dave mcbride

The eyeball test?? Really? Vick ran a sub-4.4 40 time (allegedly 4.33) but come on. He doesn’t compare to Allen, who hit freaking 66 at the senior bowl. Favre supposedly hit 63 and people didn’t think it was toppable. Vick threw 60 max on his best day (which is good!). His speed and cutting ability separated him from the pack, especially when combined wih a genuinely strong arm.

He literally has broken every record. He was throwing 92 in high school as a pitcher, and he wasn’t a travel player robot who had been trained for speed since the age of 8. It was natural.

Allen has a significantly stronger arm than Vick.

I like McDermott as coach despite the offensive problems this season.

Agreed, but how often are teams getting to the red zone? The Bills' D is 3rd in the league in yards given up per drive and 8th in plays per drive. https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/buf/2018.htm A huge problem for the D is that the O is 31st in turnovers given up.

Is it factually one of the worst in the league? That is an honest question. I don't know the answer.

One came after a long return on a punt. That was a short field.

Well, if they don't win it all, going 14-2 is a pretty nice consolation. Even if they don't win it all, though, they put themselves *in position* to win it all. They are currently as good as any team in the league. They may lose to a good team like NO, but it's not because they're worse. If they play each other 4 times, my guess is that they go 2-2.

It only seems bad to people who overvalue draft picks (as I think many do). He helped get them up off the doormat last season, and while didn't have a ton of catches, he had a lot of TDs and a high ypc. That's important for an offense.

He did miss almost an entire game with a routine quad/hamstring issue.

He has definitely looked pretty solid. Nice to see him coming around. He's a likable player. And he's up to #26 overall among all DEs (right and left) according to PFF: https://www.profootballfocus.com/nfl/players/shaq-lawson/10653

He also got a gift with a phantom facemask call on a sack on a second and 30 play. Instead of 3rd and 32, they got a first and subsequently their only td. Goes both ways.

If they're bad next year (2019) and are in that 4-12 region, they won't deserve further support. I hope their plan works out, but I'm worried because their current offensive foundation is so abjectly terrible. I don't see how you fix that in one off-season. Outside of possibly Allen (the jury is out) and Dawkins, I don't see any promising players on the entire unit. I suppose Jones might work as a middling starting-quality #3, but that's it. When there's a big step forward, it's usually built on an already-existing foundation. The Bills don't have that.

I believe -- and have long believed -- that they should have kept Taylor as an insurance policy. The fact that they believed otherwise only tells me that they were wrong, not that my thinking is irrelevant. Based on recent track, Taylor is a much better player than Derek Anderson too. I also believe that bottoming out to the deepest abyssal level is not a recipe for success going forward. As I've said elsewhere, bad often stays bad if it gets bad enough. And then at a certain point, it's on to new management. And -- no offense -- I'm going to ignore your advice. I'm in for the long haul no matter what happens.

The new standard Bills offensive performance measure should be TDs scored by the other team while they're on the field.

actually, the call was legit, but earlier in the drive there was a truly bogus facemask call on a sack that occurred on 2nd and 30. They never would have scored minus that call.

I think it's pretty clear by now that a competent backup is a very valuable asset in the NFL, especially if you're going with a raw rookie qb from a small-time program and with an injury history. It's not about the "being the man" going forward with regard to Taylor, which was never the issue. It's about not fielding the worst offense in modern NFL history. It astounds me that some people haven't woken up to how bad it all is and instead talk about cap numbers and "the future."

That's a fair point. I'm not at those press conferences, so I have no idea.

I just read the thread (including his responses) and while I woudn't say John is outright "defending" the process, he does come across to me at least as someone who, by asking repeatedly for people to (I'm paraphrasing) "tell me what YOU would do," is sorta-kinda defending the process. He dismisses out of hand the idea of keeping Taylor, which was not an impossibility even if they didn't restructure (caps can ALWAYS be manipulated). Is his position defensible? Yes -- we did get a solid pick for Taylor and we avoided a $16 million cap hit. We also didn't know that McCarron would wash out, and he seemed like a credible backup on signing. But we also have the worst offense in modern league history at present, and it didn't have to be that way. The buck should stop with management when things get this bad. JW avoids that issue, which to me is the heart of the matter. He seems to think it was an impossible situation (apologies if I'm misreading), but I just differ with him on that. A backup who doesn't turn the ball over much and makes the running game look better (as we're all realizing now) is a moderately valuable asset who can prevent you from losing. Sorry to harp on a point. I'm a fan of JW's work and just mildly disagree with him on this issue.

The Jets have an excellent, talented defense. I don't expect things to go well for the Bills offense.

That's fine, and I get that. But there's a big difference between "not making the playoffs" and worst offense in league history. The scenario I presented assumed that he wouldn't restructure his one-year-and-one-year-only $16 million cap hit.

John: I appreciate the good info (esp re Bridgewater); thanks. That said, they are on the road to having the worst offense in the history of DVOA measurements, which begins in 1986 (32 years ago). How could one not conclude that they bungled the QB position? They could have kept Taylor and had a qb cap hit totaling $20.3 million, which is not bad, and as you know cap money can always be moved around creatively. Sure, teams with good young qbs on rookie contracts have far lower hits, but the Bills aren't one of those teams at present. Teams with any decent vet are above that number (e.g. and randomly, the Redskins at $22 million), and while $16 million is too much for a solid backup (which is what Taylor is), the alternative is turning out to be pretty awful. Yeah, they acknowledged that they messed up, and I like that they did that. But they didn't have to be historic-level bad on offense: 32nd in points scored, 31st in turnovers given up, 32nd in collective passer rating, 32nd in net passing yards per attempt, 31st in INTs thrown, 32nd in points per drive, 31st in yards per play, 31st in yards, and a staggering -41 in passer rating differential vs. their opponent.

He was 2-17!

It was the football equivalent of a classic Barry Brady/Dik Smub/Yvel Varm post - endless words spewing forth with hardly any substance.

The Bills led the entire league in plays this weekend, running an astoundingly high 81 offensive plays (the Bears had 46 offensive plays). That is a LOT. Another fascinating stat: while their rushing ypc average was typically bad (3.5 ypc, a number goosed by Peterman's "chicken run" at the end of the half), it was actually better than the yards-per-pass-play average, which was 3.2. That is AWFUL (god, Peterman has to go). The Bills defensive yardage stats were also misleading because they gave nearly 100 penalty yards on two long PI plays that eventually led to scores. There was a ton of penalty yardage (292 yards total - christ!!) on both sides yesterday, marking the game as one of the worst played and most difficult-to-watch games I've seen in a while. It hit the trifecta: poorly played, over early due to a rout, and punctuated by a flood of officiating stoppages. I'd say it was a worse game than the infamous 6-3 Bills-Browns game from nearly a decade ago. That game was at least close.