CincyBillsFan

That big QB contract doesn't seem to inhibit the Chiefs & Eagles from reaching and winning Super Bowl games years after year. There is a limit to how much better Allen can make players around him. At some point there is nothing Allen can do. The Bills are being greedy with Allen and they're asking to much of him. Sure Allen has the type of personality that takes on that burden but it's up to Bean & McD to make sure there is a balance. That we have been so close to the Chiefs in the playoffs is entirely due to Allen's elite QB play in those games.

I think we're just talking past each other here. The examples I gave are of HC/GM pairs who reached the pinnacle, had an elite QB under a big contract and reloaded to make another run to the Super Bowl. McD/Bean have failed to successfully RELOAD and we're nearing the point where we may need to rebuild. And I don't want them involved in the rebuild. The only caveat I would throw out is that I'm waiting until the end of this season before deciding that they did in fact fail to reload. If the Bills go on a run and they very well might, then Bean/McD pulled off the reload. Only time will tell.

It wasn't "garbage time" until McD inexplicably had our RB attempt an onside kick down 23 - 13 with 3 minutes left and the Bills having all 3 TO's and the 2 minute warning. And for the record Allen made several great plays on that drive that ended in the INT in the 3rd quarter. And again the problem isn't any one game. It's a WR room full of players who can't get open or make the tough NFL level catches every other contending team gets. It's a defense that on Miami's SECOND possession lets them go 92 yards in 7 minutes & 30 seconds to score the games first TD. It's an offensive coordinator who calls for a pass on 4th & 1 right after a Miami TO exposed they were going to pass on that down! It's a defense who allows huge game breaking TD runs at crucial moments in the game. Allen is not the problem and his play today is not the issue. The issues are how this team has been built, injury's and the under performance of so many key players around Allen.

Not every week but on occasion you need to win those games just like you need to win a 41 - 40 game. Ditto for the Chiefs & Eagles.

Allen made some of his signature jaw dropping plays today and he also made a couple of bad mistakes. So what. The problem isn't Allen it's what's around him. Almost no one steps up to help Allen and the D puts the O in tough situations over and over again. Throw in same bad coaching decisions and as the game progresses we see Allen get antsy and start pushing. This leads to both good & bad plays. My point with the "trade Allen" crap is that some of you people obsess over the little things with Allen while ignoring the huge issues around the organization. It's exasperating and some of us throw a variation of the Greenberg idea out there for effect.

The Chargers are on their way to winning one of those tonight. I agree that it's wrong to call McD/Bean a cancer or that they haven't won anything. They have been successful and they have created a winning culture. The problem is that they haven't been good enough given the unicorn of a QB they have.

They have also failed to stem the decline of the defense in spite of continuing to feed that side of the ball significant draft & FA capital. So along with your correct observation about not surrounding Allen with more skill player talent, they have dropped the ball on the D. That's 2 very large strategic actions that they have failed at. And while McD/Bean may have the highest winning % by a GM/HC in franchise history they have not come close to matching the achievements of the 1988 - 1993 Bills teams that won 4 of 5 AFC championships and went to 4 straight Super Bowl games.

I'm with you here and I don't know whether to be happy or sad. In 2 of the last 5 seasons the Bills faced worse odds at winning their division at this point in the season then they do now. And in both cases McD rallied the team and they went on win streaks won the division and at least one playoff game. It would not shock me in the least of they did it again. But that's where I'm not sure whether to be happy or sad. Here we go again with another season where we thought we had a good chance to lock up the #1 seed and have a straight road to the SB. Then they stumble and suddenly just winning the division or even making the playoffs is put at risk. The psychology here is compelling: facing the very real possibility of missing the playoffs we rejoice when they turn it around and win the division. The season is now a success because we avoided a disastrous failure. I fell for this both times in the past. I suspect I'll fall for it hook, line & sinker again this season if it plays out this way.

Good points: You make a compelling argument that McD/Bean are not nearly as good as 7 or 8 coaches/GM pair's who have built Super Bowl winning teams around elite QBs and managed to reload while doing it. Sure McD/Bean are better then the dumpster fires in places like NY, Miami, Tennessee and others but that is faint praise. I think the answer to whether or not we're rebuilding rapidly around Allen is "no, we are not" and worse what we are doing is strategically wrong headed and counter productive. And I don't think McD/Bean are the right guys to do it. I'll wait until the end of the season to more firmly decide, because for me hope springs eternal, but ever since 13 seconds I have slowly but surely lost confidence in those two to get it right with Allen. It's not a straight down drop it's more along the lines of 2 steps back then one step forward followed by 2 steps back, etc. As for swapping Allen for a bunch of picks that is coming from the Mike Greenberg suggestion that the Jets offer all 5 of their 1st round picks for Joe Burrow. It's a great thought exercise over a beer but I can't see the Bills ever doing that. Allen, not first round picks is the key to winning a Bills SB and unless the Bills got better after Allen left Pegula would soon have trouble filling up that brand new palace the tax payer just built. And I have a sneaky suspicion that wherever Allen went a SB might be in their future.

For some players, particularly veteran guys, load management makes sense. But it seems to me that the Bills are trying to load manage the entire team for the entire season. This is a novel concept that is done in baseball & basketball but I've never seen it tried in football before. Only time will tell if it was the right or wrong thing to do. So far, it's a mixed result leaning towards it being the wrong thing to have done.

This is sarcasm right? To bad we can't test your bad take. So let's trade Allen for 4 1st round picks. My guess is that there are at least 25 teams, maybe more, that would break down the door to make that offer. The Bills could probably get it to five 1st round picks. Then after Allen is gone we can see how well McD/Bean do.

It won't be easy for me but I suspect that Friday night football and Saturday's can go a long way towards satisfying my football addiction. I have toyed with getting Buckeye season tickets near where another lifetime Bills fan has his at the Shoe (we both graduated UB and came to Cincinnati to work). he's getting fed up with the Bills to. To be honest I couldn't walk away as long as the Bills were making the playoffs. But this year I was at my grandsons 7th grade football game listening to the Bills/Saints game on my phone. In the 3rd quarter I was so disgusted with the Bills struggling to pull away from the woeful saints at Highmark that I shut the phone off and watched the kids game. I figured if the Bills won great but if they lost to the Saints I didn't want to hear it. As an aside how do you think those tens of thousands of Bills fans who took over Atlanta and Miami's stadiums feel? They spent serious dollars to go to games that the Bills on paper should have won. how disappointing was today's loss? While I'm rambling I'll throw out one more observation. Some will think that we're being drama queens here and overreacting. But how have the last 6 seasons really been different from the drought years? Yea I get we're now making the playoffs and we weren't during the drought. But given how every season ends in almost the exact same way it seems like all we're doing is serving a life sentence in football purgatory in a much nicer hotel then we did during the drought.

I agree. While I respect Allen for this it's also not sustainable in a sport that relies so heavily on TEAM performance. Think about the Super Bowls Bills and all the help Kelly got from Thomas, Reed, Loften, Beebe & Metzelars. All the incredible catches and plays made almost every week. This season we are lucky to see 1 or 2 great plays per month by the receivers. Even during the drought years think about the quality of WR in Buffalo: Moulds, Johnson, Evans, Price, Woods & Josh Reed. Only Diggs and maybe Beasley could match those guys.

I just don't enjoy watching Bills games like I used to. They're wasting one of the great QB talents of all time and there's something sacrilegious about that. Here is the franchise that managed to lose 4 straight Super Bowl games (I agonized over each and every one) then spent 18 seasons in football purgatory which was awful to experience and now maybe their greatest sin in wasting the prime years of a QB like Allen. I have a grandson that will be playing HS football in 2 years and I'm a big Ohio State fan. That may be enough football for me. Sure I'll be glued to the TV the next few weeks to see if my hunch that the Bills go on a long winning streak plays out. But my patience is nearing the end. At least when Allen was turning he ball over more he was making one big play after the other in an offense that was awesome to watch. Today they've neutered their stallion QB and while the analytics say the offense has been great anyone watching the games knows there is something way off. In the end it's about wins and losses and this new offense is doing no better then the much more exciting turnover prone offenses of 2020 - 2023. I'll give it the rest of this season but if Bean/McD bet wrong with this new approach to Allen and the offense then I might be done.

This could be directly leading to an air of desperation within Allen, which is not healthy. Since we know he won't ever throw a coach or player under the bus he internalizes every failure. He thinks that if only he had thrown a better ball here or read the D better there they would have made the play. Yet week after week after week we almost never see a receiver make an extraordinary play to help Allen out. In fact today we saw Kincaid make a great catch on a ball behind him that was probably the first time in months that a Bills receiver made a super play on an Allen throw where his ball placement was a little off. Later in the game a Miami CB got his finger tips on a deep Allen throw and barely deflected the ball. Coleman couldn't snag a deflection that I see College AND NFL WR's routinely make. Coleman has terrible visual ball tracking skills. IMO this season will go a long way towards determining whether Allen pulls an Andrew Luck in the next couple of years or gets his mojo back and plays 10 more years. While Allen hasn't had the physical damage Luck had he's experienced a great deal more mental fatigue and that can be just as wearing on a person.

Then why do it? Seriously. Why not kick off and see what happens. Maybe the Dolphins get careless, fumbles happen or they get cute and throw an incomplete pass. Maybe we pull within 3 with 2 TO's remaining? There was 3 minutes left in the game and the Bills had 3 TO's and the 2 minute warning.

Yea what the hell was that? I mean how much time does he practice onside kicks? Was there concern over the Prater injury? I mean I would think an old timer like Prater has some wicked spins or hops he could put on the ball. But Davis? That looked like a bad HS onside kick.

This is why everyone I was watching the game with wanted to go for it on 4th and a half yard on that opening drive. Instead we punt, and it was a great punt pinning the Dolphins back at their 8 yard line. From there Miami went on a 92 yard, 7 minute & 30 second TD drive. At that point you could see the shift in the game.

I think there is something to what we're saying on this thread. They are engaged in a season long experiment in load management. This is the hottest thing in sports especially in those sports with very long seasons like Basketball & Baseball. I agree that Bean & McD aren't trying to lose and they aren't trying to "spite fans" - that would be crazy and they aren't crazy. Both guys want to win a Super Bowl more then we fans do. And they think this approach, which involves load managing injury's and Allen is the way to get the Lombardi trophy. But to properly load manage you have to, behind closed doors, look at some teams differently then others. You have to think that you can beat certain teams with an 80% effort while against others you need a 110% effort. If we are right then the issue is whether load management works in football. It works in baseball with 162 games and basketball with 82 games but IMO it won't work in football with only 17 regular season games. Bean/McD made a decision to focus on defense at the expense of offense relying on their elite QB to overcome shortcomings in the offense. A lot of us think that has been a strategic mistake. If they're now engaged in aggressive load management and not treating every game as the Super Bowl then that to might be a mistake. Only time will tell if this will work and the season is not over yet - not by a long shot. But it's fair to note what's going on.

This 100%. In my mind complimentary football is when the defense forces more then 1or 2 three & outs. How often does the D allow a team to drive 40 yards, take 5 minutes off the clock then pin us back inside the 5 yard line with a short punt? It happened twice today.

The problem is that some poor drafting and FA signings combined with a lot of injury's with the new players has meant that not only haven't they fixed the D it is playing worse then it was last year. There are some bright spots but the return on the draft & FA capital spent on this defense over the last few years has been piss poor.

I haven't read all the posts in this thread so maybe this has been talked about but did any one we tried the onside kick to early? 3:30 left, 3 TO's and the 2 minute warning Why not start Miami at their 30? Instead they started at the Bills 38 allowing them to be more aggressive then they would have been back at their 30. IMO you save the onside kick until the last moment. Hell, the extra pressure on the receiving team with a minute left might make a difference.

TO's are going to happen. In the past the Bills often overcame them because they were built to overcome them. This team not so much.

Allen started forcing things in the 2nd half with the Bills down 16 - 0. That's when TO's can rear their ugly head. In the first half bad coaching, terrible WR play and a piss poor Defensive effort all contributed to the Bills being down 16 - 0. And when Allen put the cape on it was to little to late as the Bills simply don't have the explosive plays or play makers to exploit what Allen brings to the table.

Yea today they were a problem. But my point was that when you look at the issues facing the Bills THIS SEASON Allen is the LEAST of their problems. Sure when Allen has to play Superman he puts the ball in greater risk. There will be TO's. But he also makes spectacular plays. I am a fan and I am being honest when I say that the Defense is still a major issue and that our WR group is as bad as there is in the NFL. And the coaching can be head scratching at best.