Chaos

are we going to have another cancelled game this year?

so NFL isn't mad about the whole dog thing any more?

half the stories are about teams pulling out wins. the other half are teams choking away games.

Are you sure this is true.

It seems as though McDermott wants to run an offense that someone with Kirk Cousin's skill set works with. He has no imagination on how to use Allen's considerable skills. Its a complete mismatch between Allen and McDermott.

to be fair I am pretty certain he is not a tator.

So do you bring back McDermott in perpetuity?

This seems right. But it begs the question. Why do you or any fan need to "suspect" this. Are the Bills faced with some competetive disadvantage if McDermott was to come out and say 1) "Joe has the reigns, and he has the vision to bring the season back on track" or 2) "I have a vision for the offense, and I think Joe is the best guy to execute this vision" ?

I should add, I expect the arc of happiness/concern with McDermott I described above is actually pretty close to the most common fan experience. There are two categorites of extreme views that I think capture the perspective of a number of posters. (Even though both are extreme and polar opposites and different from my perspecive they are both reasonable sports fans perspectives. Lifetime achievement award for ending the playoff drought. The football season regular season plus playoff is 21 games. For this category of fan, as long as Coach McDermott is bringing a good show for 19 of those 21 weeks, they are happy and would rather not "risk" a return to the drought. Ricky Bobby "If your not first, your last, fans". These fans do not want to consider any measure of success other than winning the Super Bowl. Once they are convinced Coach McDermott will not win a Super Bowl with the Bills they want him gone. Most of this group of fans has reached this point. There is also a third group of fans. I lean into this group quite a bit. Are we "wasting" Josh Allens career. If Allen never wins a super bowl, he will join Dan Marino and Jim Kelly as 3 members of the Mount Rushmore of "greatest QBs to never win a super bowl". To add perspective, the next group of names to fill out the fourth spot is Fran Tarkenton, Dan Fouts and Warren Moon. All of whom are a substantial notch below the first three. From a sports perspective Allen never getting that win would be very sad. Your mismatch comment indicates you are in this category. As insane as it sounds, if the Bills don't advance to the Super Bowl this year, I think the Bills should either change the Head Coach or trade Allen to a team that can better use him. He would generate quite a haul. Except for McCafferty's age, the ideal trade for a retained Coach McDermott would be for Brock Purdy, Christian Mcafferty, one of the niners Linebackers and a couple of the extra second and third round draft picks the niners have stock piled. I think Shanahan would love the chance to coach a QB like Allen.

When he was first hired, I had no opinion one way or another because I did not know much about him. After the playoff drought the bar for success for a Bills head coach was probably lower than the bar for success for any NFL head coach. My recollection of the drought is not that we were constantly among at the bottom of the NFL, but constantly about 10th from the bottom and drafting 10, or thereabouts. It was a low mediocre team. The first season of making the playoffs at 9-8 was refreshing, but the early bow out, meant we had move to high mediocre team. The next season, Josh Allen blew me away in the preseason games. It was impossible for to imagine not starting him right away. But I accepted the "let him learn logic". But at the point another rookie Nate Peterman was brought in to start before Allen, I had my first twinge of "does this guy know what he is doing" doubts. But he corrected that error and the team made great progress from that point. (Side note, I did not like the "keep everything in front of you soft defense for a long time, but came to accept that it worked well and stopped being concerned about that generally) I found his clapping after bad plays as a bit bizzare but was more amused by what I considered a weird personality quirk, than thinking it was a question of competence. From the moment Allen was made the starter until the Houston playoff game everything was great with McDermott. Others may disagree, as is there preogitive, but I felt the loss to Houston was primarily coaching errors. It was the first evidence that McDermott is not a great closer in key games. We moved forward with some great preseason play and playoff play, until the 13 second game. This game is so haunting, it is discussed quite a bit still on national media, let alone in local discussion circles. There were two upsetting parts to this to me. One, it seemed to be a complete coaching error. And yet, after the game McDermott did not accept responsibility and blamed others for execution problems. (as an aside, its odd to me for coaches to thinking they are doing a good job coaching, if players do not know the play or assignments). At this point "inability to close" became a meaningfull concern of mine. At that point, I felt as though the onus was on McDermott to prove he could. So far he has not. Most NFL coaches don't get to year 6 without advancing to the super bowl at least once. It is rare enough that some of the names of those that did are etched in NFL lore, Marvin Lewis, Marty Shottenmeimer, and a couple of others. The only precedent I know for any NFL coach to get to year 6 with a top tier QB on the roster and no super bowl appearances is Dan Reeves with John Elway. Dan Marino made it to the Super Bowl with Shula, his second season. On a separate path, until the 2023 draft, I did not agree the roster was being properly constructed to win in today's NFL. I don't know how much McDermott had to do with that. But it seems from public appearance, he did not have a lot of say in the extensive focus on building the defense. The reason to keep McDermott for season 6, is the excellent regular season results he has generated. Those are not in dispute. I began the season hopeful that McDermott could prove he was a closer in this years playoffs. He still has the chance. If we go on a tear and make the playoffs and advance until at least the AFC championship game, its an easy decision to bring him back next year. If the team actually fails to make the playoffs, It is not clear to me what the case for bring him back for year 7 would be. The narrative would have to be "even great coaches have down years, plus "injuries", he deserves a shot at a bounce back year. If the team makes the playoffs but goes out in the divisional round again, I don't think there is a compelling case either to retain him or to fire him. Kind of coaching purgatory.

McDermott is either 1) involved in changing the offense to a less effective offense or 2) he is not involved. This is a tautology. it is one or the other. If he is involved, changing to Joe Brady or anyone else may not resolve the problem. If he is not involved, it is failure on his his part to not be aware of situation prior to the season starting. He is not in his rookie season Either way the fragile hopes of the season now rest entirely either on Joe Brady or the Sean McDermott/ Joe Brady brain trust. It seems it would be very simple for McDermott to tell us which it is. Based on past track record, if the offense succeeds , at the end of the season he will take credit. If the offense fails from here on out, he will blame Brady.

Does anyone know where Fitz went to college?

I would describe my observation of this same tendency to be "McDermott tends to choke and make mistakes in crucial moments during tight games"

The Bills have been Billsy for a long time.

Asinine post.

Anything is possible. But it actually hard for me to imagine the Bills making this move after a win.

Simple question. Do you think If the 12 men debacle (clearly not Dorsey's fault) had not happened, last night, would Dorsey have been fired today, the day after a win?

One can argue the details. But Sharp has accurately identified the key problem.

I just want him to say. “I f’d up by standing around doing nothing, when I should have been making sure we were ready to execute the substitutions for the FG try. But in my defense I had already given up and accepted we were losing the game” Because 70,000 in person eye witnesses saw this happen.

McDermott has identifed the real problem. Culture is fine. The problem is the sub-culture: Joe Buscaglia @JoeBuscaglia Bills HC Sean McDermott said with the new leadership at OC, he wants the offense to establish a sub-culture as part of the team's overall culture to help foster confidence and energy and focus on doing things they need to do that leads to winning. https://x.com/JoeBuscaglia/status/1724853998455321038?s=20

hard to imagine he would have been fired after a win. But the OCs job in Buffalo is to carry a two TD lead into the second half of the fourth quarter so the head coach is not put under any pressure to make coaching decisions in the final minutes of the game. So maybe he would have been fired.

No. But will not be upset if you switch over.

Elite passing performances are causation. I promise.

In games where the Bills hav a passer rating over 100, the bills are 16-2 the last three years. In all other games, the Bills are .500. Side note, other teams experience similar levels of success when their teams go over 100. Recent example agains the Bills was the Patriots 129 rating the 18 games over a 100 passer rating places the Bills eighth in the league over that time frame. So the risk is two-fold 1) will the Bills have fewer elite QB performances with McDermott gone. It seems McDermott has little or nothing to with this factor. Given Allen’s physical talent level, being ranked higher than eight with a new head coach seems as likely as ranking lower. Secondly only one team over that time period has more than 50 percent of games over 100 passer rating, surprisingly to me, the niners. As a data point KC had 49 percent vs the bills 44 percent over 100. So half the games need to be won without an elite QB performance. McDermott is actually solid, being at a bit over .500 for these games. Andy Reid gaps out from everyone by winning 64 Percent of the games without an elite passer performance in the game. So the second risk is whether or not there are HCs available who can win at least half the games, when the passer rating is below elite level. This is a real risk. My personal opinion is that there is some upside of increasing the number of passer rating above 100 games. And there should be coaches available who can also win 50 percent of the other games. Winning is the Super Bowl likely requires improving both winning percentages. After six seasons, I don’t know or any reason to think McDermott will improve in win percentage for the 50 percent plus non elite passer games, nor increase the number of elite Passer rating performances. In summary, there is risk to making a change. And there might be a reward for the change. Keeping McDermott is less risky, but at this point I don’t foresee any rewards.

Wide right, while not a crazy way to lose, is the grandfather of the Billsy ways to lose games.