PBF81

And yet ... 😏

You forgot Brady vs. McD.

Got a chuckle out of that. It has been 13 years w/o playoffs, so ...

If you want to argue we can replicate this ...

If we cannot win at least 10 games in this pathetic division in which we own Miami and there's two other siht teams, then something needs to change. Having said that, it will be very interesting to see what Coleman's impact is on our offense, Brady's impact after an offseason, and to see what will be different for Davis v. Singletary/Moss. Expect a drop in both offensive and defensive rankings to maybe 10th or so in both. The biggest curiosity is how we utilize Allen given that we have a slew of short-yardage specialists in the receiving department with no established deep-ball specialist. This doesn't cater to Allen's strengths. The big games will be Jax, SF, and KC at home and Houston, Baltimore, and Detroit on the road.

Well, again, we'll see, but there are several false narratives surrounding Brady that will come to light this fall to at least some extent. Otherwise, I decided to watch an every target video of Coleman this a.m. It's only a 22 minute video but took me a couple of hours to go through. Even by my low standards I'm not impressed, in fact, if anything it lessened, not heightened my expectations there. I see the hype even less after viewing it. And while drops are measured differently, I counted at least 15 dropped passes or at least passes that he should have caught but did not. We can go thru them if you like, game by game. Watch the passes against BC, what, three, four drops? Louisvile a few too. The other thing that I noticed with him, that much like Watkins, he had a lot of bubble screens and gadget plays, which typically aren't effective in the NFL. So that's also worrisome. Otherwise, most of his catches were on shorter throws where he was wide-opened or screened, per above, and a bunch of very short crossing routes. I saw precious few catches that he made in coverage. His LSU game seems to stand out, but after that, it's difficult to find much that's impressive in his other 41 catches in his 536 yards in 11 other games otherwise. In fact, I see absolutely nothing that tells me that if he were to line up to go deep that any DC in the league would worry about putting more than one DB on him. I can see his appeal on "highlight" videos, which would be short for this past season, like that one play where he hurdled the defender, but again, on a pass where he was open on deep coverage on 3rd-and-14, against Southern Miss, a Sunbelt team with one of the worst Ds in the NCAAs btw. But those are few. Then the second TD catch in the Clemson game. On the first he was WIDE open. That second catch against Syracuse was spectacular. The TD against Syracuse was against CB Isaiah Johnson, a senior, who went undrafted and according to NFL.com's draft profile would be on the bottom of a roster or a practice squad. So beating him wasn't particularly impressive. He won't see that coverage in the NFL with even a hint of regularity. One great route vs. Duke for about 30 yards. And another nice catch for a bunch vs. Duke. His TD catch vs. Wake Forest was nice, not spectacular, but nice, but WF had a horrid D too. His second TD against Wake was on Caelen Carson, drafted late in the 5th round. So while watching that, I can see how while viewing just the above catches, one could come away thinking that he's some kind of steal and an Andre Johnson lite, but while watching the other 90% of his play, it makes me wonder why anyone sees anything in him at all worthy of a day 1 or even day 2 pick at all. He reminds me of Knox in terms of receiving skills and highlights. Just enough huge plays here or there to make you think there's more in there when there isn't. About the biggest kick in the nads to Allen that we could give him would be using Coleman as he was used at FSU. Getting Watkins vibes here in fact, except that Watkins did in fact have speed. Either way, the schtick is that he's got great hands and makes all these contested catches. Is that what you see while watching the video? I'd be interested in your take. Again, since there's not much else to do 'til the schedule release, I'd be happy to go thru game by game and itemize each target.

You've gotta love comps like that. And oddly Diggs' season extrapolated YFS under Brady was 765. Under Dorsey it was over twice that at 1,475. Thoughts? The only reason why Cook was over it under Brady is because McD thinks that with Allen at QB the way to win games is to run the ball and have a defense that is great, except when it comes to playoff time when his D takes a premature vacation that is, while minimizing Allen's passing game. In the playoffs he simply throws everything to the four winds and stands aside while Allen takes over. Great coaching there. Why do you think that they drafted Davis, at pick #128, coincidentally the same pick that the other Davis, Gabe was picked at, when we had other more prominent needs. This team has no idea what it's doing until they do it on the offensive side. Our offense is an overlooked inconvenience by McD. Also, to start, Carolina also had DJ Moore. We have no received that is Moore's equal here. Secondly, in 2020 he also had the 24th ranked scoring offense and 21st ranked yardage offense, which regressed to the 29th and 30th in 2021. So maybe all those YFS don't translate to scoring. Maybe we can expect a similar regression by 5 and 9 rankings here too. You're also taking some extreme liberties, Samuel was barely over 1k YFS, but he needed 200 rushing yards to get that, which you fail to mention. If we start using Samuel to run the ball for the 41 carries that he had, then something's wrong. It's difficult to imagine our offense improving over last season's, and the scoring and yardage metrics were better under Dorsey than they were under Brady, not by much, but they were. And the way that our offense faded down the stretch over the last three regular season games, when every game was like a playoff game and every win was needed for even a wild-card, along with our sluggish 19.5 PPG over the last three regular season games, and against teams ranked 24th, 15th, and 22nd in scoring D. And it's not like we really stepped it up in the playoffs. Our offensive performances in the playoffs were incredibly average by our season standard. If you want to run comps, look at how our players last season did in that regard under Brady. There wasn't a receiver that even sniffed 1,000 YFS extrapolated for 17 games on his watch. Shakir was the closest at just over 900, but keep in mind that he had Diggs & Davis drawing coverage. Cook did, easily, but that was largely due to that huge Dallas game. Cook faded severely, when wins were needed the most, in the last 3 regular season games and the playoffs where he averaged a mere 3.4 yards-per-touch and a horrid 3.5 yards-per-carry over the last five games including our two playoff games. Cook didn't have a TD either rushing or receiving in any of those last five games. Was that because he's not used to getting so many carries? He started frittering out when he hit about 190. Without that outlier Dallas game our per-game metrics were notably worse than under Dorsey. After that our offense all but collapsed. Do you expect that we're going to have two WRs over 1,000 YFS?

We will see.

True, but it could also take a while for ourselves to figure it out with the advantage tilting not to our opponents in the early going. Unlike you and others I'm far from convinced that Brady's what we need. We will see. The schedule can't come out soon enough. LOL

Let's hope that all of this charisma translates to the field more than it did at FSU. Oliver's very similar in that regard, a character, and he hasn't lived up to his draft status.

That's interesting that you say that. Given that the team, as some have expressed in the Kim thread, has lost it's bloom for Terry, what would he do if offered that $10B. The cost to leave Buffalo for elsewhere is $850M, which seems like chump change in that regard. A completely new majority owner might not view it the same. Point being, that $850M is hardly the poison pill that many seem to believe it is.

Well, we do really need another slot WR. 🤔🙄 Maybe we can come up with a new formation featuring three Slot WRs, no splits, and two RBs. Seems to fit with McD's complimentary football MO. Funny, everyone just slammed Xavier Worthy who's similarly sized but faster. This place ... LOL

It'll be interesting, out entire offense is going to be interesting. The skill position lineup seems to be a lot closer to what it was in 2019 than what it was before Diggs arrived. Shakir didn't draw double coverage last year. Will any of our WRs command double coverage.

Including whatever little integrity he had left.

The years in the league, he's averaged 200 yards and a TD per season. But for some unbeknownst reason, ala Sherfield, he's going to do something significant here? Another x-th time's the charm player.

Hopefully! Be that as it may, just be prepared for more "making of the playoffs," which most coaches could do with Allen in our crap division, and divisional round losses. All fine and good for anyone that's happy with that. Also, why don't we see how this season goes first.

Yeah, of course not. This stuff is more complex than social media discussions in a forum, few people agree exactly. I'll comment on a few of your points. Agree with that in one sense, it's always been a premise of mine that a team loaded with players that play in the 6-8 range (1-to-10 scale) is more apt to perform optimally than a team that has say three or four 9 or 10s but a lot of 2-5's as well due to cap issues. The 9s and 10s always cost a lot unless you draft 'em and get 5 years out of 'em. Beane has generally done a good job overall, but his drafts leave much to be desired in that way. And as to value, Beane has never, outside of Allen, gotten great value from out day 1 & 2 picks. If anything it's been on the lesser value side. Starters, sure, but premiere/elite, not. That's where the crux of our differences seem to lie. I would rephrase that to say that he's a victim of his own past decison-making. To put that into context, I'll cite how every season one or two, sometimes more, threads go up with who would you have drafted given a certain situation, in this case for this offseason, the depature of both Diggs and Davis. My response to that is always that I would not have allowed that situation to come about. To put that into a practical frame of reference, several examples. First, since when has Beane ever drafted a WR in round 1 or 2, prior to this season? or heck, even round 3. The obvious answer is never. Davis was the highest in late round 4. If you're never going to draft a top WR, it's incredibly unlikely that one will manifest itself from day 3 picks. Some of us believe that McD is dictating to Beane what not to do, we simply do not know the extent to which that occurs. So Beane goes big-bucks and assumes risks, that once again have played out here surprise surprise, when he too could have had say Jefferson instead with the pick he traded to get the now departed Diggs. He also could have had Aiyuk, Higgins, or Pittman too, for cheap, rather than for big-bucks. That would have allowed him to do more elsewhere. The point is, that in his "grand scheme" plan, there's never been an emphasis on WR, and until last season much at TE either. Which is incredibly odd given that we have what will go down in history as one of the all-time great passers at QB. Same for OL to an extent. His philosophy until Torrence last year, has been picking up 1 & 2 year signees to fill in until ..., until what, the next 1 or 2 year signee that's junk? There's been zero obvious plan at OL. Here's the thing about that, everyone's crying about a deep-threat, so we ditch two of 'em, and replace them with yet another short-medium specialist. Certainly there's very little high-end production in Coleman's collegiate dossier. It's incredibly doubtful that he's going to emerge as some downfield threat as such in his rookie season. OK, so then we'll have to wait until next year, McD's 9th. We're pushing a decade of this playoff futility. Maybe, but the great GMs have a plan as such. He does not seem to have one. Frankly, IMO he's being influenced too much by McD to be able to put his plan in place, and knowing that he owes McD for the opportunity. Correct, because the players he's chosen, apart from Allen, simply dont' step up come playoff time. Whether that's coaching (AHEM, it seems to be) or not, the core reasons are not being corrected. Yes, exactly. More on that below however. Again, yes, pretty much exactly, but the reason is clear. It's in the playoffs where you find the best coaches and the best teams. Being "good enough" is relative. The coaches in the secondary (post wild-card) rounds are the best, and can see what we've done and do and successfully scheme us to their advantage. How else does anyone explain the fact that we take a #1 or #2 regular-season defense into the playoffs where it plays like a mediocre, at best, defense. In short, we've routinely been outcoached in the playoffs. The narrative is that Reid/Mahomes are simply too good. What a defeatest attitude. Other teams have beaten them in the Super Bowl and D and C rounds. Only we can't. Let's find someone that can. Again, they're nowhere near even top-10 come playoff time, whereas our counterparts, that's not true. Agree with some of that. But again, it's paramount to distinguish between the drastically different levels of play for Bills Regular Season Football, and Bills Playoff Football where Allen does everything, more so than during the season as the other top players all routinely disappear with rare exceptions. That's without question a coaching thing. Will it change? Why would it? Many including myself are not nearly that optimistic and have seen enough. I could not disagree more on Brady building an offense that is feared aroiund the league at McD's behest. To the contrary. McD's stuck on this '80s/'90s Run/D/Ball-Control gig, hence his "complimentary football approach. He's trying to turn Kelly into Aikman. That will not work nor does it play to Allen's strengths. If McD really wanted to do what you're saying, he'd have invested in some serious offensive braintrust on his staff. He's taken the opposite approach, put in people that he can control to get the offense to match his extremely conservative philosophy. As to Beane, if that weren't the case, our drafts would be littered with WRs and OL-men in rounds 1 & 2. McD knows defense. He knows nothing about offense. How can anyone possibly expect a coach with a mind like that know what's best for the offense, and given that we have Allen, for the team. Last season scoring under Brady was down and horrifically low-end to finish off the season. (Last 3 games) Either way, he's entering his 8th season with only one D-round playoff win. Not one coach considered to be great has such a dubious distinction, namely only one D-round or better playoff round win in 7 seasons. Furthermore, it's ridiculous to consider that many coaches considered anything but great, that coached teams to 7, 8, 9, or 10 wins regularly, with Allen wouldn't be doing at least what we're doing in the regular season. Allen is easily worth at least 4 wins/season, easily. We'll see what happens. But this configuration of WRs is not within Allen's primary skillset. We'll see if "deep threats" develop or not. We'll also see how tight the choker chain around Brady's neck is. A lot of people have a disheartening premonition about this season, myself included. Thanks for the civil, hearty, and quite engaging back-n-forth despite the notion that we agree on much. Go Bills!

You hit the nail on the head there Shaw. Very nice, well thought out, very well reasoned post BTW!! Regarding the above however, the primary issue with this team is that we're two different teams, one in the regular season and another in the postseason. For example, our Ds have consistently finished 1st, 2nd, and 4th in the league during the regular season, but over the past four years it plays more like the 20th (or worse) defense in the playoffs. Many attribute that to precisely what you said, particularly when it comes to coaching errors, miscues, whatever anyone wishes to call them, that hand games to our opponents in one form or another, including lax defensive scheming. You mention the talent in September, but the discussion needs to revolve around the talent in January and February. Here's the issue with our drafting, there's no visible plan in sight, much as game-planning, it seems to be a lot of shoot-from-the-hip stuff. To start, Drafts are not annual events taken independently, at least not for the best, best coached, and best managed teams. There should be a year-over-year plan in place to build and create a Super Bowl Championship caliber team. Is there any hint of any such plan in place here? Many would argue that there is not. If there is, it's hardly identifiable other than creating the best D. In fact, last season it was all about getting a WR that could separate. Diggs was ejected at tremendous cost because they claim he couldn't do that anymore. Watching the last game of the season vs. Miami seems to contradict that, where Allen badly overthrew him for a missed TD opportinity, and threw short to Knox for another missed TD opp, both plays he had beaten Ramsey and Apple, but that's irrelevant. This year we went with a WR that doesn't do that. There's zero visible plan for the offense in a year-over-year manner. A short-medium game doesn't play to Allen's primary skills. Brady mastered the short-medium game. Mahomes, Burrow, & Purdy run it exceptionally well. Allen has not mastered it. Our focus, clearly, has been on having the top-ranked D, which would be fine and dandy if it played that way in the playoffs, but it doesn't, it plays like one of the worst Ds in the playoffs generally speaking and with a pair of exceptions over the past four or five postseasons. McD seems to model things after the '85 Bears D which ranked #1 also, but in the playoffs it allowed 10 points in three games. We've averaged nearly three times that many in the playoffs. Here's the thing, you mention those players, but which of them step up during the playoffs? Coleman is all but mystery meat right now. Torrence played very well as a rookie, but he's the only OL-man that Beane's hit on for us in 6 drafts. Oliver's shows up for three playoff games and two of 'em our D wasn't particularly impressive against backup QBs. 10 plahyoff games, 2 sacks, 5 TFLs, 8 QB Hits, with 2, 3, and 5 in two games, one against Skylar Thompson, the other in that horrific defensive performance allowing 36 regulation points to KC. 0 sacks, 2 TFLs, and 3 QB Hits in the other 8 playoff games. Same for Milano. 8 playoff games, 3 sacks, 5 TFLs, 7 QB Hits, with 3, 4, and 4 of those in two games, one against Skylar Thompson, the others in that miserable loss to Cincy. 0 sacks, 1 TFL, and 3 QB Hits in the other 6 games. Cook, LOL, he hasn't had a great playoff game yet and Allen has to carry the running game in the playoffs. Despite Cook's 5.0 career rushing avg. hee's averaged 3.6 in the playoffs. 1 playoff TD in 4 playoff games. 53 carries for 192 rushing yards, 8 catches for 26 receiving yards, 1 total TD (rushing), and averages of 48 rushing yards and 6 receiving yards with TDs much less big-plays being rare. Doesn't that fall on the coaching given your post? Great! Eight (8) seasons in it's well past time to get it done. At what point does one cut bait. (rhetorical) GO BILLS!!!

In Brady's first two games as OC his offense averaged 33 points. In his last five games it averaged a perfectly average 21.8. The pressure's on.

The counterargument is that with Allen we'll always win 11 games. Siht, we had coaches win 7, 8, or 9 games with crap at QB. Having Allen would have propelled them to at least three or four more wins per season. Dungy win a Super Bowl in his 5th season. Reid had McNabb, not Allen, and still went to the CCG in years 3-5 and to the Super Bowl in year 6, again, with McNabb. McD's going on year 8 and we have nothing but wins over crap teams and mediocre QBs in the playoffs, and terrible coaching miscues against the good teams. McD's not going anywhere unless it impacts the Pegula's bottom line. He doesn't care about winning to a significant enough extent.

It's going to have to come down to a battle between Pegula and the media before he'll ever get rid of McD. McD would be doing himself and the team a major-league favor if he simply hired someone with come creativity and a plan on offense, rather than shooting from the hip every offseason/season. ... even to the extent of contradicting himself via this Draft. He simply refuses to give up control of an offense that he knows little about in terms of getting the most out of it. Brady merely schemes things according to McD's ill-fated methodologies.

Here's the thing, performance and Pegula's contentment are two different things. Seems pretty clear that Pegula cares first and foremost about his wealth/money than he does about winning anything. About the only thing that could send them packing is blatant futility, which we may very well see this season. There's a lot of discontentment, but last season, of our 11 wins, 5 were very narrow with four of them being against teams that we were notably better than from a talent perspective. Of our 6 losses, 4 were against terrible teams that we should have beaten. Contrary to the Dorsey v. Brady narrative, several of those losses were due to poor D from a 4th-ranked defense. We easily could have finished with a losing record last season. And our last three games, all wins, were very narrow with STs/D TDs being required to win two of the three with our spectacular Brady-led offense not even averaging 20 ppg in those last three games, and all against poor defenses. So it remains to be seen how well we do this season, but once again our offense is being led by an OC that is light on experience, who was hired due to familiarity with the head coach, and that otherwise hasn't proven much in terms of creating any kind of offense that puts us where we should be in the rankings with Allen at the helm. And what does it say when apparently our QB is making key draft decisions. Allen really wanted Coleman it's been reported now, but that's pretty much all that Allen got. We now have a cadre of short-medium largely slot type WRs, we'll see how it works out. But that's hardly Allen's strengths. Who knows what it would take for Pegula to get rid of McD pending certain outcomes, but the fact that our single biggest strength by a country mile is Allen, and yet we continually do not build around that strength, but more importantly, don't even craft our offense to optimize what we have talent-wise on the offensive side, is problematic. McD's made it clear that he prefers the '80s/'90s approach to the game via great D and running the ball, ball-control style. Does this make sense however given that we have one of the greatest passers and best arms of all-time at QB. (rhetorical) It doesn't to a lot of people and more and more are realizing just that. From that era, think Air-Coryell here, that's what we should be thinking. But McD's perpetually off on his '85 Bears bender because defense is all he knows and understands. It would seem that should we not win the division, which would be ridiculous, or worse, not make the playoffs even as a wild-card, which is even more ridiculous given Allen, it will come down to a pressure war between Pegula and the media, both regional and national. Many here have stated correctly that McBeane aren't going anywhere in Pegula's eyes. He cares about his money first, and as long as the tix to the new stadium are selling at historically ridiculous prices, he won't care. Remember the Pegula family values chart. There was nothing on it about the fans or their happiness or contentment much less anything about a Lombardi for this team, it was largely about Pegula family wealth. in short, he doesn't care about you, myself, or any other fans. He cares about his wealth. That's the sad part about it, we have Allen, but there's not one offensively minded creative person on the team to grab Allen by the reigns and direct this offense. The fact that Allen's making our day-1/2 draft picks on offense says quite a bit in that regard.

Nice to know someone's in charge on the offensive side. LOL He also loved Davis whom most people here hated. Curious how this one works out.

Again, the context.

How about it? Read the context of the entire conversation among all involved and get back to me. We're not talking about a single game here. And yes, the D did suck ass. No argument there. That's been a perennial pet peeve on McD's watch. There are lots of reasons, what you say actually feeds into the argument that was made. And BTW, Allen overthrows it quite often as well. Let's not overlook that either. In fact, in the last game of the season, Diggs had both Apple and Ramsey beaten on two deep throws. Allen horribly overthrew him, it would easily have been a TD. On another play Diggs had beaten one or the other (forget which on which play), but Allen threw it OTM to Knox for a decent gain. But had he thrown it to Diggs it would have been a TD. Again, that was our last game in which Diggs was supposed to be at his worst and slowest, and he had two very good CBs beaten on at least three plays in that game. Yet, the narrative stands that he can't get away from even average DBs anymore.