SoTier

Mahomes just threw his second TD to Travis Kelce to go up 14-0 over Pitt in Pittsburgh after Sammy Watkins caught a nice pass to get them to the Steelers 20.

It'll be 5 years AFTER McDermott and Beane are shown the door.

Bills fans are true believers in killing the messenger.

Another McDermott/Beane excuse thread! The latest scapegoat for the total incompetence of McDermott and Beane is now the CBA, which is not only the same for all NFL teams but has been in effect for several years (since 2011 IIRC). Guess what, Bills fans? The current state of the team is not the fault of Rex Ryan or Doug Whaley or Tyrod Taylor or Marcel Dareus or Vlad Ducasse or the NFL/NFLPA CBA. It's the fault of HC Sean McDermott and GM Brandon Beane who don't know what the hell they're doing -- and the current Bills corporate food chain all the way up to the Pegulas who not only hired McDermott and Beane but gave them far more power over the team than either one should have given their lack of experience.

Then why did they release Washington in the first place? If they felt that they had to do this, then why didn't they just promote Thomas from the PS in the first place? What "good decisions" would those be, especially on offense? Trading away Darby for Matthews wasn't a good move. Neither was letting EJ Gaines walk away. Trading away Watkins who was the only speed receiver the Bills had and who could catch anything near him for a draft pick and then using a draft pick to get Kelvin, a much less talented receiver with chronically bad knees and apparently stone hands doesn't look particularly good either.

Reality is that quality OLers seldom hit FA unless they are prohibitively expensive. Most of the OLers available in FA are either at the end of their careers or they suck. The same with top WRs although the situation isn't as dire; there are usually a better selection of mid-level WRs. The Bills could have had two very good WRs in Woods and Goodwin for several more years for less than what 1 WR similar to Woods in talent will cost them in 2019. Another problem the Bills will face next year in FA is that they will have to again pay more than they should to acquire top FAs because of how badly the team is likely to be.

One doesn't have to be stupid in order to do stupid things, especially when one is engaged in a situation that seems overwhelming for some reason. In the case of McDermott, he simply doesn't have enough experience as a HC -- and possibly not the temperament -- to be given control of personnel. Bill Belichick or Andy Reid he's not. Beane is certainly not the guy to really help him since he has no professional experience evaluating or managing football talent/pro personnel. McDermott and Beane are desperate because they are overwhelmed. I've been saying this for a while. The details are somewhat different, but the general contours of the current regime is scarily reminiscent of the 2006-2009 Bills under Jauron.

What's not funny is an NFL HC selecting players to acquire or get rid of based on factors that are irrelevant to how someone plays football, and there is absolutely nothing more irrelevant than players' religious beliefs -- or lack of same. I don't know if McDermott is doing that, but he seems to be intolerant of players who don't fit his narrow parameters for acceptable attitudes and behavior regardless of their on-field play.

At the rate McDermott and Beane are creating holes and piling up dead cap space, there won't be enough FAs available to fill even half of them ... and that will just be on the defense. Allen will just have to wait ... It all very S-I-M-P-L-E. McDermott and Beane are clueless when it comes to talent evaluation and personnel management and are throwing excrement at the wall to see what sticks.

This is all Whaley's fault, of course.?

A healthy JAG with 7 years in the NFL is likely to be much better than a rookie WR drafted in the 6th round who has never played in an NFL game ... and who is listed as questionable due to a knee injury that kept him out of Game 1.

You're very good at twisting what critics of the Bills say when you can't refute them honestly with facts. What I wrote was, "The most NFL successful teams don't hire inexperience HCs, give them control of personnel, and then hire inexperienced GMs without experience in managing personnel to do their bidding." Comparing what the Ravens did to the Bills are doing is a f$#&ing joke. In fact, it is the exact opposite, which may be why the Ravens have won 2 SBs and fielded playoff teams with regularity while the Bills missed the playoffs for 17 straight years in that same time span. FYI... Ozzie Newsome was the VP of Player Personnel (defacto GM) back in 2000 when the Ravens won their very first Super Bowl. John Harbaugh wasn't hired as Baltimore's HC until 2008, and he was not given control of player personnel. That remains squarely in the hands of Ozzie Newsome, who is retiring after this season ... and he'll be succeeded by his assistant GM next year. The Ravens (formerly the Cleveland Browns) has never had the HC in charge of player personnel, and have gone 190-162 with 2 Super Bowl wins in the 22 years since they moved to Baltimore. Apparently former owner, the late Art Modell, learned his lesson about giving personnel control to HCs after his experience with Bill Belichick (36-44, 1 playoff appearance in 5 seasons) as defacto GM during the Browns (later Ravens) last years in Cleveland. Modell promoted Newsome from Director of Pro Personnel with the move to Baltimore, and there he's been ever since while the Ravens have gone through three coaching regimes: Ted Marchibroda (3 years), Brian Billick (9 years) and John Harbaugh (10 years). Billick was fired IIRC because his teams didn't perform up to snuff despite a SB win, and rumors persist in the NFL that Harbaugh will get the axe if his team doesn't at least make the playoffs this year. How is that anything like the Pegulas hiring McDermott, a rookie HC and giving him control of player personnel, and then hiring Beane, who was in charge of logistics or facilities or whatever as assistant GM in Carolina, to do McDermott's bidding?

Good post. However be prepared to be attacked by the resident Bills cheerleaders who take it as their mission in life to refute any criticism of whatever stupid moves McDermott and/or Beane make or have made ... Well you're right but not in the way you think. It's the same old Bills manure show that we've seen for the last twenty years, just new names and faces for the incompetents. Groy was playing between Incognito and Miller when all three were playing in a blocking scheme that suited their skill sets in 2016. He only played in 1 game last year in the new blocking scheme. It's playing between Ducasse and Miller that's the issue. Miller played beside Mills in 2016. Miller struggled in the current blocking scheme last season, which is why he was benched last season. That may be true of Mills as well. Again, that's on Dennison and Castillo who took a decent OL from 2016 and decided to force them into their own system even though the Bills continued to have a run-first offense.

The most NFL successful teams don't hire inexperience HCs, give them control of personnel, and then hire inexperienced GMs without experience in managing personnel to do their bidding.

Others' bigotry doesn't excuse yours ... or make it acceptable.

Maybe the Bills should have thought ahead in 2017 and taken Mahomes or Watson rather than trading back. When the opportunity to draft a franchise QB presents itself, a smart organization acts while an incompetent one trades back and takes a DB.

FYI, how an OLer plays in games is influenced by how well or poorly the OLer(s) beside him play. That's why teams can have decent/good OLs even when not all the OL personnel are particularly good. Furthermore, like all football players, OLers are better at doing some things than others. Between 2016 when Groy played 7 games for Pro Bowler Eric Wood and 2018 when he was named starting center, the Bills OL underwent a major transformation which significantly undermined its effectiveness, including a new OL coach, Juan Castillo, and a new blocking scheme that the OLers struggled to adjust to. In 2016, Groy played between Pro Bowl LG Richie Incognito and promising rookie RG John Miller under OL coach Aaron Kromer who used a blocking scheme that suited the lineman the Bills had. In 2018, Groy is playing between career back RG Vlad Ducasse who was moved to LG and RG John MIller who struggled in OL coach, Juan Castillo's, blocking scheme last year. Miller never really adjusted as he was benched early on and never challenged Ducasse for the starting position. Groy played in 1 game in 2017 in Castillo's scheme, so there's no evidence that he adjusted to the new blocking scheme any better than Mtiller. It's entirely possible that the only reason Groy and MIller are starting is because the dogs the Bills signed in FA are even worse.

28-7 at the 2 minute warning for those of you can't watch the game.

The Bills' talent level is expansion level, so how are they THAT dissimilar to an actual expansion team?. McDermott and Beane are the ones who need to get their heads out of their butts. Groy was an UDFA who bounced around various teams' PS until the Bills signed him in 2015. He was never good enough to challenge Wood in his tenure with the Bills. That he's better than Russell Bodine doesn't imply that Groy is a starting caliber player but simply demonstrates just how poor a signing Bodine was.

Absolutely. IMO, he shouldn't have been on the roster in 2017, and shouldn't be on the roster this season. At best he might become a backup QB, but that would be after he'd hung around the NFL for a few years on the practice squad. He doesn't have a good enough arm to ever be a starter for an NFL team. At present, he doesn't have the experience and knowledge to make him a realistic backup prospect, either. He's played okay against other backups in preseason, but he's clearly not up to playing QB against first teamers when games count. I'm completely mystified how an NFL HC can not see that and name him the starter -- twice.

You might try reading the article again, only this time for comprehension, not just to find ammunition to blast "the media". Sherman criticized using so many picks to get only a QB and a MLB when there were so many holes that needed to be addressed and weren't.

Sherman pretty much said most of the same things I've been saying since the end of last season. BTW, do they even have a practice squad player who can impersonate a QB if Allen or Peterman gets hurt?

It will take even more amazing coaching for McDermott to get this year's edition to 4 wins. I think the Bills current roster is as bad as the Bills 2009 roster, which was four years into Jauron's run. As I said, I think McDermott is a good game day coach, but giving him personnel control was stupid when he had no previous HC experience and no experience coaching offense. I'm never in favor of HCs have control over players, even experienced ones, because they tend to have a short-term view whereas good GMs take a longer term view. For example, Belichick has been very successful while having control of the roster but almost all of the success rests on Brady and the revolving door of FA role players that the Pats bring in with regularity. They haven't been very successful at drafting since Scott Pioli left, although somebody in the organization does know how to spot OL talent because they do seem to find good OLers in the draft pretty regularly.

I agree. Peterman really doesn't have an NFL arm, so his ceiling is probably, at best, a career backup. He should have been on the practice squad last season, and probably this season, too. I'm still convinced that the Bills should have just kept Taylor and let Allen develop before they put him in on the front line.

They also went out and signed Whitworth, Cinci's long time LT, in FA. IOW, the Rams gave Goff better protection and better targets. The improved OL enabled Gurley to run wild. This year they added more talent on both sides of the ball, which is key, because even great offensive teams can't depend on putting up 30 or 40 points a game. In today's NFL, between the salary cap and high player salaries, successful HCs coaches need to be exactly that because teams that want to win consistently can't afford to get rid of a talented DT and incurr a $13+ million dead cap hit just because he and the HC or his DC don't see eye to eye. Make a good hire in the first place works for me. That's where there needs to be some kind of "process". The Bills have never really done that, and the Pegulas aren't any better than Wilson in that regard. My guess is that Terry Pegula doesn't hire key personnel for his enterprises simply on a whim like he did Rex Ryan. I also doubt he turns over full control of any of his enterprises/projects to people who've never held similar jobs before like he did with McDermott and Beane.