colin

every nfl head coach is a dictator. that's what they are hired to be. the biggest issue w our team this season is how close we are. losses of d players suck, but the d has held most opponents to a pretty low point total. yet they give up scores vs bad teams on 4th quarter drives most weeks, and when they didn't (nyg, tb) they come super close to giving the game away at home vs bad offenses. our O turns the ball over terribly, and looks out of rhythm on like 5 or 6 of every 8 drives. they are super predictable and make bone headed mistakes over and over. yet, allen has walked off the field w a lead, or was driving to the end zone more or less every week of our last 6 games, and we have a great td% and epa and all of that. yards per play is top 5 in the nfl too. good situational football and better play calling/feel for the game would turn some of these close losses into wins, and frankly that's the difference between champions and no one's in the NFL. an ironic stat i saw is that while our td% we have even since week 4 has been good, our fg% is awful. once we get out of our own end, getting a FG here and there would put us in a pretty sweet position to win these close games. some advantage play calls allowing the o to gain a few more yards, or the d to get off the field earlier, or slightly better punting, or any combination would set us up for wins. all of that is a coaching issue. so mcd is a dictator, but he's supposed to be. that's fine. but if he's a dictator who won't accept accountability and no idea how to right the ship, he should be sent packing once playoffs are out of reach to send a message that this is simply not acceptable.

he did well on that rep, maybe a more decisive turn and run post catch gets him more yards, but i'll take that all day. so the second angle on the post confirmed something i've been thinking -- dbs are eating josh's lunch because they 1) can predict our silly plays and 2) just play zone and watch josh's eyes. they don't get totally fooled if he looks off because they have an edge basically knowing what we are gonna do in certain (most?) formations and down and distances. when allen is under center, they don't know his throwing spot (which he likes to change as well) so they wait for him to stop his drop back, when he turns his back to hand off or fake a hand off, the lbs freeze, and most importantly imo the dbs don't have any eyes to read so they just stare waiting for josh to turn around. he's so athletic and good throwing the ball that he has a HUGE advantage in that situation. it's sets up such zone beaters i go crazy when we run man killing mesh/rub routes against the clearest and most obvious zones.

same here. i think mcd and beano are gonzo unless we have at least 2 good performances in the playoffs.

i voted yes because i want to win the chip this year and have no other choice but to keep mcd as corch. i don't think he can, but i'm super happy to eat some hot crow wings if he does.

you gotta chalk a chunk of that to inexperience. cook seems to ride the bench more than he runs routes, and dalton is a rook. it does almost seem like we don't really practice the plays we run, and certainly not on a situational basis. i really hope brady turns it around, but it's hard to have confidence given the position the team is in.

Allen does WHAT? when did this start happening and why wasn't i informed?

im good with blitzes, it's part of football. what drives me nuts is how badly we blitz, just don't have any flow to it, never seem to find the open gap, it's like they are so surprised and excited that they are blitzing they just run and bang into whoever is in front of them. there is an art and a science to blitzing, and we don't seem to grasp either.

that's a good point. joe brady has aspirations of being the best oc alive (they all do) and he's young and has had success. being the guy to get allen back to form or beyond is how you make yourself known. gase and hacket have made tens of millions off of very good qbs looking good under their coaching. brady might just mess around and get the bills HC job!

agree with this except the last word bruv. he fired the first OC, he fired the ST guy after 13 seconds, and he "fired" frasier. dabo walked for hc gig. it's only mcd now.

if i see a more purposeful O with lots of under center, i'm buying in. im a fool and a glutton for punishment. i'm dejected and hopeful at the same time. My name is Colin, and I'm a Bills fan.

allen's teams have also never won an overtime game. i remember a friend of mine (not a bils fan but a big football guy) who said the bills O (this is under daboll, 2020/2021 seasons) said the offense looks like guys just run around and allen either runs it or waits for someone to get open. teams have read the book on how to stop that (basic zone, cover the deepest route, bait sideline throws) and our coaches and players either can't or refuse to adjust to stop that. we've seen the evidence that we can actually run the ball, and we can run the ball and throw play action from under center in a way that baffles opponents, but we revert to type and go 4 or 5 wide out of pistol or shot gun and a disciplined d can just watch us not throw underneath and make mistakes. not being able to beat the constant zone d's we face is like a boxer not knowing how to face a southpaw. at some point it is going to kill you unless you figure it out. right now we are a boxer who doesn't know how to put his front foot outside and not get baited into counters, and every team we play just fights us out of southpaw. we'll run 2 or 3 drives where we mix in what works, but penalties, turnovers, or just doomed play calls (not to mention drops and missed blocks) put us out of synch for the rest of our possessions. the losing close games so often tells me the team is not confident, is not prepared to play winning situational football, and altho we have mad ability and some talent, we make the degree of difficulty against us super easy.

our d played with their hair on fire, but it ends up being too much of guys screaming all over the field and not making tackles. we just miss too many tackles over and over again. the biggest issue from my pov is that the opponents all do the same ish against us on D because the same thing always seems to work against us. i bet we see zone more than any other team in the nfl, yet we are dumbfounded to beat it. on the other side, we still go a great job taking away the deep pass (the entire nfl is doing that now, more or less, so mcd and co were at least innovators there), but up the gut runs, picked up blitzes, and just plain old zone beater routes means a smart O can just know what they have to do, usually based on the pre snap read.

allen isn't tuned into the O, but then again, neither are the other players. the frustrating thing about it is this team could just not make these errors, josh could scan the field prior to the snap, the backs could just hold onto the ball, spencer brown could just let one less terrible pressure a game. and this is why i've been banging on the coaching drum. the coaches set it all up, they have to make moves to reduce the bad and increase the good. under center, less blitzing (or, coach the team to blitz better, i can't think of another team with pass rushers up front who bring a blitz into the a and b gaps and get swallowed EVERY TIME. not one outside blitz), set up easy plays for the O. recognize we are getting D'd up the exact same way w a zone, and run zone beaters. how do we watch our zone get beat by zone beaters and not hammer those into our O?

a strong win and not showing predictability on o and d. also, need some kind of consistency.

i reserve my right to be a negative nacy. i also am quite happy to admit when im wrong to the upside.

ya, you make a great point. it's unknowable, so therefor it's the fault of all elements equally. that's as much as an assumption as the one i'm making, except i'm basing my opinion on what i'm seeing, not what can't be seen. we have the biggest or second biggest investment on the D in the nfl, 111mm cap as well as the lion's share of our high picks. our HC is a Defensive guru. our d has been utter cheeks, and our d lead to us getting trucked out of the playoffs ever time we exited with josh allen as our qb. our O moves the ball like a hot knife through butter, and then they stop doing what worked and fail miserably, calling awful shotgun runs that the d has down pat and baffling redzone plays. the coaches can't explain why we stopped doing what worked at the presser after. the same squad that had the team fall totally flat vs cinci at home in the playoffs, and the same squad who gave us the 13 second abortion, like, what extra evidence do you need to tell you that our coaching is doing poorly? do you need a signed notarized affidavit from the coaches saying they don't know what they are doing and feel underqualified? the vast majority of our teams' success is because josh allen is an insane talent at the most important position. diggs is a bonafide super star at wr as well. dropping a game to the mac jones pats and not looking any better vs tb and nyg is pretty plain evidence that something is rotten in denmark, but you are too paralyzed with uncertainty to come up with a conclusion that's pretty well a common narrative around the nfl.

I remember thinking daboll sucked at times, I was kinda right but more wrong. I also thought Dorsey was pretty close to dabs in his first year, I suppose I was correct. I did not realize how not bad our o has been, nor how absolutely trash our d has been. I know alpha thinks it's all Dorsey, but clearly it is mcd. He built the team d heavy, he calls the d, and they suck balls. Maybe a better oc makes us greatest show on turf level, but an extra punt forced by the d, and two extra possessions for the o (meaning the d gets off the field sooner across all drives) and wed have zero to two total losses, as bad as it has been overall. That's crazy

we don't seem to run any pre nap read quick plays targeting kincaid, diggs, and cook. well, we do, and we score, and then we shun them to the netherworld. if d's will just play deep zone to take away the allen run and deep pass from us, then we can run some of the stuff that new england ran for ever. technically we have the same offensive system they used when they were great, but we refuse to run effectively and hate uptempo fast plays because it scores too fast or something. instead of having this constant attack the whole field and pray that the protection holds up and josh doesn't take the bait stuff, we can just run more deterministic stuff at least some times.

we spend 111MM cap on our d, highest in the nfl outside of pittz (thanks the athletic for the data). we also have more high picks on d than on O. if our defensive HC can't make something worthwhile out of what we have given the above, then both he and the gm are cheeks and need to go. they have every chance to right the ship, and did some some improve vs cinci, but we can lose 2, maybe 3 more games all season, and i think we need at least one win in the post season, for them to not get ridden out of town on a rail.

you make a strong point here, and anything is possible especially w allen at qb, so i will continue watching! that said, im now of the opinion that daboll was a problem, just less of one than the rest of our staff. dorsey was under dabloll the whole time anyhow, not like a sea change happened.

sure, but it's more a comment about how trash the players we added in the offseaon are. hines and harty and ford combine to make what hopkins makes. even if hines was playing, we aren't getting jack out of these guys. i bet if we had hopkins we'd have at least two more wins. instead we have gadget guys who aren't good and we don't use anyhow.

our low dollar guys seem to perform at the same level as our expensive guys. rookie DK is way better than 10++ non catching tight end DKnox, rookie shakir is better than anyone at wr not on a rook contract with a name other than diggs, late additin vet joeseph is better than settle, or ford. it's a joke what we do w our picks and cap.

crazy how he was just sitting out there and is better than more or less any other line man we have in that game. what the hell is the FO doing?

i hate watching what this team does in losses so much that it kills the joy of being a fan. for that reason alone, i want the front office gone. in reality, i think if we miss the playoffs, or if we are one and done in the playoffs, the whole squad gets sent packing. the biggest knock on rex was his silly d required one of like 3 vets at each of 7 positions or else his precious scheme falls apart. well, we decided to pony up long dollars for two older injured safeties, highly drafted rookies can't get burn, and we dropped picks and dollars galore into our d line where most of the talent is on the bench because we rotate so heavy, yet linval joeseph coming off the couch at age 36 was our best lineman. this situation kinda reminds me of the aaron rogers GB packers. everyone said aaron's attitude or whatever is why they never won more than 1 chip in spite of hitting crazy reg season wins and making the nfc chip game so often, but im starting to think aaron just saw how his FO couldn't pull their heads out of their butts and he carried them (in a weak division/conference mind you) further than they should have gone. im starting to suspect we are seeing the same situation w allen on our team.

nonsense. having such high EPA per drive means the tools are there for success, but the coaching is not delivering. having predictable play calls is a coaching problem. having players make the same preventable mistakes in the same situations is a coaching issue -- either coach the player to not make the mistake, or change what you are doing so that tendency isn't as glaring. spacing on routes is a scheme coaching issue. i'll make it simple if it wasn't before -- if you have capable players and get bad results, you have bad coaching. if you have less capable players and get good results, you have good coaching. we have plenty of capability on O, same roster even with more talent (Dalton) than the prior season. our results are much worse, so either all the players forgot how to play, or the coaches are being lame and predictable. the data points are quite obvious, high epa, same players killed it on o before, current o sucks, even vs weak ds. on d it's maybe even worse.