CincyBillsFan

I think Harbaugh would be a great coach for the Bills. He checks off all the boxes the most important being that he comes from the offensive side of the ball. IMO the next 2 games will tell the tale. Anything less then 2 - 0 and Pegula should reach out to Harbaugh to see if there is any interest and under what conditions the guy might take the job. Sure this is risky as parting ways with McD at the end of the season in favor of Harbaugh might simply accelerate the decline and dump the Bills in the toilet real fast. But I would prefer risking a complete collapse and rebuild then the slow decline that we're experiencing now. Give me death by guillotine over death by a thousand cuts any day.

Your metrics are screwed up. If the franchise is unwilling or unable to construct an offense around their elite QB that can deliver more wins & a #1 overall seeding then it's foolish to use those criteria in judging that QB. Allen has already shown he can win the biggest games and raise his play to the stratosphere in the playoffs. The fact they haven't reached a SB yet has NOTHING to do with Allen and everything to do with the Bills coaching and defensive performances. To suggest that Allen is holding the Bills back is comprehensibly wrong. Without Allen this team is at best 3 - 6 today with no hope of turning it around this season or at anytime in the foreseeable future.

What has changed? Opponents coverage schemes and their willingness to stick with them. Also other teams recognize that the Bills don't really have anyone who can stretch the field with blazing speed.

Funny how we get accused of "hero worship" for defending Allen on 2BD. As you note the stats are pretty clear that Allen is having a very strong season. Over my professional life I've found that most problems can be explained by 2 or 3 big issues that if resolved fix the problem. My objective assessment of the Bills offensive limitations involves coaching, O line & skill players and more broadly that the Bills have focused the lions share of the teams resources on the D rather then the O. Getting more out of Allen wouldn't make my top 5. Every time I read something like this the Greg Cosell quote pops up in my mind: "if you need you QB to be great every game then you have a problem and it's not the QB."

I agree that Taylor and the Bengal's O coordinator together are scheming their O better then Dorsey is for the Bills. And it's a lot easier for Burrow to run his offense better then Allen runs his because Burrow has a much better O line, RB & WR group to utilize.

If you are trying to diagnose the problems facing the Bills offense Allen is the least of those problems. Sure he could play better as any player could but if I had to prioritize the top 5 issues the Bills O faces Allen would not make the list. And imagine if instead of Miller the Bills had signed Hill or McCafrey? Or that they had used one or two of the three first round picks from 2019, 2021, & 2022 on an O lineman or skill player?

I wouldn't but what the author of this article didn't really address was to what extent are these offensive moves part of McD's grand design over how he expects Dorsey and the O to compliment his D? A few weeks ago I would have said that McD was allowing Dorsey to run the O with minimum interference and that the inexperienced Bills OC was learning as he went and offensive production would improve as time went by. But recent McD comments in both written articles and on the field/post game interviews have caused me to consider that Dorsey is trying to do exactly what McD wants him to do. And IMO that changes everything. Thinking back to the off season the constant drum beat out of One Bills Drive of "Allen must run less" and "take what the D is giving him" takes on new meaning. I thought at the time i was overstated given that the team had finished 13 - 3, won the Division, won a playoff game and lost in the Divisional round as much because of bad D as bad O. Particularly when you consider that the O was in the top 3 of every important statistical category. I now have to consider what increasingly the evidence pints to: the offensive struggles we're seeing today are the direct result of the strategic & tactical decisions made by McD/Bean in the off season.

But that would require the D to reliably make some stops particularly early in the game. It seems to me that McD wants to have his cake and eat it to: Score a lot of points AND hold on to the ball for long periods of time protecting the D. Of course that is hard to do when your offense isn't built to do it and you've spent the last four seasons directing the lions share of your high draft picks and splash FA signings to the D over the O. I know I sound like a broken record on this point but IMO it's the reason for almost everything the Bills are experiencing today. They made a fundamental strategic mistake in how to build a team with an elite QB in the current NFL. And I am becoming increasingly worried that there are no quick fixes

I agree that under the circumstances Mahomes is having a better season then Allen. That's why I said Allen was playing better then "almost every other QB". I also find your argument unpersuasive. Sure Allen could play better, every QB could including Mahomes, could play better. But Allan's play is not the core problem with our offense. So which of the following do you think would move the needle more on offensive production keeping everything else the same: * Improved play by Allen. * Improved play by the O line. * Improved play by the skill players. * Improved coaching & play calling. * A commitment over the last four seasons to spending high draft picks & FA signings on the O line and skill players. To me the answer is obvious. How about you?

He is getting there and I'm very confident that he will be great. But right now he's an emerging player.

I would suggest that it's an impossible task as NO QB is excellent all 4 quarters in every game they play in. Yet you're right to note that this seems to be the expectation of a surprisingly large number of fans on 2BT. As the great QB analyst Greg Cosell repeatedly says when talking about the Bills & Allen: "If you need your QB to be great every game then you have a problem and it's not the QB."

The QB and one of the WR's are high powered the rest of the offense is low wattage.

What QB's are playing better then Allen so far this year? Allen and Edmunds nave NOTHING in common and you lose all credibility when you suggest that they do. At his best Edmunds was never a top 10 LB while Allen has been a top 5 QB for the last three and one half seasons including this one.

An O line that over the McD/Bean era has not seen the use of a single #1 pick and only two #2 picks in SIX YEARS. An O line where Mitch Morse (2019) is by far the most aggressive FA signing in SIX YEARS. Is it even possible to build anything better then an average O line with this level of commitment?

For what it's worth Allen also leads the league in total TD's and QBR rating. Allen is in fact playing better then almost every the other QB in the NFL. And yet the Bills are still losing which is the crux of the problem.

First, when we had the opportunity to load up on the O line & skill players like the Chiefs, Eagles & Bengal's all did during their elite QB's rookie deals, we didn't. Other then Diggs who did we sign? Instead the Bills out their money & draft picks into the defense. A defense that was primarily responsible for our exits from the playoffs in 2019, 2020, 2021 & 2022. And last I looked Allen is the 9th highest paid QB in the NFL and is likely to drop to 10th once Lawrence gets his deal.

Then you need to think a little deeper. Comparing two QB's in a head to head game without comparing the talent and coaching around them is silly and misleading. It leads to notions like Brock Purdy is an MVP candidate who is one of the best QB's in the NFL.

And this is why I still have hope and also why this game really is the season.

Thought exercise: switch Burrow & Allen last Sunday night and who do you think wins the game and how do the stats shake out? I'm confident Allen's wins the game, wins all the passing stats AND would still have been the better runner.

I didn't say we had the worst group in the league but we do have the worst group among the legitimate Super Bowl contenders. On offense, I would say the following contenders either have better skill players and/or a better O line then the Bills: Eagles, Cowboys, Chiefs, Bengal's, Ravens, Lions, Jags, 49's, Dolphins. Now let's look at offensive coaching and franchise philosophy (where does the team put the majority o their FA & Draft capitol) which I believe go hand in hand. These contenders are better then the Bills: Bengals, Chiefs, Dolphins, 49's, Eagles, Cowboys, Lions, Jags, 49's.

Burrow had much better O line play; much better WR play and better offensive coaching. Yet it took a 4th quarter Bills fumble at the Bengal's 10 yard line and the Buffalo D's inability to get the ball back to the Bills offense that likely won Burrow & the Bengals the game. Big money? You mean less then Rogers, Wilson, Murry, Jackson, Watson & Herbert and about $3 million more per year then Danial Jones. That BIG MONEY?

But the Bengal's tackles did a nice job protecting Burrow off the edge. Their O line was build first and foremost to provide decent pass protection. And they have spent considerable draft & FA resources to achieve this.

This is a disturbing trend because the Bills put most of their franchises eggs in the defensive basket and this unit's bad play has moved from the playoffs to the regular season. Sure injuries have played a role but so what, injuries happen no? And while Allen's TO's do put pressure eon the D all those TD's he scores should be going a long way towards relieving that pressure, no? Which has been the pattern during the playoffs over the last few years with the exception of the Ravens game. Now we see bad D in the regular season. Sure injuries have played a big role here but if your franchise is defensive focused in resource allocation and coaching expertise there should be enough talent/schemes to at least maintain a decent D.

But what are the standards that an offense with an elite QB and one elite WR should set? An offense that has a below average O line (maybe way below), skill players that are average at best (sure Kincaid is on an upwards trajectory), coaches that are not considered top of the line offensive minds and a franchise that is focused first on its defense? My expectations are that we're getting exactly what we built on offense. During the critical 2019, 2020, 2021 & 2022 seasons in which the current Bills team was created the defense received the lions share of the draft & FA capitol. During this time the Bills made ONLY ONE big move to improve their offense: trading for Diggs which has been a home run. With the possible exception of Morse (who had concussion issues) EVERY offensive FA signing has been a reach or an over the hill/back up player. Ditto the draft where during those four years the Bills favored the D in a ridiculous way with the highest offensive picks being in round 2 in two of the four drafts. Yes, the Bills started to change course this year and used a 1st & 2nd round to pick offensive guys. Kincaid looks on his way to being an elite play maker while Torrenze beat out the previous seasons starting guard. Imagine how good our O would be today if we flipped the draft & FA signing over the last 4 years to favor the offense?

But it begins and ends with the fact that the Chiefs franchise values offense over defense. Strategically their defense is expected to compliment what their offense is doing not as in the Bills case the other way around. They do this because their head coach is offensive focused and he has one of the top 3 QB's in the NFL. As a result the Chiefs act decisively to fix problems on their offense. Reid sees Mahomes as his ticket to winning games on the back of his offense and acts accordingly. The Bills are polar opposites with a defensive minded coach who sees having an elite QB as a way to free up even more resources for the defense. McD sees Allen as a ticket to having an effective offense without having to commit a lot of resources to it. The role of the offense in McD's system is to compliment a defense that is expected to win games. This worked 20 years ago but not today.