colin

for anyone who is sticking to frazier is a good DC: McD is a better one. he's had much better Ds, shown more versatility and creativity, and had was Frazier's boss in buffalo. if mcd can't improve our playoff d by stepping more into the DC role, then we really don't want or need him as our head coach. mcvey, reid, that guy in cinci, and billacheat all very much had heavy control over their side of the ball as head coaches, it's time for mcd to show he can do the same.

well, i expect two things. 1, i expect the new DC to be essentially an avatar of McD. im thinking he sees how his former mentor and current despised rival Reid in KC has an avatar of himself but controls the O, and if you can't beat em join em. 2 I expect the D to be much more dynamic and multiple. it might not be as good as last year given that i expect to lose some talent, but i think we will see more meaning changes on an opponent to opponent basis.

That's a pretty good analogy (metaphor?) but when he played frasier was a much more impactful player than edmunds. my big issue is that we have one single player that for sure makes the guys around him better (von) or perhaps two (milano) on D, after all that investment. we are way better off to follow the rams model (and what we did for diggs) and trade resources for players who will make an impact, or sign in FA, given that we keep drafting and contracting up guys who are just above average, but not impact.

we got bease and brown on not so big contracts (first go round that is), im hoping we get a high value/high production/low cost/low profile guy in free agency this offseason. dquan and von and bease/brown when we got them and hyde and poy make me think we can get just enough added value from a cheaper FA pick up to keep us in super bowl running.

losing our brand new 33 year old free agent pass rusher caused our d a tremendous drop off. Losing our all pro high doller CB tre white the prior season didn't seem to impact us at all (we had similar rankings, and gave up the same kind of bad plays in the playoffs with and without him) and that was with levi wallace being our best outside CB! the strength of the mcd d is that it puts the back 7 at an advantage so you can take away the big play. the weakness is it's a lot of checks and just in time adjustments which create huge easy to exploit holes if they aren't run correctly. the salve for this in teh passing game is a pass rush. anyhow, i say if we keep our coaches, we ride their strength, which is a 1 of 11 d which should not require top flight talent up and down the pitch, and use those savings to protect our all world qb.

i did. i'll go one step further for the people who think playoff wins over wind tunnel conditions vs baltimore, squeaking past indy and miami w a 3rd string qb, and a solid beat down over new england (who we have beaten all but one time since brady left) make a great coaching staff while we are blessed w the goat JA17 at qb: aside from averaging a win in the playoffs per year, we are no better than the marvin lewis coached bengals to date. it's true that team never won in the playoffs, but they lost to strong teams, including a super bowl winner, which is more than we can say in terms of who ended our season. look, i don't want to hate our FO, and i don't want to be a lil debbie downer, but get out coached and out schemed in the playoffs every single year, and we dump boat loads of cap and resources into positions that either don't make an impact at all when it counts, or are literally riding the bench as part of a rotation, while have zilch at other important positions. all these little sins are adding up to big ones, and they must be addressed quickly.

since the season before the one just ended, when we were spread covering monsters, into the beginning of the past season, we were huge front runners. deadly when we had a decent start and lead, but if the other team hung around we basically lost them all. now, we won some close games just this past season and our O results were identical to the prior season just more consistent, but the team didn't seem to buy in and we heard that form the diggs and allen interviews recently. that's a low confidence front runner mind set -- like a boxer who doesn't trust his own chin/toughness.

they had the excuse of top talent being hurt. im not saying cinci and kc are perfect, but they are our afc rivals and they are way way better than us as teams when the chips are down. when i see the bills falter, i see either obvious coaching blunders (13 seconds) or i see a team that lacks preparation and confidence, which to me is on the coaches. my bottom line -- if the results of the bills are evidence of good coaching, then the results of marvin lewis in cinci was evidence of good coaching.

brian billick, marty shotty, reid in philly, many more if you include coordinators who got sacrificed. HC and DC staying after 13 seconds and the failure last year is legit crazy. baltimore (and you can perhaps say these moves were sacrificial, but it's at least action) shot their OC and DC after not being satisfied w how they have done, and they played cinci way better than we did in back to back weeks (shoulda won the last one), and that's w a UPS driver at QB. like, how would our team look if allen was hurt and not playing? to me the fact that we'd all assume a terrible loss (hell, we had one vs cincy w our goat qb ready to go) is a real reflection on what the coaches and front office have here sans josh allen. edit: to your point -- we have been just savagely trucked at least once in every single year that mcd has been here. sadly in 2022/2023 it was in a home divisional playoff game. between those total team lay downs and the chirping from diggs and allen, i think it's safe to say that the bills players are wise to the fact that their roster is not balanced and that their coaches are not top shelf.

bobobonators, you came back! i thought you were out! I missed you.

only the real extra positive people are still not openly questioning our FO and coaches (cover 1 guys are pretty pollyanna, but i bet they come around). all im gonna say is better coaches have been fired from less stacked teams for better results.

This is a great thread. the numbers have been discussed to death, and i think it's clear davis has a problem w catching. from watching him play, the thing that stands out to me the most is on the left hand side of the field, either catching over the right shoulder (which several times meant if he catches it clean he's getting 6, instead he drops it) or coming back to the ball, he's just awful. i mean, the number of drops where the ball went through his hands into his chest would be crazy for a good highschool player. he (or the scheme and other players) are doing well to get open in those positions, but he's dropping perfect balls way to often in the exact same way. i hope he can figure this out and simply improve his ability in those spots. coulda been a TD at the jets, and a TD vs the Bengals. if he hits those, it woulda been home field throughout, and there's a shot that we get back in that bengals game and have a sick sick comeback at home.

IMO we can just play our first and second round picks on D more snaps rather than being 9 deep at a huge cost. oliver at 12mm or whatever vs what that would get us on OL (if we ditch saffold who is awful we have like 18MM plus along w the oliver money, that's two monsters at G, better running and more protection for josh). the OL would be playing way more snaps than oliver too, and we showed we can run the ball last season, so w a better offensive mix and line, that would keep the d fresher, which would also offset the loss of oliver.

lol, exactly. we halved our losses from the prior year in 2022, still got the clown shoe booting out of the playoffs w our D laying an egg (o too mind you).

To me, this is why im not so sore about dabol leaving (aside from the fact that we had our own problems w him, and we've had the same numbers on o a better reg season record, and the same playoff exit w dorsey) -- his staff kept ford on and let teller walk. i understand players change and develop and one system is better than another, but ford was a slow fat weak pie eating fatbody who sucked out loud day one, and teller was at least ok to start with and became a savage monster. we had mouse mcnally when peters was on the team, and he had all of one offseason w peters and said he could be one of the best ever. i feel like the candy azz coaches we had, at least for OL, under dabol messed that up awfully.

i know pundits and mock draft gurus aren't NFL GMs and basically don't have the chops to do it for real, but one thing that always stands out to me from these vs what teams actually do is how heavy the mocks/pundit picks/rankings are for players from big schools vs smaller ones. obviously these internet guys don't do any actual scouting and visiting workouts and such, but the basis between who gets picks vs big school mocks, and who does well vs the same mocks is pretty interesting, you'd think someone would pick up on that and do some sort of small school focused junk for us to argue about during the offseason.

This ("artists" being famous for being famous even to an audience that doesn't like nor consume their art) phenomenon is crazy to me. I thought breaking the old model of narrow channels of distribution (controlled by record companies and whoever) would end up letting smaller and different acts grow and compete and everyone find their audience. Strangely, while some some artists get big via grass roots promotion, what sells even more than before is celebrity itself. I just be reactionary (I mean, I am, but I don't think im knee jerking on this one item) but something about that seems pretty terrible to me.

whatever, kc's d scored 7 and they had 7 set up on a silver platter from a huge return. philly wanted to remove the passing attack as much as possible and did decently w that, but had no answer to the free yards up the gut in the second half. mahomes was fine, but he wasn't the reason they won. key mistakes by philly leading to 14 points and the OL got them the W.

mahomes is obviously a great qb, but he didn't do jack yesterday, cmon! 180ish yards, netting like sub 6 per pass? KC ran their way to victory. qb is the most important position obv, and we have a guy who is gonna go down as the best ever, but how do hard core football fans come across as hero worshiping cheerleaders about the qb when you can watch the game and look at the box score and see it wasn't him who decided the game?

the adjustment to run up the gut for what seemed like 10 yards every first down in the second half won the game for KC. KC changed what was not working and Philly did not. our coaches are on record saying they don't adjust, they have jumped the shark from dedicated and "process" focused to arrogant and frozen. 13 seconds and not practicing prior to the cinci game so the team could make heart symbols w their hands on tictok are two things no super bowl winning coach has ever done.

the philly d folded hard when it needed a stop, i think that's the way to see how they didn't help win the game. also, philly lost because of RB runs up the gut. having oliver getting skated and edmunds 15 yards back won't do anything about that, and if we keep edmunds at like 18mm a year or whatever, that's nearly 30mm of cap in those two guys and keep in mind oliver rides the bench about half the time anyhow. given allen another nfl WR and top 10 (not top 3 like the two teams today) blocking and he puts up 40 in any prime time game.

on d philly was extra boring and basic and KCs blocking (not just OL, who are maybe the best in passing, but backs and TEs too) was superb. kc won that game because almost exactly how cinci was running against us, they ran vs the philly d. they attacked one guy up the gut on 1st and 2nd down whenever they saw the match up they wanted, and got huge gains. also, philly made two HUGE 7 point mistakes, the kick return allowed and the fumble for a TD. on D KC just decided to flood against the run and force hurts to be a QB. they dared him to pass and never really rushed him. it woulda been a frustrating way to lose if philly avoided either of those terrible mistakes, or woke up in the second half and did something to not allow KCs easy yards on the ground.

well, i suppose same numbers w less vol is better, and it reflected in our win loss record (we were 7-6 last season, never got close to stinking it up like that this reagular season). to me, our blocking at the end of the season this year was worse, bordering no awful for our last game. lazy fatbodies like our LT and LG in leadership roles no less is not something we can over come.

we had like almost exactly the same O numbers in 22 as 21, but with lower vol, basically because we got conservative on our win streak after losing to minni in order to stop the red zone TOs. im fine w dorsey, i think he gets better year 2.

i saw a vid of him w comedian shane gillis (hilarious guy, lewan and this other ex nfl guy to a barstool podcast) -- lewan is looking crazy thin. he might be closer to 200 and than 300 pounds. mentally, i think he's been done for a year or two. he's got his tens of millions.