Ronin

Did you read the link? That explains it.

McBeane's futures in Buffalo are single-handedly tied ot Allen. As a reminder, Allen was the costliest QB in this past Draft, he essentially cost us four day 1 & 2 picks considering that we could have taken Edmunds with the 12th overall, which would have been a wise decision, then take Rudolph who had far less risk late in round 3 and then wait til next year while using picks 22nd, 53rd, 56th, and 65th picks for OL & WR. But Allen was "their guy" that they thought selling the farm for was wise. There's zero possibility that their careers, here as well as as GM & HC elsewhere, are not directly tied to Allen.

1 point is possible too. One team nearly got a 1-pt. safety a week or two ago. Apparently it was our game; https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2018/10/30/patriots-bills-game-nearly-had-the-first-one-point-safety-in-nfl-history/

Almost every team has a game like that, it doesn't mean that they're good. Besides, the body language of the Vike players in that game clearly showed that they were just going thru the motions, probably focused on the game after us vs. the Rams. The Niners just obliterated the Raiders worse than we beat the Vikes. Besides, who said that the Vikes are any good. None of their five wins are against a winning team. Besides, besides that game we haven't even averaged 9 ppg and have allowed over 26 ppg. And we're going to get a whole new OL and a set of decent WRs with one pick in each of the first three rounds? Don't think that free-agency, particularly with McBeane's track record therein, is going to be the answer. You're optimistic. The Draft for that would have been this past one where we turned five day one & two picks ranging from 12th overall to 65th overall into two players. I'm pretty sure we'd have been far better off and much further along for next season had we used all five picks on OL & WR and worried about a QB in next year's Draft.

You misunderstood me, I don't think that the Browns are worse, in fact, they were better statistically in a very significant number of relevant team stats last season. The big difference between us and them was TOs. They had a horrendous TO ratio of -28. To put this into proper perspective, the NFL record for TO ratio is -30, in 1965 by the Steelers. Had the Bills had their TOs last season we'd have been 0-16 easily. Had they had ours I have no doubt that they'd have won a bunch of games too. Had we had their 41 TOs and they our 16. Taylor was a huge reason for the lack of our TOs, while he didn't move the offense he didn't throw INTs.

Only by 2. But consider, the Browns' rate of INTs last season was 4.9% whereas ours is 5.4%. Also, contrast that with Cleveland's TD% last season was 2.6% and they had 15 TDs to our pace for 6 and our TD% of 1.2%. Should be an interesting 2nd half of the season to be sure, and not in a good way.

To add some additional perspective, the 0-16 Browns last season had 15 passing TDs and 28 INTs. How on earth we've won two games is perplexing. Or perhaps I'm looking at it backwards, how on earth the Browns managed to win none, ... To surpass last season's 0-16 Browns we'd have to average over 1 TD/game and and significantly decrease our INTs.

Let's suppose that that's true, that he's actually great. You leapfrogged the point entirely. Typical here. Everyone wants to be right, so very few people look at the big picture. Unfortunately that's EXACTLY the problem with our FO.

I've been nailing this team for years with my "negative" takes. Yet, here we are, exactly where I warned we would be at the rate things have gone over the past decade-plus. Either way, unlike with most here, it's not about me being right or anything of the sort, it's an analytical discussion of the Bills. I realize that gets lost on many readers, but many understand. My point on "a 5th rounder failing," remember when many here claimed he was really a 2nd or 3rd rounder (if not, go look it up), but again, the point being that McBeane WHIFFED on that in spades. But they learned from their mistakes, right? Hardly. They continued to try to shove a square peg into a round hole until it become embarrassingly blatant how ridiculous they looked attempting to do so, nationally that is, not simply with fans more knowledgeable about the Bills. Put another way, when the most superficially oriented NFL fans got it, only then did our illustrious McBeane & Co. Think that through. It won't take "time to tell if the process is working," it isn't. Anyone that's watched, and paid any significant attention, to the NFL over the years and other teams, etc., should realize full well that one simply doesn't take a team like the Bills, with no long-term talent on the roster, much less putting up any significant numbers currently, and turn it into a winner within two or three seasons. Particularly given some of the mindboggling moves that McBeane have made. Moves like paying Lotolulei, heralded by many here and elsewhere as a great pick-up in the offseason when any truly unbiased knowledgeable person could very easily see by a quick visit to ALL of the analytical sites that the signing was a complete NOTHING signing and a waste of money & caps space. Naturally there'll be a poster or two insisting that one had to have seen Lotolulei play, as if they spent last season and prior seasons watching the Panthers with all eyes on Lotolulei. I've been ranting since prior to last season that the time to trade Shady was then, when he may have actually fetched a 1st-round pick, ... not that McBeane and their process would know what to do with it, but talking about geniuses, now all of a sudden everyone's talking about trading an injury-laden 30-year old RB, when again, anyone that's ever paid much attention to the NFL should realize full well that the odds of a 30-plus year old RB doing much of anything are remote. Again, not bully for me or anything, I don't care about that, but it says something, quite a bit in fact, when people getting paid millions don't understand that much less are able to grasp that simplest of historical factoids. But hey, I suppose that it was more important to make the playoffs last season, as a direct result of the unlikeliest of passes in another game altogether, than it was to build for the future. And frankly, how come no one noticed that last season "wasn't a rebuilding year," but their second season is? We've been through that with other lame coaches and GMs that again, quite frankly sucked here. You're either rebuilding or you're not. Levy came strutting back to OBD as a GM and proudly did the same, announced boldly that "the future is now," and claimed that the team was not rebuilding, before the following season stating that it was rebuilding. I mean who does that except people that haven't a clue? The core point here is that no, not everyone has to "wait two or three seasons before knowing what's going on." Sometimes you can look at collegiate performance, ascertain against whom it succeeded or did not, how, and why, etc., and determine everything that you want to know. Instead, people simply look at high level accolades like many did with Zay Jones & Watkins, two horrendously easy bust predictions, and figure that hey, they were "great" in college, at least w/o considering the details, so they must be great in the NFL. More accomplished WRs, Hardy to name one, who's had Ryan and the Falcons offense throwing to him, came from SC, yet they've done nothing. So why on earth would a gadget slot WR playing in a ridiculous spread offense, very often playing from well behind and with plenty of garbage time stats, and sometimes featuring 5 WRS, be good in the NFL. People that can't see through simple things like that are the types that buy bridges site and title unseen. Same for Watkins, a player that made living off of bubble-screens in college, plays that simply don't work in the NFL, so why isn't that predicdtable, because it was, again, to anyone understanding that simplest of things. Clearly the bottom line here is twofold, A, most people don't understand that. B, most people never even look that far in their analyses, which is why all of these so-called "draft experts" all have the same 40 or so players ranked in their 1st-round projections. What the better teams have are people in their front offices that understand those things, clearly our FO isn't like that. Beyond clearly neither are McBeane. Wishing and hoping that they were or will be, or that they'll suddenly and for no foreseeable reason gain that knowledge and/or pay attention to it would be foolish. As to time, that's a luxury that they simply no longer have. If McD can keep the focus of the lockerroom all season he'll be doing great. It not, oh well, next man up. But there too, it's clear that the Pegulas don't get this stuff either, so what are our hopes that they'll be able to identify, and then subsequently hire, people that do? It's a valid question but a depressing one to think about. Again, it's not about me, or you, or any fan, it's about a discussion as to why so few NFL people, you know, the ones that some of us as intelligent fans that have actually paid attention to other teams and situations over the years in the NFL, are constantly being told that they're "experts" despite their ignorance of some of the most trivial and essential tenets of team-building, actually know what they're getting paid millions to know, much less try to figure out after they get paid that much. Food for thought. This "come back and see" nonsense has been goinng on since Polian left and it's gotten beyond old.

None of the Bills' rookie draft picks have stood out except for Edmunds. Johnson's been OK but hardly great. Phillips has been OK but nothing to write home about. They both strike me as the type of players that will both play out their contracts and contribute in some way but that no major effort will be made to retain them. We'll see I suppose. That's about it. The rests are either enormous question-marks (Allen) or role-players (Neal, McCloud, Teller), or no longer on the team. (Proehl) McBeane needed to do a whole helluva lot better in this draft, immediately, in order to save their jobs IMO.

Not sure what you mean by "came into play," but the "math" of the situation is simple. We entered the Draft with 6 picks on days 1 & 2. We had the 12th and 22nd overall and in the 1st. We had the 53rd and 56th overall which were the 21st and 24th picks in the 2nd round. We had the 65th and 96th overall which were the 1st and 32nd picks in the 3rd round. That's 6 picks on days 1 & 2. Think about what kind of strides they could have made in rebuilding the team with those 6 picks. Just that, don't defend what they did, simply consider the alternative to what they did. Those types of draft opportunities rarely come around. I loved the Edmunds pick, but they could have had him freely with the 12th overall. They chose Phillips with their 96th overall, meaning quite simply, that at the end of the day, the net cost to acquire Allen was the other four picks. As such, Allen was the most costly QB in the Draft, and by a country mile. No other team gave up nearly what we did to get "their guy." the Browns and Jets gave up nothing to get Mayfield and Darnold except their own 1st round picks. Rosen was the second most costly and Arizona merely swapped 1st's and gave up an extra 3rd and 5th to make that swap. The cost, at the end of the day, to aquire Allen, was astronomical. That's all fine-and-dandy, and regardless of whether any of us are in agreement or not, the simple point remains that when you trade that much and ignore ALL of the other offensive needs not to mention a bunch of defensive ones too, in a grand opportunity to make enormous strides in rebuilding a team that you just inheritied, YOUR (their) decision had better justify itself or you're toast. If Allen doesn't work out it'll make the play/move to get Watkins seems trivial in comparison. You simply don't make a move like that and declare that a player was "your guy," have him not work out and then not expect to be fired much less be subject to intense criticism which includes whether or not you're competent. Having one pick in each of the first three rounds and a bunch of extra picks on day 3 in this forthcoming Draft isn't even close to the same. As I've always maintained, McBeane will now sink (more and more likely with each passing week) or swim with their draft strategy to acquire Allen, which means simply that Allen had better become a top-10 (at least) QB in this league fairly quickly, or at least demonstrate that he's even remotely capable of that feat, or they're toast. Right now it's arguable whether or not he's the worst QB in the league, so he's got a helluva ways to go, he's not even playing as well as Taylor and is in historically poor territory alongside the offense. Even with this supporting cast his numbers should be what Taylor's bottom-dwelling numbers were last season if he's even half of what McBeane seems to think he is. The thing I'd be concerned about the most if I were an Allen apologist, which I'm not, is that his sole strength was his arm-strength, yet, his YPA are DFL in the NFL. In short, there's not even remotely been a manifestation of this strong arm. Amidst no other real core strengths coming in, I'd say that's an enormous issue regarding his future development and promises of success. It's incredibly unreasonable for anyone to suggest that they should get three or four seasons to "see if Allen develops." The reasons why he won't, if he doesn't, are immaterial. They're reasons of McBeane's own making regardless. The fact that Allen was easily the riskiest draft prospect in the Draft does not help them. Either way, Pegula's hand may be forced sooner rather than later anyway. McBeane are taking heat, have not proven anything at their current levels of employment, but more relevantly, appear to be on the cusp of losing the lockerroom, which if that happens they're both "dead men walking." As it is, they're going to have a devil of a time attempting to lure value free agents to the team w/o paying a premium, at this rate no one's going to want to come here. 80M in cap space, or whatever, can easily vaporize on just a few players, and they're far more than "a few players" away from being competitive. I won't even go into the notion that it'll be alongside a looming future stadium issue.

It's actually worse than that. He's won only one game in which he didn't have a favorable turnover ratio, that game was the Indy snow game last season and let's not forget, they nearly beat us. The other 8 wins last season, we had a favorable TO ratio in each one. Of the 7 we lost, our TO ratio was positive in two of those games and even in three. We outplayed nearly no one, including most of the teams in our wins. It's a completely unsustainable model for winning games. To date we're 11-12 under McBeane, but that's highly deceptive and masks the realities just as it did last season.

You'd get so outdone in evaluating collegiate talent that you'd regret having asked. I was one of the few that publicly said that Spiller would be a bust, that Watkins' collegiate play wouldn't translate rendering him a bust as well, even more so for Jones, probably here too. I'm sure some of that is here too. Contrary to your beliefs, it's not nearly the craps shoot that you seem to think it is. Did you ever stop and wonder why there's so little disagreement amount draft analysts as to the top say around 50 players? Either way, taking 5 picks ranging from 12th overall to 65th overall (1st in the 3rd) round, using essentially four of those to draft Allen, is a factual occurrence. There merits of that strategy can also be debated and conclusions drawn immediately. It helps if one understands college ball, NFL history, and a few other things. Just because someone gets paid a ton of money to do this doens't mean that they're competent at it. I mean seriously, you're a Bills fan and don't understant that?

That money can easily vaporize on three or four players, especially the way that the franchise has done it. And a few more Lotolulei's and it'll be gone, for nothing. As to 2 picks in each of the first three rounds, please, tell us how they're going to get those?

I suppose, to each his own. I got tired tho of being irritated/frustrated/dejected while attending games and had trouble paying to end up that way. Seriously, I'd rather just relax in the lot in a reclining chair and if things become unbearable, pack up and head home. You wouldn't have to eat and drink all game anymore than you would at home. Buffalo is a tailgater's heaven, best in the league IMO and I've seen many. I've not seen Lambeau where I heard it's also great, but I've been to many others that don't even come close to comparing. This talk of a downtown stadium, besides the notion that there isn't going to be a new stadium, would be the worst idea for Buffalo ever. It may fit Pegula's model for a downtown One Buffalo "kingdom" of sorts with his personal stamp on it, but it moves things even closer to lake-effect snow and would necessarily forever alter tailgating as we now know it as Bills fans, due to far more limited parking, which is currently and always has been an enormous part of the draw to games. Ask yourself, do you see attendance as high as it is if tailgating as we now have it at OP is removed? I don't, not by a country mile. And polls have continually shown that game attendees consider the tailgating at OP to be just as important as the game itself. A losing team playing incompetent football sans any great tailgating to me is hardly a recipe for future attendance. Like I said, no new stadium is even realistic in Buffalo, just sayin' in relation to your comment on tailgating.

Seems like a ridiculously small sample size however, he only played one game in which he had a meaningful number of snaps, guessing garbage time the rest. Either way, that one game was agianst the 28th ranked passing D of the Bucs. Not sure I want to rely on that. He hasn't played since last season and wasn't exactly keeping hiimself in game shape this offseason and he hasn't taken any kind of meaningful number of snaps in nearly a decade.

It's too late for McBeane to learn from their mistakes. They're in with both feet now on Allen. The bigger question, or questions, are A, if they whiffed so badly in assessing Peterman, who IMO was never anything other than a 5th-round QB, at best, why should anyone think that their assessment of Allen was any better? Granted, Allen's the better QB, but who knows by how much, and frankly, that's not the question. The question is whether Allen was worth turning 6 day 1/2 picks into three with one being Allen at essentially the cost of four of those picks, or whether he wasn't. Given the riskiness with the pick, enter B, has McBeane's approach to rebuilding the team been a good one? I have no idea how anyone can support the notion that they're rebuilding strategy has been anything other than abjectly horrid. 10 picks next year aren't going to help them much since they're all, other than one-per-round, on day 3. Those aren't the kind of spots where starters are frequently found, they're spots where role-players and depth players are drafted. You can package 'em all up but you're still not getting enough to rebuild the team by any significant measure. That opportunity was this past Draft. McCoy's days are over and they have no one to backfill on a team that has relied on rushing. We all know the rest, they essentially need an entire cadre of WRs, particularly after whiffing on Jones last year while letting Smith-Shuster pass, they'll need a better TE, and almost an entire OL. That's an impossible scenario for any GM, Polian had more to work with back then and it took him several seasons. They're going to sink (likely) or swim on Allen now. But more importantly, doesn't one have to question the methodology of selling the farm to draft a risky QB that has the same exact traits of past major busts (Locker, Russell, Leaf, et al), while putting that same QB on an island as if, even if he were good, he'd succeed without the protection and passing options? Then factor in this ridiculous and unhealthy reliance on the GM's and coach's old team's players, players that are average on a good day. Well, that's this "process" that we keep hearing about ad nauseum to the extent that the phrase has become all but anathema to Bills fans and soon will be entirely anathema with absolutely no one wanting to hear it anymore. Either way, McBeane has this team going in reverse, and honestly, who thought that that was even possible when they got here. But make no mistake, a crescendo of terminal criticism is going to hit them sometime during or immediately after next season if they don't start producing noticeable positive results, and I wouldn't bet much that they're even in a position to make that happen, and right now, unless Allen steps up his passing play they have no chance. It shouldn't have been difficult for a QB to at least match Taylor's passing numbers, even with sub-par receivers and a sketchy OL, but as of now Allen's simply an expensive "poor man's Taylor." He doesn't run any better than Taylor, comparably, and his passing isn't even what Taylor's was, astoundingly. Again, not sure "where to from here," it's not a mess that I would have made for myself so don't ask me for solutions to a seemingly unsolvable problem, but it doesn't bode well for the future, any aspect of it.

Good point, it's all relative. Lower the bar and you're on your way to the Super Bowl.

As I've pointed out, his success was tremendously limited, essentially to as single season and exclusively against non-winning teams. That was in '07, he had no success by any standards otherwise. If he starts people will be slamming him just as much as they are Peterman at this point. I don't think having Andersen on the sidelines whispering into Allen's ear is going to help matters. Let's be frank, the move to acquire Andersen is a grasping-at-straws attempt by McBeane to CTA. It too will fall short as they entire end-of-tenure damage-control mode.

I can agree to disagree on the basis that we have different standards. Here's Andersen's career stats; https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/A/AndeDe00.htm He had one season of success as you state it, but against an incredibly soft schedule, one of the easiest in the league that season. In his only four games against good teams he played poorly that season. He had absolutely no success of which to speak of, by any standard, otherwise. Once again McBeane have dropped the ball and caused a turnover.

Right, so it's wash/rinse/repeat. At some point we have to worry about the team moving despite what the Pegulas say. Older fans are falling off and people are leaving Buffalo and the region in drover, indigenous types anyway. The fanbase is shrinking. At some point, unless extended winning rears its head soon, IMO this small-market is in trouble despite efforts by the Pegulas. Maybe I'm off but it takes more than "loyal fans" to keep a team. The NFL has an economic model and Buffalo no longer fits it despite what we think. I'd be concerned, and incompetence on the field and in the front office cannot possibly help the overall situation. Agree with you on no QB high unless they pull a Watkins. Not sure I see that happening, as high as they are on trying to fit the Peterman square into the round hole, you'd have to think that one way or another they'll try ten times harder to fit Allen into the same hole. Drafting another would conflict with that. Either way, they don't have enough resources to build up the team prior to a crescendo of terminal criticism forcing them out. Think about it, they need a complete OL overhaul, WRs at all spots, a RB now (should have looked into trading Shady before last or this season when he had some value), and even a TE not to mention backup QBs too. We'd literally be better off offensively as an expansion franchise. Then of course there are defensive needs on top of that. Kyle's on the cusp of retirement, Lorax is too, and Hughes is a free agent after next season. There's no way on earth that they turn this team into a perennial winner by 2020. At this point they'll be lucky if Allen's "the one" and doesn't contribute the starting QB spot to the list of needs too rendering the offense a complete overhaul.

I saw that, I tried finding out who those QBs were. Did you find anything? Either way, that's nearly a month. At least we can get back to 125 passing yards/game and a passing TD every third game, something that even the worst QB in the league with no NFL future and with no competent WRs should be able to do. What perspective? Peterman? You want him "learning" from Peterman? What's he supposed to learn? Seriously. Same for Andersen. He'd learn more locked in a room playing Madden.

That's another good point alongside the person that said that is isn't very "process." So the question then becomes one of whether it would have been better/wiser to build the key parts of the team, like the OL and at least one WR, with 6 picks on days 1 & 2 and grab a QB in next year's draft, or whether it was wiser to turn the first five of those into merely two players, one having been the riskiest QB in the Draft not to mention the most costly in terms of draft picks. I think that the answer is clear at this point. The only questioning seems to be why those making this decision didn't seem to think so. Either way, they've dug themselves an enormous hole to work out of that IMO is impossible. But hey, they got "their guy." That's all that matters, right? Or is it?

Unfortunately, I don't think that anyone "wants a new team," we're all Bills fans. But at some point you have to ask yourself how much time you want to devote to merely financially supporting a team without much coming back to you. Don't you think. No one likes a loser, particularly fans of a loser. But if you have people in charge at the top two or there levels that are clueless as to turn it into a winner, then your choices are to support a loser or simply start paying less attention. You said that their primary concern is profit? Is that your concern too? ... namely their (the Pegulas) profit? ... or do you have other concerns, like winning and at minimum some level of basic competence on the field? If your concern is not their concern, are you contributing to their concern? If so, then can't we say that you're part of the problem? I mean hell, if they have everything that they want after bilking us fans, why should they alter their means of approach? Seriously, why should they if their goals have been met? Of course all the "tough guy" fans & posters here will tell anyone thinking like that that they're not a real fan, to which my reply is that a real fan expects and demands competence and isn't satisfied with anything less. I mean if being a fan is merely contributing to the profits of the owners, then no, I'm not a fan I guess since I don't give a crap about the Peguals financial situation in that regard, I care about competent play on the field and a reason to be proud of at least something in our region socially speaking. If being a fan means expecting, yea demanding competence, and being completely dissatisfied with incompetence, then I'm a fan. So I suppose it depends upon perspective. As I tell people, although I don't go to games anywhere close to regularly, I'd rather go tailgate and watch the game from the lot than contribute to the owners' goals while getting nothing that I want in exchange. But hey, as long as there are enough people that equate fandom to simply being financial cattle to be harvested, then there's not much reason for positive changes, is there?

Where they whiffed is in team-building. Too many fans think that simply having a QB will do it despite the notion that it STILL all starts in the trenches to borrow an overused cliche`. The fact that the front-office thinks like says little for them and frankly, they're both OJT types, Beane in his role and McD in his. They are responsible, but how many people and fans applauded what they traded to get "their guy?" Be honest. When you take such risks your career necessarily hinges on those risks. They could easily have had Edmunds, who was a great pick at 12th overall. So in essence their other 4 picks between 16th overall through the 65th (1st in the 3rd round) is what it took to get Allen. Think of the team that they could have begun building with those picks, hell, they could have completely revamped the O-line to the extent that any average QB would have looked better than Allen, Peterman, Taylor or anyone else, then used their 1st next year to get a QB. But NOOOOO! They've gotta do it their way with much support from the fans, many here, about "their guy." Well Manuel was "their guy" too under a different tag-team. The bottom line is that they clearly don't know what they're doing in the same manner that anyone that foolishly thinks a new stadium is forthcoming. Neither do the Pegulas, but that's another matter altogether. What the franchise doens't need right now is this. It'll be a minor miracle if they can turn this around by the end of 2020 much less keep their jobs til then. At that point we'll be in the option years for the lease when I doubt that any respectable coach or GM will want to touch this franchise and its 20+ years of abject misery. This is a classic example of what happens in style-over-substance management. As I started, they whiffed miserably at team building, actually, seemingly going in reverse, oddly. At this point it's simply a question of who's next and when and whether they'll be the next two undeserving candidates or whether they'll actually know what they're doing.