Of all our "hot" starts, is this by far the worst?

[PABillsfan23]

This is right up there with 2008.  Wide open AFC this season.  9 wins has a decent change at getting in.  Buffalo won’t sniff 9 wins now 

[Boatdrinks]

I'd have to say '08. Mostly because Brady got his knee blown up by Pollard on opening day and I thought the division was attainable. Then I'd have to go with 2011 because they beat the Pats and I started to think they must be for real. As usual , good teams improve as the season goes along where the Bills tail off and get exposed as charlatans. As a fan base we've forgotten what good football after Halloween looks like. 

[Steve Billieve]

I'm gonna wait until the season ends, I mean if we get to 8-8 from here there's a lot to hope for going into next year.  Some of those other years just left me hollow inside.  Maybe if we loose the next 7/8 like we lost the last three, but until then . . .

[The Frankish Reich]

36 minutes ago, Boatdrinks said:

I'd have to say '08. Mostly because Brady got his knee blown up by Pollard on opening day and I thought the division was attainable. Then I'd have to go with 2011 because they beat the Pats and I started to think they must be for real. As usual , good teams improve as the season goes along where the Bills tail off and get exposed as charlatans. As a fan base we've forgotten what good football after Halloween looks like. 

I had forgotten about Brady going down.  That did lead to a lot of talk about "the division is wide open."  And it was ... just not for us.

[Boatdrinks]

2 hours ago, ShadyBillsFan said:

I’m clueless as what happened to the defense.   

 

There is no way all of those INTs and strips were “pure luck” 

 

 

There is always some element of luck to getting takeaways and the pace figured to slow down. That said, it seemed that guys were around the ball and where they were supposed to be in the defense . That goes a long way. As of late, itvhardly seems like they have a defender in position to make a tackle , much less force a turnover. I'm struggling to explain it. 

[Steptide]

4 minutes ago, The Frankish Reich said:

I had forgotten about Brady going down.  That did lead to a lot of talk about "the division is wide open."  And it was ... just not for us.

That was the year the Dolphins introduced the wildcat and went 11-5 to beat out the Patriots for the division. Pretty crazy the Pats missed the playoffs at 11-5 that year. The afc was just  that  good 

[Boatdrinks]

2 hours ago, Haslett_Stomp said:

 

Someone in the national media (I think it was Bill Barnwell on ESPN.com) said in a column a couple weeks ago that the Bills defense would regress to the mean during the 2nd half of the season.  I didn't want to believe it but, alas, here we are...

 

 It's  true that the Bills don't have much star quality talent on defense , and that NFL offenses usually start out behind the defenses  in the early season. Must've figured that NFL OCs would figure out how to exploit the weaknesses they saw on film after awhile. 

[The Frankish Reich]

1 minute ago, Boatdrinks said:

 

 It's  true that the Bills don't have much star quality talent on defense , and that NFL offenses usually start out behind the defenses  in the early season. Must've figured that NFL OCs would figure out how to exploit the weaknesses they saw on film after awhile. 

I think that's right. You had a lot of mediocre journeymen like Humber, Worthy, Lorax, Thornton (and fading vets like Kyle) as well as smart vets like Hyde and Poyer. They knew their jobs, didn't get caught out of position like in Rex's defenses, and the bend but don't break thing led to no quick scores and opportunities for opposing offenses to make mistakes, hence the great turnover ratio.  As the season goes on, mediocre or worse talent gets exposed as offenses start to win those 1-on-1 battles.

[dezertbill]

4 hours ago, Steptide said:

I'd definitely have to say yes. I know we got beat down by teams in those previous years where the bills started hot, but I don't remember having 3 straight games where the bills just got completely annihilated after starting so well. 

 

I've been dwelling on what happened to this team the last few weeks. 2 and half weeks ago, the national media was praising the bills and all talking how we were going back to the playoffs this year. It's absolutely mind boggling that 2 and a half weeks ago we were 5-2. I don't even recognize this team right now. 

I disagree

 

This has been labeled a rebuild from the get go.  Honestly if we had started 1-4 and stood right now 3-7 everyone would be saying "its part of the process.  Give it a year."

 

But we had success and beat some good teams.  All of a sudden we start losing and everyone forgets what we were doing in the first place.  Building a roster that McD and Beane want with players who buy into what they are trying to do.

 

I am baffled like the rest how all of a sudden a team that plays stout D can start leaking like a puncture.  But bottom line is this team isn't stocked with the players that will provide us long term success.  If you look at the guys we jettisoned, none are killing it with their respective teams.

 

We have a GM who hasn't even run a draft yet, and a coach didn't even pick all of the players on the team.  Be as mad as you want, you have to give them time to do their thing.

 

It's a five year plan.  They will get at least three years to make this work.  If we are in the same boat in 2019 then we'll have a new regime in 2020.  

 

I don't see that happening though.  So I will be in the minority and have faith because of what I believe McD stands for and what he brings to the table with his style of coaching and character.

[Adam727]

In my opinion this year was the worst by far.  

 

I never thought Trent Edwards was an NFL QB so I wasn't as surprised as some others when that season fell apart.

 

Going into this season I would have been perfectly happy with 0-16 and drafting our franchise QB.  But by the time we got to 5-2, this was the first time in a long time where I believed the playoffs were not just possible but likely.  When McD switched to Peterman I lost any hope in winning the SD game, making the playoffs, and faith in the HC/GM's decision making all before the game even started.  (In prior years at least there was a 3 hour game and the week leading up to it where we got to be hopeful, have a few drinks, & have fun before the Bills inevitably screwed it up.  This time they screwed it up for us in advance) 

 

I don't think I've ever felt this hopeless about the franchise's direction going forward, and would have to go back to the week 17 game against Pittsburgh's backups or maybe even the Music City Miracle to think of a week as depressing to be a Bills fan as this past Sunday.

 

 

23 minutes ago, dezertbill said:

I disagree

 

This has been labeled a rebuild from the get go.  Honestly if we had started 1-4 and stood right now 3-7 everyone would be saying "its part of the process.  Give it a year."

 

But we had success and beat some good teams.  All of a sudden we start losing and everyone forgets what we were doing in the first place.  Building a roster that McD and Beane want with players who buy into what they are trying to do.

 

I am baffled like the rest how all of a sudden a team that plays stout D can start leaking like a puncture.  But bottom line is this team isn't stocked with the players that will provide us long term success.  If you look at the guys we jettisoned, none are killing it with their respective teams.

 

We have a GM who hasn't even run a draft yet, and a coach didn't even pick all of the players on the team.  Be as mad as you want, you have to give them time to do their thing.

 

It's a five year plan.  They will get at least three years to make this work.  If we are in the same boat in 2019 then we'll have a new regime in 2020.  

 

I don't see that happening though.  So I will be in the minority and have faith because of what I believe McD stands for and what he brings to the table with his style of coaching and character.

I'm OK with a 5 year process...  But if they were going to bench their starting QB in the middle of a playoff run anyway (after trading away their best run stuffer for a 6th round pick) instead of trying for the playoffs...  why didn't they get rid of Kyle, Alexander, Incognito, and Shady in the off-season and rebuild correctly?  If they really weren't trying to compete this year (as evidenced by the fact that they were willing to throw the season away in week 10 to get a closer look at a 5th round rookie) why not fix the cap situation by getting rid of players that will be retired in 3 years and set us up in a better position to actually rebuild going forward?    

 

Instead we're going to just miss the playoffs this year, head into next year with way less cap space than we otherwise could have had, and will be drafting in the middle of the first round instead of drafting our franchise QB.  By trying to build both for now and for the future at the same time it feels like they are doing neither correctly.   

 

[The Frankish Reich]

You know when I also (momentarily) believed it was happening? The Kyle Orton 2014 team. Right after we blew out the Jets in that epic snowstorm "home" game played in Detroit.  Then 8-6 after we beat the mighty Packers, and it was on to Oakland (2-12 at the time). And we all know what happened. So my ranking:

 

1. 2004. The "Steelers Backups Beat Us" year. That one wasn't such a big deal since the playoff drought was like 5 years at the time.

2. 2011. Fitzy on a roll.  That one burned me bad.  That one was so bad that I STILL believed in the ensuing offseason. The following are real words actually spoken by me when I ran into another Bills fan at baseball spring training game: "You know, Fitzy played with broken ribs ... I think next year (2012) will be the one."  Yeah, I said that. Ouch.

3. 2014. Orton Magic!  And I wasn't the only one - there was a great "Who Says Kyle Orton Can't Be Our Franchise QB" post here round about the time of that Jets game. And Sammy was making plays and that team just seemed to have a kind of swagger. Until they didn't.

 

I never fell for the Rex Ryan teams, or for this year's team, although in retrospect I'm not sure there was any reason to prefer the '11 and '14 versions to the '15 and '17 versions. 

Edited November 21, 2017 by The Frankish Reich

[dezertbill]

40 minutes ago, Adam727 said:

In my opinion this year was the worst by far.  

 

I never thought Trent Edwards was an NFL QB so I wasn't as surprised as some others when that season fell apart.

 

Going into this season I would have been perfectly happy with 0-16 and drafting our franchise QB.  But by the time we got to 5-2, this was the first time in a long time where I believed the playoffs were not just possible but likely.  When McD switched to Peterman I lost any hope in winning the SD game, making the playoffs, and faith in the HC/GM's decision making all before the game even started.  (In prior years at least there was a 3 hour game and the week leading up to it where we got to be hopeful, have a few drinks, & have fun before the Bills inevitably screwed it up.  This time they screwed it up for us in advance) 

 

I don't think I've ever felt this hopeless about the franchise's direction going forward, and would have to go back to the week 17 game against Pittsburgh's backups or maybe even the Music City Miracle to think of a week as depressing to be a Bills fan as this past Sunday.

 

 

I'm OK with a 5 year process...  But if they were going to bench their starting QB in the middle of a playoff run anyway (after trading away their best run stuffer for a 6th round pick) instead of trying for the playoffs...  why didn't they get rid of Kyle, Alexander, Incognito, and Shady in the off-season and rebuild correctly?  If they really weren't trying to compete this year (as evidenced by the fact that they were willing to throw the season away in week 10 to get a closer look at a 5th round rookie) why not fix the cap situation by getting rid of players that will be retired in 3 years and set us up in a better position to actually rebuild going forward?    

 

Instead we're going to just miss the playoffs this year, head into next year with way less cap space than we otherwise could have had, and will be drafting in the middle of the first round instead of drafting our franchise QB.  By trying to build both for now and for the future at the same time it feels like they are doing neither correctly.   

 

Whether you agree or not, I truly believe with TT's struggles that McD felt Peterman had developed to a point where he could come in and do some things with the offense that TT could not.  He could experience some success that TT was not able to achieve.

 

I don't think he made the switch with the mindset that TT gave us the best chance to win but he wanted to give Peterman some game experience.

 

So with a playoff bid in mind he was seeing if Peterman could snap us out of our slump.

 

I don't think this was a tank move. 

 

 

 

[Adam727]

58 minutes ago, dezertbill said:

Whether you agree or not, I truly believe with TT's struggles that McD felt Peterman had developed to a point where he could come in and do some things with the offense that TT could not.  He could experience some success that TT was not able to achieve.

 

I don't think he made the switch with the mindset that TT gave us the best chance to win but he wanted to give Peterman some game experience.

 

So with a playoff bid in mind he was seeing if Peterman could snap us out of our slump.

 

I don't think this was a tank move. 

 

 

 

I'd certainly be able to understand the decision better if this is/was his thought process.  Something about the way he kept answering questions in the press conference announcing the decision about making the team better now and in the future makes me think that Tyrod's salary and next year's draft situation were part of the decision to start Peterman.  But maybe McD really thought Peterman gave the Bills the best chance to win this past Sunday.  If that really is the case though, I think that raises an entirely different set of concerns.