Richard Noggin

Okay, thank you for this. Obviously the gameplan did NOT work, even a little bit. I remember the Bills missing TONS of tackles, though. Reminds me a little of the approach to the Chiefs last regular season, insofar as the Bills were unable to execute when the opposition did as invited to do (run relentlessly). Might be that they didn't have the personnel to win their chosen matchups, which represents a failure of self-scouting among other things. And also, you have to effing switch it up a LITTLE, don't you?! Unless you've got just objectively superior talent, you have to keep a competent offense guessing from time to time.

Say it ain't so. To my ears that sounds...disqualifying.

Is the bolded true? Can you share where you learned this? That can't be true. Please don't let it be true.

d o o s h thinking on display here. Be better.

Bit far out to predict, no?

A full year (or more) before drafting him, Beane I think went on AND off the record about "that big kid in Wyoming." He was openly hoping Allen had a down year leading up to the draft so they'd have a shot at him. And he meant it. (I definitely overheard something to this effect at Tempo.) Maybe he truly didn't believe he'd have a chance at him, so had no qualms admitting the interest?

So the guy whose offensive players LOVE him and the trust he places in them, who is now HC of a big market franchise...that guy replacing an admittedly uninspiring hire after just one season (Dennison was hired during an offseason when no one wanted to come to Buffalo) means "McDs OC hires thus far have been underwhelming"?

But...Jim Kelly derp derp blah!

Love this breakdown. Wonder if Chad Hall would be the guy to push this WR-centric offensive growth? (I'm a Dorsey guy, FWIW.) I know he's got more credibility WITHIN NFL team circles than he does in popular forums, like TBD.

I was fortunate as a long-tenured server at Tempo to watch so many coaches, front office personnel, and players interact with each other...and I'll admit, Hackett was one of the most boisterous and intense football minds even while out to eat. Really got caught up in talking football with his fellow coaches who were less...engaged. Marrone, on the contrary, was boastful and self-satisfied. I came away impressed with Hackett's football righteousness. For whatever it's worth (and it might be worth a little something on strictly relative terms, closely witnessing so many intimate interactions and comparing them to one another). The amount of access a few of us had back then was pretty crazy.

One of Johnson or Hamlin (the Bills #3 and 4 safeties on the depth chart) will be a PLAYER in this league. My money is on Hamlin. They're learning from the best players and coaches (w/r/t secondary play), and one thing the Bills do at an elite level is identify potential in DB prospects. All the ingredients. The Bills need to worry more about LB and DL.

Sign Byron Pringle? Get er done?

That's all fine and good and as usual I mostly agree. But I wasn't making any of those points you're countering. Carry on!

Eff it; you've got Josh freaking Allen. You can afford to play a more aggressive defensive scheme, and potentially forcing an early turnover or two could really let an offense like ours put a team away. Giving up some big plays here and there, as we've seen, won't burry this offense when it's playing unbridled. Aggression is the key to a team featuring Josh Allen. Or whatever. Probably just not in McD's DNA either way.

No, I just don't see things as simply black and white the way you do. I genuinely wonder about the myriad variables influencing career trajectories. You are a smart poster, but you are also not terribly flexible in your thinking when challenged or even simply questioned.

Hey, I'm mostly asking questions that I think shouldn't be overlooked. Circumstances have SO MUCH to do with any given player's success, but especially at the QB position. How things ultimately do turn out for young QBs in the NFL don't necessarily reflect the only way they could have happened. How many highly-regarded prospects could have benefitted from a complete redshirt rookie season and excellent one-on-one coaching, with elite weapons already flourishing in a dynamic scheme waiting for him once he took the field in year two?

Plus, do you think Mahomes would have had a similarly fruitful redshirt year here? In KC the coaching was well-established and the team was solid. Mahomes went through a daily QB camp for the entire season, breaking down his mechanics, habits, thought processes...before building them back up again. Allen on the other hand was thrust into the fire (do NOT forget who his offensive coaches were that season...and his offensive "weapons") and he relied upon outside/off-season tutelage to refine his game (at least early on).

Without digging up actual clips, I recall Bills d-linemen looking rather foolish against Mahomes in the 1st quarter especially, including leaving their feet and lunging at air. Mahomes just does it with a stick up his butt and awkward, short, choppy steps.

It may be due to the franchise's remarkable top-to-bottom turnaround since the day McD took over, dontcha think? Breaking the playoff drought his first year had a lot to do with his early legitimacy (we all know the way the Bills snuck in and how poor they looked once there, but he got the absolute most out of that roster). And he was largely responsible for bringing in Beane, and consequently #17, so...now the franchise is a legitimate SB contender every year until proven otherwise. Pretty amazing to be in this position after decades of mediocrity. He's likely earned at least two more seasons to win a SB, barring some kind of unforeseen debacle in 2022. The best organizations in the NFL value head coaching consistency.

So maddening from an opposing fan's/team's perspective. For example, Mahomes did very similar things early in the game.

The loss hurts so badly precisely BECAUSE of how well Allen played down the stretch (both in the last two games AND in the last two minutes of both halves against KC). So in a way, the author's claim is way off...emotionally. The Bills squandered legendary performances from a transcendent talent who did everything possible to win THIS SEASON (BEFORE his contract becomes an obstacle). The author is mostly ignoring pathos. In another sense, though, of course the author's argument has some merit...logically. We all witnessed the absolutely undeniable ascension of a formerly polarizing player to unanimously elite status. And typically, elite QB play doesn't waiver year-to-year the way defensive play does. So the sober, rational takeaway can be that Bills fans should reasonably look forward to 5-10 years of elite QB play, which gives the team a chance basically every season. In this way, the author's logos is sound (minus one caveat). (A logical counterpoint could suggest that the Bills failed to capitalize on what might be...looking back...the franchise's best path to a championship, given contract situations, roster makeup, top playoff seeds falling, etc. There are, in the end, so many delightfully painful ways to look at this loss WITHOUT even digging up the trauma of past devastations.)

Clearly I'm talking about Bills fans.

Same thing on the Hail Murray last season. No composure or discipline. Just all-out pursuit. While that same approach helps uber-talented edge guys like T.J. Watt rack up the sacks, it also helps opposing offenses rack up the rushing yardage in the vacated B and C gaps, and it helps mobile QBs escape contain.

I think he was trying to look at the overall event and our relationship to it, without blaming anyone or being a prisoner of the moment.

Also, chasing him to dive and tackle is NOT what was called for. Chasing him to corral and contain is what they should have focused on. Stay in front of him, cut down his escape routes, and gradually close in. Wouldn't have missed so many damned tackles and allowed so many scrambles with that mentality. The coverage plan was working for much of the game (of course that back-end discipline broke down eventually). But the d-linemen KEPT losing contain. WTF. Seems like Addison and others were gunning for sacks and glory when they should have been patiently compressing the pocket.