colin

you come across as spiteful and somewhat unhinged at times, but you are 100% bang on with this one Arthur. the team is soft from the head down. we are too emotional as a team, and it takes a toll that we can't cover. last year when indy was blowing us out the building in a light rain at home, i thought they must have a solid DL and a great OL, as they brought us near defeat in allen's first home playoff game the year before, and they do have some talent, but the got ground down last season and this season by teams we beat. what it was is they played hard and fast and targeted the weakness of our team and it got no response from our coaches and our guys could see that and basically quit. it happened the season prior vs Tenn, and KC. it happened the year before that against philly in a windy playoff game, and now it just happened w the bengals. from what i can see, diggs and milano were the only players (i'll except allen as he's our whole freaking team) to like call out that the team was not playing w energy. this team didn't want to be in the playoffs last night, and it showed, and our coaches have to wear that as much as the 13 second debacle last season.

well, i did type that we need OL talent, and fast, but i honestly think our scheme and planning is the biggest issue. cinci didn't have better OL talent than us yesterday w the scrubs lining up, but they beat us because they were confident, prepared, and had a plan to attack us. our team was emotionally spent, didn't practice enough during the week, and had a foolish dumb plan that didn't adjust at all for what cinci was doing nor for the weather. line talent is needed big time, but our scheme upfront has to change on both sides of the ball or we will get a similar exit next year.

it was 100% a bad call. if not just specifically that incident, the way the whole thing was handled by our team and coaching staff had the squad drained and dead, saffold is on tape admitting as much. the over social media coverage, the strange kyle brandt josh allen/buffalo love affair, they national outpouring. all of it ended up being a distraction and the team and the coaches were fully unprepared (didn't they practice less for this game?). low energy at a home divisional game is totally unacceptable.

I agree with the bit about our O getting schemed and us not doing jack about it. i disagree on the D side tho. i think that has been known for ever. since McD got here we have been trucked in a game by a physical team every year, where they basically had the game won on the first drive and no coaches made any changes to adjust against it. the only way we've been able to beat that is to play rock paper scissors early to stop them in their tracks (we did that vs tenn this season) and then go out and get a lead to put pressure to stop the run. to me it's arrogant and lazy as a coaching staff, because they want to be able to just sit on one stupid package on D, yet they constantly sub out D line and even CBs, but they never come up w an answer up front. my only like hopeful suspicion: we know mcclap has taken over calling defensive plays for frazier in the past, i think he did it last year vs NE when the D got a bit more aggressive in that windy game. im hoping he's seen enough and actually has some talent as a DC for us.

agree, the fact that our guys are platooned, we've put so much money and so many picks into it, and they get figured out snap 1 and never adjust tells me they are not put in a position to win vs good teams. we need more size and power obv, but getting ultra trucked every year w different lineups is not a pure player issue.

IMO it's more coaching and scheme than talent, because cinci had a not great line and it got hurt and they put out a trash heap and dominated our trash DL. we obv do need talent, lots of it and fast, but the coaching and the scheme is a bigger and more fixable thing IMO

our defensive coach is a corpse of a turtle of a man.

yes, we lose the chip game after sneaking one over jaxonville instead of miami.

diggs wasn't, he was fired up when guys had their heads down. so, buffalo was a hot item this offseason, we saw on tape miller talk to his dad about joining in order to chase a ring on a 3rd team. i think miller figured, ok this is my best shot at more glory. once the going got tough, the team started to lose focus and energy, all the emotional crap w hamlin, the neutral site stuff, our team lost focus. thats on the coaches as much as anyone else. our team has a toughness problem.

step one, either mcd should be fired or at least frazier. after that, they skeleton crew the D (which won't make too much go wrong, given lawson and phillips and jackson and that 4th string safety were playing our playoff game) and just do enough to get the O into a cohesive unit. step two is the wane them selves off of tre white, hyde, poyer, edmunds, dawkins, guys who we pay a ton too but don't help us win games (or at least won't anymore).

aside from a lack of elite guys (to your point) there is a fundamental issue on the team, what we do as a front office and what we do as a coaching staff do not align. letting wyat walk but signing saffold, the quinten spain debacle and that williams RT we paid and the flipped to RG, trying to sing that RB from washington who blew us off, and then drafting cook high and then trading for hines, the rotating and sitting of DBs and DL, like exactly what is the goal here? do we want to run screens, do we not? do we want to run the ball? brining in phillips and lawson and bease and brown is the biggest alarm bell to me. like, did we not have anyone better, are street free agents really better than who we brought in? or is it just that they knew the scheme? if we had any idea of what we really wanted to do this off season and put some work towards that as a team, we'd have been better. instead, we rely on allen and diggs and a few others to make magic happen and just shotgun plays and players.

to me this points out the only positive im clinging to right now. a couple pure scrubs out of football/street free agents/mid tier FA pick ups added real value to our team (bease and brown, settle and jones, phillips and lawson). so like, i just HAVE to assume the FO knows the guys they drafted and paid and such kinda blow, and you think if you do well in the draft and FA you can turn the ship around (we signed hyde and poyer on teh cheap a while back). great players make players around them better. we have so few of those that every time we have some people out we just seem to suck.

im so sick of hearing this. its just so true tho, it seems like we build a house of cards on D, and wonder why physical play kills us. i will say, we can get equal produciton that we got the last 4 playoff losses out of a D that has milano, von, groot, and like whoever else we scrub together while we'd do much better with 2 more sick OL and another WR. we have coaching and allocation issues, issues that allen has glossed over

the upside of that is jones and phillips and lawson were cheaper street free agents, and they outplayed our picks and our prior expensive guys. we just have to get smart (less stupid really) with where we allocate our money on the lower level guys on the team. schematic issues on D are obv a more immediate issue, but that can also be fixed IMO. our O just totally lacks talent. cinci's back up OL is better than our starters.

we were the same dang thing on d in 2018, with much less invested in the D. 2nd overall in yards, got trucked by physical teams who can run the ball up the middle (which imo the biggest reason we lost today. take that away and maybe we hit the qb on 3rd and long w the back OL and get a turnover and the O catches fire). our stupid scheme/never adjusting vs good teams has murdered us 4 times in the playoffs. we can have a kinda sorta d performance at home in the playoffs w less investment on the D, but an extra actual NFL starting WR (we brought back the ghost of Brown and the corpse of Bease this season for crying out loud) and two linemen who can smash and run, and all of a sudden we might be able to run directly up the gut, execute an actual screen play, and not watch davis drop perfect pass after perfect pass when diggs gets erased by the D.

d meltdowns and bad situational play, that's been the downfall of our team. we all thought if we could just get home we can make it to the bowl, but we have lost a game at home EVERY YEAR to a physical team in bad weather. EVERY FLIPPIN YEAR! im sick of this fake tough guy chest out and goofing around while we beat up the sisters of the weak and poor to just hiding when it rains a bit and a team w some blockers (even 3rd stringers like cinci!) comes to town. we need to sign some butt kickers and we need to ditch frazier.

I think this is actually correct Opie, the team was mentally done. just another reason we need some coaching changes. at the very least let frazer take a walk and have claps take over the d (not ideal, but a change is needed). i was looking over some stuff, and we had the number 2 d in the nfl in 2018, josh's rookie year. our o was perhaps the worst, and we had cheeks for wr/te, and o line. free agent (from the prior year) safeties poyer and hyde were our starters, levi and tre white (before he lost his mojo) at corner, rookie lb edmunds who had no clue in a lot of games, milano started getting burn, and we had a rag tag of zero stars in a rotation at DL. basically, we got the same friggen results (which were over all awesome at the time given who we had, i will admit) on D that we get now, but we have added 2 2nds, 2 1sts, and big free agent money to the line, a 3rd at lb (riding the pine) a couple late picks at S (stinking when our starter gets hurt) and a 1st and some late picks at corner. we got trucked by running teams who can pass some then, we get trucked by running teams who can pass some now. i don't know if it's all on mcd, frazer, or whatever mix, but we simply have not added enough physicality to our D line, and we spend way way too much money on non elite smaller guys who play off of the ball. as far as cinci balling all over us w ups drivers at OL, its pretty clear our O roster and our O scheme is simply not good enough. we are a front running emotional team, and that can get us down badly, and allen bails out bad coaching and roster moves or else we get crushed by good teams.

i had my suspicions but didn't really agree w you at the time, but ya i think we have an issue. that issue is scheme/roster arrogance/inability to adapt. we do one thing only, any good coach and team that has some differentiation in their strategy will just say "oh, lets block them up like this and run mixon up the gut for 10 a clip" and we just sit there and clap about it. as bad as the O was, and it sucked, as unprepared as we were for the snow, and we went skating, and as deadly as the cincy passing game is it was the up the gut move the chains bully the line backers plays that guaranteed us the loss. im sick of any team with a couple quality big 10 interior linemen and a physical back eating our lunch. this has happened literally every single year that mccoach has been here.

that's a great point. here's my read on that: We had some guys banged a little bit on the DL, jones is our big nasty and he was out. hyde obv out at S, and von out changed who we could put on the pitch. but OL were out for cinci too. our problem is we have these "scheme" guys, instead of more just big strong guys (or fast, or whatever). anyone being out and our princess and the pea scheme just won't work, and it also limits our ability to change it up. cinci scouted us, knew what we wanted to do on o and on d formation by formation, and just took our lunch money, with back ups. we get boat raced by guys who will adjust blocking and run up the gut too much, we need a new dc AT LEAST.

Fact dude. We have had worse seasons wrt how we ended them since 2020 w our loss at KC. Our d was ranked 2 in 2018, with young scrubs who we ended up paying. Our team is like a one note band, and we can't adapt. That's on coaching and the fo.

He should be dejected, every single year his team gets blown out by a physical team, and he loses with his coaches looking a mess in the playoffs.

You are likely right, but a change is needed. Some young DC who does analysis to be an avatar for our hc (like dude in KC for Reid) can work. I just need a change.

We get trucked by a physical team running down our throats every year w McDermott. This year, it happened today. Since we got diggs and Allen, it has been 2020 Ten and to some extend KC the next week, and then in the playoffs Indy trucked us a bit but we got lucky. 2021 Indy absolutely just destroyed us mind body and soul at home in the rain. 2022 Cinci at home in a playoff game All of these games started off w the bills getting trucked and stayed that way. The truth is our coaches are stubborn and arrogant. They do so little actual game planning, and instead just run their magic system all the time. We draft and sign players based on our moron schemes, so much so we had to sign brown and bease, and Phillips and Lawson this season! This is bill parcels levels of stocking to your old guys, but parcels won Superbowls and we haven't sniffed one. They say this team is designed, players and schemes, means we have no room to change jack nor cope when guys go down. Cinci had young and banged up corners, and three fricken linemen missing, but they just knew to be physical w our princess of a team. We had no answers at all. On the other side, our OL was fully up and running, and they sucked out loud. The idea that we HAVE to pay Edmunds a billion dollars because our scheme is so impossible that we cant run it without his unique talent of getting good regular season stats and getting blasted in the playoffs is a reflection of the good money after bad moves we make. Baltimore is in a better position right now to win a chip than we are, for example. While they have a gimmick O and don't have their rb/QB signed, and just canned their DC and OC in consecutive seasons, they played better w more heart than we ever did vs the bengals, and have real linemen and leadership in their building. We are soft finesse front runners who rely on Allen to rescue our crap every game. I'd sign Roman, or whoever, and whatever dc we can get (or have mcd run the d, I don't care, some kind of change) because our team is ready to be beat by any team that can be physical, and we have all these resources tied up in these goofy small scheme specific people (our safties, lbs, corners, and linemen cost a ton and we never see to get more than one for two of them to play at a high level).

He was past the corner and the ball hit him prefect

It was risky, but honestly I think Dorsey is our least bad coach. We needed a huge play, the play call worked, the ball hit Davis on the hands and chest, but he dropped it because he's not a good wr.