colin

even with our total junk interior blocking this game, a prime shady would have had 150+ yards from scrimmage on sunday. having close to zero at TE and RB is just too big of a hole, good thing is it can be fixed quickly

i read on there they might cut morse, sign mongo and move him to C. i fully expect that. cut brown, murph is OBV gone, cut or restructure at least 2 of the DL signings last season. i could see wallace getting a smallish tender, norman gone, kroft and smith gone, motor might not make the team, but it depends on who else is there. we need better interior blocking, better DL production, better TE and RB (i think those two are the easiest to improve), and we have to do something about LB/scheme. our scheme and players just don't add up to anything good right now, but i think mcd can fix that with a quickness

he's a pure JAG, it's just that motor is cheeks.

i don't know what they are going to do, but we need to upgrade as much of our DL signings last year as possible. we need a small improvement at CB2, i don't think sherman is fast enough for that (not at a good price anyhow). for RB, they either need to sign a guy for not too much, or draft somebody. i'd like speed there, but a power back who can move would be a huge get too.

im happy daboll apologized, it was in order. he was not as good in the playoffs as he was in the regular season.

oh, i agree with you from a macro level coach tuesday, but having 3 linebackers as base vs johson, who is sick coming forward but just cannot cover 1 on 1, would be a huge help letting us disguise and dictate. also, and i should have made this clearer, i don't mean going to a 2 gap 3-4 or something wild, i mean lining up and disguising coverage more different ways so that we have a shot vs a kc and can not be an open book. it could also let us bump guys, switch off, etc without just being beat before the ball is snapped. I think for this to happen, we need to hit a home run or two on new people. pass rusher, another db, either a new MLB or OLB, something i think can be added to make this work. if you look at how our d was 2 years ago, and how the carolina d under mcd was at their best, they made everything opponents did much much harder.

two things 1) the athletic has had multiple GMs and talent scouts opine that the new ideal way of building a roster is to get actual super duper stars and fill in the rest of the roster w youth and role players. This is in contrast to the i suppose new england model of having superior role players up and down the roster and just coaching them up into a force. the issue with that is you can't pay them all, and your run into a place where you have a young guy who can't make the team, although he might grow into a better player, because you've stuck your money into depth and breadth instead of a few sure fire stars (us trading teller is an example of that. if we had a star T opposite dawkins, we would have kept cheaper draft guys and see if one sprouts). the Rams are a good example of this, they have just super duper studs at DT, CB, and aim to get that at a couple other positions, and the rest of the team is pretty fungible. they aren't as good as they were a couple years ago, but even with goff hurt, and not being worth his contract, it is still a pretty nasty team. KC is the most shining example, two just stud DL, one sick S, and the rest of the d are JAGS and they are pretty sick. on O, it's one solid LT (first overall pick, but not the best), top qb, and two weapons our d didn't even begin to stop. they ripped us with some no one back up RB because of the threat of the rest of the talent. 2) we have a serious issue with our defensive scheme. we have the talent and the coaching to shut down baltimore in the wind, who only do one thing, but against any multiple O, we just struggle. they can play very solid vs a team like indy for 3 quarters, and just fold with a couple bad play calls late, or they can get ultra trucked vs KC. with who we have playing and our scheme, it's nothing but a guessing game, and against a talented team and/or a good coach, we don't take things away effectively. we sort of defend everything by design and try to tailor it play by play, and anyone getting wiped or out of position and we just get ripped on runs or missed tackles on a regular basis. they have played much better than the first 6 weeks, but if you look back at those games, the degree of difficulty they pose to opponents is simply not high. contrast that w a baltimore or KC D, they are both capable of re tooling and shutting down what they want vs an opponent, given them a chance to win. i really hope the ship can get righted, but the combo of who we are paying a tone of money too, and just zilch depth at LB and CB exposes us in a big way. both edmunds and oliver have lots of potential to end up as solid starters in the NFL for 10 years, but edmunds in particular is simply ineffective. he can be manipulated by a well run O to go where he leaves a hole, and does not make dynamic plays getting off blocks, breaking up passes, or blowing up runs. imo, to get past KC, we need to totally retool our DL, and rescheme our D. if you watch what we did on D the last 2 seasons, while we did get trucked the odd time, the d as a unit was much more consistent and was doing so with much poorer special teams and offensive play.

we built our roster at times the same way we coached last night, timid. trading for diggs was a bit of that, but worked out great (trading for a guy instead of drafting one, that is). trading up to get allen was super aggressive, and an awesome move. Trading out of the mahomes pick to get a late 1st round CB, well that one was a little bit un aggressive. the edmunds pick baffles me. a couple guys taken later are better MLBs, i think they just fell in love w the potential. passing on metcalf but making moves for ford and knox strikes me as similar to not going for it on 4th down at the end of the half last night, but going for it from mid field on 4th and 1. like, it was an aggressive move to get the OL who might be better than he looked in college, vs the size weight speed freak WR. like ya i guess the % chance of a bust WR is slightly higher than OL, but the impact of ford if he got much better would have been what, a solid guard vs an injured below average guard? the upside of a maniac like metcalf is what we see in seattle, a game breaker. the other issue, perhaps above all, is we seem to have drafted and signed FAs to fit a rather ridged scheme, especially on D. instead of getting top talents and adjusting, we get what we get and try to fit them in 1996s latest and greatest D!

whatever their reason was, they didn't spend the extra time getting prepared, i can tell you that much.

on O, i do think we call what we call due to huge holes in our roster, OL does not play well in the run game, and against creative schemes in the pass game either it seems. our TEs and RBs are just straight cheeks. TJ yeldon is head and shoulders over motor, and yeldon is the definition of a nobody. on D, i think we call what we call in spite of holes in our roster, and it shows. i'm now fully convinced that edmunds is a bad MLB and needs to be moved or moved on from. schematically, we just ask our players to do things they aren't good enough at and have no answer intragame. prime brian urlacher at MLB and some kind of monster at DE might have made our D work last night, but those type of guys go to the hall of fame for a reason, we simply need some better players and scheme to use them better. the only upside i see is so much of our D are higher priced FAs so we can at least boot them and put the money somewhere else, but we need to just hit in the draft to get over the hump.

i gotta disagree w your disagreement! it was a tough play, but the ball hit his hands near the end zone, he had a decent gain and a shot at the endzone, and he folded. josh took a few bad sacks/intentional grounding that cost us a bunch of yards, but he also ran around and got out of horrible blocking from our OL a few times. we can't have him being jonny miracle back there while our skill talent fails to get open or fails to make a play when their number is called. beez and digs are the only guys who can consistently win their assignments, and kc had the silly idea to take them away as opposed to our superior strategy of letting our opponent destroy us with their best players over and over.

im not super worried about this. i am a huge huge JA supporter, and honestly think he has the god given talent and drive to be the best ever, but cap issues are a reality. the issue right now is our team is a couple few draft picks and a lot of free agents. some have been huge values (diggs, even with the cost of the trade, our two safeties prior to their new contracts at the least, beez, you might be able to toss in a couple more) but plenty have been meh at best or are declining in value now. we have a couple big hits in drafting, allen being the shining star obv, but guys like ford, edmunds, wallace, epenesa, knox, singletary, phillips, have so far just not been real impact players vs where they were drafted. we need an ozzie newsome type draft where everyone we get is a size speed weight guy who can play and is just nasty. teller seems to be that kind of value now (total 2020 hindsight, i didn't think he was special before) and we need a few of them.

aside from DE who can make an impact, i really am jumping on the move edmunds to OLB train. he has a ton of ability, but its just so clear he can be controlled by scheme and qb play by the other team into making mistakes, so he end up being ineffective way way way too often. i'd rather they try to work his talents into a different position where he can dictate, bumping and shadowing TEs, shallow zone stuff, and rushing up field. i suspect the decline of the tampa 2 style d has to do with the inability to get 4 DL who can create pressure by themselves, and the fact that MLB in that D is just a nearly impossible task.

read a stat on twitter from some KC analyst who cover 1 retweeted. they said that mahomes threw an average of less than 5 air yards and out of 33 or so attempts only 3 of them had a defender within 1 yard. also, cover 1 pointed out that if all of our red zone drives were automatic TDs, we still don't have enough points to win the game. the O was beat up and beaten up all game, and made mistakes, and had no balance, but at the end of the day the D was just rolled and we can't beat a top team w that trash out there. our entire D personal and scheme need to be retweaked to work better. mcD had a disgusting D in carolina for long enough that i think he can get the ship righted here, and he's reworked things quickly too, so here's to hoping he will that accomplished next season.

i agree he coached badly, we got out coached harder than we have all season last night, but i don't think we had a shot to win that game anyhow. as a team, we put all our eggs in one basket on either side of the ball and don't really adjust. we throw to WRs and have josh make miracles happen, and we play a zone nickle on D and hope for mistakes and the odd dialed up blitz pressure. coaching at the HC and OC level improved this season, regressed on D. we need to hit on some draft picks and FA upgrades and scheme better to get over the hump next year.

The bills, ravens, and indy could beat GB or Tampa more than 6 times out of 10 if they played enough times. the afc is head and shoulders better than the NFC this year, i expect KC to trounce tampa.

i agree wholeheartedly with the drift of this chat. one thing that sticks in my craw: the bills coaches are really really conservative to swap in and out skill players. davis was in no shape to play, brown was dinged up, and beez was in and out (heroic effort from him) but we didn't throw in Stills and barely put mac in. meanwhile KC dumps their 1st rounder for a guy who was driving UPS trucks and smoked us with him. On D, we have corners alternate, have nearly 10MM a year DEs not suit up, and rotate all game. they have unlimited flexibility to move guys around on D, but treat skill positions on O like they are rocket surgery. makes no sense! part of me wonders what our practice breakdown problems are. i feel like we don't spend enough time on situational plays that we can go back to and maybe change up over time to TEs and RBs. i dig some might be due to lack of talent, but KC took our bread and butter away (helped by injuries) and we had no answer. on the flip side, their whole O were the two most obvious players they have, and we didn't even seem to try to stop it schematically.

in that case, the execution was PERFECT!

he's better than the TRASH we had before him, sure, that's why i'm 50/50 on it. he has a lot of heart, but not as much talent.

What was that about? so, players who im like 50/50, where losing them creates a hole at least on paper, but these guys aren't really difference makers: Brown (not over all super dynamic, speed and some ability, but hurt too much too) Milano (i like the way he plays, i think he's an above replacement level guy, but he's hurt way too much and is not a game breaker, i could be convinced he needs to stay though) Mongo (love the guy, but he's clearly a lesser player than teller, who we sadly let go for cheap. has been hurt and is over all a replacement level guy) Josh Norman (just done at this point) Levi Wallace (a tad better than Norman, but a weakness at corner) Klien (had some solid games as a pass rusher, but had more negative impact overall) all the DL they brought in this year (Butler, Addison, Williams) didn't even manage to equal the guys they replaced, who aren't stars. Motor (not as good as a JAG 3rd stringer, rookie deal so we don't need to move on from him) Guys who losing would make a real hole and we aren't likely to get a solid replacement for Morse (paid like an all pro, plays just above average) Edumnds (sick talent, just a bad angle and mistake machine, although he brings some good plays sometimes. could be out of position, cheap contract so he obv gets at least another year) Knox (clearly not a great player, sick athlete, has been improving at least some tho, on rookie deal so whatever) and there you have it, we don't have enough playmakers (diggs, allen, white) and the guys we have around them are just not good enough. There was an athletic article on the final 4 teams, the bills had more free agent players than any other team. a couple of those have been decent, but look at who TB brought in on D (suh and JPP) and who we did (a bunch of no ones, including Murphy who barely plays) and it's obvious where the issue is

yelden was a clearly superior player, with the possible exception of pass blocking (don't know either way, just could be something i missed) than motor. the two play combo, when we were up 9-0, where we ran power right and had good OL execution and motor gets 3 yards, and then he drops a sure fire first down and more lob pass on the screen (again to the right) just shows me he's at best JAG. the saddest thing about the above is Yeldon is a career 2nd or 3rd guy in the NFL, who doesn't really stay w a team for too long at a time. he's a pure replacement level player, and aside from Moss having some solid power running late in the season (im gonna hope he recovers and is a solid back going forward), he was better than what we saw at RB all year. our line stinks at run blocking, we are a kinda smoke and mirrors finesse team on both sides of the ball, but it's overly evident that we simply do not have good players at RB and TE, KC knew that and rolled us in a laugher.

i was anti dabol for the longest. he really turned a corner this season, but had regression this post season. didn't pass enough early vs indy, scheme was unbalanced and ineffective vs baltimore (im willing to say weather and the baltimore d was the bigger part of that tho), and vs KC i do think he was hamstrung by injuries to our best RB (out) and our 2 and 3 and 4 WRs being dinged up or basically to hurt to play (beez was in and out, davis was basically a no show w his injuries, and brown was somewhere inbetween). if the bills coaches had billicheck in game adjustment ability, the would have let josh make one or two reads and just run the ball, he could have run for like 150 if he kept it more, and on d they would have done something to disrupt kelsey getting free releases. still woulda lost the game tho. we got out coached, and badly, but with who we had healthy and who we have overall, we just weren't going to beat KC where KC was playing hard and dirty.

normally i'd say this is insane, but mccown is known as being one of the best qb's in terms of knowing the game, and has over shot his talent by miles. my assumption is that watson likes him and would stay if he's corch, which would make a ton of sense. if watson doesn't like it, or doesn't care and won't stay anyhow, then it makes me wonder if they can't get anyone else to sign, or they have just lost their minds. if he's a passing game and qb guru, and they get a vet former HC on staff for DC (frazier would be ideal, good thing he's already a senior DC on a much better team!) and a solid guy for OC, and watson stays because of it, it's a good idea. put another way, if hiring this guy kept watson, if im the texans i do it.

he's an ahtletic freak (see post above). i mean, really really better than most DTs. His issue is partly his still set (small, not as polished) and some of his other athletic traits (short arms being the biggest) hold him back in a modern NFL setting. he's got more talent than kyle ever had (who also had burst but wasn't tall and long enough) but kyle had just outstanding skills. LSU DT is generally a great place to learn the trade, and he grew in the NFL too. If he can polish up his ability, he and oliver in the gut can be a nascar package for passing downs.

38 27 bills. we close the game out early in the 4th, they have a scary drive to make it closeish, but then we score an extra FG and ice them on D.