hondo in seattle

Let's set the stage: The Bills have the fewest number of homegrown players in the league. In other words, we haven't drafted well in the past. And this year we're in Cap Hell because of bad signings in the past. In fact, we're spending less on current player salaries than any team in the NFL. So we have virtually no talent we've drafted ourselves and we can't afford to pay for FAs. That's what Beane and McD are up against. This season they have a team will little talent. Their plan is to improve the cap situation so they can sign better FAs and draft better than the previous regime. It's going to take time. So in this past free agency, we dumped TT to get his salary off our books and get some draft capital. We also signed AJ - the best vet FA QB would could afford. We still had Peterman. And we drafted Allen - a guy who many scouts and former NFL QBs believe has a lot of upside despite your misgivings. Peterman - surprisingly - outplayed the other guys in preseason and won the QB competition. AJ disappointed in camp, got hurt, and was traded away for more draft capital. Coaches tend to publicly say they have faith in their players because players play better when they have the confidence of their coaches. It's a well known psychological phenomenon called the Pygmalion Effect. You have no idea what McD privately thought of Peterman. Given what we saw of Peterman last year, I seriously doubt that McD ever considered Peterman a franchise QB. I suspect he considered Peterman a placeholder until Allen developed a better ability to read NFL defenses. But when Peterman faced a real NFL defensive scheme playing at regular season speed, he couldn't approximate his preseason success. So Allen's getting the starting nod earlier in the season than maybe expected or ideal. But most Bills fans and observers expected Allen to start at some point this year anyway. I'm not sure how this series of events lead you to conclude McD doesn't know how to develop QBs? Dallas threw Aikman to the wolves his first year. And speaking of Carrs, Oakland threw Derek Carr to the wolves and it didn't ruin him. Putting a rookie behind a bad line on a bad team doesn't necessarily ruin him. It depends on the resiliency of the the QB. I'm not even convinced that David Carr was "ruined" by his rookie year - he just might not have been quite good enough for the NFL. No one can look at this roster or Week 1's result and be happy. But nothing leads me to the conclusion that McD doesn't know how to develop a QB.

Agreed. But what plays would you prioritize? I'd make sure to throw some deep routes and some deep outs - maybe out of max protect. Allen is inexperienced and has shortcomings but he does have a live arm. I'd want the D to respect that arm and defend the entire field - so that Shady might find some space in the run game.

I love the OPs optimism but here's what scares me... We haven't drafted well in the past. As a recent BN article points out, we have the least homegrown talent in the NFL. We're in cap jail. So we haven't been able to sign a lot of good FAs either. Little drafted talent. Little FA talent. It's not a competitive roster.

I'd like to see have Daboll put together a game plan that only asks Allen to do well whatever he does well in practice - whether it's RPO or No Huddle or whatever.

I get what you're saying and had the same suspicion. On the other hand, I disagree with the critics who call Beane and McD "clueless" and the like. It's easy to see there's a rational plan behind all their moves. An effective plan? We'll see. I don't agree with every move Beane's made either. But there's real logic and football acumen at work.

Kaep is the best QB available, probably affordable since he doesn't have any NFL prospects, and is mobile. Given how bad Peterman and our OL are - he's a perfect fit. I don't care about his politics. This is football. You rooted for the Bills when Richie played despite Richie's racist remarks? But you won't root for Kaep who's campaigning to end racism (albeit in a misguided way)?

I don't think McD is looking for choir boys. From what he's said, he's looking for guys who practice hard, play hard, and put team first both on and off the field. There are many different personality types that'll fit in that mold. Last year he took a below average roster and achieved an above average win total and ended the drought. This year, he's seriously handicapped with an even crappier roster. Thanks to dead cap and unspent cap money, we're spending less on the team we're fielding than any other team in the NFL. What chance does any coach have when the team is spending $60 million less on current player salaries than the league allows? I fought in the first Iraq war. We had M-1 tanks; they had T-72s. We had air support. They didn't. Of course we won. McD is going into this season vastly under-armed. I'm not ready to say he's not a good coach after one bad game - even as bad as that game was.

I agree the roster is a disaster. Money means something. When you pay less in current player salaries than any other team in NFL, you ought to expect the worst roster. I wonder why some are calling for a new HC when (1) McD ended the drought, and (2) he's being handicapped with a crap roster this season.

Are you referring to this?... "We continue to build this thing the right way, and do our things at the right time. So, if you do things the right way, and make the right decisions, usually good things happen in the course of time, and that’s the same with this roster. We’re building this thing in a certain manner, like I said just in the second year to get this thing going, and to get this thing done the right way for the future." My impression is that McD thinks he and Beane are taking the right steps to build a better roster. That doesn't necessarily mean this is right now a better roster. Remember we're in Cap Hell this year. The Bills are #32 in current player salaries. If roster spending is reflective of roster talent, we're fielding the worst group of players in the league. Realistically, there's only so much the coaches can do.

If you want to make rational criticisms of McD, go ahead. But do you really need to act like a 10 year old and make up insulting nicknames? Let's elevate the conversation.

Agreed. It's easier to see the game and call good plays in the booth. But you coach & motivate on the sideline.

I agree McCoy should have touched the ball more. He's our only star offensive player. When you have only one quality weapon, you need to use it. On the other hand, the OL was so bad - in fact, the whole team was so bad - that I don't think it mattered who was getting the hand-off. This game was going to be a rout no matter what. As the old adage goes, games are won and lost in the trenches. We lost in the trenches.

This year we're spending $60 million less on current players salaries than the league allows. We've got 53 mil in dead money and another 7 mil unspent. Only one team in the league has even half as much dead money as we have - Dallas with 28 mil. To put this in perspective another way, we just lost to a team that has $30 million dollars more talent (2018 spending) than we have. Later this season, we'll ask McD to beat the Belichick & the Pats even though they're spending $40 million dollars on their roster than we are. No team in the league is spending as little on current player salaries as we are. There's only so much the coaching staff can do when other teams are fielding better players. https://overthecap.com/salary-cap-space/

Normally I would have interpreted it as a sign. But given Travis's impressive resume, I might choose the other option. I used to believe Bills fans were rare and hard to find outside WNY. But we're everywhere - even the slums of Dar es Salaam!

Are these guys really all hated? The only one I personally don't like is Sully. I didn't like Rodak in the beginning because he was clueless about the Bills. He's improved quite a bit since. The others don't bother me at all.

Well said! Obviously there are a spectrum of opinions regarding Sully but I think Last Guy's post nicely captures how some of us detractors think and feel. It's been suggested that people who don't like Sully's writing are pollyannas who only want to hear about sunshine and roses. We invoke Felser to show that's not true. We're okay with fair, well-reasoned criticism. We just don't like Sully as a columnist.

I'm not going to argue labels (columnist versus feature writer; guitarist versus drummer) because that's not the point. The point was these other writers offered me something I wanted: interesting new information. Whenever I read Sully's articles however, I felt I wasted my time. There were no new data points, no new insights... just his (usually negative) opinions. You could find the same opinions on this board. What did Sully offer that was new or different? For me, personally, reading Sully didn't make my day better in any way. I didn't find his POV provocative, challenging, or anything like that. Even when I agreed with him - which happened from time to time - my reaction to his articles ranged from bored to annoyed. Maybe I'm wrong and the guy just sees the world through darkly tinted glasses but his negativism felt like a shtick to me - that he was purposely over-the-top negative to get attention. I prefer authenticity/sincerity and balanced objectivity.

I said I wanted columnists to be informative, entertaining, or maybe even uplifting and Sully was none of these things. Instead of responding with a rational counter-argument, you say I'd like Murph or Chris Brown. So you're either not trying to read for understanding or just trying to be offensive for the fun of being offensive. Either way, you're wrong. Was Sully informative? No. While at the BN he rarely - if ever - gave us inside information. And his insights were common sense. He had no deep knowledge of football in general or the Bills specifically. I took away no new insights or data from his articles. He merely pronounced his judgment on widely known people and events. Was Sully entertaining? To some, I suppose he could be. But I thought his Negative Nancy shtick was boring and tiresome. Was Sully uplifting? No. He's more on the other end of that spectrum. Some people try to find the silver-lining in every situation. Sully, on the other hand, tries to find the dark cloud. He seems to relish knocking others down. I used to like Larry Felser who was certainly capable of criticism. I found Larry to be both informative and entertaining. I liked Tyler Dunne because he gave me information I didn't already know. I like Erik at Cover 1 because I learn a lot about x's and o's and player performance from him. If you enjoyed Sully's columns, great. I didn't. That doesn't make me a pollyanna.

His job is to write something readers want to read. In my case, he failed. I want a columnist to entertain, inform, and maybe even uplift me. Sully did none of those things.

Nice article though the concern about overspending for non QBs is not a new one. I've read somewhere that some teams allocate budgets for each position to avoid over spending on someone like Mack. There's got to be some balance. I guess I understand the excitement in Chicago but they mortgaged their future and hamstrung their cap to get Mack.

Rogers clearly doesn't get sportsmanship, child safety, or even basic civility. Judging from this incident, he's not the kind of guy you'd want around kids. But I guess the league is willing to ignore Rogers' issues in order to say they have an ex NFLer working in their league.

Charlie Rogers is now a youth football coach. Angry that one of his players moved to another team, he called up the player's dad and threatened to go after the 11 year old kid in an upcoming game. "We're going to blitz every f---ing play until your guy comes out the game, or don't bring him to the game... You know I'm pissed off about this s--t right here, and I'm telling y'all, swear to God, we are going to blitz — we don't give a f--- if we give up a pass or not — we're blitzing everybody." The league suspended Rogers one game. https://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/2018/09/06/ex-nfl-player-charlie-rogers-reveals-plan-injure-11-year-old-player/1213242002/

When I was a college sophomore, my friends would sometimes talk about their 'A' or 'B' averages. In contrast, I would wryly mention my 'I' average. I had a bad habit of not turning in my work and/or missing exams and my official grade for several classes my freshman year was "Incomplete" until I made up the missing work. So, in regards to the Bills, I'd give them an "I." There were some missteps - let's call them "rookie mistakes" - at first. But they seem to be getting better in their roles as owners. It can take years to turn around a franchise and I'd like to see more before awarding a grade.

I'm not going to argue that Chan was good but he didn't have a lot to play with. In fact, our GMs had a lot to do with the entire drought. The HCs don't deserve all the blame.

Peterman played well in the preseason but didn’t do squat in the regular season last year. While we hope he builds on his preseason success, where would you fairly and realistically rank him right now? I can’t say Rosenthal’s wrong just yet.