SoTier

McDermott is not that much of a noobie. My guess is that Tyrod has likely decided that the Bills aren't good enough for him, either. You can bet that guys like Gillislee, Gilmore, Woods, Watkins, Dareus, and Darby are all ecstatic that they were lucky enough to escape. They didn't "inherit" a tire fire, they created it. Zach Brown, Ronald Darby, Marcel Dareus, Mike Gillislee, Stephon Gilmore, Marquise Goodwin, Sammy Watkins, and Robert Woods all left, via trade or FA, on their watch. If the decision to start Peterson was truly McDermott's and not somebody higher up the corporate food chain, then it was truly bizarre. NFL HCs don't give up shots to win games or make the playoffs; it's not in their DNA. Even ol' Dick Jauron would put winning ahead of auditioning a QB when a team was 5-4 and was holding a playoff spot.

I disagree. This team has been much worse than any Bills team has ever been over the course of any three games in its history -- and that history includes some pretty terrible teams, and no, this wasn't the team that "we thought we'd have at the start of the year". Most fans thought that the Bills would at least be competitive with most teams even if they didn't win a lot. This team is uncompetitive, and it's uncompetitive because it's been deliberately stripped of almost all its younger talent in a matter of months, and that talent has been replaced by rookies and scrubs. A poster yesterday stated that the team was the equivalent of an expansion team, and that seems about right. It's going to take a whole lot longer than a couple of years just to bring the talent level up to where it was when McDermott and Beane came on the scene, especially if they're the ones doing the talent selection.

This is nonsense. The Bills got the crap beat out of them three straight games. With his team holding the sixth seed and with a record of 5-4, McDermott changed from his veteran qb to a rookie qb who had never started an NFL game before. That rookie qb was unprepared to start an NFL game and had a horrendous game, throwing 5 ints in just the first half, and you think McDermott being criticized by the press is an "odd crucifixion"???? In what universe do you reside? Why the hell shouldn't a professional football coach be held accountable when his team plays terribly or when he throws an unprepared player out on the field for any reason other than dire necessity like injury?

McDermott and Beane have stripped the team of talent the way Jauron did. Chan inherited Jauron's expansion team and actually added some talent. Whaley added more ... and McDermott and Beane have remedied that in short order.

Why are both teams "talent starved"? Oh, yeah! Because those "serious professionals" jettisoned almost all of the best and youngest talent on the teams in order to fill them with scrubs. Those "serious professionals" are simply playing money ball.

Ummm ... Marrone was hired before the Pegulas bought the team. The Pegulas have nobody but themselves to blame for Rex Ryan and his clown show since they wanted him even though Whaley wanted somebody else, supposedly Hue Jackson. I believe that the Bills used a search committee to select McDermott, and that Beane was hired after him, after the draft, possibly with McDermott's input. Nice revisionist history, though.

Watkins would have been here this year, and he never said he wouldn't have re-signed with the Bills. He's a WR drafted high in the draft ... they are ALL prima donnas, and they complain all the time. It's more than likely that the Bills weren't interested in re-signing him at the market rate for WRs. And Dareus wasn't a distraction. There was never any whisper about him causing any kind of trouble in the locker room. Somebody on the Bills wanted him gone, and since the Bills had been trying to peddle him even before OTAs, I doubt it had anything at all to do with whether he "bought in" to McDermott's system. My guess is that Dareus realized that he wasn't wanted on the Bills, and that affected his attitude or his work ethic. Obviously, he feels wanted in Jacksonville.

The Bills needed bodies to fill holes, so they took what they could get, especially since they didn't want to pay too much for them. Except for Benjamin, I don't think the other two had much, if any, recent injury history. Players get hurt, especially DBs and WRs since they tend to be somewhat smaller than many of the guys hitting them. If the Bills got duped, it's because they essentially swapped their late mode well equipped Subarus and Toyotas for older model stripped down Fords and Dodges simply because they were cheaper.

I think Frazier is likely to be the scapegoat and get the axe. IMO, Frazier did a really good job masking the Bills defensive deficiencies, primarily lack of talent, as long as he had Dareus to plug the middle on obvious running downs, but he simply doesn't have the talent now. I don't know if there's more to it, such as Williams and Alexander getting old. As on the OL, there may have been scheme changes that these guys are struggling to adapt to. Certainly Preston Brown played better when he had more talented players around him and a better DL rotation. If Glenn were healthy, I think there would be enough talent on the OL for it to function decently but the players, except for Ducasse, have simply not adapted well to Dennison's zone blocking scheme. Maybe it's not all the players but only 1 or 2 who are struggling but that's more than enough to derail plays with regularity. Certainly, Ducasse doesn't help. He's a scrub who has been a bust on every team he's ever been on as a pro.

Jacksonville.

You noticed that, too? Apparently talent is not part of the "skill set" that the Bills regime are seeking since they've managed to strip the Bills of so much of it in such a short time, and apparently without any regard to the consequences to the product they put on the field. The Bills -- I don't just include McDermott and Beane here because I think they are taking orders from higher up the corporate food chain by those focused only on the bottom line -- have displayed a really callous disdain for their fans and their fans' loyalty IMO. I don't know how else to describe the personnel moves that they've made since just before the trade deadline. There was a real chance that the Bills might have made the playoffs this year simply because of how bad the AFC is, but apparently saving a few million dollars on Dareus' salary was much more important than breaking the 17 year playoff drought. That's how much the Bills -- not the Bills players -- care about winning football games because to the suits in OBD, it's all about maximizing profit. Money ball.

Why are you amazed by what Bills fans continue to justify from OBD after all these years of their putting crappy teams on the field? Any excuse that OBD comes up with to shipping out a player who has supposedly "transgressed" (which lately apparently means making more than the league veteran minimum salary) gets instantly slurped up and regurgitated by the brainwashed legion. Sometimes OBD doesn't have to come with excuses; they just get rid of the player and let the True Believers make up lies to blame the players ... The True Believers will never hear a bad word about the Bills. Every move they make is brilliant. They still stubbornly cling to the myths that trading Jason Peters and Marshawn Lynch were good moves. They're not going to admit that trading Dareus was probably at least as bad, especially if Dareus goes on to have success in Jacksonville.

It doesn't matter. The Bills don't really care about the cap except when they can use it as an excuse to not re-sign their own players. They care about actual $$$ they spend. Taylor is due a bonus of several million at the beginning of the new league year, so he'll be cut before that date. Since the entire NFL knows how the Bills operate, nobody will offer them anything. Money ball.

Why don't they have better options? Oh, yeah, they opted to go with STers and PS refugees on the DL ... and then they traded away their best DLer for a 6th rounder supposedly because he didn't "buy into" the new system although the Bills were trying to peddle Dareus since before the first OTA.

If they do that, how are they going to package those draft picks to move up and draft their Yet-To-Be-Named Savior Franchise QB? After all, if they don't have their franchise QB, what's the whole point of building up the team since they won't be able to win the SB without one.

Jim Kelly never won a SB in 4 tries, either.

Have the Bills suddenly fixed their defense while the fans and the media were focused on the QB change? Of course not, so there's no more hope today than there was 6 days ago. Exchanging one active roster scrub for a practice squad scrub isn't going to do much to improve a defense that gave up nearly 500 yards and 9 TDs on the ground in 2 games.

There's a whole lot of whistling past the graveyard in this thread.

IOW, almighty McDermott lied with a sincere smile plastered on his face when he claimed they were trying to win games while rebuilding. That sounds about right. Con artists are great actors.

I agree with Alphadog's thoughts on Eli, too. I think the most notable aspect of Eli is his streakiness. That has stood out about him since he was a rookie. All QBs can have hot and cold streaks, but Eli's have been spectacular at times and seem to last longer than simply a handful of games. When he's "on", he not only can carry a team, he seemingly makes miraculous plays, but then there's "bad Eli" who becomes a turn over machine.

That's right, and the Bills' business model is to keep actual current payroll as low as possible while keeping ticket/merchandise sales as high as possible to maximize profits. Winning is totally irrelevant as they've demonstrated this season.

Look at the rosters, BLM. Most NFL players are black. It's a fact not an opinion. Young black men, especially those from poor backgrounds, gravitate to football and basketball because they offer real opportunities for talented kids to get out of poverty. Sports are certainly a better choice than criminal activity or just giving up. Most poor kids, white or black, don't have many options. Blacks aren't the only groups in the US that have used sports as keys to upward mobility. At various times and places in the US since after the Civil War, various immigrant groups dominated the popular sports of their eras: Irish, Germans, Jews, Italians, Hispanics. Young men with next to nothing except their athleticism and talent, and not much help from the larger society, used sports to better themselves and leap into the middle class. In the case of blacks, the larger society has tended to be virulently hostile until relatively recently.

How, exactly, have the Bills proved the national media wrong any time recently ... other than embarrassing those prognosticators who thought the Bills were potentially a playoff team before the Jests game?

The Bills have had all of 21 winning seasons in their 67 years of existence, only 2 of them in this century and none under the current ownership. The Bills haven't made the playoffs in seventeen years, the longest active post season drought in professional sports, and they are apparently doing just about everything possible to insure that their record for futility continues into the foreseeable future. If you don't like the national media insulting/mocking/criticizing the Buffalo Bills ineptitude, I suggest you complain to the people who can do something about it, the Pegulas.

Something like 70-80 percent of NFL players are black, and blacks make up the majority of players at every position except QB and special positions like kickers and long snappers. Less than a third (10 of 32) of the starting QBs are/have been black this season ... and that includes Brent Hundley who is replacing the injured Aaron Rodgers as well as Jacoby Brissette who was originally subbing for Andrew Luck who was expected to return. That's way under the 16-22 one would expect if blacks were given the same opportunities to be QBs in the NFL as whites, so a casual observer might very well think that there's something to the story. IMO, the problem isn't so much in the NFL as it is in big time college football. Just like there' are few no black HCs at the marquee collegiate programs that produce the majority of professional players, there's a dearth of black QBs starting at many of those same programs, perhaps most. My guess is that many/most young black QBs talented enough to be recruited into major collegiate programs are encouraged (sometimes by coaches but sometimes by family or friends) to play other positions beside QB because they're perceived as offering more opportunity to make the pros. That results in most of the top collegiate QB prospects being white. If you don't think this happens, read the bios of a lot of black pros playing other positions ... a significant number were HS QBs.