colin

i get that there is no shot mcd is gone this season, next to no shot dorsey is, and im not sure but like 50/50 or so that fraser gets re upped. that's the reality for the bills, but it's also completely true as pointed out above that many if not most winning pedigree teams would absolutely bounce coaches out the door for what's happened. miami (not that they are such winners) barely lost to us in our house right before we quit vs cinci, they fire the DC. baltimore gave cinci hell while we laid down, and even tho they did it w a back up qb (could you imagine the bills w josh injured? talk about no shot) and lost on a fluke play, and they fired the OC, a year after the DC got the door. philly is in the bowl and ditched the HC that won them a chip before (maybe that wasn't the greatest move, but clearly they will not accept bad results for too long). i agree w the OP, if mcd isn't ready to not re sign fraser after the past two exits, he just wants to go along to get along and isn't the ruthless alpha who brings home lombardis.

sounds pretty good. i think it's culling time. poy and edmunds have to walk. cost/benefit isn't right (although i still kinda have hope for edmunds, he seems like a coach killer, never as good as you think he should be). I'd trade oliver if i could, or i'd keep him for one season. not the worst guy to have trying to show out for a contract IMO. i'd roll w the dbs we have under contract, we have a ton and they have shown enough (we had a top 3 D 3 times and number 1 i think twice with levi friggen wallace at cb2). if a daquan jones quality value guy is available at DT im all for it, ow a LATER pick into DL is fine. i'd look to sign at least one solid starter, potentially paying bank for an LT and moving dawkins to LG. i hope morse retires, i'd ditch him and use bates to replace him (downgrade but not huge). spencer gets another shot at RT, but we need to draft at least one starter at OG (or C i suppose) and at least one T who can push either of our current starters. i'd also sign the best WR w a decent speed/size combo i could. We have to put picks into WR and i think TE. we have one guy who can play TE and that's weak. i'd take a late RB for a bigger body. first 4 picks should be OL times 2 (unless we sign 2), WR and WR/TE. our coaches got a rag tag squad on D to be number 2 in 2018, and that's with rookie allen and the least amount of offensive talent i've ever seen on a bills team (puts pressure on the D). i think firing fraser would be a good change, and im fine w anyone mcd would appoint or just have him take it over himself. i personally think he's stepped in a few times to take over the d calls and they always make the team better. fraser is a spent force. honestly, if we get two new bodies who can play at RB and TE, add two blockers (and even getting brown healthy might count as one) and an actual WR (even TD Jesus would be an upgrade, but not enough) then this O could be really good. w oliver in a contract year, final year AJ, 2nd to final year Basham, and 3rd year groot, and of course miller coming back, we have plenty of guys on the DL, we can just have the better ones play more snaps (imagine that!) to make up for losing phillips and lawson to whoever signs them/UPS.

by our standards this was a great draft. while jj at the pick is a better value than diggs for the pic due to age and contract cost, there were 6 wrs taken before or just after the 22nd pick in 2020. lamb is nice, but not as good as diggs, and the rest are not even close, ruggs is out the league!. honestly i agree w the takes that hodkins was a good pick, not beans fault that mccoach ditched him. if we did this like every year, traded a pick for a sure fire guy and drafted with that ~ level of success, we'd be in a much much better place.

philly has a sick roster that covers up for hurts. he's not a good passer, i kinda over rated him before seeing more of him this season. solid overall guy, top12 at the qb position, but not due to his passing acumen at all. kc and cinci both built their teams similarly, but kc has a sick qb and a sick OL, which always gives them the advantage in the playoffs. both have risk taking Ds that do better in big games than week to week. we have too much breadth and depth, not enough stars, and our coaches need to wake up. playing the same schemes based on good regular seasons but bad playoffs just doesn't make sense in teh playoffs. our team quits one game a year because they see the corches just calling plays from the dusty old textbook when it's not working. every team has bad days but our coaches need to have good ones in the playoffs. i do think a new DC (even mcd taking over) and a little talent can get us there. allen diggs cook knox and our pieces on D are solid.

i think we can get pressure if we have a monster or two up front, like w did w von and like mcd did in carolina w greg hardy. my biggest issue is we have incongruent coverages along w our front 6 strategy way too often, and good qbs figure it out quickly. we seem to be unable to add in the right amount of wrinkles. it's either vanilla, or too many checks so we get guys running scott free like vs cinci. the real issue w platooning the DL for this team is that we end up w street FA guys and practice squad players coming in and performing about as well as our 2nd and 1st round picks because how much of a statement can you make in 21 snaps? meanwhile, we have just the lowest level of trash on our OL, fat bodies giving up and saying they are tired, while a quarter of a billion dollars qb runs around and tries to find the one single nfl wr we have signed. the bad news is where we are new, the good news is a couple lucky big men draft picks and some wise investing and we fix most of our talent issues, we just gotta hope the coaching side gets corrected.

that post game smack video from those kc players was funny, and answered a lot of my questions about how so many NFL players make millions but go broke shortly after they stop playing

it's true we have a talent issue at key spots, but how can any rational fan not see how badly our coaching has been in our playoff exits? no matter if we were ahead and gave up the lead, or behind and just turtled (we seem to alternate that on playoff losses) the coaches had ZERO answers. no change ups, no wrinkles, nothing. on top of that, the blowing of the big lead in houston, kicking the FG at the end of the first half vs KC, 13 seconds vs kc, and the rah rah bs and family time prior to not practicing to play cinci at home. our coaches have blundered in terms of scheme, in terms of preparation and in terms of game day adjustments. on the topic of talent -- having talented rookies sit, or plowing free agent money and high picks (2 firsts, 2 seconds, and our biggest external hires outside of diggs) into a D line where PLAYERS SIT ABOUT 2X TO WHAT THEY PLAY, is just asinine. the star model of franchise building (tampa, kc, rams, cinci all follow it, maybe SF too) where you get some just absolute studs and fill in the rest as best as you can seems to be the way to go. i used to think the biggest risk was injuries, like how losing von and our safeties seems to have turned our d into swiss cheese, but other teams seem to be able to have injuries and simply make adjustments. cinci w the destroyed oline and baltimore missing their mvp qb come to mind. i think we've spent our cap on our coach's fanciful ideal of half the roster being rotated in and out and over paid for a squad of super Jags, while picking guys high and letting them sit while our starters get older and make mistakes. i think the biggest take away is that our FO seems to have crossed the line from steady even handedness to outright arrogance. running the same paint buy numbers d in the play offs after the opponents have figured it out, along w bringing back lawson, phillips, beas, and brown shows me the coaches think they have the special sauce and they just need someone who can run it correctly, including street free agents.

ok, so you are arguing for a ban on football then, or maybe we just make it flag, right? you have to actually make up your mind and not just virtue signal both ways. either an injury on the football field that flirted with death (but where the player is totally fine an walking around 3 weeks later) is too bad of a thing to accept and you just cancel the season, or you handle it and carry on.

like edmunds, oliver is a good player, but not a great player. great players make players around them better. poy and maybe hyde last season, tre white for his singular best season. based on what we have seen this season on the DL, Von Miller and to a lesser extend Da'quon Jones are the DL we have who make the DL around them better. the sad part is we put so much into it and don't have much to show on the DL. the happy part is fair market value Free agents like jones can come in (and costly but good ones like miller) and simply improve our team. so we gotta find more of them, and while oliver is on the squad next season and i hope he gets 15 sacks, just like edumunds he only seems to make marginal improvements because he's getting tapped out in terms of his ability to impact.

it's the scheme/coaching and drafting. guys on our team who we drafted who are good are just good, allen, milano, tre before his knee, etc. guys who we brought in are just obviously good too, diggs, miller. the only guy who left who has been solid is teller, that was a whiff for quentin spain, the uber quitter. frankly, given we have the super qb, i think we should do what w did w diggs and what the rams have done a dozen times (it seels) and trade picks for players we know are good (if we can't just sign them as FA). trading a 3rd or 2nd for a sick pass rusher or sick OT (or even WR if they are out there) would do so much to improve this team. and while we might have to let a edmunds or poyer or Tre white next year walk, i think we'd be able to handle that.

not every having wheels and screens going to the RB and TE positions effectively, and the fact the our 2 and 3 wrs are cheeks most of the time is the reason for this imo. riddick is clearly onto something tho, which si why im all for dumping edmunds and poyer and so on. we need passrush and blocking

i'd walk away from both or keep hines on a cheaper contract. agree w the above, spend a late pick on a RB and have him be a body, put resources into the o line and pass catchers.

bengals were down 3 linemen, and barely beat the ravens the week before, the ravens w the most athletic UPS driver alive playing QB. the total gutless nature of our D and entire team shows a quit game, that's on the coaches. if the schemes don't work at the highest level, and the motivation leads to a nice run for the bus every season, then why are the coaches not getting upgraded?

dude, it really is just that simple. imagine any other qb driven team, who was the top dog to win the super bowl, having to pull two guys off the street who used to play for them to fill every passing target south of their #1?!?! we lack talent on OL and WR in a huge way, and need fewer 1st and 2nd round picks on the bench in a platooned DL and highly paid older dbs, and more actual guys who score

for the second time i'm thinking of baltimore. i figured they were closer to a chip at the end of the season then we where, given they hung w cinci and had their own 13 seconds type loss. but that was with a pure scrub playing qb and their one time NFL MVP hurt. imagine what we look like w allen out? so anyhow, baltimore ditched their dc last year because they weren't happy. this year they ditched their OC. both of those guys have had equal or greater success than our coordinators, but they still fired the OC after a tough loss on the road to a great team with their best player and qb out. you can frame this as harby looking for scape goats, or you can frame this as baltimore won't accept anything less than getting further towards a championship, but what you cannot deny is that as an organization they are not sitting still and they've won two chips over a period where we are yet to win a road playoff game.

he's a good player, at times a really good player. my take is we already paid a more impacting LB, and we paid and perhaps over paid for some secondary in a d that protects the secondary. with pass rush our D is very effective, without it good qbs eat us alive, and we are just not great vs power running in general. based on this we need to put the money elsewhere (imagine a good LT, move dawkins to LG, what an upgrade!), and for that reason I'M OUT.

lol, is asking millionaire pro athletes to prepare and put in effort in the biggest game of their careers weeks after their teammate has recovered from a traumatic injury the same thing as working a robot to death? hoping management applies a little discretion to the event rather than flip it into a media frenzy, im worse than the spartan's with the helots!!

that was the only bills board i was never an active poster on. bills range, bills zone (i think range came first, and zone and TBD broke off of them, but it's hazy) really did get nuts! the job johnson flutie wars lasted for years. god we had an awful awful team for so long.

if that's true (and i think it is at least more than it is false) then we have a sort of fragile scheme that protects the heck out of the secondary and asks a lot of the DL. in that case, we shouldn't be dropping big cash or high draft picks on corners and safeties. i think the combo of signing tre poy, taron, hyde, and milano to big extensions and drafting elam w a 1st shows a lack of planning. i get signing a couple of them, but they all have gone down at various times with only a small impact on the D (which still sucks in the playoffs in our exit game) but the 34 year old DE who we rotate in with the rest of them goes down and our pass rush goes from deadly to worst in class. looking back at mcd's d in carolina, he made josh norman look like a super star, and had what was considered a generational talent at MLB, but when gregg woman beater hardy went down, that d went from savage to soft. hind sight is 20/20, but based on the above we should be staffing up our DBs w cheap young rookies and signing maybe a couple of them, have some draft pick play along side milano, and we shoulda traded picks to get pass rushers from other teams (we could have had von and chub like denver did instead of say AJ or basham).

it's true our drafting has been pure cheeks outside of josh, but that's not the whole answer. our coaching seems like it is set and forget w josh rescuing us regularly to beat up on the weak and limited, but not enough adjusting/preperation for the big dogs in the playoffs. in terms of roster tho, we don't develop/play rookies enough. that LB having like one bad game and no other exposure, elam sitting so much, cook and shakir sitting behind motor and mckenzie because they made mistakes THAT THE STARTERS MAKE EVEN WORSE THAN THEY DO! i think we have a cultural like union ship mentality that is hurting us. we don't give the new guys enough of a shot (i remember peterman starting over allen, for shame!) and most importantly we over pay for role players who are great "cultural fits". knox was paid a bit too much, you could argue that milano was too (he's a sick player tho, so that's marginal). We run this kinda fragile defensive scheme that relies on pass rush out of 4 platooned DL, but we still paid milano (again player is worth it but investing in the position like that in our D is sus) and paid top 3 corner money for tre, and top safety money for hyde and poyer, and now we are talking big dollars for edmunds? von coming in and falling out made a huge measurable impact in our d, similar (but less) w D Jones. we were a mash unit in the secondary for most of the season and sort of had the same results. imo we need to be smart about where we dump resources, money contracts and draft picks. trading a first for diggs (even tho jefferson woulda been there and turned out great, we don't know we woulda taken him and we didn't know at the time he woulda been there) was actually an astute and great move. signing brown adn bease at the time was great. signing morse was a + move, over paid but good guy. we need more of that (and d jones and perhaps miller, injury will determine) and less aj klien and over paying dbs in a db protecting d.

facts this team has been having family day (coaches players and FO) since Jan 2nd. maybe it was inevitable that the season ended the moment the CPR was administered to damar, but it became a huge distraction that sucked the life out of the building. 3 home games in a row after that day, 3 sub par performances. outright admitting to being tired and taking time off of practice, even in these extreme circumstances, is a black mark on the coaching and leadership. it was 13 seconds last year, now it was this. we need to be more methodical, more ruthless, and less emotional as an organization. Diggs and Milano channeled all of this into motivation, sadly they might have been the only ones.

crazy pills or not, you bring up a good point. i think it came down to what they chose to spend time on, and it all went to fixing what could not be fixed. it would also explain why allen went deep, cuz he doesn't have to worry about these clowns messing up a route.

so, i've read some pretty convincing breakdowns here and elsewhere, and it seems like our biggest issue in the passing game was that davis and mckenzie very often run horrible routes and are in the wrong spot. that's basically why they got the ghosts of bills wrs past late in the year. our OL play was also crazy bad. huge downgrades this season at LG and RT (brown was hurt, i have hope he's better next season). so im guessing with these various issues they never spent the time or the effort to get the rb passing game or screen game going, my guess is saffold is so utterly trash that he can't be counted on for anything, and that sunk the screen game.

look, we may have never won that game even playing our best given injuries and the talent difference/match up, but IMO our annual quit game came at the worst possible time and this was it. we lost after the 2nd or 3rd drive largely because the team quit and that is a result of coaching and preparation perhaps even more so than the players and their emotions

nope. leaning into it so hard, bringing him into the locker room DURING THE GAME in some like made for TV moment, constant media presence. it got out of control and the team lost focus. it took on a life of its own, and instead of it being a buffalo locker room thing, it became a national attention thing. the team should have had visits and interactions w hamlin and kept it in house. the team should have skipped practice and mollycoddled players weeks after the incident. the guy has had a pretty fortunate recovery and it should not have been impacting the team last week.