dave mcbride

The comments from sources are not entirely negative. From part II: 'His intent — players repeat — is pure. The coach who ended the Bills’ 17-year playoff drought realizes how badly locals are dying for their first Super Bowl. The quest consumes him. “He never, ever, ever does a damn thing with any other intention than to empower and grow the Buffalo Bills franchise,” this ex-Bill said. “That’s a fact. Now, whether or not the *****’s going to work or whether or not the players are going to receive it well? That’s a different conversation. But it doesn’t come from an evil - ‘Sean McDermott wants all the praise and all the credit.’ He genuinely wants every person in that organization to thrive and win a lot of games to the point of exhaustion. “All he wants to do is help that team win. Now, that’s the truth.”'

LOL. Like Florio or hate him, but PFT is without question one of the most read NFL-oriented news outlets. It is HUGELY popular.

Interestingly, I just checked the twitter/X feeds of all the Bills reporters who have access: Buscaglia, Sal C, Mark Gaughan, Tim Graham, Matt Bove, etc. etc. None have even mentioned this explosive piece except one -- John Wawrow, who said nothing of substance. National writers who don't depend on access, on the other hand, seem happy to talk about it. .

Randy Mueller agrees with you and doesn't hide behind anonymity: https://theathletic.com/5098045/2023/11/29/nfl-coaches-on-hot-seat/. "Bills coach Sean McDermott is now front and center needing to have a plan for 6-6 Buffalo to not waste another year within the championship window of their perennial league MVP candidate Josh Allen. McDermott is known for his attention to detail and his need to micromanage at every level. But right now his only management job should be his defense, which has underperformed this season. That’s where he needs to be a difference-maker on Sundays. To be fair, some of the Bills’ issues are injury-related, but some have been a function of McDermott’s ill-timed blitzes and less-than-ideal execution. By replacing his defensive coordinator last off-season and installing himself, he has to be directly accountable for the unit’s results. His somewhat defensive responses to questions about his decisions are seen by some as an effort to pass the buck. I would love to see more transparent self-accountability. Sometimes a little humility can go a long way. Forget about Allen and his propensity to make a crucial mistake. Forget about the dismissal of offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey; at this point it doesn’t matter. Forget about the lack of reinforcements that they may have been able to add to the defense before the trade deadline and didn’t. The point to focus on is that this defense has to play better over the last third of the season or questions will start to be asked about the guy who is leading the charge. Organizational skills be damned, McDermott needs to make a difference on Sundays. The pass rush has generated sacks (41), but the sub package pressures to affect the opposing QB have been a letdown at critical times. The Bills rank 14th in opponent passer rating and 17th in getting off the field on third downs, per TruMedia. Neither is good enough to advance in the postseason. The offense is trending in the right direction with the changes instituted by McDermott. Now he must do the same with the side of the ball where his expertise lies."

Nit-picking? There is SO much parity in the NFL and so many close games across the league. How a team performs late game relative to its opponent can easily be the difference between 11-6 and 7-10. It is inarguable that the Bills' defense is terrible late. Inarguable. Their defense is last or near last in EPA and DVOA in the fourth quarter this season.

It wasn’t the play before. The play before was the clear forward-progress stopped in bounds play that the refs ruled out of bounds. GB was screwed twice on that possession by horrible calls.

Anyone who doesn’t believe the fix is in after those truly ticky tack penalties called on Seattle is very naive.

I'm talking about 8 games in total, not just one. In this one particular game, along with the offensive and ST failures, the defense failed to get a stop either in the fourth, which is part of a much broader season-long trend.

I am talking about ends of games. The defense made precisely zero stops vs the Jets in the last quarter and allowed them to convert a fourth on their final possession to bleed clock, preventing the Bills from trying for a TD in regulation. Allen and ST were bad, but the defense made precisely zero plays in the final quarter too.

I feel like I'm beating my head against the wall. The Bills D made zero plays in crunch time -- i.e., the fourth quarter. All they did was allow the Jets to first move the ball for a TD and second chew up valuable clock at the end. I never said that they're a bad defense for four quarters of games.

I'd add that the Jets had basically two possessions in the 4th quarter: an eight-play TD drive and an 8 play FG drive from the Bills 27 in which they converted a 4th and 1 that forced the Bills to burn timeouts. When the Bills got it back, they moved the ball fairly easily but ran out of time and had to settle for a long FG to tie it. Make that stop on 4th, and the game may turn out very differently. But as with so many 4th quarter performances this season, the D could not make a stop in crunch time. And against Zach Wilson.

The run game wasn't great, but at the same time you should play it safe and accept punts and a field position game vs an absolutely terrible offense that you're leading by two scores.

I'll say this about him - I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone improve year-to-year like him, and this goes back to college. I remember him getting benched for Tua vs Georgia, and I thought, put him out of his misery -- the man can't throw and also has an incredibly slow release. No chance at the next level. Props to him for always improving year to year. I think he's plateaued, but that plateau is pretty elevated.

I think this is what you'd see - the 2021 version of him, when he only had a rookie Smith: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/phi/2021.htm. His numbers were pretty Tyrod like, which doesn't mean bad (Tyrod was a decent player for the Bills).

I will agree that Dorsey called a horrible game vs the Jets in the opener. You don't keep throwing when you're up 10 points vs a Zach Wilson-led offense. You just can't. That said, the D gave up a big TD drive to the Jets in the 4th that allowed them to tie the game - and they were playing Zach Wilson. And then the horrible low punt and TD return. Christ. What a ridiculous loss.

This team has long-term Sammy Watkins syndrome, I suspect, but the Julio Jones trade certainly worked out for Atlanta.

I specified that I was basically talking about the 4th quarter for both offense and defense, and lord knows the offense shares some blame. But it can’t be argued that the defense chokes all of the time late. The stats back it up - they are great in DVOA in the first parts of games and a disaster at the end. I think they’re last if memory serves. The offense has largely done ok in the fourth quarter. There are a lot of close games in the NFL, as you know, and winning the 4th quarter is often determinative. This is a team with an expected W-L record of 8.5-3.5 and a huge dollar investment in defense. It’s very frustrating.

Wow. How about watching the whole game vs NE, which has the worst offense in the NFL??

Oh man. The Bills have a top ten defense in every category overall but when they get to the final 10 minutes of games, they hover between 30th and 32nd (this is documented). That is all coaching. Stop drinking the kool-aid. Kind of?? That was blatant PI. It was a freaking joke that it wasn’t called. We can complain about Hochuli, and we should, but the NFL gifted us a game vs the Giants.

He is the worst starting qb in the league and he put up all-pro numbers in that game.

Um ... Mac Jones prefers to throw very short passes behind the LOS because his arm sucks and NE is good at running screens. That's literally all they are good at. Expect those plays and scheme against them.

They literally did it against Detroit last season. The got the ball at their own 25 yard line with 23 seconds and Bass kicked the game winner with 7 seconds left. And the Bills had been shredding the Eagles all night. Plus Allen is quite literally the least sacked QB in the league this season (tied for first with Mahomes with a 3.3 percent sack rate). So it's unlikely he's going to get sacked. Last night, the Bears got the ball with 10 seconds and completed a pass to the Vikes 34, where the WR fumbled because he couldn't get out of bounds. But they didn't have any TOs, and the Bills did.

I can't believe I'm writing this, but if an athletic, game-changing safety is there, it's something I'd consider. They are really hurting at that position, and the best safeties these days can make a big difference. Ideally, though, I'd prefer to get a safety in round 2 or 3 as long as the player projects to being good.

If the one loss is to the Cowboys, they'll be 8-5 in the conference and 4-2 in the division (not that the division record matters for the WC). The Bills would have 2 non-conference losses. The Colts and Houston both have two non-conference losses already. Denver has only one. For tiebreaker situations, it's better to have more non-conference losses than the team you're matched up against in a tiebreaker. Pittsburgh has one but has a very easy schedule the rest of the way. Unless they fall apart (and they aren't that good), I see them getting to 11-6 despite being a fraud. That's one probable playoff team. Cleveland has one non-conference loss and I see them losing 3 more games because they have no QB. The Bengals are technically in the running too, but they don't have a QB. So if the Bills make it to 10-7, I don't see the situation as insurmountable. And they all play each other: Houston faces, Denver, Indy, and the Browns going forward. Having said all of this, I'm getting serious Rex Ryan-era-in-November vibes just from typing this.