dave mcbride

The Josh Johnson of wide receivers -- brilliant!!!!!

Something to think about: Brandin Cooks, Davante Adams, and a done-for-the-season Mike Evans are the three remaining WRs standing from the historic 2014 NFL wide receiver draft haul:

You will like this. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6832852/2025/11/25/chip-kelly-raiders-fired-offense-film-review/

It might be less complicated than we think. The Saints traded him for a first to a Super Bowl window team in need of a separator, and he had a great season for NE. Then NE traded him and a 4th for a first rounder from the Rams, which they used to select Isaiah Wynn (at a point where they needed o-line help). He had a great season in 2018, but in 2019 suffered two concussions, missed time, and the Rams didn't make the playoffs. They did a bit a of a rebuild and shipped him and a fourth to Houston for a 2nd round pick, which they used on Van Jefferson (a younger, cheaper WR). Houston was the third team in four years that he was traded to that was in a SB window. Houston was very good in 2019, beating the Bills in the playoffs and building a big lead vs KC before collapsing. They were after Cooks because they had to replace D'Andre Hopkins, whom Bill O'Brien had a beef with. Cooks was very good for the Texans, and actually signed a two-year extension worth nearly $40 million in 2022. Then, a very bad Houston team traded him AGAIN for two picks (a 5th and 6th) because at the time they were in a massive pick acquisition phase (they had an extremely small number of picks in 2020 and 2021; Davis Mills was their top pick in 2021 and he was a 3rd rounder). The team that traded for him -- the Cowboys -- was yet ANOTHER team in a SB window, coming off a 12-5 season. They went 12-5 again with Cooks, who was solid for them (50+ catches; 8 TDs). The point is, in every instance the trade made sense. All the teams were willing to give up real resources for him. The Cowboys gave up the least, but then again they had to take on his salary and they still gave up a 5th and 6th -- not chump change. All of the 5th and 6th rounders the Texans took in 2023 are still on the team, and To'oTo'o made some plays vs the Bills on Thursday: His career is very weird, but at every point the move made sense for the two parties involved, and not because he was a problem in his prior location.

This is pretty hilarious: https://www.nbcsports.com/watch/nfl/profootballtalk/devin-mccourty-hilariously-tells-mike-florio-what-an-nfl-pile-is-like. His description of the strategy in those situations is amazing.

Proof positive that the OP in this thread is one of the worst takes in some time on this board.

I honestly think Josh will be running the show if they go new OC. He is the franchise and far more valuable than either Beane or McDermott. Plus if Brady goes, it’ll be because Allen WANTS him to go. Allen is the power there now, although he of course has to be willing to exert that power. That’s an open question.

I was just about to post this! Ryans’s comments say it all regarding what the team puts on Josh.

Anyhoo … game over.

Enh. Way too early to be thinking about that.

Taking points off the board to run shotgun from the one is pretty much always a terrible idea. If there is no qb sneak threat, the offense is likely to lose on 2 pt conversion attempts.

This is correct. But they find themselves in knives-edge games in the first place because of what the OP is highlighting.

For the life of me, I can't understand why they went into prevent mode with zone coverage all the way down the field right before the half. Houston had plenty of time, and they predictably picked the Bills apart because a) the Bills couldn't get close with only four rushers and b) someone is always open in the Bills zone scheme if no one applies quick pressure on the QB.

Exactly. If you only think you may have had the flu, you have not had it. A full blown flu is AWFUL. Flus kill a lot of people every year, and for a reason.

I'm arguing about UCLA football's pathetic fan base in a separate thread!

The attendance was terrible LONG before Chip. I also think that COVID is what really killed any tradition of attendance at UCLA games. The Rose Bowl is just too damn far from everything--32 miles from campus! He also took over a mess of a program and over time made them competitive. My expectations going forward are extremely low, to be sure, but I think my pessimism is warranted. They are simply not going to get 4 and 5-star recruits, and Kelly at least realized this. They aren't cut out to compete in the Big 10 either, and it's not because they're a former Pac-12 team. Washington, Oregon, and USC are all competitive. Partly because of the money situation UCLA is set up to be an absolute bottom feeder for some time going forward, down there with Maryland, Rutgers, etc. You are right about Mora, who DID get some top-20 recruiting classes. But that was a long time ago, and he was a far worse game-day coach than Kelly, in my opinion.

I thought they had 437 fans!

Well, the Bills scored 44 points vs that team the Rams were facing last night and should have had 46 if not for an errant throw to Gilliam on the 2 pt conversion.

I'm a UCLA alum too and think that Kelly was the best thing that happened to that program in the last decade. UCLA's absolute ceiling is never going to be higher than 10-3, with a more realistic ceiling being 9-4. 8-5 is a good season for that program. They don't have the money, they don't have the commitment, the athletic dept is a mess, they don't have fans who show up to games given the stadium location, and they have long struggled to recruit 4 and 5 star recruits. The academic expectations are another issue. They were competitive with Kelly and had a pretty impressive run game. Kelly focused on 3-star recruits who fit within his system, which in my view was a realistic approach. In his last three seasons, they went 8-4, 9-4, and 8-5, with the fifth loss in the final season a result of a crazy ending vs Pitt in a bowl game. They didn't lose that game because of Kelly. I feel confident in saying that that three-year run is probably going to be the best such run they have in the dozen years that follow after his departure. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6642637/2025/09/19/ucla-football-deshaun-foster-martin-jarmond/ "The biggest issue with UCLA football, according to more than a half-dozen sources The Athletic spoke to for this story, some of whom were granted anonymity in exchange for their candor, has been a lack of financial resources. The Bruins had never been USC when it came to money or commitment to football, and UCLA has piled up more than $200 million in athletic department debt in recent years. But that disparity — fractures of which showed throughout much of this century — became much more of a problem in 2021, once name, image and likeness arrived." ... “Looking at the Chip regime through clear eyes, it was a major rebuild that took too long, at first,” one of Kelly’s assistants told The Athletic. “Then, we really turned the corner and were a top-20 program over the last three years, which is all you really can ask for any non-blue blood.” But, the assistant continued, UCLA wanted more. The fans weren’t engaged — “Chip’s not the biggest fan engagement guy.” It became apparent UCLA folks were tired of Kelly, who didn’t replicate the success he’d had at Oregon before leaving for the NFL, and Kelly, program sources said, was tired of the entire dynamic, especially of [athletic director] Jarmond, who was hired two years after the coach arrived. “You’re trying to sell the players on getting a great education and we can develop you as a player, but we didn’t have any money to pay them, and we were losing out on players,” said one position coach from Kelly’s staff at UCLA.

The funny thing is that the Browns were built like a very good NFC team. They were better than the Broncos. In particular, I think the 1987 Browns would have beaten Washington. They were a better team. That was 1997!

This game is kind of the season for the Steelers. They will very likely lose on the road at Detroit and Baltimore, and 9-8 will not get them in the playoffs. On the flipside, if the Bills lose yet again, they'll be 3-5 in their last 8 and 1-4 in their last four road games -- a bad sign for January even if they manage to slip in as a #7 wild card. Huge game for them too. They need to stop the bleeding and prove they can beat a team on the road not named the (now tanking) Jets or the Andy Dalton-led Panthers.

I don't disagree. It implies that he's not really that interested in managing more complex protection schemes pre-snap, which is not how Manning and Brady operated.

After last season ended, I was hoping very hard that the Bills would go after Davante Adams and do whatever cap maneuvering they needed to do to get him. It stuck in my craw last mid-season that they couldn't get him (I realize it was always unlikely given their cap situation, but still, where there's a will there's a way with regard to the cap), and now seeing him feast for the Rams on a 2-year 44-million dollar contract really bugs me.

Love this! I remember that flu game and defending Bruce, who had a fever of I think 105? It was something like that -- extremely high. He couldn't play football much less maneuver himself around a hospital in a wheelchair in that condition. I remember Cornelius Bennett saying afterward that Smith was EXTREMELY sick and that the critics had no idea how bad that flu was.

My pats fan friends are alarmed about this turn of events. One pointed out that Lowe was the worst LT in the league last year and looked it again yesterday.