SoTier

Kelly was in no way better than Allen. Using Super Bowl appearances is nonsense, especially in the case of Allen and Kelly. The Bills haven't failed to make the SB because of Allen. In defense of Namath, it was a very different era. Actually, the top QBs back then seldom had completion percentages above 55%, and many were below that because they threw so many more "bombs". My guess is that if Allen or Mahomes or Burrow were throwing many, sometimes most of their passes to WRs 30 or 40 yards downfield, their completion percentages would drop significantly. Also, Weeb Eubank who coached that SB winning team, and he was probably the best HC the Jests ever had. After he retired, the Jets sucked, especially on the OL, and Namath got beaten up pretty regularly because there were so many fewer rules protecting QBs. Both O'Brien and Pennington were pretty good QBs. I would put them both above Todd. O'Brien was in the class of 83 with Elway, Kelly, and Marino, so he suffered in comparison -- and the fact that the Jests were barely competitive with the Bills and Dolphins. Injuries plagued Pennington, but he got the Jests to the playoffs nearly every season that he was able to play all/most of a season. After the Jests released him, Pennington led the Dolphins to a playoff berth before another shoulder injury ended his career.

I can't disagree with your list. The bottom of that list is pretty sad. FTR, Lamonica and Reich weren't even starters for the Bills.

Peters had the quickness and size needed to play LT, and the Bills knew they were always going to move him there. Brandon signed him to a contract for low-end RT money. In fact, Peters' back up at LT on the Bills made as much as Peters. After moving to LT, Peters played at an elite level. He was twice named 2nd team All Pro. Peters didn't realize he'd been tricked until he went to the Pro Bowl and found out what other LTs were making. That's when he demanded a new contract.

Luckily for the Bills, Brandon harassed the wrong lady and ran afoul of the Pegulas.

The Bills GM was Russ Brandon. He was totally focused on maximizing profits with winning football games a very distant second.

That shows you what happens when you don't have an NFL caliber OL except for one player (Peters), a QB who refused to throw more than 5 yards beyond the LOS (Trent Edwards), a WR corps made up of Lee Evans, Josh Reed, Roscoe Parrish, and a washed up Peerless Price, and a risk adverse HC (Dick Jauron). The Bills didn't "lose" Peters. They threw him away. Russ Brandon, the Bills de facto GM, cheated Peters by negotiating a deal based on him playing RT as he was just learning the position. When Peters moved to LT and made All Pro, he wanted to renegotiate his deal, but Brandon refused. Peters held out for one training camp IIRC, but finally returned to the team, vowing to play out his contract and leave in FA. Brandon offered him a decent contract, but Peters made it clear he was done with the Bills. Brandon traded him to Philly for one of the Eagles' 2 first round picks (it ended up being #28) before the season started. Peters made the Pro Bowl for Philly that season. The Bills didn't have an NFL caliber LT until 2012 when they drafted Cordy Glenn in the 2nd round. The way that Brandon handled Peters -- and to a lesser extent, Marshawn Lynch -- is the primary reason I absolutely loath Russ Brandon. After trading away Peters, Jauron tried to move Walker to LT. He refused and "retired". Later in the 2009 season he returned to the Raiders at RT. He played 1 more season before really retiring.

My bad. I thought you were claiming that the Bills hadn't prioritized the defense, but when I read the post that you originally responded to, I saw that you were talking about size and speed on defense.

Umm ... the facts don't support your statement. Six years ago (2019) they drafted DT Ed Oliver at #9. Five years ago (2020) they drafted DE AJ Epenesa at #54. They traded their first round plus some other picks for Stefon Diggs. They added RB Zach Moss and WR Gabe Davis in the 3rd & 4th rounds. They also draft Bass in the 6th round. This was probably the only year that the Bills went heavily offense in the draft. Four years ago (2021) they drafted DE Greg Rousseau at #30 and LB Boogie Basham at #61. Three years ago (2022} they drafted DB Kaiir Elam at #23 and LB Terrel Bernard at #89. They also signed LB Von Miller. Also on that 2022 defensive roster were All Pro LB Matt Milano, S Jordan Poyer, S Micah Hyde, CB Tre'Davious White, and LB Tremaine Edmunds.

They have yet to have a game wrecking pass rusher except for the 2022 season before Von got hurt ... and during that period, McDermott certainly managed to maximize Von's effectiveness. They also had Tre White, Micah Hyde, and Jordan Poyer in the defensive backfield for a while (only 2 games for Hyde). I think that McDermott has run the scheme he ran in 2023 and 2024 trying to minimize the deficiencies on the DL and in the defensive backfield caused by the injuries to Hyde, White, and Miller (all of whom never came back as good as they had been) and the decline of Poyer's skills in 2023.

You and I are usually on opposite sides of how to win that SB, but I totally agree that fear of an expensive FA acquisition getting hurt (like Von Miller) should not be a deciding factor when that player doesn't have a history of frequently getting injured.

And Diggs played great for four of those seasons before he decided he wanted to be elsewhere. The poster to whom I responded claimed that the Bills hadn't given Allen WRs, and that's blatantly untrue. Despite their cap restrictions, the Bills added Samuel and Cooper last season. Samuel suffered from turf toe for almost the entire season. Cooper started meshing with Allen before he was injured, and like Coleman, he didn't play as well post-injury as he did before. Moreover, the Bills have given Allen a great OL so that he's not getting crushed regularly when trying to pass ... like Burrow all the time and Mahomes in the SB.

It's highly unlikely that games on OTA TV are going to go away any time soon -- not until OTA broadcasting ends which is also unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future. The NFL is not moving games to streaming services to increase viewership. Streaming services are buying the rights to some games in order to increase their viewership. If the services don't get a permanent bump in their customers from the games, they won't buy more exclusive rights. Making all NFL games available for streaming is simply the NFL avoiding any issues with anti-trust laws. The networks are going to continue to broadcast teams' games to OTA stations. Even when local team games are "stream only on XYZ service", they are available to local OTA stations. Out of market fans are the ones who are impacted most by streaming services' exclusive rights to individual games.

I cannot believe that McDermott -- or any NFL HC with half a brain and lacking a super-sized ego -- would get the best DLer in the NFL on his roster and NOT design a defensive scheme to maximize his talents. McDermott is the guy who fired his OC during the season and allowed his new OC to immediately start refashioning the offensive scheme to take better advantage of the Bills offensive talent. What evidence do you have that McDermott and Babich wouldn't refashion the Bills defensive scheme to take advantage of Garrett's -- or even a somewhat lesser "game wrecker" type DLer -- that the Bills added to the team other than your own obvious dislike of McDermott?

This is my position on acquiring Miles Garrett, too, and I've never been one to chase after this big name or that via trade or free agency. Garrett is special. He's worth the risk that he might be injured and not play as well in the future as he has in the past.

Any player can be injured and never play again as well he did pre-injury. Nothing is ever guaranteed. The Bills could stand pat at #30 in the 2025 draft and draft a DLer there who might take 2-4 years to reach potential or they could package their 2025 first and one of their seconds as well as their 2026 first to move up to the middle of the first round to take a better DL prospect who might need only a season or two to reach his potential. That DLer could also suffer an injury in TC and never play as a rookie. That happened with QB JJ McCarthy in Minnesota this past season. The draft is a crap shoot. Half of all first round draft picks are either out right busts or disappointments or they get injured early on and never play as well as they did before the injury.

Plan B would be don't bother with him. Actually, that would be Plan A.

Or maybe the Bills have just had a run of bad luck. Do you really think that the Commanders would have beaten the Lions in the Divisional Round if they don't have 16 players on IR for that game, including their best defender, Aidan Hutchinson? Untrue. They didn't have Rapp. They didn't have Benford.

Was Stefon Diggs an UDFA or a refugee from the waiver wire??? Is the Bills OL trash???? For the love of God, STOP LYING TO ADVANCE YOUR AGENDA.

Why are you comparing a rookie DT to DTs who have been in the NFL for decades? If you want to "prove" how bad Carter was as a rookie by using statistics, then use them fairly. Compare rookies to each other, not to veterans.

There were 219 rookie DTs in the 2024???? I think not. Tre White was drafted #27 in the first round. Cole Bishop was drafted #60 (#28 in the second round) which is much closer to the third round than to the bottom of the first round where White was drafted . If he was ready to play in the NFL, he would have been gone before #60.

I don't know if the Bills would have won any SBs with Whaley as GM but I think that they might have a stronger roster. Whaley knew talent. As a GM, he was never totally in charge because he reported to Russ Brandon, who was dedicated to maximizing profits rather winning football games. Whaley was continually forced to scramble to fill holes when Brandon decided the Bills couldn't "afford" to pay one good player after another. When he was fired after the 2017 draft, there was a lot of speculation that Whaley wanted to draft Mahomes at #10 and clashed with McDermott over that. McDermott won, and Whaley was gone. Beane -- and McDermott -- lucked out when Brandon was forced to resign in 2018 because of complaints that he was sexually harassing female employees of the Sabres.

Carter is a DT, and DTs generally take longer to develop than DEs, especially when they're late Day 2 picks (#31 in the third round). He was also injured IIRC.

So it might have been Monos/Nix. Even under Nix, Whaley evaluated most of the talent. As bad as Manuel was, I will acquit Monos/Nix/Whaley of being so incompetent as to pick Manuel in the first round because they all reported to Russ Brandon, and Brandon wanted a QB in the first round even though there were no QB prospects worth taking in the first round. Ralph Wilson was dying, and the team was going to be sold, so Brandon wanted a full stadium in 2013 to demonstrate the team's profitability to prospective buyers. He saw a first round QB as the best way to achieve that given how crappy the Bills had been of late. When the "message" is an opinion, the "messenger's" agenda matters, dude. "My dog is a German Short-haired Pointer" is a fact. "German Short-haired Pointers are better than Dachsunds" is an opinion. That I owned a GSP for 15 years and that I do not like ankle-biter dogs just might have a little something to do with my opinion.

He could be. If the Panthers get him an OL and some weapons, he might blossom. Did you forget that Josh Allen didn't look very promising on a really talent-deprived Bills team in 2018? He improved significantly between his rookie and sophomore season, but even in his third season, lots of analysts still doubted him.

I think that a lot of people said something similar to that about Bryce Young. He even started 2024 poorly, but then "the light came on" and he played really well the rest of the season. Certainly down the stretch, he played better than last year's OROY CJ Stroud. Players making a big jump between their rookie and sophomore seasons is very common.