SoTier

And what, exactly, is that plan? How exactly does a team rebuild by shedding younger, talented players and keeping/acquiring older players who spent their careers as backups or STers?

And I prefer reality to myth. Wade Phillips was here 3 years before he was forced out by Wilson (1998-2000) Gregg Williams was here 3 years and his contract was not renewed (2001-2003) Mike Mularkey was here for 2 years before resigning. (2004-2005) Dick Jauron was fired in his fourth year after having his contract renewed in 2008. (2006-2009) Perry Fewell was the interim HC who took over from Jauron. (2009) Chan Gailey was HC for 3 years. He may have been fired or just didn't have his contract renewed. (2010-2012) Doug Marrone was HC for 2 years. He chose to quit, probably after losing a power struggle with Doug Whaley. (2013-2014) Rex Ryan was the only regular HC who was fired after less than 2 full seasons on the job. Again, see above. The Bills haven't gone around firing their coaching staffs because they didn't make the playoffs. Ryan was fired because he was an incompetent buffoon who made promises he couldn't keep and used the team payroll as a feeding trough for his family and friends. He deserved the boot. In hindsight, perhaps the Bills should have tried harder to keep Marrone and even Mularkey. Both seem to have turned out to be decent NFL HCs. I think you misread/misinterpreted my statement. I meant that no HC had ever tried it before. IMO, it's ludicrous to think an NFL HC woud consider it since it's totally out of character because like players, they're conditioned to always try to win.

My realism says that starting Peterman in a game that the Bills appeared to have a chance to win when the Bills had a winning record and a hold on a playoff spot only makes sense if the purpose was to distract fans from the defensive collapse and the coaching staff's inability to fix it. Sorry, but you own your mistakes, especially when you want the power to make the big decisions, and that applies to first year HCs, too. McDermott made one in starting Peterman. Dennison made more than one in the Peterman fiasco, including not seeing that that kid wasn't ready to start as well as drawing up a game plan that would set up just about any first time NFL starter to fail. If McDermott continues to make serious mistakes down the stretch that call his coaching judgement into question, then yes, maybe he should be replaced. Cry me a river. "It's time to try see if this rookie QB drafted on Day Three is the next Tom Brady," said no NFL HC ever with his team having a winning record and a piece of the playoffs, especially when his rookie QB was as unready for a pro start as Peterman appeared to be. Taylor had 1 bad game ... against the Saints. Maybe if Dennison designed plays that had some prayer of working against good defenses, Taylor wouldn't have to check down so much. Dennison is the one who decides which plays the Bills run, y'know. Minnesota doesn't have a franchise QB either, but they sure don't play Jauron 2.0.

The Bills aren't getting a third or any other pick for Taylor. He's due a big bonus just after the start of the league's new year, and the Bills aren't going to pay that to a player they don't want. Consequently, if they can't trade him, they'll cut him ... and every team in the league knows how the Bills operate. It's why they only got a 6th for Dareus ... teams knew the Bills wanted him gone so badly that they'd take anything.

I'm not sure what your point is. You're the one who claimed that McDermott wouldn't start a rookie unless he was "out of this world in camp" ... and Peterman wasn't. Certainly his play as a starter was so unacceptable that one has to wonder what the coaches saw in him to make them think he could even be a reasonable backup QB. Because he wouldn't be Taylor. I don't think that will happen, however. A first round QB will cost less and sell more seats ... and don't think that the Bills ever ignore their bottom line.

Excuse me, but why in the world would a team give up its first round pick and a player to get "the cream of the 2nd tier" QB???? That's called a backup QB. You only trade up to grab the best QB in the draft IMO. You can draft a backup in the fifth round ... Really? He already did ... even when the Bills were holding down a playoff spot.

The Bills are gearing towards getting cheaper. They are one of the oldest teams in the NFL because they haven't gotten rid of older, expensive veterans in their effort to retool but have simply replaced more expensive players with cheaper ones. A team looking to really retool not simply cut salary would have cut Kyle Williams rather than trade Marcel Dareus if they felt the need to get rid of a DT, which was a stupid move in the middle of the season anyways, but then, the Bills are just special that way. Making stupid moves is the key to their success at avoiding the playoffs for this entire century. I expect Shady to be gone before next season, and likely Glenn, Incognito, and Clay as well. Maybe even Wood, too. Can't waste money on OLers and TEs, especially if they don't buy into the system by getting hurt.

What does whether someone agrees with Taylor about what he thinks about his benching have to do with their being a fan of his or not? We're talking normal fans of a football player, not groupies or stalkers here. As for Taylor's belief that he was benched because he was black, I would like to categorically deny that but I can't. There have been so many personnel moves made that, taken together, scream, "Taylor has been set up to fail". The OC seems to have deliberately instituted an offensive system and drawn up game plans intended to minimize Taylor's strengths and maximize his shortcomings. Then Dennison created a game plan for Peterman that was completely inappropriate for a rookie QB starting his first NFL game as if he were deliberately trying to show up Taylor. Now, McDermott comes out and says, "well, Tyrod's starting against NE but after that 'no promises'". Since it's unlikely that the Bills have lured Peyton Manning out of retirement, I have to wonder what Taylor did to po whomever on the Bills he po'd because somebody sure has it in for him. Or somebodies. There is something putrid about the Bills actions and attitude towards Taylor this year that wouldn't look good in the light of day, and that goes triple for benching him at SD. I don't know what it might be, but it seems to be more than just incompetence on the part of McDermott, his coaches, and Beane. Maybe it's the subtle kind of racism where some people think there are some jobs that blacks just can't do as well as whites or maybe it is simply holding black QBs to higher standards than white QBs. All the posters constantly whining about how many times Taylor leaves plays on the field while conveniently ignoring that white QBs do the same thing are good examples of how that works. For myself, I think benching Taylor might have been done simply to take the focus off how poorly the defense had been playing since the Dareus trade. He's become the convenient scapegoat for all the troubles the Bills FO and coaching staff have brought upon the team by stripping it of most of its talent and insisting on using an offensive scheme that does not fit the personnel that they have, from the QB to the RBs to the OL to the WRs.

I understand statistics fine, but you are trying to change the parameters because your original claim that draft position doesn't make a difference doesn't hold up. It does. The closer to the top of the draft a QB is taken the better chance he has of success. QBs drafted in the top half of the first round have about a 50% success rate, but the QBs taken #1 hit at 80%: of the 10 QBs taken at #1 between 2000 and 2014, only 2 -- David Carr and Ja'Marcus Russell -- were outright busts. Sam Bradford has been a disappointment primarily because he hasn't been able to stay healthy. All the others became Pro Bowlers, some MVPs, Super Bowl winners, etc. Of the 14 QBs taken in the bottom half of the first round (17-32), only Chad Pennington, Aaron Rodgers, Joe Flacco, and Teddy Bridgewater have been successful. That's only about 29% success.

Actually, we do. At best, he is not ready to play in the NFL and at worst he's no better than the TC fodder he played against in the preseason. He is nowhere near the supposedly "pro ready" QB that his fanboys claimed he was. He's not nearly as good a backup as Jeff Tuel was in 2013, so he's not even ready to be an NFL backup QB.

YOU look historically! The only QBs from outside the first round to have any kind of success as starters who were drafted between 2000 and 2014 are: Tom Brady, 6th 2000 Drew Brees, 2nd 2001 David Garrard, 4th 2002 Matt Schaub, 3rd 2004 Kyle Orton, 4th 2005 Derek Anderson, 6th 2005 Matt Cassel, 7th 2005 Ryan Fitzpatrick, 7th 2005 Matt Flynn, 7th 2008 Tyrod Taylor, 6th 2011 Russell Wilson, 3rd 2012 Kirk Cousins, 4th 2012 That's 12 QBs that range in success from the GOAT to minimally acceptable starters out of 153 QBs drafted after round 1 in those 15 years. That's 8% success rate. Only Brady, Brees, and Wilson are truly top tier QBs. Schaub and Cousins are probably a step down from the top three so that's 5 good/excellent QBs (3%) found after round 1 in this century. Moreover, Brees, Wilson, and Cousins were all considered to be either too short or too slight to be successful NFL QBs. Brady was a skinny kid who got caught up in athletic department politics and had limited starts at Michigan despite playing better than the starting QB whom the AD insisted start. Of the rest, Taylor is easily the best ... and he shares the same problem that Cousins has: he's considered rather slight to play QB.

This is what the Bills should do but it's not what they're going to do IMO.

I totally agree. Even players who don't play well almost always play that way because they lack talent. A few may have personal issues that impinge on their ability to play better but guys don't make it to the NFL if they're lazy. I don't even hate my least favorite Bill, Vlad Ducasse; if he could be better, he would be. I'm angry at the poor decisions the Bills FO and coaching staff have made that have made him a starter!!! This year at least most of Taylor's problems are also on the Bills FO and coaching staff. Every QB who ever played from Tom Brady to Nate Peterman needs protection and targets as well as an offensive game plan that maximizes his assets and minimizes his limitations. Taylor has not had any of those this year. Peterman didn't, either. It's like these moronic coaches developed game plans for both of them designed to insure they failed! My guess is that just about every QB in the NFL this season would struggle to look good playing for the 2017 Bills. Well, then, isn't being a fan of any team rather "lemming-ish"? It looked like there were a lot of lemmings waving yellow towels down in Pittsburgh last night. How can you be a fan of any team and not support the players who make up that team? You don't have to be a fan of each player to support them as team members. I don't see the hatred repeatedly expressed against some Bills players -- particularly Taylor and Dareus this season -- as being a sign of anything except the individual hater's own shortcomings.

He's also had a much worse team around him than those 1990s Bills, especially this season when that OL has been trash. It's easy to forget just how talented those teams were. I can't watch video of those 1990s teams ... it's hard to believe those were Bills teams after watching the garbage teams the Bills have fielded in this century.

The real problem with the Bills has been and continues to be that the real control of decisions about chosing players, keeping players, paying players, and apparently even playing players seems to reside higher up the food chain that Beane or McDermott. That's been the case since Donahoe was fired in 2005, and that didn't change much when the Pegulas took over. Beane is a largely a figurehead who is subservient to both his bosses at OBD and to McDermott on player matters just as Whaley was to his coaches. Nix and Gailey were good ol' boys together who went back decades IIRC. Nothing is really going to change on the Bills until/unless they have independent leadership -- with real power and only answerable to the owners -- from a "football guy" as was proposed to have Polian oversee the team. As long as GM and HC are saddled with putting the interests of accountants and marketers ahead of winning, the Bills are going to wallow in the same "Pit of Misery" they been in for the last decade or so.

"The Guy" doesn't necessarily have to be the best at his position. He has to be a game changer, which is a player whose play can change game momentum -- and does it somewhat frequently over the course of his career. Bruce Smith was that as was Kelly and Thurman. So is Shady.

Well said, sir! You have nailed it. I said back in pre-season that McDermott reminded me too much of Jauron, and that's EXACTLY what the Bills have, and maybe worse. Jauron at least had a consistent philosophy: play not to lose by too much. I'm not sure what McDermott's philosophy is except "it's my way or the highway". He sticks to it, however, even when it's obviously not working. Dude, let me set the record straight here. The Super Bowl Bills were not choirboys off or on the field ... or in the locker room. They also weren't well known for what you describe as "football character", either. Just the opposite. Some wag nicknamed them "The Bickering Bills" IIRC. They were a rowdy crowd, and they got into trouble, which tended to be covered up when it happened locally unlike today. They even got into fights in the locker room ... which were reported. Numerous members of the team got drunk regularly, used drugs, and smoked frequently, including during the season. McDermott and Beane didn't think Dareus had "football character" because the Buffalo Bills wanted to dump his salary. They had been trying to peddle him since well before OTAs which was before McDermott had any real opportunity to judge Dareus first hand and before Beane was even hired. McDermott apparently decided back in March that Zach Brown, Mike Gillislee, Stephon Gilmore, Marquise Goodwin, and Robert Woods all either lacked the skill sets he wanted or weren't willing to buy into his system, too. Such an astute talent and character evaluator, he doesn't even have to work with them to know they're not what he wants.

Probably if McDermott and Beane get the five years their fanboys insist they deserve.

Now, now, you can't go blaming McDermott for THAT. He had good reasons for having Whaley trade back to the end of the first round: he needed a DB immediately since he had none more than he needed a QB for the future since he had one for now; he wanted to collect more draft picks for 2018 which is supposedly going to be the best QB class ever so each first round QB will come with a guarantee; he wanted to wait until his pal Beane from Carolina replaced Whaley so that they could implement their "vision" together. Hate to rain on your parade, dude, but Miller went at #2. He wasn't on the board when the Bills picked at #3. Dareus was becoming a game changer under Jim Schwartz, and he's likely to become a game changer in Jacksonville now that he's on a team with a coach that knows how to use him.

The Bills don't keep their top players long enough for them to become difference makers here. Some of the best they've sent packing: Pro Bowl CB Antoine Winfield (Minnesota), Pro Bowl LG Ruben Brown (Chicago), Pro Bowl DT Pat Williams (Minnesota), future HOF LT Jason Peters (Philly), All Pro RB Marshawn Lynch (Seattle), Pro Bowl CB Stephon Gilmore (NE) ... and likely to be added to that list: WR Robert Woods (LAR), WR Sammy Watkins (LAR), Pro Bowl DT Marcell Dareus (Jax), CB Ronald Darby (Philly). Certainly Peters and Lynch went on to become "the guys" for their respective teams.

And apparently discovered the Fountain of Youth ...

You're denying that the concept of professional athletes "quitting" exists. As fadingpain noted, it's been documented that it does. You're taking the literal meaning of "quitting" and assuming athletes just decide they're going to slack off because there's nothing to play for. That's generally not how it works. Teams "quit" on coaches because several players at least on the team have become disillusioned with the coach, his coaching style, what his assistants are teaching, etc. Feeling that way about coaches stress out athletes because they've been conditioned to believe in their coaches, and it often affects their on field/court performance. Psychological stress can affect job performance (among other things), whether you're a teacher or an accountant or a law enforcement officer or a professional athlete, and the sufferers don't have a whole lot of control over it because they're not making conscious decisions to do x or do y. I'm not saying that the Bills have "quit" on McDermott, but it is something that exists and can happen.

I agree except for starting Peterman against the Chargers. My gut feeling is that it wasn't McDermott's decision but was ordered from above. I say this simply because football coaches and players don't like to lose, although they'll tolerate it at the end of the season if the record won't impact whether they go to the playoffs or where they're seeded. "I think I'll start my low round rookie QB against a 3-6 team just to see if he might make a pro QB" said no NFL coach ever with his team sitting on a 5-4 record and holding a playoff spot.

This. "Buying into" the HC's "system" doesn't trump a lack of talent despite the manure the Bills FO and coaching staff have attempted, with some success, to feed to fans. Excellent post. I think that you may have nailed the real impact of the Dareus trade dead-on: it had a tremendous psychological impact on the defense far beyond what his physical presence added to the defense based on however many snaps Dareus was given. You may have also correctly assessed the impact of the Benjamin trade, too. Might want to do some reading in psychology. It would open your mind.

on the Ducasse and Mills. Ducasse has been a bust since his days as a second round pick with the Jests. He's bounced around the league as a backup since ... until he landed in Buffalo where Dennison and Castro think he's played well as a starter. That's how low their standards are! Mills looked like he was going to develop into a decent RG until Dennison instituted his zone blocking scheme which the entire OL has struggled to master except for Ducasse. As for Dak, he looks like a shadow of himself with Zeke and LT Tyron Smith out, but that's true of most QBs, even supposed "franchise QBs", when key parts of their offenses are missing. What exactly has Nate Peterman done to deserve another shot at starting this season?