Roy's Mid-Season AFL Power Grouping

[The Jokeman]

2 hours ago, Bill from NYC said:

Thanks for a great post. I only disagree wrt Reid getting fired. The man is great, and was very good Alex Smith, let alone Mahomes. McDermott is not close to being in his class imo.

With all the injuries we've seen under McDermott I think he's done a remarkable job. He's similar to Reid in his Philly years. Yet I won't say he can lead us to a title as so many of our playoffs defeats came from a few plays missed by our offense or defense and the refs.

[ChronicAndKnuckles]

16 minutes ago, The Jokeman said:

With all the injuries we've seen under McDermott I think he's done a remarkable job. He's similar to Reid in his Philly years. Yet I won't say he can lead us to a title as so many of our playoffs defeats came from a few plays missed by our offense or defense and the refs.

the ultimate irony would be if McDermott got fired by Buffalo and went on to win it with another team. 

[The Jokeman]

15 minutes ago, ChronicAndKnuckles said:

the ultimate irony would be if McDermott got fired by Buffalo and went on to win it with another team. 

I understand why people want to let him go but the landscape out there not overly enticing to me.

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

Oh to be an ascending team.

 

I remember how fun that was.

 

This iteration is one foot in the grave 

[Thurman#1]

Using this method, Brady and the Pats would have been graded as declining in most of the middle ten seasons of the Brady & Belichick era.  In 2009, they started 7-5  and it was clearly the beginning of the end, till it wasn't. In 2011, they started 5-3 and people said it was over, till it wasn't. The 2012 Pats started 3-3, so clearly they were on the downside, except they weren't, going 12-4 that year. In 2013, they were 7-3. Same with Peyton Manning and the Colts in the middle of his career. The 2002 Colts started 3-4. Clearly they were on the descent, except they weren't. The 2004 Colts were 4-3, until they went 12-4. Again, they obviously were descending, until they weren't.

 

The Bills are 6 - 3. That's still an excellent record. No particular reason to think they're declining besides recency bias. They sure didn't look like they were declining after Chiefs week.

 

Your ascending group does look like they're ascending. The great likelihood is that roughly two of the four will be genuine competitors over the next few years and the other two will have problems. Houston, for instance, looked very recently like they were on the upswing. Now, not so much.

 

You're likely to have hit on two or so in most of your categories.

 

But what we know is that most teams can't be understood completely till weeks probably 10 - 13, when things get clearer. We're reaching that, but it's only starting to clear up, it's not there yet. What we further know is that some of the teams that genuinely ascended this year will regress. 

 

The Bills certainly did look awful this week. It'd be hard to argue with that. You're resting your opinion too much on recent events and reactions to them.