defense. They were blown out (lost by 20 or more points) 4 times in 2017, and 4 more times in 2018, avoiding a 5th blow out lost to the Chargers when Anthony Lynn took his foot off the accelerator with his team up 28-6 at the half. McDermott took the 15-17 team he inherited to 9-7 and a wild card playoff berth in 2017 and a 6-10 disaster in 2018. Meanwhile, other new HCs in 2017 like Anthony Lynn took the formerly 9-23 Chargers to 9-7 in 2017 and 12-4 and a playoff win in 2018. Sean McVay took the formerly 11-21 Rams to 11-5 in 2017 with a wild card playoff berth and then 13-3 and a SB loss in 2018. In fact, winning early seems to be a very likely scenario if the HC has the goods -- and that's not necessarily a totally new phenomenon. While Doug Pederson won the Super Bowl with the Eagles in his second season as HC in 2017, and Matt Nagy took the 5-11 Bears from 2017 and turned them into a 12-4 playoff team in 2018, Brian Billick and Bill Belichick also won SBs in their second seasons with the Ravens and Pats in 2000 and 2001 respectively. Tom Coughlin took the 10-22 Giants to 11-5 and a playoff berth in his second season in 2005. A couple of years later, he spoiled the Pats' undefeated season.
  7. Exactly this. Whether it's coaches or draft picks or trades or FA signings, McDermott and Beane have been consistently poor at evaluating the offensive talent; they miss far more than they hit while it's just the opposite on the defensive side. That's not a good omen for a team in the modern NFL where offense is the name of the game. Peterman "didn't work out" because McDermott failed to recognize that he was, at best, a backup QB, and treated him like he was a potential starter. My guess is that McDermott didn't watch much of Peterman's game footage. That fifth round pick could have been used on a kid who could play ST or RB or LB or DB or whatever, and the Bills could have just signed an UDFA QB to throw pick sixes if they just had to have a QB in the 2017 draft.
  8. Josh Allen looked much better after he returned from his elbow injury, but I'm not sure what makes you believe the offense "progressed". Maybe I need special Bills-colored glasses. The Bills scored all of 27 points against the 3 playoff teams they faced in the second half of the season (6 vs Pats, 9 vs Bears, 12 vs Pats). Their other 3 opponents were non-playoff teams (they played the Jests and Carp twice). They did hang up 41 on the Jests with Matt Barkley, and 42 on the Carp in the season finale with Josh Allen but Miami was in "run for the bus" mode.
  9. When, exactly, does McDermott stop getting passes for his mistakes because he "corrected" them? McDermott hired Dennison but that's okay because he was replaced after a year. McDermott hired Castillo but that's okay because he was replaced after two years. McDermott hired David Culley to be the Bills QB coach despite never being a QB in the NFL but that's okay because he left after two years, and the Bills hired a QB coach with actual experience as a QB coach, Ken Dorsey. McDermott passed on a first round QB in 2017 but that's okay because Tre White has been good and Mahomes or Watson wouldn't have been nearly as good with the Bills. McDermott wasted a pick on Nathan Peterman but that's okay because he's gone now despite having single-handedly lost 3 games of the handful of games in which he played.
  10. I was responding to this quote from K-9: "If you really, honestly think Mahomes would have won the SB or pitched 50 TD passes with a stable of Deonte Thompson, Zay Jones, Charles Clay, and Shady with Rick Dennison as the architect, what can I say?" This is essentially the pardigm on Mahomes vs Allen on TSW: passing on Mahomes was okay because he would have been mediocre on the Bills because of the team around him, but Allen will flourish now that he's got some modest talent around him. My point is that if a special player like Mahomes would have struggled because the Bills wouldn't have put a good team around him, including coaching, how can we (posters on TSW) realistically expect Allen to flourish with the modest talent currently on the Bills team when he's so much more raw than Mahomes was as a rookie, and so needs so much more support?
  11. Better them than us. I think the low in Jtown on the first day of summer was 49 or 50, which is pretty cold!
  12. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every 20 years or so. Mea culpa.
  13. Bado didn't write that at all. I was briefly tempted to suggest that you try rereading what he wrote, this time for comprehension of the entire thought, not just to decipher the individual words ... but we both know deliberately misunderstanding what was written is one of your favorite tactics for attacking posters you dislike. Put this in your pipe and smoke it: the same people responsible for the substandard offenses the Bills fielded in 2017 and 2018 are also responsible for the 2019 offense. If it doesn't matter whether or not the Bills goofed in passing on Mahomes because he wouldn't have been nearly as good on the Bills as he was with the Chiefs, what chance does Josh Allen, who has to improve in his game a whole lot to just to become a decent NFL QB, have of becoming one any time in the near future?
  14. First round QB prospects not are divided simply between Andrew Luck and everybody else. Mahomes was a significantly better prospect than Allen. He had two outstanding seasons before the draft, including leading the NCAA in yards per game (421), passing yards (5,052), total offense (5,312), points responsible for (318), and total touchdowns (53), and being named the top college passer as a junior. Allen played at a much more modest collegiate program where he wasn't even statistically the best QB in his conference. He was named 2nd team All Mountain West Conference in 2016 but his second year as a starter at Wyoming was not as good as his first. Unfortunately for Allen, he's always going to be compared to Mahomes because the Bills traded away the pick that was used by the Chiefs to take Mahomes.
  15. You're the one spinning the fiction that the NFL is meritocracy simply because coaches get fired, usually for either not winning or not winning enough. The reality is that "who you know" is not only commonplace, but pedigree -- who your father is/was -- counts significantly too. Tim Graham wrote an article on this very subject for the Buffalo News in September, 2017: Self Made Men. Moreover, all I did was point out some examples off the top of my head of relatives of owners, execs, coaches getting jobs because of their familial connections. I didn't comment on whether they were good hires or not. Your own defensiveness about my contradicting your claim of the NFL being a great "meritocracy" led you to assume otherwise.
  16. ^^^ Not really magical at all. He's what horsemen in the racing industry call a "morning glory" -- a young horse that looks so great working in the morning that its trainer starts thinking about Churchill Downs in early May or Saratoga in August. The problem is, when that horse actually gets to the track in the afternoon, he fails miserably. Maybe he doesn't like crowds. Maybe he only runs well before he gets breakfast. Maybe he only runs well with horses he knows (his stablemates). Maybe he doesn't like dirt in his face. Whatever, he sucks. Peterman looks good in practice without pressure, without speed, without confusion -- all real time conditions. He'll always fool coaches who don't objectively view his regular season game footage ... and he's going to suck if he gets put into a real game. Yep, I did. Thanks.
  17. NFL football teams are more like medieval fiefdoms complete with absolute rulers and trusted henchmen who practice rampant nepotism than modern corporations, organizations or governments that frequently try to give the image of hiring and firing on merit. Except for Green Bay, owners are virtually answerable to no one for their hiring and firing decisions. Some owners act as their own GMs or their GMs are puppets -- Jerry Jones in Dallas and Dan Snyder in Washington come to mind. Many owners use their teams to provide employment for their family and friends -- Ralph Wilson employed one of his daughters as a scout and his son-in-law was a long time exec with the team -- and had enough clout to get Bill Polian fired back in the 1990s. It's also pretty common for GMs and HCs to hire their relatives. Rex Ryan hired his twin brother. Mike Shanahan hired his son Brian. Jon Gruden's son Deuce is the Raiders' strength coach. Bill Polian's son succeeded him as the Indy GM. The recycling of GMs, HCs, and assistant coaches is pretty routine. Many who proved incompetent on one team get hired on another team in a lower title and then resurface elsewhere in the same/similar position from which they were fired a few years before.
  18. If you take those two decisions totally out of context and look only at the Bills roster today, you are absolutely right. However, if you look at those two decisions along with all the other personnel decisions they've made since 2017, they seem to point to a HC/FO that either discount the importance of offense or are terrible at judging offensive talent or both. The Peterman decision just seems to me to reflect a belief on the part of McDermott that Peterman could overcome his obvious lack of talent by determination and practice. QB is one position where it's virtually impossible to mask talent deficiencies, especially when they are as serious as Peterman's. McDermott and Beane's offensive decisions have almost all been questionable. Some have been outright bad. From hiring assistant coaches to trading/signing offensive talent to drafting players, McDermott/Beane seem to get it wrong much more than they get it right, and that doesn't spell success in the modern NFL. Defense may win championships but defensive teams aren't going to ever get to the opportunity to contend for championships in the current NFL unless they have good offenses, and you can't build a good offense without more high end talent than just a promising first round QB prospect. I'm not sure that McDermott/Beane realize and/or accept that because they seem willing to settle for surrounding Allen with middling talent and hoping that UDFAs and rookies unexpectedly play well.
  19. They must not have been looking very hard because they could have found somebody considerably better than Peterman without sinking to bringing in a first round bust or a retiree given that they found Barkley within a couple of days of Anderson getting hurt. Instead, they waited a month and signed Anderson who promptly got hurt. I can think of numerous reasons for the Bills to wait a month to replace Peterman, none of them very complimentary to McDermott and/or Beane. At minimum, I think the delay in finding a competent backup QB suggests that either or both didn't think that having a competent backup QB was particularly important, despite Allen's struggles and his propensity to run too often.
  20. Vlad the Imploder is what he's always been: an okay backup guard who can give a reasonable imitation of a starter in a pinch between a decent center and OT. Whaley signed him to backup John Mills, who had looked so promising as a rookie, but who imploded under the tutelage of McDermott and Castillo, so Ducasse became the defacto starting RG in 2017 and 2018.
  21. Yeah, yeah, yeah .... every time the Bills trade away a talented player for the equivalent of used athletic equipment, Bills fans rally around the GM/HC/whoever responsible for making said trade with the trite "he didn't want to be here" bull manure. It's the perfect refuge when said traded player like Jason Peters and Marshawn Lynch go on to become All Pros. If Dareus regains his All Pro form, the Bills will be three-for-three.
  22. McDermott or Beane made the decision, ergo it must be a good one, just like naming Nathan Peterman the starter and then trading away AJ McCarron. Brilliant! Well, maybe McDermott just doesn't have the temperament to be a HC in the salary cap era. Successful coaches have always found ways to deal with difficult but talented players, and that's even more important in this era when the salary cap imposes significant limits on teams' ability to fashion "perfect" rosters, however, the GM/HC define "perfect".
  23. Isn't the point of the NFL to win football games, most notably playoff games, not accumulating tons of cap space by filling the roster with rookie contract guys and bottom feeder veterans? Talent is expensive in the NFL, and teams that don't identify and manage talent very well don't make the playoffs very often. When the Bills start making the playoffs and winning playoff games with some regularity, THEN we can discuss whether or not their cap management is "good", "decent" or "a train wreck waiting to happen". Right now, all this gushing about how "good" their cap management is premature.
  24. Get back to me when all this "good cap managment" results in watching the Bills still playing in mid/late January rather than those stupid teams that "chased after bright shiny toys".
  25. This is irrelevant because this is not Mahomes/Watson vs Allen. It's Mahomes/Watson vs Peterman. If neither Mahomes nor Watson had been any better than Mitch Trubisky was as a rookie -- and never got much better -- they would have been infinitely better than Peterman. The Bills would have been much better served to have passed on any QB in the 2017 draft rather than take Peterman. He was a disaster -- and McDermott couldn't/wouldn't see that until he'd lost at least 3 games virtually single-handedy (2017 Chargers, 2018 Baltimore, 2018 Houston). The only game that he wasn't awful in was the one game where passing was extremely limited on both sides because of the weather (2017 Indy).
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