colin

OK, i don't follow them much, but imo your description is accurate (so who is the smartest baldwin?). one thing i'm thinking, w kromer the beach barbarian as our OL coach, tom foolery which spain describes will not happen again. the one thing he's had everywhere he's gone is mobile, agile, and hostile interior line play. the fact we went into the season and lost vs pittz w mongo and ford, and williams at RT, and like the moment we switched in brown (who is super raw and plain old makes errors) and slid over williams we had a very obviously better line, tells me either the coaches didn't get guys as prepped and/or they straight up didn't figure out their best 5. now, i dunno how much better spain woulda made our team, but him and bates in there to start vs pittz gives us a shot at a red zone score and home field advantage. you hate to see it!

two losses on special teams super blunders. blocked punt vs pittz, 13 second massacre vs KC. he gotta go!

Nah, those teams were putrid, and we were never close to having a shot in our division or making the playoffs. We had a horribly unbalanced team that nearly made the playoffs under Saint Doug. Both were losers, but Mularkey was simply more of a coward.

he sucked, but mularky sucked worse. ironically, mularky was some kind of genius in scripting opening drives. mainly due to the run game design. i remember the bills were horrible under him, but scored on like 11 of 16 opening drives that season.

To add to this point made, Star really has (or had) insane talent. he was often thought of as the number one talent in the draft they year he came out (i think he ended up top 10). he's massive, fast, strong, not fat, explosive, all the things you get given by God, but i think at this point in his life, he clearly doesn't love it and obviously does not do every thing possible to be the best he can be. This is a pretty standard issue w super talented interior DL guys in the NFL. Parcels used to say CBs and DTs are a planet issue, there are only so many people on the planet w the natural ability do to what they do, so you have to accept them as they are (probably why he always built his team, billicheat too) through linebackers and safeties, who are always total football heads. part of why darnold is so dominant is that he is talented obviously, but he's not really that big or imposing. he works out like a olympian in the offseason, does all these different kinds of training, and mentally wants to win as much as anyone. if Star was like that he'd probably be a hall of fame guy, but he ain't.

so much dude, the constant magic tricks he pulled off lead to some great plays, but it doesn't have to be so hard

I think this might actually be a good situation for him. if watson can't play, he has a built in excuse year one. if he does, he will win some games and generate some excitement. i know the watson situation is really bad, but he may also trade him for some valuable pics. compare that w daboll in nyg, who very likely is going to waste a year trying to improve a not great qb, and then go into a new draft needing a qb. at least lovie might be able to get some value for their great qb, potentially leading to drafting another one, and it's a bit of a moon shot, but maybe the watson situation works itself out and he can play for them.

Biggest thing i recall about Kromer, aside from his protective Oline instincts kicking in even on 40 dollar folding chairs, is we always got into our blocks with a quickness. talent is obviously the strongest requirement for football players, but having the technical work done individually and as a group so that they operate like one set of pistons off the snap goes a long way to disrupting the flow of the opponents D line. That's gonna help us with all the unique runs our team can do because of number 17. The other thing, and this made me insane the last couple of years, he might actually have guys ready to handle a stunt. i remember throwing my hands up in disgust more times than i care to admit watching our OTs and IOL just totally flub really simple stunts which ended up blowing up drives (i think a big holding call vs jax came on one of those, which took us out of scoring range, which took us out of the #1 seed).

i can't think of a superbowl that has had less interest than this one.

if instead of just looking at all coordinators, you look at ones who's teams have good records, or have good stats for their side of the ball, and in particular filter that via how much credit is broadly given to the OC/DC vs the players (dude out of colts w the corpse of wentz as qb, for example), then you might still get a different answer. the idea that "population A looks like X, so population B should look like X as well" should be examined a bit more closely if one is looking for honest answers, but as in most cases i doubt that one is.

so what you're saying is bring in chandler jones? agreed!

i think the truth is somewhere between what you are saying and the general take that the bills have a really good D (it's really not the best, despite rankings) so net net i think i agree with you -- we simply lack playmakers. the problem is we are paying our D and especially our DL just a ton of money, with 4 guys (2 1sts 2 2nds) on rookie contracts. we should have a monster DL given what we've put into it, but we just have a deep set of JAGS+. we need at least one monster up front.

to me the groot and basham picks don't make sense. i can see drafting one of them, but drafting both with our holes at TE2, CB2, OG/C just seemed like going all in on pass rush, but doing it at a sort of half pace, since we didn't go after anyone after low balling jj watt (that was a smart move tho, not paying up for him). i think aj epenesa being so terrible necessitated the pick of groot and or basham tho. out single biggest issue as an organization at the moment is the big resources we have dumped into the DL and front 7 just haven't gotten enough return. oliver is nice, and i think groot will be a player, but all the free agent money and pics we have in there haven't really gotten us what we need. all these JAGS look a lot better if we get a stud or two in there. i'm going hard for chandler jones this offseason. he, oliver, phillips and groot on the line can get your qb feeling queezy.

in short the bengals saw what was beating them, and had already put in the work to have one in the chamber to fire off in that situation. they changed up their coverage and pass rush, not to defend every possible thing all the time, but to take hill away. our problem on D is we sort of defend everything all the time. it gives you great average results, but in a give situation you are defending things that the O has no interest in attacking while not having quite enough to stop what they do want to do. if the pass rush is working, the McD defensive system is murder on a good passing team (see the carolina D vs manning in the super bowl, only problem was cam did just enough to give the game away, but manning was putrid). we just don't quite have the pass rush we need, even tho we dump so much into it. a better DC (and imo if mcd was our DC, or spent more time as our DC he could do it) would have had something in the back pocket like this. the most obvious example of this is how bad we as a team flubbed 13 seconds. the kick was a joke, but you can make the argument they were scared. the d that followed was literally insane and i am still convinced someone in our staff thought they had no TOs. rushing 4 and literally not covering only works when you can't let them get out of bounds.

so, assuming we keep morse for 1 more year, i see us ditching mongo and williams, drafting a guard who can also play C, perhaps 2 guards. i can also see wallace walking and they draft a CB in the 1st or 2nd. i feel like for whatever faults, our FO knows cbs and how to coach them up like no one's business. for next season we need a new G and CB as above, for the future we need someone who can play C. potentially for both, we need a slot WR, a TE2, and would be nice to have an RB w speed. We also need a punter but given how often we punt, i'd say any just ok guy will do. im getting ahead of myself, but i think we move some contracts around and sign chandler jones and possibly someone on O, and fill in our JAGS in the draft and maybe the odd cheap FA. the one upside of paying meh players who don't start or barely play so much is we can move money around and when their contracts are off the books the young guys behind them can fill in the spots w no drop off. looking back, mongo and williams were bad resignings. mongo was awful, and a pine rider, williams was bad at right tackle when he had to play it (vs a raw raw rookie, which is kinda shocking) and played RG decently by the end of the season, but net net is not even an average starting RG in the NFL at 10mm. odd guy, was great for the jets one year, fell apart. was great for us one year, did the same. laziness/motivation issue i bet.

those are good questions, i'd wager 1: he wanted to win and didn't want to let his players down 2: it was a suspicion that was confirmed to him after the fact when the giants hired dabol. looking at this, and it's a lot of info coming in from a fire hose, it seems to me like the text from boomer billicheck is what put him over the top in feeling slighted.

im kinda 50/50 on the rooney rule. it feels like a forced mandate, a wrong to correct a wrong if you will, but given that it's only interviews, it's also kinda practical and may well lead to better results. net net i think it's fine. in terms of is it a sham, or is it working, does the nfl not have many more minority coordinators than it did just a little while ago? if that's true, then i'd say it's doing the job as intended. head coaching might not be up to snuff in the representation regard, but i think you have to give it time and see how hiring goes. firing happens so often in the nfl that it's kinda hard to take a snap shot, you have to look at it over time. the next question to me is, how many minority coaches should there be? black nfl players are obviously over represented (vs pop) but is that where head coaches even come from? do they come from college coaches, general pop, etc? i think obviously it's a mix, but if the interviews are happening it's got to be a good thing for those who want more minority coaches, even if they seem like sham interviews sometimes, cuz you gotta be in it to win it/miss 100% of the shots you don't take etc. if flores has evidence of ross asking for tanking, that's a massive bombshell, and should cost ross the team, and probably create some new rules.

poetic indeed. someone has to come up w some kind of meme about bill saying he only thought dabol got the job ahead of time due to a technical issue he had with one of his cameras in the giants facility.

at some point you just have to admire the hubris. gives no fudges, breaks rules and doesn't care, happy to have serial killers on his team and initiate ex judicial prison on players he wants to pressure, spreads love wherever he goes. Urban might just be NFL coach of the year!

a good hc leans on his guys, even if it makes them angry, if it's for the betterment of the team. if this is the read through (and i think it is) this is a good thing for our HC IMO.

bro, i didn't even consider that angle. ya, this could blow up a bunch of things, no? if people cared about vices like the used to (politically speaking) then something like this would potentially have an impact on all the online gambling stuff, possibly making some states blow out of it and such. crazy

im down on mcd right now cuz of the end of the kc game (he either called for that nonsense, or was a bit asleep at the switch and let it happen), but the last thing i want is him to be a coasting palsy guy w the coordinators who just pleases them because they have the talent and not him. a little fire and a strong stance on things is required. if frazier wants out because mcd breathes down his neck, that's the right thing. mcd has stepped in and improved the d which is a but of a slap to frazier, and im totally speculating, but i'd bet there was some kind of told you so when ford got the bench, williams got moved, and bates became the starter. if not a told you so, a bit of a "took you long enough"

if im getting one guy, it's jones. shorter contract, just move some wood around to make room. if i get another, i think patterson. great spark player.

this guy sucks! he never got anything done until he had allen. we need a real winner, like dabol. i'll see myself out.

every single thing that happened after the heroic TD w 13 on the clock was disgusting. the kick was either a coaching brain fart, or the order just didn't get through to the kicker, hard to tell which is worse. the d we lined up in was a joke, and we got slashed right away. the fact that they called TO's, and showed that line up, and then lined up in it again shows our coaches (frazier, perhaps McD, can't be certain who made it happen) just suck bad when the chips are down. the coaching staff put the players in a position to fail and got what they asked for. while there is zero chance mcd gets the boot, and it seems like a declining chance we will be rid of frazier, if we don't get to the super bowl next year (barring allen injury or the like) i suspect mcd's seat gets very warm.