dave mcbride

LOL. My take: Bills fans think they hate the Pats more than anyone else, but I can assure that Jets fans hate them more than we do. Who is the one coach who has given Belichick fits the last few years? Adam Gase. This is at least in part about the Pats.

Why should we presume he'll improve the defense? In his 20 years of coaching (DC and HC), his defenses have finished in the bottom half of the league 10 times in the points allowed category and 10 times in the yards allowed category. By the numbers, he is perfectly mediocre judging from his long history.

http://www.espn.com/nfl/columns/story?id=2672668

The animosity stems from him a) being a terrible coach in Buffalo while remaining supremely arrogant all the while, b) being an absolutely terrible human being, and c) selling snake oil and lies for most of his professional career.

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2018/12/06/if-kyler-murray-follows-the-money-it-may-lead-him-to-the-nfl/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/garyphillips/2018/12/09/football-not-baseball-is-the-more-financially-sound-option-for-kyler-murray/#65b54d015860

Trust me, I am right about his time in Buffalo. He has missed 16.2 percent of games in his emtire NFL career, which is very normal because injuries over long careers are almost impossible to avoid. Kyle Williams missed 12.5 percent.

Wikipedia says Kugler is the guy who coached up Jason Peters and made him a star: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Kugler.

??? - in the past 18 years, they have finished in the top 10 in points allowed 13 times and the top 10 in yards surrendered 7 times. Christ, they were first in points allowed and 8th in yards allowed a mere 2 years ago! (2016) Also, with regard to winning percentage and competition level, he is in fact 27-10 in the postseason with the Pats. He is the greatest coach of all time. There's really no argument to be had about that. And lest we forget, that 1994 Browns team (11-5; 1st in D) was a team on the up and up that got derailed by the Modell-created chaos in Cleveland the next season. And he was one of the greatest DCs of the modern era before all of this. By the numbers, the Giants was utterly dominant when he was the DC there from 1985-1990.

A new WaPo feature piece on the drafting of Mahomes just posted. What's notable is that Reid, Sean Payton, and Bruce Arians -- all of whom clearly know a good qb from a bad one -- really wanted Mahomes. https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/01/09/we-got-it-done-inside-story-how-patrick-mahomes-landed-with-chiefs/?utm_term=.0ccdc0c3f255

Au contraire. The day I ever root for the Cowboys -- over even the Dark One himself -- will be the day hell freezes over.

Good hire. I like him.

You're forgetting Rashaan Evans, who was the #22 pick overall, and Anthony Averett (a 4th rounder). Of the group, Allen, Payne, Humphrey, and Jackson are all very good to elite (Jackson is the best as of now). Some of the others have the potential to be very good but aren't there yet (e.g., Minkah Fitzpatrick, who was up and down this season). Foster gets an incomplete given that his criminal proclivities. It's interesting that he's on the Redskins now; he's the fifth guy from that Bama unit on Washington now. "And here’s where they went in the draft: Marlon Humphrey — Round 1, No. 16, 2017 — Baltimore Ravens Jonathan Allen — Round 1, No. 17, 2017 — Washington Redskins Reuben Foster — Round 1, No. 31, 2017 — San Francisco 49ers Ryan Anderson — Round 2, No. 49, 2017 — Washington Redskins Dalvin Tomlinson — Round 2, No. 55, 2017 — New York Giants Tim Williams — Round 3, No. 78, 2017 — Baltimore Ravens Eddie Jackson — Round 4, No. 112, 2017 — Chicago Bears Minkah Fitzpatrick — Round 1, No. 11, 2018 — Miami Dolphins Da’Ron Payne — Round 1, No. 13, 2018 — Washington Redskins Ronnie Harrison — Round 3, No. 93, 2018 — Jacksonville Jaguars Shaun Dion Hamilton — Round 6, No. 197 — Washington Redskins And, of course, this doesn’t even account for the fact that Rashaan Evans went No. 22 overall in this year’s draft, as he didn’t start that game. Anthony Averett also got selected this year, going in the fourth round. That stat is an incredible recruiting tool for coach Nick Saban and the Tide, and the streak of producing top NFL Draft talent will likely only continue. https://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/alabama-football/built-bama-11-alabamas-2016-defensive-starters-selected-past-2-nfl-drafts/"

Tua is really, really good. He just had a few bad moments and made a few bad decisions. He's very young. It happens. The talent is obvious, however.

Peters missed only two games due to "injury" in Buffalo -- his final two, right after the Bills had been eliminated from the playoffs and (presumably) becasue the organization was bent on keeping him healthy in order to extract max draft capital (which they did). Otherwise, he was extremely healthy in Buffalo.

You're crediting them with an offensive TD even though it came in *late* garbage time (1:08 left in the fourth) in a ritual stomping?

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2019/01/07/nfl-wild-card-weekend-fmia-eagles-chargers-peter-king/ 6. I think we’re all still in the business of trying to figure out the problems between Mike McCarthy and Aaron Rodgers, and why the Green Bay offense looked so crummy this year. I asked former NFL quarterback and current Bleacher Report and NBC NFL analyst Chris Simms about it on my podcast this week. His take: The Green Bay offense is just too vanilla. Said Simms: “I think he [McCarthy] is too regular. It’s just basic West Coast offense. I can promise you guys like Bill Belichick, Mike Zimmer, those guys? They’ve been around it for so long and they had to face Bill Walsh. They know that offense just as good as Mike McCarthy and Aaron Rodgers. They know the rules. Other West Coast guys who’ve been successful, let’s say Sean Payton or Kyle Shanahan or Sean McVay, it’s West Coast-based, but they’ve added their own footprint to it to go, ‘I do this along with it, to make it not the West Coast. But I have my own wrinkles.’ And Green Bay is as basic as it gets. It is what we could call in the NFL Day 1, Day 2 installation, your basic plays you put in the first day the rookies are in. Aaron Rodgers, who, you know, I think is the greatest quarterback of all time … We see him dance around and sit there in the pocket … He’s not doing that because he wants to look cool. He’s doing that because nobody’s open a lot of the time. I also think that he’s been scarred by people not being open so much of the time. Troy Aikman, early in the year, made comments … ‘There’s nobody open.’ I remember my dad [former CBS game analyst Phil Simms] doing it two years ago: ‘There’s no separation.’ “ 7. I think that’s an interesting reason—if true—why evidence is now coming out that Rodgers audibled so much, and why he appeared either laconic or disinterested at times. I’ve wondered whether he looked around the league and saw all this imagination—including, this year, in Chicago with rookie coach Matt Nagy—and then looked at his own team and saw the same old thing.

Their defense is awful. Just awful. They can't stop anyone. They have literally finished 32nd two years in a row in defensive DVOA as per Football Outsiders. That is hard to do.

Arguing against letting Gilmore go only works in the context of a we-could-have-drafted-Mahomes/Watson argument, but if the regime wasn't sold on either of those guys (and they clearly weren't; otherwise they would have taken a QB given that they weren't invested in Taylor), then they wouldn't have drafted them anyway and the point is moot. The Bills pass D has been very good without him even though he's a very good player himself.

? - They were 7th in passing defense as measured by team passer rating (the differential of which is the most predictive stat of success in sports). Opponents had an 85.4 rating. http://www.espn.com/nfl/statistics/team/_/stat/passing/sort/quarterbackRating/position/defense/seasontype/2 Raw yardage is indicative of nothing other than the fact that their opponents were playing from behind most of the time.

Um ... .

Apropis of your point above about qbs, I thought you might be interested in this piece: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/a-cheap-qb-is-a-quick-route-to-nfl-playoffs-but-sustained-success-costs-big-money/2019/01/03/c014f9ba-0f9a-11e9-84fc-d58c33d6c8c7_story.html?utm_term=.dad9be59b542

I also think that short of a franchise tag, which the Bills would never have done (and I don't even know if they could have done it that year), there was no way he was going to resign with Buffalo. He was moving on regardless.

very weird. There is another set of stats in the same article with him being targeted 5 times and giving up 1 catch for 7 yards with 2 BUs. I also read in another spot that he had two BUs. Anyway, 3 catches on 6 attempts for 19 yards is good -- 50 percent completion rate for 3.3 ypa.

I agree completely. The Bills have a good secondary, obviously. But Gilmore is very good too.

?? Gilmore wasn't necessarily the main guy on that play (I read the piece you got the info from too in the Charlotte Observer). https://patriotswire.usatoday.com/2018/02/05/these-stats-from-super-bowl-lii-show-impact-of-malcolm-butlers-benching/ Gilmore officially gave up one completion in five attempts for 7 yards; he also had two pass breakups. And to reiterate, NE probably isn't even in that game if not for the great play he made at the end of the Jax game.