Avisan

Sounds like that's exactly what happened, Ed was feeling it so he kept cooking. I think rotation by default with wiggle room for when a guy is "on" is the best of both worlds, no?

I cannot even imagine being this miserable and insufferable after the team I allege to be a fan of pulls out a huge win against their toughest opponent of the season. Get a grip, dude.

It was the third down vs. KC, too. Kincaid had already gotten the first, then Allen got the first AGAIN, and somehow neither counted. That crew shorted us on spots all night. It was maddening. Football really is a game of inches at time, refs shorting us an entire yard in key situations is getting really, really old.

Yeah fam, I watched the game, too. Players were getting beat, and injuries reducing rep counts together in the preseason reared its head frequently. The Ravens are absurdly talented across the board and took advantage of every opportunity we gave them. It was extremely frustrating and disheartening to watch. Then our talent started showing up and the Ravens were spent. The Bills weathered things not going their way for 55 minutes, made a few crucial plays, and won the damn thing. When your team is less talented than the other team, the other team has a QB that ALSO is making unicorn plays, your team continuously gets rough breaks... and you pull out the win anyway, it's absurd to pretend that has nothing to do with the head coach of the team.

I mean, this game is the perfect example of why he stays. Players making mistakes that get the team in the hole. Getting screwed on a highly questionable but unlikely-to-be-overturned spot (seriously though why do the refs keep doing this to us in big games). Some balls breaking our way, but some seeeeriously not, leading to the team still being down 15 late. What does the team do? Keeps playing hard. Keeps grinding the Ravens down. Keeps pushing until they finally take the lead against an exhausted, demoralized team that is the most talented opponent we will face this season. This of course doesn't happen without Allen. It doesn't happen without the quality of culture established and maintained under McDermott, either.

Really tired of getting screwed on spots in big moments

That makes sense. It makes their takeaway count truly wild, too. Opponent turnover on 17.5% of drives is an absurd rate. Funny that we turned into such a feast or famine defense, but it does make sense based on the bodies we had available and with our offense grinding teams down. One big mistake was fatal for most opponents.

Odd. All of that is really difficult to square with other stats, the only way this makes any sense is if Bills games had ~25% fewer drives per game than the average NFL game. I guess that's possible, but with the Bills having an extremely middle of the pack time of possession ratio that doesn't make much sense. Been having trouble finding anything that tracks number of possessions per team, either per season or per game, and manually counting up # of possessions would be a huge PITA so I haven't done that, but that may be the only one to square the circle, here.

I need to see a source on that stat. I question its accuracy. The Bills were 11th best both in points allowed per game and opponent points allowed per play. They were 17th in opponent plays per game, so perfectly middle of the road there. Hard to come up with how they end up at 18th per drive without contradicting with at least one of those other data points.

My bad, one season where they were just outside the Top 10 for points allowed. So one season where they were merely "good" instead of "very good" at their primary job. FWIW, the dynasty Patriots regularly fielded defenses that were average or worse in most metrics other than points allowed and/or turnovers.

11th in scoring, 3rd-most takeaways. Significant 3rd down struggles, and middle of the pack in yards allowed but given the personnel deficiencies in the back seven I think it overperformed its talent.

It's important to note with Dorsey that we scored well in EPA/play and iirc some other advanced metrics. It's not as though the offense was a tire fire. It was, however, very boom or bust and it amplified Josh's worst hero ball impulses. It wasn't a good fit. Why would I not be? The defense has ranked very highly every season under Frazier, McDermott, and Babich. I think we have had talent issues more so than scheme issues on defense. A defense is often only as strong as its weakest link and we had some serious matchup talent issues in all of our exits vs. the Chiefs.

Gee, I wonder if having a stable, high-quality head coach has anything to do with our sustained success and consistency? Changing coordinators is not the same as changing the person establishing the culture and vision, assembling a staff, guiding player development strategies, etc. While McDermott gives his coordinators a lot of autonomy, they ultimately still report to him when it comes to approach, preparation, and strategies. He has developed and promoted within the system to help maintain consistency, while bringing in outside perspectives to help shore up areas of weakness. It has worked very well to this point. Changing head coaches means the whole thing goes, and the bar is VERY high for trying to find an upgrade based on the sustained success the Bills have enjoyed.

New culture, new schemes, new player preferences, etc. Many coaches like having increased control over personnel decisions, too. That was reported to be a factor for Vrabel after his Tennessee stint, for example. Josh Allen would remain constant, which obviously helps, but in every other way it would likely be starting over. The QB is a huge part of the equation, but it isn't the only thing, and very recently we saw how wrong things can go even with our unicorn under center with Dorsey as OC. Coaching changes bring large organizational and roster shifts. Starting over is a pretty accurate way to describe it.

Yeah, my first thought when I saw this. The dude pulls up to not get baited into 15 yards and Mahomes lays him out in response. It's bull**** and I hope players start absolutely lighting him up. Take the 15 if you have to. This is ridiculous.

? Of course we have talent gaps. Just about every team has talent gaps. That's the whole point of a salary cap, to enforce relative parity. I also freely admit that water is wet. I think Beane gives out too many mid-value contracts to league vets in decline, but that's his only real downside and the Bills have a very good overall roster despite that.

McD gets to be "coach for life" because the Bills are an extremely good team every single season and their units often perform above their talent level.

The number of you absolute geniuses on here that seems to assume that if we change coaches we'll just gently stroll our way into a Superbowl win is mind-blowing. The Saints under Payton with Brees, one of the all time greats, regularly missed the playoffs. Phillip Rivers was an incredible talent and didn't get many opportunities in the postseason relative to his ability. It's unfortunate that we happened to ascend at the same time as another dynasty, but it's where we're at. If there were some magical Chiefs-destroying coach in this league, he would be employed and *regularly beating the Chiefs.*

Say it with me: Practice. Squad.

The data is what it is, fam. This is frankly an embarrassing way to conduct yourself.

Our defense has never been a terrible unit under McDermott. There's no reason to think it would be any worse than last year and there's a good chance it's better.

This does numerically back the idea that the Bills give out a ton of midrange contracts to midrange players relative to the league. It's provided great stability and continuity that has led to sustained success, but it may well be leaving us too resource-strapped to take more FA/trade swings at elite players to get over the Superbowl hump.

Allen really didn't have to put his body on the line much last season. Other than his early-season hijinks leading to the broken hand and Amari Cooper missing the new player orientation about whether or not you let Allen involve himself in backyard football pitch backs ("NO"), there were very few of those moments. He does it anyway sometimes, because that's what makes him happy, but it wasn't necessary last season.

This, but unironically. Y'all gotta get over yourselves.

In a bizarro world where the Bills don't have Allen but have a top 10-15 QB instead, they're likely still division favorites and certainly perennial wildcard contenders.