SoTier

How, exactly, will you know that you have "an above average QB" if he doesn't have protection or targets? When he goes elsewhere and shines like so many other ex-Bills have done in recent years?

It's Jauronball 2.0. Replace most talented players with JAGs, career STers, and PS refugees and pretend they're "just as good" because they "buy into The Process" while adding 1 big name "star" to con fans into filling the stadium ... rinse and then repeat ... ad nauseaum.

You're wasting your time pointing out facts to Shady. Some posters with agendas don't let the truth deter them from spreading their propaganda. Why fix what's not broken? It's Jauronball 2.0.

The Seahawks already had a talented team when they went without first round picks in 3 drafts, dude! They weren't trying to build up talent on a team that's full of JAGs, career STers, and PS refugees. Oh, and they haven't been quite so "fine" either. Russell Wilson, another QB the Bills could have taken but chose a WR bust instead, is like 80-90% of their offense and the only reason they don't have a losing record this season.

The Bills HAD "speed guys" ... the three of them are now playing in LA and in SF. Obviously, speed and sure handedness aren't part of the "skill set" that the Bills brain trust want.

How would having a "good QB" -- or even "any QB" -- fix the play calling unless the Bills get a twofer deal ... a new QB and a new OC?

I'm done "cutting the Bills slack" about anything. The supposed purpose of an NFL team is to win football games, but that obviously isn't what the Bills are interested in. If it was, the best Bills players wouldn't be scattered around the NFL on teams going to the playoffs while the Bills are loaded down with JAGs, career STers, and PS refugees yet again. Since the Drought started, if you include Wade Phillips (he coached 1 year during the Drought), the Bills haven't really suffered from bad coaching except for Jauron and Ryan. Phillips has been successful as a HC and even more successful as a DC, and Gregg Williams went to win a Super Bowl as New Orleans' DC. Mularkey, Marrone, and now Lynn appear to be solid NFL HCs ... Chan Gailey, like the others, didn't do a bad job as a HC but he was hampered by his team's lack of talent. Fans like to scapegoat coaches for the team's failures, but I think the Bills' problems go higher up the corporate food chain. Too many bean-counting accountants with other agendas than winning football games have made -- and continue to make IMO -- too many key decisions that impact whether the Bills have the talent to win football games no matter who their coaches are. So, Mike Mularkey stays on the list of the coaches that got away, just like Antoine Winfield is the first name on the list of outstanding players that the Bills let get away even if he left more than a dozen years ago.

Define "good coach". If you mean a HC with the reputation of being a good HC around the league and a winning record elsewhere in the NFL (like an Andy Reid or John Fox) before the Bills hired him, you have to go back 39 years to the hiring of Chuck Knox in 1978. Since then the Bills have hired either retreads (Levy, Phillips, Jauron, Ryan) or NFL neophytes (Stephenson, Bullough, Williams, Mularkey, Marrone, McDermott). Gailey actually had a winning record as an NFL HC in Dallas but he had been coaching in the college ranks for more than a decade when the Bills hired him, so he wasn't quite a retread but also not quite a newbie, either. He certainly didn't have the reputation of being a good coach around the NFL at the time he was hired. The only two who worked out were Levy and Phillips, and only Phillips had success both before and after he left the Bills, although he's probably best as a DC rather than a HC. Mularkey, Marrone, and Lynn seem poised to create a new category of Bills HC -- the good ones the Bills let get away. Good leaders pick good subordinates and let them do their jobs.

Why do you assume that? Have you even watched the Titans or Jags? Both are as flawed as the Bills in their own ways. In fact, outside of NE and Pitt, there are no really good teams in the AFC. The AFCW winner might be 8-8.

Again, you can't really say that because he hasn't done particularly well as a rookie, and even if he did, that doesn't mean he's going to continue to improve to become an accomplished pro WR. Unless they are really, really bad, it takes 2 or 3 years at least to determine if most players are keepers or not.

Old Time AFL Guy: that article was really poor. Is the author a Texas or Nebraska fan by chance? He offers no real substance for his prediction except mainly that Mayfield is short and will likely win the Heisman Trophy. Obviously, the author has never heard of Drew Brees, Russell Wilson or Kirk Cousins, all of whom fell out of the first round because they were deemed "too short/too slight" to be NFL starters, and have still found success. As for the Heisman Trophy winners coming up short in the NFL, that's an exceptionally stupid argument. The Heisman is awarded on collegiate achievement not on suitability for NFL success. Most QBs who get drafted into the NFL, even those taken in the first round, wind up disappointments, and the divergence of the college and pro games has made that even more likely. Even college QBs who have "all the right metrics" for NFL success frequently crash and burn. PS Since I don't follow college football, I have no preference for any collegiate QB ... it's just that the article was so bad. PSS When I tried to quote your post, that article messed up my reply format for some reason, so I didn't use it. I don't know if that's a general problem or something loopy with my browser.

We'll see. If the Bills shed most of the rest of their higher priced talent (Clay, Glenn, McCoy, Incognito, Taylor, Williams, Wood) in the off season, I think you'll have your answer about how "unfettered" Beane isn't because it will be the same kind of thing that they did in 2017 before Beane was even hired.

The only problem I have with the Bills going 9-7 and losing a playoff tie-breaker is that they miss the playoffs ... and that's likely because of one of the numerous poor decisions made by the Bills FO and/or coaching staff. Bringing Taylor back for 2018 and taking a QB prospect in the first or second round would be much too sensible for the Bills to ever do, so you don't have to worry your pretty little head about that for the next few months. OP: If a team signs a player off another team's practice squad, they have to put him on the active roster. That means that a player currently on the Bills roster gets cut. Who would you suggest get the axe (specific player or position) so that the Bills "scouts" get a closer look at some kid who wasn't good enough to make any other NFL roster all season? This is given the fact that the new QB won't know the Bills playbook, and that the starting QB gets about 80-90% of the coaches' attention and the backup gets almost all of the rest. What is to be gained by doing this now? This is something that the Bills might consider in March when the new league year starts, but not now. Look how long it took Garoppolo to get up to speed for the Niners ... and don't tell me that he wasn't given a whole lot more attention by the coaches than any PS refugee could even hope to get.

Why? The Bills have a fifth round rookie QB who does not appear to be ready to play in the NFL, so they should replace him with a PS QB from another team who would be even less ready? Or are you suggesting that the Bills replace Tyrod Taylor with a PS refugee?

Every violation of the rules is not a "character flaw". College kids drink. They smoke pot. They go out and get rowdy, and sometimes run afoul of the law. As long as they don't make that kind of behavior habit, then they likely will grow out of it and go on to lead normal, sober adult lives ... just like most of us stoned rock n rollers from the 60s did. Heavy drinking and drug use by young professionals, whether athletes or not, in their late twenties and early thirties when they should be focused on their careers and/or families is far more serious even if it was/is "only" rumor, especially when twenty or thirty years ago bad behavior by professional athletes was often covered up or ignored even by law enforcement. I just think it's as unfair to condemn collegiate athletes for occasionally engaging in petty misconduct common to the student population as it is to ignore/mitigate much more serious actions, whether legal or illegal, they might engage in that indicates they might have serious attitude/personality problems. Agreed. They will take one even if he's not all that good just to say they took one. I just hope they don't trade up to take one just to take one like they did for Losman.

Watson looked good but he played in exactly 7 games. The number of QBs who have looked great for fewer than 10 games as first time starters and then tanked are legion. Most recently and spectacularly are Brock Osweiler and Colin Kaepernick, which why it takes at least two and sometimes three years to decide if a QB is truly a keeper.

Russell Wilson proved that you don't even have to be 6'0 to play in the NFL.

I think this is a good assessment. I don't think Whaley was an independent GM who called all the personnel shots himself, so he couldn't build a team with his own vision. No Bills GM has been independent since Donahoe was fired in 2005. Whaley definitely didn't pick his own HCs, and he was definitely subservient to both Ryan and McDermott when it came to the draft. My feeling is that the decisions on which players were to be kept or allowed to walk in FA were done by higher ups in the Bills organization based only on monetary considerations. I think that Beane is pretty much in the same situation as Whaley was ... the figurehead GM at the beck and call of the HC for the draft and of the FO higher ups for player retention ... or in the case of the Bills, player non-retention.

I will add that the Chargers have staked their current claim to being a "hot team" on beating the Bills with Peterman and beating the Cowpies without Elliott and without their LT Smith. This week they get to play the winless Browns.

Where did I predict anybody's doom? With several gushing posters declaring McDermott a hero and savior based on the "feel good" article that was posted, Shaw66 pointed out that McDermott is still going to be judged by how well his team does on the field. I supported him by noting that even NFL icons can get tossed in the trash if their recent records aren't good enough, and that observation has nothing to do with "logic" but with fact. What is illogical is declaring McDermott a great coach and leader based on a "feel good" article. Secondly, don't think that accusing me of being a troll is going to silence me when it comes to criticizing moves the Bills have made or make that I think are bad, stupid, wrong-headed, short-sighted or a combination of any or all of those. I've been a fan of the Bills longer than many of the posters on this MB have been alive. I've been a season ticket holder, too, so I've earned the right to express my opinion on the team, past and present. If my opinion is mostly negative, well, the Bills haven't made the playoffs for 17 years and appear to have done all they could possibly do to insure that they miss for the 18th straight year in 2017. They had exactly 2 -- count 'em, 2! -- winning seasons in those 17 years. This season they strung together 3 of the worst losses ever experienced by this francise in its mostly losing history. What the hell is there to be positive about? That Jauronball 2.0 might be slightly less mind-numbingly boring than Jauronball 1.0?

The claim has been that Woods and Goodwin were allowed to walk because they didn't "fit the skill set" that the Bills needed. Who would have decided the "skill sets" players needed in March? McDermott and Dennison. Get a clue. Every team needs at least one speedy WR to stretch the field. Benjamin and Matthews are not going to catch passes 30 yards downfield, juke the DB, and sprint to the EZ. They aren't fast enough, and that's why they're not equivalent. They are not going to force defenses to play well off the LOS simply because the DBs are concerned about keeping them from catching long passes and scoring. By not having at least one WR like Watkins, Woods, or Goodwin, the Bills automatically limit their ability to make chunk plays, and that would be true no matter who their QB was, including Rodgers, Brady, Brees, etc.

Totally agree. I said something similar in another thread the other day. Who cares if Tyrod Taylor isn't "the future"? He's who the Bills have now, and while he's not a top shelf franchise QB, the Bills could do a whole lot worse than him. If creating a game plan structured to his talents -- and the talents of the OLers and RBs -- can get the Bills more wins, maybe even make the playoffs as a WC, how is that a bad thing? All this whining about how "we'd be one and done" is nonsense, too. Any team can win in the WC round ... especially this year. More importantly, winning and making the playoffs in 2017 certainly doesn't preclude a team from improving in 2018 and aiming higher, including drafting a "QB for the future".

NFL = NOT FOR LONG. Coaches and players are only as good as their recent records. So Eli Manning, the iconic face of the NY Giants for the last 13 years who bleeds Giant blue, gets dumped for Geno Smith.

Really? They let both Woods and Goodwin walk in FA and then they traded Watkins. Benjamin and Matthews are NOT the equivalent of any two of the three receivers the Bills got rid of simply because they cannot stretch the field. Zay Jones isn't a deep threat, either, and it's only been recently that he's been able to catch the ball. The Bills have absolutely no deep threat ... for a QB who has demonstrated that he can and will throw long in the past. Benjamin, Matthews, and Jones are nothing special, and together, they're a joke as an NFL caliber WR corps -- and Benjamin has barely played. Oh, and stuff the excuses for the Bills FO and the " so-and-so probably wasn't coming back next year ... ". We've heard this bull manure every single time the Bills get rid of a good player in order to replace him with a cheaper, less talented player. The Bills FO has spent the last 17 years religiously shedding good players rather than pay them and paying certain very average players for reasons known only to the suits at OBD, and what they did under the supposed "new regime" is exactly the same kind of thing they did regularly under the "old regimes".

Hey, don't whine to me that the brilliant Bills chose to let their Pro Bowl DB Gilmore walk in FA and had to draft a DB in order to fill the hole left by that move. That's been a pattern that the Bills have followed since the salary cap was instituted: they either let the good/great DBs, WRs, RBs that they've developed walk in FA or trade them for not all that much and then use the draft to fill the holes created by the departure of said DBs, WRs & RBS. Every time I've pointed out that the Bills did that exact same thing in 2017 despite having a "new" regime, including GM and scouts, I've been attacked by certain true believers who claim everything is all fixed now. Well, it ain't. The new regime is doing the same that the old regimes have done. So, be happy spinning fantasies about the yet unnamed QB the Bills will draft in 2018, maybe even with that first rounder from the Chiefs -- and don't cry in your beer that the Bills could have had Patrick Mahomes or DeShaun Watson instead of Nathan Peterman or that fantastic unnamed QB to be named later.