SoTier

They also need to stop wasting draft picks on trading up for projects. They traded up for Jones in 2017 and Allen and Edmunds in 2018, and all were "projects" for various reasons. The draft is always chancy -- only about 50% of first round picks become successful NFLers and have decent careers as starters, and the success rate for later rounds plummets after the first round -- so making a habit of trading up is a losing proposition, and trading up for "projects" is even riskier.

I bet he goes to a team with a decent offense and suddenly flourishes -- just like most of the other players McDermott and Beane have cut loose in their short tenure.

I think you've just defined "the process" that McDermott is always yapping about.

Do you bother to follow the rest of the NFL at all or do you only watch the Bills demonstrate their ineptitude every week and lap up all the excuses coming from the usual Bills propaganda sources? There is absolutely no question that the players the Bills allowed to leave in FA or traded away are significantly more talented than the players with whom the Bills replaced them (and yes, that includes both Tre White and Tremaine Edmunds, the only two who even come close). If you don't think so, then it's just sour grapes and/or blind loyalty to McDermott and Beane. Woods is tearing up the league in LA. Gilmore has become the Patriots' lock-down CB. Glenn is Andy Dalton's new best friend. Goodwin was on his way to becoming a star for the 49ers when he had Garappolo throwing to him. He still lights up the board on occasion even with CJ Beathard throwing to him. Watkins shines whenever he gets the opportunity in a star-studded KC offense which features different players almost every week. Preston Brown, Marcel Darius, Reggie Ragland, and Ronald Darby are all season-long starters for play off contending teams.

That's nobody's fault but McDermott and his henchman Beane. McDermott has mismanaged the team talent since he wrested control of player personnel from Whaley before the 2017 draft, and Beane has been totally complicit in deconstructing the team and has mismanaged cap since he was hired. About 25 or 30% of the dead cap money ($13.6 million) comes from voluntary and health-related retirements, so those don't count. Most of the dead cap dollars (about $32 million) comes from these players McDermot traded away: Darby, Dareus, Glenn, Ragland, Taylor. All of them except Taylor are starters on playoff contending teams, and Taylor is significantly better than Nate Peterman, AJ McCarron, or Derek Anderson -- and maybe better than all of them combined. Then there's another nearly another $6 million in dead cap space that Beane wasted on bringing in Corey Coleman and AJ McCarron for a few days' or weeks' try outs before sending them packing.

And the Bills repeatedly hire HCs who do their best to see that no QB looks too good because they don't like that new-fangled invention called the forward pass. I think Mularkey and Gailey were the only two HCs with offensive backgrounds since 2001, and only Gailey was really interested in having a passing offense. All the others were committed to "run first" offenses even in the face of NFL rule changes that make the passing game dominant.

I think this is a very real possibility.

If it's as rainy and cold as forecast, I think that many fans will just stay home. A significant part of the crowd will probably seriously anesthetize themselves before the opening kickoff, so they may be far more entertaining than anything the Bills do on the field. My guess is that the stands will be pretty empty by the middle of the third quarter, and I would not be surprised if a significant percentage of those left vigorously voice their displeasure at their own team. It was a harbinger of what was to come under the offensive juggerNOT that was the Bills under Dick Jauron. That would be the OP. He thinks the Pats won't even score 20. I'm thinking they score at least 50 because Brady and Belichick take particularly perverse pleasure in torturing Bills fans.

The lack of talent on Bills, particularly on offense, and the successes of the numerous ex-Bills that McDermott and Beane didn't think were good enough says that I'm right and you're a blind homer, but keep "Billieving".

The Jets have a rookie QB and 3 wins, but at least they are in most of their games. The Browns have a rookie QB and 2 wins plus a tie, but they've been in all their games until the very end except for the stinker they put up against the Chargers. The Bills have a rookie QB and 2 wins, but they've been blown out of 3 games, and lost badly to the Chargers even though the Bolts took mercy on them and sat most of their starters in the second half of that game. I watch the beginning of Bills games but that usually doesn't last long. Instead I switch over to Sunday Ticket and watch entertaining games.

I have never been a McDermott fan, but I used to think that he was at least a decent game coach who could get the most out of the talent he had on hand. I have come to the conclusion that that's simply not true. His lack of recognition of offensive talent is bad enough, but his stubborn insistence on keeping Nathan Peterman on the roster, and his pursuit of Carolina cast-offs to the detriment of all other options (there is absolutely no other way to account for the Bills waiting a month to find a better back up QB than Peterman only to bring in Anderson) have to sink him to the very bottom of the Bills coaching barrel along with the likes of John Rauch, Jim Ringo, and Hank Bullough. I think McDermott may even supercede my candidate for "worst Bills coach in this century", Dick Jauron, by a smidgen. I doubt that McDermott lasts until the end of the season, and if he does, he won't be back next season. At some point, he's going to lose the locker room as the blow-outs pile up which will only lead to more uncompetitive games. I think a number of players quit in the Indy game after the Clay fumble, and I think it will get worse. The real question is how much embarrassment can the Pegulas tolerate. After NE, which I can't realistically expect to be anything but another blow-out, the Bills play Chicago and at the Jets before their bye week. I can't seeing the Bills winning either, but Chicago might be a defensive slugfest because Mitch Trubisky isn't even half as good as a healthy Deshaun Watson or ten percent as good as Patrick Mahomes. If the Bills get blown out by the Jets, however, McDermott is probably not the Bills HC when the Bills face the Jags the week after the bye.

I knew the Pats laid 50+ on the Bills at least once. Well, it may be that bad -- or even worse -- Monday night. I think that the Bills keep it close early on because it's a divisional game, but there will be one crappy/unlikely play (like Clay's fumble against Indy) that will once again send at least some players running for the bus, and then the rout will be on.

Really? How is he doing that? By throwing 10 INTs in 7 games? He has thrown as many INTs as he has TDs, and his stats completion percentage, his TD/INT ratio, and his QB rating aren't as good as Mayfield's. Against Minnesota Darnold fumbled in the 2nd quarter, was intercepted in the 3rd quarter to give the Vikings a FG, and then was intercepted twice in the fourth quarter which resulted in the Vikes getting 10 more points. That's 4 TOs in a single game. Darnold threw for 1 TD and ran for 1 TD.

Just because the Bills overpaid for a crappy WR doesn't mean that other teams' coaches and FOs are so stupid as to chase after Carolina rejects. "All the big boy clubs" have competent talent evaluation, which is why they're "big boy clubs". The Bills haven't had that since John Butler and AJ Smith departed for the West Coast back in 2000, and McDermott and Beane are almost as bad talent evaluators, especially on offense, as Dick Jauron.

McDermott and Beane talk the talk but they sure as hell don't walk the walk. Their actions clearly demonstrate that they don't care about offense. Both Goodwin and Woods were still under contract when McDermott was hired well before FA (he was hired in January IIRC). Free agency doesn't begin until March, and Goodwin and Woods were allowed to walk away in FA. I believe that Woods may not even been offered a contract. With no other decent veteran WRs on the roster in TC except Jordan Matthews, McDermott and Beane traded away Sammy Watkins for a draft pick. The Bills finally got around to trading for what was supposed to be a top WR, Kelvin Benjamin, at the trade deadline although Matthews had been mostly injured since TC. In order to defend these incompetent clowns, you have to make up crap and rewrite history. Now that's crazy, but carry on.

Absolutely. He was president of the Bills when both were hired, and they had to be acceptable to him.

Now, who's "making stuff up"??? How the hell have McDermott and Beane "made clear that QB and the passing game is most important"??? By shedding Goodwin, Woods, and Watkins and adding the Stone Hands Brigade of Benjamin, Jones, and the other assorted scrubs who try to impersonate NFL WRs every week? Maybe it's by replacing Pro Bowl OLers with career backups and bottomfeeder starters? Maybe it's by replacing one Neanderthal OC with Son of Neanderthal OC? You're certainly correct that the Bills don't have a QB. Why don't they have one? Because McDermott really thinks Nate Peterman is an NFL caliber QB and is determined to prove it??? Because the only available street FA QB available was Derek Anderson? Or is it because McDermott is so determined to get a franchise QB that he passed on Mahomes and Watson in 2017 in order to draft a DB?????

Ummm ... January is "very late"??? Wood announced his retirement a few days after the playoff loss when his injury was discovered in an end-of-season physical. Moreover, since Incognito was 35 years old, the Bills should have been preparing to replace him, not pretending he was going to play forever so that they didn't need to have as Plan B. The Bills knew they needed a better backup than Peterman (who shouldn't have been on the roster in the first place) after the first game of the season. Why didn't they bring a veteran backup then? Why does it seem like it was always either Anderson or nobody? What the hell is so special about Anderson -- aside from his Carolina connection -- that the Bills wouldn't look at alternative QBs, some of whom are significantly better than Anderson.

Why in the world would the Saints be interested in trading him away? They are seriously thinking SB, and Bridgewater is a relatively cheap backup. Moreover, they get a season long look at possibly Brees' future replacement.

So was Dick Jauron. What's your point?

And we're going to spend the next fifteen or so years watching Mahomes and Watson tear up the league because we passed on them to draft White -- a CB who will likely go on to success and the playoffs with some other team like so many other good, great Bills DBs over the years, like Jabari Greer and Ronald Darby who both have SB rings from NO and Philly respectively.

"Time servers"? Seriously, in the modern NFL a team can't afford to wait around for two or three seasons to decide they're "ready" to start building the offense. The Bills had a chance to grab a seriously good QB in 2017, and they passed ... for a DB. Compared to franchise QBs, great DBs are practically a dime a dozen.. The Bills then shed talent to gather draft picks in order to trade up to grab the fourth highest rated QB in the next draft who's clearly a project, and trade up again to get another first round project, this time a LB. They could have filled numerous holes on both sides of the ball if they had used all the picks they had collected on more than 2 players. Now, they are very likely to be picking in the top three in the 2019 draft, maybe even #1. What if there are no great offensive prospects worth a top 3 pick? What if the Bills get the #1 pick, there's a consensus #1 pick, and it's a QB? That's the Bills dilemma because they passed on grabbing a good QB when they had the chance in 2017! In the first round, where a team has the best chance to find success, you cannot make need or predetermined "plan" the primary reason for drafting a particular player. If there's a talented QB available at your turn, you take him and don't trade back in order to draft a CB to replace the Pro Bowl CB that you let walk in free agency because you don't believe in paying DBs or WRs the market rate for players at their skill level.

This is simply untrue. The offense had most of the pieces in place except for a QB. It had the best OL and WR corps that any Bills team has had in this century, and the WRs were all young vets. They had a good pass catching TE in Charles Clay who could also block (a bonus), and one of the very best RBs in the league. This group was good enough to be about in the middle of the pack in most statistical measures. The defense had some of the pieces, namely a solid if somewhat older DL and good CBs with Gilmore and Darby. Preston Brown was serviceable at LB. It needed to improve the back seven. It was not a clutch, shut down defense like it had been under Marrone and Schwartz but that was more on coaching than on talent. McDermott stripped the offense of virtually all its talent and replace talented players with bottom feeders and career backups. He did somewhat better with the defense because he cares about the defense -- and special teams. In McDermott's universe, the offense is his red-headed step-child who always gets the crumbs.

Decent compared to whom? For all we know, they could very well just be subs or STers on better NFL teams, but they're starting because the Bills have no one better.

I think that Mahomes would have been successful where ever he was if he had any kind of decent coaching and a decent supporting cast. He's a special talent. You are absolutely right that Allen needs a real QB coach, not a WR coach in need of a new gig so make him the Bills QB coach. I've been on record -- and have taken lots of heat for it -- in saying that the Bills are setting up Allen for failure because they have failed to give Allen any kind of support: not a first rate QB coach, not good receivers, not a solid offensive line. IMO, he's the little kid that the Bills have thrown in the deep end of the pool to sink or swim as best he can ... and he'll also make a convenient scapegoat to take pressure off the Bills CS and FO for their failure to build a competitive team. If you think I'm kidding, consider all the posters who are "okay" with the crappy team the Bills have fielded in 2018 "as long as Allen is learning the ropes". As Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold have shown, a team doesn't have to be totally inept on offense just because they have a rookie QB as their starter.