SoTier

Most of the FA OLers the Bills signed would be depth on good NFL offensive teams, so there's plenty of room to upgrade through the draft.

Point A -- the Bills won six games last season, most of their games were snoozefests except maybe when Allen was in, and half of their losses were by 20 or more points. It's not going to take much to be "much improved" without winning enough games to even sniff the playoffs. Point B -- if the Bills fail to "contend for a Super Bowl in 2020" I'm sure you'll simply see 2020 as another "stepping stone". Point C --I don't care if Hockensen is the best TE in the draft because that may mean nothing -- like Manuel being the best QB in the 2013 draft. I want the Bills to draft the BPA who's on the board at #9. The only positions they shouldn't consider at #9 are QB, kicker, and punter. They could use upgrades everywhere else, including at MLB so they could move Edmunds to the outside which may be a better fit for his skill set.

I like GMs who are good talent scouts because having a good eye for talent is irreplaceable, and honing that eye only comes with years of experience. All NFL teams have cap experts to "manage the cap", but having the intuitive sense to know which players to pay and which players to let walk in FA only comes from GMs who know and understand football personnel -- and it's priceless as long as the ownership is committed to winning football games rather than only the bottom line. Bellichick has always had an eye for talent and for how to get the best out that talent, and when he paired up with an owner with a commitment to winning, well, as they say, "the rest is history". As I said in 2017 when Beane was hired and started replacing scouts, there's no guarantee that change is going to result in improvement. Yes, the Bills in 2019 are a lot different than in 2016. However, are they really a better team???? I think the defensive coaching is better. I think that the offensive coaching may be about the same or slightly worse. The overall talent level on the team is significantly less than in 2016 though, and certainly the offense remains a dumpster fire until/unless last year's rookies and this year's FA crop prove otherwise. Moreover, while the McDermott/Beane win-lost record doesn't seem too bad at 15-17, the fact that 9 of the Bills 32 games under "McBeane" were 20+ point losses (28%) is appalling. I knew which football organizations I liked best and I knew some of the GMs like Newsome, Belichick, Snead, Roseman, Dorsey, etc but I looked up the GMs that I didn't know by name. The football team on the field is never going to consistently outperform the quality of the front office that identifies/acquires/retains the personnel on the field. That's, of course, why the Bills have sucked pretty much since John Butler and AJ Smith said 'adios' and flew out to San Diego in 2000.

The only reason to get rid of Taylor was to clear out all the competition so that the first round rookie QB the Bills had yet to draft would be guaranteed to start early on in the season. That's why Peterman and McCarron were the two "veterans"on the roster -- and that's a very "Brandonesque" move as he did pretty something very similar in 2013 before they drafted Manuel. The scenario that Taylor would have caused division in the locker room has always been utter fantasy. Taylor started for the Browns, and accepted being replaced by Mayfield with the grace and dignity he has always displayed, including when he was foolishly replaced by Peterman in 2017. Moreover, he would have provided Allen with a real mentor, especially given David Culley's lack of experience as a QB coach. In fact, the handling of the QB situation in 2018, demonstrated serious incompetence on the entire Bills organization from the owner down to the coaches. If Allen is not a success -- and QBs drafted outside the #1 draft position have only turned out to be successes about half the time since 2000 -- how much of that is because of the poor coaching that the Bills gave him. I don't know if Brandon was on his way out in the spring of 2018 or not because he was fired for personal misconduct rather than for how he ran either the football or hockey team, but Beane is pretty much a younger version of Brandon in that his background is on the administrative/business side of football ops rather in player personnel. While McDermott may have had input into the choice of a new GM, he didn't select Beane. That decision came from either Brandon or, more likely, the Pegulas.

What FormerlyofCtown can't seem to understand -- or deliberately misunderstands -- is that while Brandon and/or Whaley could give recommendations on the coaching hires, the final decision on who to hire belonged to the Pegulas, and their preferences trumped -- and will continue to trump -- all. Ryan was a big name HC looking for a new gig in 2015 who expressed interest in the Bills job, so neither Brandon nor Whaley could keep him off their final list of candidates. Unfortunately, Ryan impressed the Pegulas. Blame for the Ryan hiring rests solely on the ownership. The credit or blame for the McDermott hiring will also rest solely on the Pegulas, not their staff.

Actually, I'm skeptical. I want to see Beane actually do SOMETHING genuinely impressive before I consider him "good" much less "great", and so far, he's simply hasn't been here long enough to do that. That Russ Brandon had a significant hand in his select definitely counts against him. FTR, for any team to win the Lombardi trophy in any given year is sheer luck. The organization has to select a good HC, and he's got to put together a good staff, and that staff has to stay together to give some continuity (which hard for winning teams to do because their assistants continually get poached by other teams). Then the team has to put together a quality roster of veterans and younger talent, and key players have to stay healthy while unproven youngsters have to step up and fill holes when they occur. Finally, a team has to avoid fluke plays, terrible calls, and other impossible-to-anticipate situations as in the Music City Miracle in 2000, the Minneapolis Miracle in 2017, and the phantom PI call against the Saints last season.

Really????? He's had exactly 1 draft, and none of the those rookies would have been regular starters until late in the season if there had been any veterans with reasonable talent on the team at the positions that they played. That includes both Allen and Edmunds as neither the QB nor the MLB positions had NFL quality veterans in 2018. Lack of competition makes it hard to evaluate if these young players are really good -- or if the alternatives are just so bad. Oh, because the Bills will win the off-season ... again??? Teams were interested in the Bills "castoffs" in 2017 and 2018 because McDermott and Beane shed players with actual NFL talent (Gilmore, Wood, Goodwin, Watkins, Taylor, Brown, Darby, Dareus, etc) rather than ST caliber players who only started because there was nobody better on the roster? Why is it "pivotal"? That Pegula is still contemplating firing Phil Housley as Sabres coach suggests that he's exceptionally tolerant of incompetence, so Beane doesn't have much to worry about, especially if Pegula can add in arena/in stadium gaming to his revenue stream in the near future.

Well, if Kelvin Benjamin was "part of the plan" then maybe the plan is seriously flawed. How is a big, slow WR with bad knees, mediocre hands, and a questionable attitude of much use on any team????? I can name at least 8 ... 8. John Dorsey of the Browns 7. Brett Veach with Andy Reid of the Chiefs. 6. Mickey Loomis of the Saints 1 SB 5. John Schneider with Pete Carrol of the Seahawks 1 SB 4. Howie Roseman of the Eagles 1 SB 3. Les Snead of the Rams 2. Kevin Colbert of the Steelers 1 losing season since 2000, 2 SBs 1. Bill Belichick of the Patriots 1 losing season since 2000, 6 SBs I'd would also have added Ozzie Newsome of the Baltimore Ravens with 2 SB wins but he retired in 2018. Maybe you should expand your horizons beyond Buffalo and WNY. Well, actually, the Bills need to win a few more games than 6 with a Beane assembled team before their fans can talk playoffs much less playoff wins. The 2017 team was mostly still players brought in by Whaley with a few contributions from the Nix era and from McDermott. Beane's contributions to the 2017 playoff team were Kelvin Benjamin and Jordan Matthews IIRC. Don't pee on the OP's Cheerios by bringing up facts! Excellent post. Your last paragraph pretty much explains why I am not very optimistic about the Bills future. As long as the Pegulas hire the HCs, then the Bills will pretty much operate the same way that they have since 2006 with the GM simply being a facilitator for the HC. It hasn't worked so far, primarily because the head coaching selections have been so bad -- and every new HC has to bring in "his guys" of course, so good players leave and the team starts all over again ... and again ... and again. Terry Pegula's tenure as the Sabres owner and his hiring of Rex Ryan hardly inspires confidence that his hiring choices for coaches can even be reach "average" much less "great". If something magical happens --- Beane, McDermott and Allen have to have HOF worthy careers while with the Bills -- maybe the Bills will become perennial playoff contenders and possibly win a SB despite Pegula's ownership but realistically, the odds of winning a million dollars in a lottery are probably about the same. As QBs like Phillip Rivers and Matthew Stafford demonstrate, a franchise QB isn't a guarantee that a team will win games with regularity. A great coach can be a loser if the organization he's with can't/won't provide him with the personnel he needs as Bill Belichick's career demonstrates.

OP, maybe the reason that there isn't more serious discussion on TSW is because many posters who disagree with "the company line" -- that the Bills winning the Super Bowl under the current regime is fore-ordained -- don't post here much because they don't wish to be continually insulted by the team cheerleaders who defend every move the Bills make, no matter how egregarious, even to the point of making up wild stories (like the one that Beane actually ran the Bills 2017 draft despite being a member of the Carolina Panthers organization).

Peterman's play in 2017 should have been a red flag to Beane ... and apparently it wasn't. McCarron "wasn't who they thought he was" because either Beane was too ignorant to realize that McCarron was looking for a real shot at a starting gig or realized that but didn't care and misled McCarron to get him to sign. Rather than signing another backup QB immediately after McCarron was traded, Beane waited around for a month while Anderson finished his golf tourney. As for Benjamin, he had played poorly in Carolina prior to his trade, supposedly because of injuries, and had already been supplanted there by Funchess. Well, according to the Beane cheerleaders on TSW, Beane had input into the Bills 2017 draft despite being an assistant GM for the Panthers. In that scenario, then, passing on Mahomes would have to count against Beane. The McBeane bot army can't have it both ways.

"Team culture" is almost always an excuse to mask an organization/HC's inability to identify/acquire/retain an effective blend of talent on the field/sidelines to win games with regularity. The only NFL team that seems to really have a "team culture" is the Patriots but even their success seems to be dependent upon Brady's ability to adapt to continual changes in his offensive personnel and Belichick's genius in creating defenses that maximize the effectiveness of whatever defensive talent he has. All the other teams that have been regular playoff teams over the last 20 years have been much more successful when they've fielded teams filled with talent and much less successful when their talent has been limited. Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Green Bay, Philadelphia, KC, New Orleans, and Seattle are all examples of this. Just having a franchise QB isn't enough as San Diego and Detroit have repeatedly demonstrated.

I've had lots of pets over the years, and, consequently, I've had to put down several of them. The above is so true. It's better to put a sick pet down too soon, especially an older one, than to wait too long. It's all about quality of life for the pet.

If Rosen had shown to be a top talent last year, all these trade rumors would be swirling around because nobody would believe Arizona would think of trading him away, new regime or not.

"Draft a QB every year until you get the right one" is just as stupid as the OP's. An organization should select a first round QB only when/if they think he's the next great QB in the league, not because they need a QB (EJ Manuel) or because they want to get in "the best QB class in years" (JP Losman) or because they want to placate/excite their fan base (Johnny Manziel). Even when they think their QB is likely to be the next great QB, teams miss frequently.

Aikman is irrelevant. Johnson essentially screwed the pooch by giving up the #1 pick in the 1990 draft pick for a QB who was still available after 336 picks in 1989. The chances of Walsh "hitting" anything besides an opposing DB in the hands were infinitesimal. Even under the rookie pay scale, a first round QB goes for at least $5 or $6 million a year, which is the going rate for a backup QB who can win a few games for a team (like Tannehill). Nobody knows if Rosen can develop half as well as Tannehill. The Bills have way too many needs to waste a second round pick on a backup QB. Johnson's move was an utter fail in 1989. The Bills attempting to recreate it (at least in your mind) by trading a 2nd rounder for Rosen in 2019 is simply too stupid to merit any consideration.

This isn't 1989 ... in case you didn't notice. The Cowboys essentially traded the #1 overall pick in 1990 (they crapped the bed again) for the opportunity to draft another QB at the end of the 1989 draft who ended up a career backup, who in a 10 year career, was active for all of 80 games, threw 40 TDs and 50 INTs. How, exactly, is this a move to emulate???? With the salary cap, no team can realistically afford to use so much cap space on 2 unproven first round QBs from the same draft class for "insurance". How do you know that "Rosen is cheap"? Except for speculation by media sports mavens, there's no indication that Rosen is even on the market.

Please don't feel guilty if you decide to put your dog down if they can't figure out what's wrong with her in short order. IMO, if a dog is suffering, it's better to put him/her down too soon than to let him linger. On Feb 17, my 11 year old Standard Poodle began vomiting and couldn't keep down even water. I took him to the emergency pet clinic 50 miles away. They thought it was pancreatitis because he had had a bout with that about 5 years ago. They kept him overnight but he didn't respond as well as they had expected, but I took him to my own vet as per their instructions where he was to stay at least for several hours. When I visited him that afternoon, he still wasn't doing well and was refusing to eat. I was torn between giving up then and putting him down or waiting another day in hopes he would improve. I waited another 24 hours, but his condition significantly deteriorated. When I finally decided to put him down, I don't think he knew I was there with him. I should have gone with my gut feeling and put him down on the day I brought him back to Jamestown so he would Known that I was there for him. I will always wonder if he felt abandoned at the vet, and the stress from that contributed to his worsening condition ...

Arguing over which stats, especially rookie stats, are "important" indicators of future performance is simply silly. All that really matters is whether Allen improves his passing game, both his mechanics and his decision making, as he gains experience. As a rookie, he wasn't very good as an NFL QB. Neither was Wentz. Wentz significantly improved in his second year. He had more modest improvement in his third year as a starter, but whether that means he's reached his plateau -- as all QBs do at some point -- remains to be seen. If Allen improves his game as a sophomore, then he's still on a trajectory to be a franchise QB. If he only improves somewhat but then stalls, that will be cause for serious concern. Sometimes, as Wentz shows, injuries and team issues may limit a QB's development, but it usually takes a young QB two or three seasons (including being the #1 QB in training camp) to realize his potential. Allen's rookie stats are largely irrelevant now that he's coming into his second year. He's not competing against only the other 2018 QBs or just against other recently drafted first round QBs. He's competing against all the QBs in the NFL, including Brady, Rodgers, Brees, Luck, Wilson et al, and the reason why those QBs are considered "great" is how important they've been -- and are -- to their teams' ability to win lots of football games. How Allen's play translates into Bills' wins in the future is what will determine if he's considered a bust, a disappointment or a success, not arguing over rookie stats or the relevance of this particular stat over that one as some kind of predictor of future success.

True. Maybe, maybe not. If Allen busts badly as Paxton Lynch did, that's a problem for both McDermott and Beane. If Allen only turns out to be mediocre, Beane will probably outlast McDermott for a while. I think everything for both depends upon Allen. Since McDermott now has "his" players, he has no excuses. If the Bills don't win more than 6 games in 2019, he'll be on the hot seat in 2020. I agree with this post pretty much until your last sentence. I don't think that Pegula is particularly committed to winning in either the NFL or the NHL. That he not only kept Russ Brandon but promoted him to be head of both the football and hockey organizations says that profit counts for more than winning. Brandon was promoted despite heading up a football organization that went 82-110 with only 2 winning seasons out of 12, although the Bills were a very profitable business for the Wilson family during that time. Furthermore, Brandon was fired because of issues unrelated to the performance of either the Bills or the Sabres.

I don't think that Stafford has ever been the real problem in Detroit. Like the Bills, the Lions' FO can't seem to "put it all together" very often. Stafford is significantly better than either Tannehill or Cutler, just not nearly as good as Luck or Brady.

Apples to apples. Football coaches, like engineers and most other professionals, specialize in specific disciplines within their field. The Bills needed a QB specialist for their new QB who had significant need of one, but instead they hired a WR specialist who had no professional QB coaching experience in 30 years. You can spin that any way you want but it doesn't change the facts of the matter.

The problem with this idea is that it would subvert the salary cap and increase the inequality that the salary cap was instituted to limit.

So, because a structural engineer and a software engineer are both engineers, you'd applaud a bank exec who hired a structural engineer to design his bank's computer security system because if the structural engineer can design bridges that don't collapse, he should be able to design computer systems that can't be hacked? After all, the structural engineer did write a pretty sweet computer security system for his computer security class back in his college days thirty years ago.

Culley wasn't necessarily incompetent but he was certainly unqualified for the job the Bills gave him based on his experience. He was a WR coach not a QB coach. Case closed. He should not have been hired as a QB in the first place, and that McDermott and Beane hired him for that position raises serious questions about their competence to do their jobs. Even if McDermott had fired Culley, he and Beane don't get brownie points for finally figuring out that the unqualified guy they hired couldn't do his job very well. They also don't get applause for thinking a barely competent backup QB and an incompetent backup QB could help Culley do his job -- or help Allen, either. It's a possibility that Culley left before he could be fired. He may have realized he was in over his head and looked for a position that actually fit his skill set.

The map also seriously under represents urban populations because it maxes out at a population density of 90 people per square mile. Counties containing large cities or close to large cities frequently have population densities of 10 times or more of that population density. My county, Chautauqua is predominantly rural but in 2010 it had a population density of about 100/square mile. Nearby Erie County which contains Buffalo and most of its suburbs had a population of more than 900/square mile but both have the same value color (90 or more/density) on the map. If you watch the map carefully in its later decades (from1920-2010) in the area of the Great Plains, you can see the populations of some counties fall as the population on the high plains fell because of the major changes in agriculture resulted in much larger farms/ranches worked by many fewer people using much more machinery.