Beck Water

What a load of non-sequitors in response. No claim was made by anyone that the Bills have never traded up for a player in their history. That's your man 'o straw. That indicates It's probably not worth my time to respond, but what the hell - I'll try once. A further response from you with cracks about "mensa" and "nonsense I'm spewing" will earn you a fast ignore. Obviously, Beane has a history of trading up for players. Outside of the Allen and Edmunds trade-ups which included capitol acquired starting with the 2017 draft and continuing throughout the 2017 season Beane has traded up twice in the first: 2022 Pick 130 (a 4th round) and a swap of 1sts to go up 2 spots for Kaiir Elam 2023 Pick 130 (a 4th round) and a swap of 1sts to go up 2 spots for Dalton Kincaid Brian Thomas Jr was not available when the Bills picked. That's a fact. To be able to draft Thomas, the Bills would have had to move up at least 6 spots in the 1st, from 28 to 22. That's a value of about 120 points, which is a late 3rd with maybe a 6th or a next year's 5th back. Yeah, yeah "if Beane really wanted to", the reality is that other GMs aren't going to give their 1st round pick away without fair value, and that means using some of the draft picks that allow Beane more "shots on goal" to keep the roster stocked. Example: the six-spot tradeup from 22 to 16 in 2018 that resulted in Tremaine Edmunds required using 65, a pick at the top of the 3rd round. And, one more time: we didn't have a 3rd round pick going into the 2024 draft. The Jags roster and what happened to their WR corps is also fact. The point isn't to diss off Thomas as a receiver - he's a good receiver and may become a great receiver, sure. The point is that the Jags had no run game to speak of and no other receivers to speak of, so he got a lot of targets. Put an equally talented receiver on the Bills who had fewer total passing attempts, and more targets to divide those attempts between, and he wouldn't be standing out to as one of the top receivers in the league for yards. Or maybe he would, I don't know - maybe you compulsively watch Jaguars games and study their film. I don't. As far as me "pining" for better WR, my opinion here is a matter of record and I have receipts: I think that Beane and the Bills have underaddressed the WR position and underresourced it in the draft. But the guys I mentioned are all players the Bills could have actually realistically have drafted - unlike Thomas, who would have required a trade-up the Bills did not have draft capital to move up for last draft.

So from what we know about McDermott, he is sincerely committed to Kaizen, the business principle of involving the whole organization in striving for continuous improvement. So I would imagine he looked at that piece, looked at places where it pointed to areas he could improve, and decided on how to address them. As for last year's article, I think it was notable that a lot of the Buffalo press corps did not speak out on it one way or the other. The most cogent comment on it came from John Wawrow, aka @Delete This Account, a guy with considerable experience and considerable access/trust within the Bills organization. His summary of the article was "former employee has issues with former boss" and something to the effect of "that's why many of us will sit this one out". I agree that NFL head coaches are a special, driven breed and that can make them come across as jerks from time to time. People who are laser-focused on one goal, also, can fail to perceive how they come across viewed from a broader perspective. But also, when you interview 40 people and interview them at length, you can both ask for, and elicit, stories that can portray a person in a particular slanted way.

I don't think that's McDermott - he doesn't have time to lug around hate for a journalist. He and Beane (separately) actually sat down with Dunne at one of the off-season events last year - Senior Bowl or Combine - and had what Dunne described as a "good conversation". I think part of that conversation may have been McDermott and Beane saying "look, as a journalist, why wouldn't you reach out and get our side of it?" to which Dunne could say "as an independent journalist, the Bills have not credentialed me or given me access to you". I think one outcome was, Dunne agreed to reach out and get McDermott or Beane's side of anything he wrote about them (not agree with their side, just seek it out). And Beane/McDermott ensured Dunne got some form of press credentials to the Bills, which Dunne doesn't always use but has tweeted about a couple times just enough to make the point he's able to be there. And yeah, I'd like to read it 'cuz Ty Dunne writes well but nah, I'm not gonna subscribe to do so. Dunne didn't have press credentials to the Bills at the point where he wrote that hit piece last year. He gained access last spring after he spoke with Beane and with McDermott, I forget if it was at the Senior Bowl or at the Combine - the latter I think.

I got to say Glenn had the Lions D looking fierce last night. Collinsworth kept babbling about how the Lions had no one who could provide any pressure while Darnold was getting tossed around like a rag doll and running for his life back there. And the Jets have good defensive players.

Right. But if "getting a win" was "priority #1" the way the coaches were saying before the game, don't you think they would have gone for a FG? There would be other punts, and there were - and Martin getting his bonus depended upon a very heads-up and go-hard play from Jamarcus Ingram.

Don't forget McDermott declining a 10 yd OH penalty so that NE could kick a 42 instead of a 52 yd FG - just to give us a few point cushion in case his D got a safety or something. That was ....yeah. Oh, and that was after we punted instead of attempting a FG from the NWE 35 when the game was BUF 10 NWE 14. Did you happen to watch the Chiefs at Denver game? What the Bills did was subtle and based on a poke here and a nudge there. There was nothing at all subtle about what the Chiefs did.

I actually thought for the most part guys were going pretty hard. We were starting our 2nd string OL the whole game, across the board, and I think they wanted to show what they could do. 0 sacks despite Trubisky having the mobility of a busted lawn mower and being slow with his reads; 130 yds rushing - not too shabby. I think Mitch is well-liked and the receivers who played wanted to run decent routes for him. Hollins was playing for incentives and going hard. That said, they weren't giving it everything they'd got to gain YAC or fight back through contact. I think it shows the guys who played were going pretty hard in that McDermott had to resort to tactics like punting instead of attempting a FG when the Bills were on the NWE 35 yd line and declining a holding penalty when NWE was on the BUF 24 so that NWE got to kick a 42 yd FG instead of a 52 yd try. Then he played his trump card, substituting Mike White for Mitch Trubisky. That's the point at which the offense at least just went through the motions.

I know, I was dying. They were just all over him. Well....Burrow was starring in a remake of "run for your life" much of the game. Neither Cam Heyward nor TJ Watt seemed to have much impeding them.

Agree. There were 3 he could have had though. We'll see Weds if they count them as drops.

OK. So that would be Indy, KC, SFO, LAR for Coleman and KC, SFO, LAR for Kincaid. Let's hear your argument that those games were more "fire" than, say, DET, SEA, TEN, JAX, and 2nd MIA: Go. Now on to the second point, let's hear your argument that the absence of Coleman and Kincaid were causal factors. Coleman already is WR4 or 5 in the playoffs. In case you weren't watching, neither Shakir, nor Cooper, nor Kincaid, nor Knox played a single snap. That would seem to indicate that the Bills consider Shakir, Cooper, and Kincaid at least of more importance than Coleman, making him functionally #4 or #5. He fights back to the ball plenty. I think his instructions for yesterday were, "Don't".

The last thing you say is true. WR will continue to be a massive hole on the Bills until/unless we have a receiving corps the like of Chase/Higgins/Boyd or St Brown/Williams/LaPorta or Jefferson/Addison/Hockenson or maybe Kupp/Nacua/Higbee. The next couple sentences up remind me of the sort of thing people wrote about Allen after the draft, his rookie season, and whenever he had a bad game his second year. Because everyone knows, the player you draft is the player the team will get, Forever and Ever, Worlds without End, Amen. I'll leave the "lot better option available and Beane fumbled it" bit for after next season. I think we need to bear in mind that Beane has been pinning the Bills receiving hopes (for years) on guys who can play, but are relatively short and can get neutralized by aggressive, physical defense. Then we get annihllated in the playoffs when the refs say "let 'em play" and fail to call DH or DPI, or (as with the Lions) call it, but only a fraction of the time that it's actually going on. You can't change the outcome by doing the same thing. Beane also has a profile of drafting relatively raw but immensely physically talented players (Allen, Edmunds, Rousseau, now Coleman) on the theory the staff and the players will "coach them up" if the player has the right mindset. Sometimes it works well (Allen, Rousseau), sometimes it works OK (Edmunds), sometimes it doesn't work (Elam, apparently). Coleman is to be determined.

That, my fellow Bills fan, is the one aspect of yesterday's performance that truly worries me. I do not think that was done on purpose.

Gawd, that was Ugly. Although to be fair, I think Reid didn't truly understand until yesterday just how broken Carson Wentz remains.

It's possible. But I think it's also possible that Keon will buckle down in the off season and take a big step.

What the hell is your point here? Do you want to list every single promising player who was not available when the Bills drafted and pine after them, too? It's not like we could have worked a simple trade of a 4th and swap up 2 slots last year to draft Thomas. He was drafted 6 slots before us and we didn't have a 3rd round pick going into the draft. And in case you didn't notice, the Jags finished 4-13 with the #26 rated offense on points; the Bills finished #2; #9 for passing yards vs the Jags #24. They started the year with Christian Kirk and Gabe Davis ahead of Thomas as WR, and both of them were injured by November; Devin Duvernay spent October and early Nov on IR. Thomas put up the numbers he did because he was competing for targets with Parker Washington (6th round) and Tim Jones (who?) and he was getting Fed. Thomas was the best WR on a bad team who just fired their head coach. C'mon Man. If you want to pine, Go Big. Pine after Justin Jefferson who was actually drafted with the pick the Bills traded away to get Diggs. Or maybe pine after Amon-Ra St Brown who was drafted in the 4th; maybe Beane could have drafted him in the 2nd round instead of doubling down at DE and taking Boogie Basham - St Brown was forecast by pundits to go in the 2nd or 3rd. Toss in Puka Nacua if you want to.

It's not just teams adjusting to Wilson. Wilson's decision making as a professional QB is just not good. Example: at the end of the game with :46 seconds left and a FG needed to win: 1st and 10 at the Pitt 42, Wilson scrambled instead of throwing the ball away. Worse, he didn't get OOB on that scramble. It cost the Steelers 19 seconds off the clock. Then the next play, he took a sack costing them 5 yards and their final time out. Two things every QB gets drilled on in end of game clock management: the few yards you get from a run play are not worth the time (unless you're in FG range and working for ball placement) and Don't Take A Sack. I don't think the Steelers as a team believe that Russ Wilson can QB them to wins any more, and when a team doesn't believe that, it affects how everyone performs. That said, Pickens is an ass.

I mean, he's a harsh critic but he's not wrong

People who live in Buffalo itself Tranplanted Bills fans who live far outside Upstate NY

Was this pre-draft or yesterday or ??

I was worried myself. But I think there are a couple of things at play. One is, I think when a receiver is used to tracking and catching balls from Allen, it makes it harder to track and catch balls from other QB. There is that much difference in the velocity thus the timing of when the ball gets there. Trubisky said after the game "if we'd had a few more reps to build timing, I think we would have gotten a couple of those." Two is, Brady wasn't making any efforts to scheme Keon more open. Three is, the reason that Beane traded for Amari Cooper was that the Ravens game showed us we really didn't have enough WR talent to divide a good D's attention and the Houston game showed us that without Shakir, we don't have enough WR talent period. So Beane spun the roladex and 2 weeks later Cooper was here. But we just spun the roladex back to "Shakir out, no Cooper" and it was generally not pretty. [in case anyone was wondering, Collins got 100% of the snaps, Coleman 97%, and Samuel 67%; no other receiver got snaps] So yesterday, without Cooper AND Shakir, AND running vanilla plays, there just wasn't enough to divert attention from Coleman and Hollins. Alex Austin, one of NE starting corners, played more than 3/4 of the game and I think he was covering Coleman a good bit. Then add in that Trubisky takes longer to make up his mind and throw and the ball takes longer to get there, and it wasn't good. There's no question that Coleman needs to work on his release and his route running this off-season though.

Relax, McDermott had ya. They wanted to get Jimbo his tuddy and McD had a plan. I don't think they intended Bass to miss the XP though, that was scary. And that's exactly what McD did. Don't we think McDermott, who has a career-long track record of bemusing rookie QB, couldn't have called a defense that would have bemused and confused Milton and had him seeing ghosts? Vanilla, Vanilla, Vanilla was the flavor of the day.

LOL yeah, Pats 17 Bills 16 at the time. That was McD's insurance against the Bills D being able to score a safety or the O being in position to kick a chip shot FG and win.

Did you watch the KC-Denver game? I would say KC was actively trying to lose. Wentz looked Gawdawful. Mahomes, watching Wentz play QB, looked as though he was in pain and close to requiring sedation on the sidelines. C'mon man, 27 rush yards, 98 passing yards, 5 sacks for 27 yards, 2 fumbles, 5 (FIVE!) 1st downs, 1 3rd down conversio with only 18 minutes TOP. Their D looked Gawdawful too. For Denver's offense 321 passing yards and 4 TD, 159 rush yards, 29 (TWENTY NINE!) 1st downs, 10 out of 14 3rd down and 2 of 2 4th down conversions with 41:49 TOP. There's no way a team like KC puts up and allows numbers like that, unless they are actively trying to lose. As "trying to lose" goes, that was a bank heist in broad daylight in the center of town. Buffalo, on the other hand, actually put up 259 yds of offense, 2 TD, 16 1st downs and 6 of 15 3rd down conversions, 28:46 TOP vs 309 yds of offense allowed, 241 passing yards and 309 yds of offense, 1 TD, 19 1st downs, 4 of 12 3rd down conversions and 31:14 TOP. We actually held the lead for 7 minutes of the 3rd Q. As "trying to lose" goes, that was (relative to KC) subtle. The Bills were far from doing all they could have, and they weren't going to give any plays away to playoff opponents. But Man!! that was a coaching Masterclass in doing just enough to let your guys earn incentives and to put guys you want to evaluate in positions to succeed and show you what they got, while at the same time very carefully not doing too much. To me, pulling Trubisky for Mike White in the 4th Q after the Patriots went up 17 to 16 is the key indicator that winning was truly not a priority for McDermott in this game. It was hard not to let the guys score when they recovered a botched snap on the NE16 and they wanted to get Cook a TD, but after NE scored on the next drive to re-take the lead, McDermott was Taking No Chances that Trubisky might play too well and do too much.

Right on! I think Buffalo Joe is to the NFL kind of like Buddy Holly or Elvis Costello are to rock stars. Birth Control glasses, geeky looks - "hell, if he can be a rock star, I can be a rock star!" So he has that sort of "everyman" appeal to him. [Edit: I'm not saying Buffalo Joe wears birth control glasses or looks geeky, just that if a kid from Lancaster can go from UB to walk on at training camp to making the Bills roster, Well Hey!] But just like Holly was and Costello is actually an exceptional musician, "Buffalo Joe" has to be pretty exceptional to even make it from walk-on to starting an NFL game AND wearing the green dot in that game, even a game with little meaning (to the Bills).

If he had the green dot (which I think he did) then setting up all of the D was part of what Buffalo was evaluating. I thought he had the D generally in the right position. I'm sure we were going very vanilla on D, but not entirely from what I saw. I think it's pretty normal for players to be slow to react their first year. They are still thinking about things, it is see-process-react whereas when they develop the processing bit becomes automatic and it's see-react, see-react. (this is the rust IMO that Milano is scraping off) I actually felt Buffalo Joe looked less "lost in space" than Bernard did his first year or Williams his first year, which is positive. He'll benefit from a full off season of NFL level strength training and conditioning for sure.