SoTier

Sorry, dude, but it's NOT the media's job to be a cheerleader for any sports franchise, although in the Buffalo market, some media outlets have embraced cheerleading and dispensed with honesty. The incompetence of the Bills organization in this century is what has made many fans and media commentators into skeptics. The reality is that the Bills have only had 3 winning seasons -- 2004, 2014, and 2017 -- and 13 losing seasons in the past 19. They have not won 10 or more games in a single season since they went 11-5 in 1999. They have only made the playoffs once since 1999, too, and they have not won a playoff game since 1995 (23 seasons). You can put as much lipstick as you want on that pig but it doesn't make it any prettier. As for "ending" the drought, while that's technically true -- and I'm happy for the players like Kyle Williams and Eric Wood who had an opportunity to play in a playoff game at least once in their careers -- there's no indication that the Bills are any closer to building a team that makes the playoffs more than once every twenty years than they were when they went 9-7 in 2004 or 2014. The reality is that they snuck into the playoffs by winning an OT game in a snowstorm and getting lucky when Andy Dalton made a miracle play on 4th down, and, true to form, they then returned to their losing ways in 2018. At present, all Bills fans have is hope that maybe this Bills will be different from its predecessors, but we've been down this road again and again -- including drafting QBs in the first round and making what look like quality FA signings on paper -- over the last quarter century. You can buy into the latest hype from OBD and tell yourself things are looking up if you want, but knock off the whining about the media and other fans being skeptical.

I simply don't believe the Fins -- or any NFL team -- intends to tank. First of all, it's not in the DNA of NFLers to deliberately lose because they've been raised and trained to be competitive all their lives. If they didn't try their best to be the best at football, they wouldn't last in the NFL. More importantly, there is no guarantee that a collegiate underclassman who looks great comes back and plays just as well or better the next year -- or stays healthy. Even if an underclass star does that doesn't mean that he'll make a good NFL player. Too many supposedly "can't miss" college players, especially QBs, have crashed and burned in the pros. I don't think the Titans would have made the playoffs even if Mariota had stayed healthy. He's simply not a very good QB. He's not any better than Tannehill -- neither can make the clutch plays when games -- or seasons -- are on the line.

I have never been a fan of PFF and their rating of OLers. However PFF compute their "rank" numbers, they consistently seem to discount blatantly bad plays like whiffs while penalizing OLers who struggle to make up for their linemates' poor play. It seems that their film "experts" watch and rate the play of each OLer totally out of context to the entire play, so they don't catch the bad plays by 1 OLer that forces his linemate to try to make up for his failure -- and may fail. Maybe they just don't know squat about OL play. Whatever, their ranking system seems pretty meaningless. The measure of any unit is how effective it is in protecting the QB and opening holes for the running game, no matter what kind of stats individuals produce. An OL which supposedly has 4 of 5 members "average" or "above average" should have protected the QBs better and opened more holes for the RBs than the 2018 Bills OL did. They were easily the most ineffective OL the Bills have fielded since about 2009 or 2010. The real "proof of the pudding" about whether this OL is an improvement over 2018's version will be revealed only during the regular season by how well they protect Allen and open holes for the RBs. Until then, I'll reserve judgement on the OL -- and on the success or failure of the 2019 FA signings.

And probably get a ring for his trouble!!!!

I didn't say it made sense because it really doesn't for Tennessee unless they intend to send Mariota packing and draft a QB. Bringing in a former starting QB to a team that already has a starting QB usually opens a can of worms. As for Miami, how is their situation significantly different from the Bills' situation in 2018 when they traded Taylor? What QBs did they have on their roster? Nathan Peterman and ????

Sad but true. The reality is that both Tannehill and Mariota have turned out to be the absolutely worst kind of QB to draft in the first round: just good enough to make a team give keep him -- even give him a new big long-term contract -- but not good enough to win with. At least with Fitzpatrick and Taylor, the Bills didn't have to invest long term. If Allen is going to fail, I hope he proves he can't get the job done quickly and noticeably like Losman and Manuel rather than look "just good enough" to tempt the Bills to keep him. Both Miami and Tennessee wasted a lot of time and talent hoping that these two guys would "develop" but they never did. Only 3 or 4 years? Predictions of Brady's slow but imminent decline probably started a decade ago, at least among some Bills fans. 2019 will be his 20th season, and except for his rookie season in 2000, his first starting season in 2001 when he replaced the injured Drew Bledsoe, when he tore his knee in the season opener in 2008, and when he was suspended for 4 games in 2016, he's at least started every Patriot game between 2000 and 2018 -- that's 15 complete seasons. He's got to have sold his soul to the devil to amass that kind of record!

My point was just that it's way too early in their careers to judge these kids, and doing so simply is assuming they'll be great because of pre-draft hype. None of them were all that great as rookies. Mayfield looked the best of the first round QBs but even so, there's no guarantee that he'll become a great QB either -- any more than any of the others. Vince Young was the OROY in 2006 and Mark Sanchez led the Jests to the AFC Championship game in 2009. FWIW, the only young QB I can think of who was traded very early in his career and went on to be a great QB was Brett Favre. That doesn't portend well for Rosen if he does get traded.

Darnold, Allen, and Rosen had decent rookie seasons despite all being hindered by the crappy teams around them as rookies. Even allowing for that, however, none of them played well enough to be considered more than "promising" at this point in their careers. The history of the NFL is littered with supposedly "best QBs to come out in a long time" -- some who even looked much better as rookies than any of the three you mentioned -- who crashed and burned.

It's way too early to judge the 2018 QB class and whip Gettleman for passing on a QB and take a generational RB prospect. It may be that if Mayfield had been available, they would have grabbed him but who knows as they never got that chance. Mayfield was clearly the best of the rookie QBs by a significant margin. He clearly demonstrated that the talent and leadership that made him the #1 pick apparently carried over to the NFL. The other four QBs all seem to be promising youngsters with Allen and Jackson demonstrating the best leadership but whatever they did in their rookie seasons -- including Mayfield -- will be meaningless unless they make significant progress as sophomores and continue to develop into true franchise QBs. Furthermore, just because there's a bunch of highly regarded QB prospects in a draft doesn't mean that any or all of them will find success. Most drafts yield a single franchise QB ... and not all of them come out of the top of the draft or even out of the first round (Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers, and Russell Wilson all come to mind).

McCoy had a terrible season last season because he was trying to run behind the worst OL the Bills have put on the field in at least a decade. They couldn't open holes for RBs nor protect the QB. If there is not a serious upgrade to the OL this season, neither McCoy nor Gore will have even decent seasons. Neither will Josh Allen. Exactly this. When good RBs start 'dancing' behind the LOS rather than hitting the hole, it says that there's no hole for the RB to hit. When Willis McGahee was in Denver and Baltimore, he hardly ever 'danced' behind the LOS like he did with the Bills. Fix the damn OL!

"Unknown"? Hardly. "Untalented" seems be more accurate. You like to rewrite history to suit your prejudices. The Bills had a major rebuild in 2001 under Tom Donahoe ... and traded for Drew Bledsoe in 2002. The Bills had another major rebuild in 2006/2007 when Brandon and Jauron gutted the team and replaced them with Jauron's talentless smurfs ... and signed Terrell Owens in 2009 to try to cover their failure. The Bills had another major rebuild in 2010 under Buddy Nix after the Brandon/Jauron disaster ... and signed Mario Williams. The Bills underwent a major rebuild in 2016-2017 by shedding virtually all of their talent on offense and some on defense ... and attempted to trade for Antonio Brown. Luckily they failed. Seems like 2019 is just deja vue all over again. Antonio Brown proved last season that he's puts his own interests far above those of his team and his teammates. How does that constitute "dedication to football"????? My local Subaru dealer called me the other day to ask if I was interested in trading in my 2 year old Forester for a newer model. I didn't waste my time listening to his offer but politely declined because a new car wouldn't be a good idea for me right now -- I have more important priorities. Just because Pitt was shopping Brown didn't mean that Beane had to get into serious trade talks with them -- serious enough to be reported as "likely" or "very likely" in the media -- when an expensive aging selfish diva of a WR was NOT what should not be a priority for the Bills. Maybe YOU should better understand the nature of the job of a football GM which is to provide the long term view that counter-balances the short term thinking of HCs when it comes to personnel matters. Beane hasn't demonstrated that long-term thinking yet. My first thought on hearing that the Bills were "likely" to trade for AB was, "oh, no, what are they thinking?" My first thought when I heard that the trade wasn't happening was "thank goodness somebody in the organization has some sense", so I would have never criticized Beane for passing on talking trade with the Steelers.

If Brown doesn't fit the "process", then why did Beane even bother to discuss a trade for him at all???? Brown's not an unknown quantity. Did Beane have nothing better to do? Did the Pegulas say, "Brandon, bro, see if you can bring AB here to add some excitement to this team?" Or is "the process" just another cliche to obscure the general mismanagement of the team under Pegulas/Beane/McDermott?

Wanting a winner and being smart enough -- and committed enough -- to actually build one are entirely different creatures. Over the last twenty years, the Bills have been neither, and NOTHING that McDermott and Beane -- or the Pegulas -- have done during their tenures indicates that there's been any serious change in the team's philosophy despite all the personnel changes from top to bottom of the organization. 1. The Bills have tried the "trade for a big name vet after stripping the team of talent" twice before when Donahoe traded for Drew Bledsoe in 2002 and Brandon traded for Terrell Owens in 2009. 2. The Bills have alternatively attempted to placate/excite their fan base with big FA signings: in 2007 they signed Derrick Dockery and Langston to big FA contracts after repeated criticism of their OL, and in 2012 they signed Mario Williams after Chan Gailey's 2011 team proved incapable of stopping anybody. 3. They've traded away draft capital repeatedly to chase after questionable QB prospects: -- in 1998, they traded first and fourth round picks for Rob Johnson after he played 1 NFL game; -- in 2004, they traded a first, a second, and a fifth round pick to move up to grab JP Losman; -- in 2018, they traded a virtual fortune in talent and picks to move into the top ten to draft Josh Allen 4. The Bills shed talented players that they drafted/developed rather than pay them their market value under Pegula/Beane/McDermott just as they had done repeatedly under Wilson/Donahoe/Brandon. You can believe that Pegula/Beane/McDermott are somehow different from previous Bills regimes and they're on track to become winners, but I'm long past "Billieving" in this team until they actually field winning, playoff contending teams with regularity ... and 1 playoff appearance and 3 winning records in the last 19 seasons just ain't good enough to count.

Too bad that they threw away so many pieces before they decided to get a "young QB", including the draft pick that would have gotten them a bonafide franchise QB. They have a young QB and an aging RB and not much else on the offensive side of the ball. By the time the Bills collect enough productive talent to be a respectable offensive team, much less a serious playoff contender, Allen will be long past his rookie contract. IMO, the proposed trade for AB was a publicity stunt on a par with Russ Brandon's bringing in Terrell Owens after the Bills had collapsed in 2008. It was an attempt to put lipstick on a very ugly pig by going for a very big name to improve season ticket sales. IIRC, the Bills set a season ticket record in 2009 on the hope that TO would make the Bills winners. "Deja vue all over again" as Yogi Berra would say.

At least most posters on TSW will convince themselves that the Bills are a playoff team ... and will likely be disappointed. Plain and simple, the entire offense needs to be rebuilt for Allen to have any real chance of becoming a good QB, and the defense could use significant upgrades at several positions. At least the Bills appear to have finally gotten around to hiring an experienced QB coach for Allen.

Why, because one or both teams you don't like made the Super Bowl or because the Bills have been irrelevant to it for a quarter of a century? Both championship games were exciting because of how close they were, and hopefully the Super Bowl will be a close, exciting game as well.

Where in the desert would you suggest? Once you get away from the LV metro, most of the potential "fan base" consists snakes, scorpions, and coyotes. About 75% of Nevada's population (2.8 million) resides in Clark County where Las Vegas is located. Northwestern Arizona is only marginally more populous.

This board has only become "MUCH less contentious" because the intolerance of the McDermott/Beane cheerleaders has successfully discouraged those who don't worship at the alter of McDermott/Beane from posting much if at all. Every dictatorship ever has congratulated itself on supposedly "making everybody happy" simply because it's suppressed dissent. Except for Allen's play this season, there is NOTHING encouraging about the management or coaching of this team to set it apart from all the other crappy Bills teams of the last 20 years. In fact, the talent level on this team is as low as it has ever been in those twenty years, easily rivaling 2001 and 2010 ... except that this regime is in its third year not its first.

Sour grapes make a trite, sour whine.

That train has already left the station, dude. Barring injury, it looks like the Bills will be haunted by Mahomes for the next 10 or 15 years. Passing on Mahomes to take Trubisky or Watson would be like passing on Marino to take Kelly or O'Brien in 1983 but trading away the opportunity to draft Mahomes to take a DB in 2013 and then trading away a fortune in talent and picks the very next year for a QB who was not nearly as good a prospect is going to prove to be an outright disaster unless Allen defies all the odds stacked against him, not the least of which is the inability or disinterest of the McDermott/Beane regime to put together an NFL caliber offense, to become a great QB. Even if Allen becomes a decent NFL starting QB, the Mahomes trade will go down as another gaffe by an organization that has repeatedly demonstrated its incompetence with stupid trades over the last two decades, including trading their 2005 first round pick to move up to take JP Losman in 2004 (and losing out on the opportunity to take Aaron Rodgers in 2005); trading away All Pro LT Jason Peters in 2009 for a late first rounder; and trading away All Pro RB Marshawn Lynch in 2010 for a 4th rounder. Indeed, the trade might come to be seen as infamously as the Dolphins passing on signing Drew Brees as a FA to trade for a washed-up Daunte Culpepper in 2006. The Bills NEED about 8 or 9 new starters ... just on offense.

I'm glad to hear Beane wants to build "a high powered Offense". Too bad he's clueless about how to go about that -- and relies on a HC who thinks "high powered offense" is scoring more than 1 offensive TD a game.

Why would a team interested in winning football games with some regularity cut a good/solid LT? Why would a good/solid LT re-sign for bottom feeder money to play RT for the team that traded him away when he could make much more playing LT for another team? FTR, Glenn is a superior LT to Dawkins, who is, at best, adequate. He's the one who should be moved to RT -- or better yet, to G where he could actually be good. Not all teams are as stupid as the Bills. They understand the importance of having a decent OL anchored by a solid LT. Yeah, the reason is stupidity. Most OLers miss games due to injury. It's the nature of playing "in the trenches" where big bodies are always falling on one another. Since Glenn's 2018 injury was unrelated to his previous injuries, why would he "might not be suited to be a starter in the league any longer"? I mean other than Bills' fans looking for excuses to justify the Bills trading away a good LT and leaving their potential franchise QB unprotected?

ROTFLMAO. You need to take off your Bills-colored glasses, dude, and watch other teams besides the Bills. FTR, the Bills got thrashed by the Ravens, the Chargers, the Colts, the Pats twice, and by the Bears. Maybe you forgot about those? For good measure, they also got beat by the Texans even though DeShaun Watson was playing with a partially collapsed lung, and managed to beat the Titans with Mariota limited by his elbow injury. The Bills are not even in the same league as KC or the Rams offensively, and their defense isn't nearly as good as the Rams or the Bears' D. That's not even considering the other excellent teams that missed the playoffs because they were inconsistent: Atlanta, Carolina, Green Bay, Minnesota, and Pittsburgh. As for the "end is near" scenario for the Pats because Brady declines/retires, that's been a false hope for Bills fans for a decade, and there's no indication that Brees is planning on retiring, although if he wins another Lombardo, he might. Of course the Saints do have Tony Bridgewater on their roster whom they may re-sign if Brees leaves. The Ravens, Colts, Bears, Texans, Rams, Eagles, Cowboys, and Chiefs all have top notch young QBs have proven themselves. That's not even considering some up and coming teams that are likely to be playoff contenders beginning in 2019 like the Browns who actually had a mathematical chance to make the playoffs as late as week 16 or 17. The Bills have no offense. The lack of talent on offense is simply appalling. They don't have any real good offensive prospects except for Allen -- and most of their offensive roster is non-NFL caliber. I've been saying all season that the Bills are setting Allen up to fail because they haven't given him any help in terms of talent, and I will continue to stand by that until I see the team make significant improvements to the quality of players on the offensive side of the ball. The sad reality is that the two areas where the Bills need the most help -- OL and WRs -- are also two units where it's the hardest to have "quick fixes" via rookies having immediate impact. It usually takes two or three years for OLers and WRs to come into their own -- if they ever do. Furthermore, McDermott and Beane have given no indication whatsoever that they can recognize offensive talent even when it hits them in the face. I don't have a time frame for McDermott/Beane to "close the competitive gap" because I don't believe they have the ability to do so. They are lacking in player personnel knowledge themselves, they've filled their staffs with "friends and family", and their "money ball" philosophy is wrong headed if the goal is to actually win football games rather than con fans into believing that the team will actually improve "if only ....". One more note: making the playoffs in the NFL is a whole lot harder than it is in the NHL, and it's taken the Sabres 7 years to climb to "middle of the pack" -- and Pegula is a "hockey guy".

I dunno. Maybe it's that the Steelers have had15 winning seasons, 12 playoff seasons, 4 Super Bowl appearances and 2 Super Bowl wins since 2000 while the Bills have managed all of 3 winning seasons and 1 playoff appearance in that same time.

^^^ I think that's called "JayCutleritis"