Chaos

This is a reasonable view. Not perfectly aligned with my own, but very reasonable none the less. At this point, I thing it is arguable that Josh Allen is already among the best three QBs to never win a Super Bowl (along with Jim Kelly and Dan Marino). Hopefully that changes in a couple of months.

The Marv Levy led Bills were true contenders to win the Super Bowl. I know this because they played in the Super Bowl. I am not really sure you are a true Super Bowl contender if you never actually make it to the game. One can make the philosophical argument that all 32 teams are Super Bowl contenders every year, but that seems to miss the spirit of what most would mean by that expression.

at the 153 voter marked, i am a bit surprised by the results. 50% think only winning the super bowl is a successful season and 80% plus think a successful season requires playing in the Super Bowl. Both of those results are higher than I would have guessed.

You should start your own better question poll.

So don't troll. And stop being stupid. Problem solved.

A 61 year sample, suggests is pretty significant and is a bit silly to dismiss as "coincidence". In this case it actually goes past correlation and advances to causation. When NFL owners have their Franchise QB in place, they don't often give coaches many many years to get the team a championship. As my first post said quite clearly, "past is not prologue". But ignoring history as irrelevant rarely serves anyone well. Only 23 Franchises have won Super Bowls. 25 % of those teams won after making a coaching change, after the Franchise QB was in place: Miami Dolphins draft Bob Griese #4 overall in 1967. By 1970, team moves on from HC George Wilson to Don Shula. By 1972 they win the championship. Washington Redskins. Joe Theisman becomes the Redskins starting QB in 1978. Redskins move on from seven year tenured George Allen, and name Jack Pardee as coach. Pardee let go after three seasons. Joe Gibbs comes in and delivers a championship in year 3 New York Giants: Phill Simms drafted in 1979. Plays under Ray Perkins without significant team success until 1982. Bill Parcells comes in in 1983. Championship delivered by 1986. Denver Broncos. Hired Dan Reeves in 1981. Drafted John Elway in 1983. Stuck with Reeves until 1992 without ever winning a championhsip. Replaced Reeves with Wade Phillips. Phillips got 3 seasons until 1994, without winning a championship. Went to Mike Shanahan, who brought home the Championship with John Elway in 1997. The 11 year no championship run with Reeves is a model teams most don't seem to want to replicate. Indianapolis Colts - Peyton Manning drafted in 1998. Jim Mora is the head coach. Has a 13-3 season in 1999. Lost in the playoffs. Let go after the 2001 season. Tony Dungy brought in. Delivers championship in year 4. Green Bay Packers - Packers had both Brett Farve and Aaron Rodgers on their roster from 2000-2006 and were coached by Mike Sherman with some success. But the Packers went in a different direction in 2006 and replaced Sherman with Mike McCarthy. by 2008, Aarron Rodgers was the starter, and in his third season as a starter the packers hoisted the Lombardi trophy. These are the stories of teams who made a coaching change after the franchise QB was in place, and won the Super Bowl. Of course the story of the winners doesn't tell the story of the teams who never won. Along with Dan Reeves, Marty Shottenheimer, Jeff Fisher, and Marvin Lewis provide the cautionary tales of the downside of coaching "continuity".

The Miami game was callled out, because that is the main reason we don't lead the division now. At the time it was less consequential.

Some sacks do result in fumbles.

You missed my point. We ONLY lost one major player. It will never get better than that. We had the golden opportunity last year and did not close.

I feel your pain. I like watching the Bills. If they make it to the Super Bowl, that means I got to watch them the maximum number of times in the season. That is more important to me than winning the last game. But boy would winning the last game would be nice.

When no one was looking Josh Allen's career is about 1/3 over. There are only so many next years. This is a huge point. The Coach/QB combo is the most important dynamic for succeeding in the NFL. And when HC's sub-contract that relationship to the OC, we end up where the Bills are this year.

A couple of games into the season, we were all joking about not having to punt this year. Truly dominating. Super Bowl Favorites by a large margin. After the defeat of the chiefs, it seems the #1 seed in the playoffs was practically a given. A game in hot weather followed by a bunch of injuries has changed the perspectives. This poll is to ask what you will personally consider a successful season. This is not a quiz. There are no wrong answers. It is pure opinion. They call these opinion polls.

Spiller wasn't OJ or Thurman, so we all were required to hate him. But he had a 4.8 yard per carry rate of production for his career, which is exactly the same as Singletary (and better than Fred Jackson's 4.4) . And Spiller did not have the advantage of teams needing to focus on their defensive efforts on the one of the top 2 QBs in the league to help him.

I suspect if you actualy provide links to those interviews, they will all have the a bit of a passive aggressive approach where McDermott is deflecting blame. As I said in the original post, I can go either way with this coaching staff. But McDermott really does not take accountability for the mistakes. Even the 13 second debacle, he deflects as mainly an execution issue.

I honestly have never heard an NFL coach make more excuses about being able to get ready than this recent sequence.

The Case for Keeping Sean McDermott forever The Bills have historical had some incredibly bad head coaches. Lots of them. For many years. Sean McDermott is a very good head coach, probably top 10 in the NFL currently. No sane organziation would risk going backwards to the days of Kay Stephenson or even Rex Ryan. McDermott is arguably the greatest build of espirit de corp in the modern NFL. The Bills are a team, built to win together or lose together. He has embraced the concept of the Bills mafia to make the team the NFL's version of "La Cosa Nostra" (our thing). He is not going to cast aside a Leslie Frazier or hire an OC from outside the Bills organization. It is just not fathomable. He isn't going to instantly insert a new player (see Hines) into the rotation until he has passed his initiation. I don't follow other NFL teams as carefully as I do the Bills, but I feel confident in saying the Bills have the best team chemistry in the NFL. Most weeks the Bills come to the games ready to play. They seem focused and like they have a plan each week. When the plan clicks they dominate. Coach McDermott is passionate and wants to succeed. He does not seem like the paycheck is the main motivation, he wants to win. The Case for Considering a Coaching Change Josh Allen is really good. It is actually hard to imagine missing the playoffs with any credible NFL coach with Josh Allen as your QB. Virtually no QB at Allen's level is home watching the playoffs the first week. McDermott is not a necessary ingredient to making the playoffs. History is not on McDermott's side. Since 1960 only one time has a coaching/QB combo appeared in their first championship game after their fourth season together (Ken Stabler/John Madden, 1978). It has never happened in the free agency era. Past is not prologue, but it is probably worth understanding this dynamic. It is worth noting, that on numerous occasions after a team had its franchise QB in place, making a coaching change led to a Super Bowl appearance. McDermott does not appear to be a great game day coach. More than one of his losses has reached the level of epic NFL game meltdown. He very well may have missed his opportunity with HIS 13 seconds collapse. In public he does not own the mistakes. He more or loss always blames problems on the "execution" of his obviously correct decisions. (should be noted 100% of all NFL coaches expect 100% of the callls they make to work if perfectly executed). McDermott seems to want to win his way. Winning his way seems more important than simply winning. (random movie analogy - McDermott is Roy "tin cup" Mcvoy (Kevin Costner) the lovable character who loses the US Open in his attempt to reach the par five in 2. Bill Bellicheck is David Simms (Don Johnson), the unlikable guy who lays up and actually wins the US Open. The Dr. Jekyl / Mr. Hyde portion of the thread title, is because I fall into both camps. A bit part of me wants to win or lose with these guys. Another part of me just wants to win a super bowl, and not be emotionally connected to who the personnel who actually get the job done.

Jackson played all 67 defensive snaps in the game. He is one of a handful of guys holding the rubber band , duct tape and glue defense together. This is one of the most awful threads in the history of TBD.

You do realize Allen is injured don’t you?

Seems last year all of the pieces lined up. Only one major injury (Tre White). That scenario is not going to happen again.

Vikings must have played their super bowl against us

There is a word for people who are blaming Josh for the teams struggles : Idiots.

Why is it impertative? Do other succcessful teams overpay aging players based on past performance? I think your hearts in the right place. But conventional wisdom is that it is better to lose a player a year too early than hold on a year too long.

I have always been in the no dome camp. But I have recently reconsidered this. As the season expands to 18 games, it is more of a war of attrition than ever before. It seems to be a built in disadvantage to have to spend decemeber and january playing 60% of your games in potentially brutal conditions while, your competitors are playing in comfortable conditions. Based on the recent history of the Patriots and Dolphins, its is certainly arguable that this does not matter at all. But I suspect having brutal condition games down the stretch does not really help.

The lions sure dont

no one is saying its not hard. these guys get paid millions to be the best at it. It is reasonable to say that the Chiefs are better than the Bills during Beane's era This means the chiefs have better talent or the chiefs have better coaching or the have chiefs have better coachiing and talent. Beanes options are too stand pat with the strategy and be the chiefs second fiddle (like the colts to the patriots or the raiders to the steel curtain steelers) or make moves to have better talent and/or better coaching than the chiefs. Second best in the AFC is pretty good. Puts us ahead of 14 teams (although several would dispute we are second best). I think calling the second best Roster/Coaching combo "poorly constructed" is a bit of an over statement. It is hard to say it is the best however.