hondo in seattle

Weirdly, I feel much far more calm and confident than I was last week against the Ravens. Intellectually, I know the Chiefs at Arrowhead in the playoffs is a huge mountain to climb. But intuitively I feel like this will be an easier win for the Bills than the nail-biting, high-blood-pressure-inducing victory against the Ravens. Hopefully, my intuition is right. If not and, the gridiron gods forbid, we lose in an epic rout - I'll deal with that when it happens. But I'm expecting the best today, not fearing the worst.

I have a lot of respect for Walsh and the influence he had on the game. But he didn't invent his offensive philosophy out of nothing. He took Sid Gilman's ideas and evolved them. And I'm a little dubious of "coaching trees." For example, John Rauch who went 7-20 as his time as a coach with the Bills and yet has an even more impressive coaching tree than Walsh. Walsh work for Rauch so Walsh's entire tree falls under Rauch. And Madden worked for Rauch too, so the Madden tree also belongs to Rauch. Most the coaches today can trace their tree back to Rauch - or a bunch of other coaches. Coaches move around so much that they can all trace back coaching trees back to most any tenured coach of the 1980s.

But Tyler Dunne told me that McDermott is a tyrant who micromanages his subordinate coaches who all hated him and wanted to leave.

You're correct. For simplicity's sake, I was assuming PATs were a given (100%). From an analytics perspective, taking the PAT or going for two is actually pretty much a toss-up as you laid out. From a coaching perspective, it's situational: how much do you trust your kicker if you kick, your offense if you go for two, or your players in general if you plan on taking it into overtime.

I'm not as old as Pete, but at 66 my professional "energy" is the same as it's always been. I can't run as fast or as far as I used to. Not even close - though I am taking the husky for a 12-mile run with 2,000 feet of elevation gain in the Santa Cruz mountains today. I can't do as many push -ups or sit-ups. But I speak with the same passion that I did when younger and can work long hours without flagging. I'll guess Pete can too. As far as Xs and Os are concerned, I always thought Pete was pretty good on the defensive side of the ball. My bigger point is this: being older doesn't necessarily mean being less capable. These things do go hand in hand sometimes but not all the time. Some seniors are very sharp and energetic.

Imagine we have a time machine and go back to 1920 to watch the Akron Pros tie the Buffalo All-Americans 0-0 in the last week of the season. But we change history: we allow overtime (not a thing back then) to make sure the first year of the NFL has an undisputed champion. What are the chances of Buffalo winning in OT? Based on the best, most consequential evidence (i.e. the scoreboard), each team has an equal ability (or, in this case, inability) to score. It's a 50-50 proposition. Generally speaking, overtime games are toss ups.

So it's exactly like flipping a coin. Even now, a game goes into OT when after four quarters only when each team has demonstrated a perfectly equal ability to score. So who comes out in overtime is a 50-50 proposition unless one team had a significant injury late in the game.

Offense... Coop makes an unexpected appearance. A big one. Defense... With the nation watching, Milano plays his best game of the season.

Do you really believe Reid's risks losing "just to showboat" and diss McD? I believe Reid is doing whatever he can to win. And that sometimes includes unexpected trick plays. Whether Reid respects McD or not - I don't know.

Since 2015, the two-point conversion success rate is 47.5%. Overtime gives us a 50% chance of winning. It's not a big difference but I say play the odds.

5 pounds of what? Painkillers?

Personally, I'd take the job. In fact, I would get on my knees in tears of joy and give thanks to every god I could think of (and Hinduism supposedly has 330 million of them). But I'd take the job because I'd never have a better option. Joe Brady might. Sometimes good coaches fail as head coaches because they don't have the right organization and/or roster talent. And then they get stuck with a losing record on their resume. And then it becomes hard to get another shot. Just ask Jim Fassel, Vance Joseph, Spags, or Leslie Frazier. If I were me, I'd jump on the opportunity to coach the Saints. But if I were Joe, I wouldn't take the first opportunity that came my way. I'd wait for the best opportunity and that might not be NO.

So hopefully Brady's replacement is already on board, or we hire and 'train' him this year. I don't want Josh and the offense to have to go through a painful and possibly unproductive transition to a brand-new coordinator (with little idea of what's worked for the Bills and why and what didn't and why) who implements a brand-new offense while building brand-new relationships. I'd love to see some continuity.

Carroll is a good coach. As for his age... people age differently. Some guys are senile old men with canes at that age. Others are mentally sharp and run ultramarathons. As someone who is a very active 66, I'm a bit sensitive about age discrimination. Suggesting an older person can't do a job because of their age is not all that different from assuming a person can't do a job because of their color or gender. As a culture, I look forward to the day when we stop using faulty stereotypes in our judgments and instead take each person as they uniquely are. Carrol was unsuccessful in his one year with the Jets, moderately successful with the Pats, very successful with USC, and then successful with Seattle (.606 and a Lombardi). He'll do well with the Raiders if the new GM can find some talent beyond Bowers.

We have a few purple and teal chips. But blue chips? Only one: Josh. We'll win anyway.