hondo in seattle

"We're close."

I used to do 30 mile trail runs just for fun. Now I have trouble putting my socks on in the morning. In the time it took me to transform from a highly conditioned athlete to fat, aching wreck of a man, the Bills still haven't won a Super Bowl.

They say we don't appreciate people till they're gone. My fear is this: we end up appreciating Anthony Lynn a lot next year when we see Dennison struggling to create a running attack that's just as good. The Bills were #1 in rushing yards and #1 in ypc. Those are impressive stats that will be hard to duplicate in a new scheme.

McDermott, Frazier and Dennison are all legit guys. If we hadn't hired them for their current positions - some other team would have. If not this year, then at some time in the future. But here's my concern. McDermott will implement his defensive scheme here. But he has very little experience running his own D. Ron Rivera was the architect of the Panther defense. Likewise, Dennison has never run his own offensive show. He's always been a Kubiak guy. Kubiak was the architect of Denver's offense. So are we getting cheap Rivera and Kubiak knock-offs. Or will we witness the student surpassing the master? We have no way of knowing this in advance so I'm with QTR when he says he's not passing judgment until Week 10.

I was an army lieutenant back then - young, fit, professional, can-do attitude, successful with the ladies... Now I'm an aging fart, chronic back problems, Irritable Bowl Syndrome (a souvenir from a trip to a third world country), ever growing waistline, thinning/graying hair, prone to tell stories about the old days, happily married to a beautiful woman who could have done better.

Good point. I remember Fitz once said that only one of his NFL QB Coaches actually coached the mechanics of the QB position. The rest of them did the 'mini OC' stuff I mentioned earlier.

Part of the role of a QB Coach is to play mini-OC: breakdown game tape, look for tendencies, prepare the players for the upcoming game plan and so on. A good WR coach could transition pretty smoothly to these kinds of tasks. But you also want the QB Coach to coach the mechanics of the position: footwork, throwing motioning, where to look with your eyes, and so on. This would be hard transition for a WR coach who would lack both the expertise and the credibility. Seems like a very odd hire though maybe we're missing something.

Here's how I look at Super Bowls... Imagine a track guy. He qualifies for the Olympics every time. Over the course of his career, he picks up a couple golds, a couple silvers and a bronze. He won 2 of 5 possible Olympic golds. Another guy wins gold, doesn't qualify the next Olympics, wins gold the next Olympics, then fails to qualify again. So he competed in the Olympic twice and won gold both times. He's 2 of 2. So he's better? Nonsense. Jim Kelly didn't get selected into the HOF because he's .000 in the Super Bowl. He was selected because he won 'silver' four years in a row and because of what he did with the football in every game he played.

I kind of disagree. Brady isn't the GOAT because his team wins games which requires defense, special teams, etc. He's the GOAT because of what he does with the football, year after year.

They have similar ratings which, I hope, indicates a close game.

Agree. It used to be that you got into 4 or so Pro Bowls and you became a HOF candidate. Not anymore. Not if you're backing into the PB.

Bill Walsh among others has explained this. So has Vince Lombardi. It's often better to master a few techniques than be a jack-of-all-trades and expert at none. A lot of these guys might appear to be 'slaves to their schemes' because they've worked hard to drill in a certain defensive strategy with interlocking individual assignments and techniques. To suddenly change things up would often create confusion and set players up for failure. Rex and Rob liked to add new wrinkles every week. Look at how that approach served them. Walsh, on the other hand, said he would never do anything new in a Super Bowl. He would run the same offensive and defensive plays he did all year - the ones they've drilled and perfected - and let the better team win. Who's going to out-execute who? Sometimes one team just has better players.

Good post. Zone works fine when you put pressure on the QB. When you give him all day to throw, it's a disaster if the QB has any accuracy.

"DC's are stupid" is akin to saying "HVAC technicians are stupid" or "military officers are stupid." I guess we feel better when we denigrate another profession even when we do it without any actual expertise. Generally speaking, the best high school coaches become college coaches. The best college coaches become NFL coaches. The best NFL coaches become coordinators and head coaches. None of these guys are "stupid" at Xs and Os. The blueprint is simple? Pressure Brady and put tight coverage on his receivers? And Bill never figured out an answer to this approach because he's stupid too? The hubris of a fan is an amazing thing. It all sounds so easy when your a fan but the greatness of the Belichick/Brady Pats is that there is no true blueprint to stop them that's actually consistently effective and would work in any game. I hate the Pats but you have to admire them. Bill and Brady make opposing DCs look helpless all the time - versus a variety of schemes.

The odds do get longer the further you go in the draft. On the other hand, there's really no such thing as a sure thing. As one scout explained it, no college QB is NFL ready. They all have new skills they need to develop. So, as a scout, you try to guess which ones will continue to develop and which ones won't. Nobody can predict that with 100% accuracy. The track record of 1st round QBs is better than the track record of 3rd round QB,s for example, but it's still far from stellar. Some put the hit rate at about 50%, some lower. Whenever you draft a QB, there's a good chance you're wasting your pick. In other words, drafting a QB is indeed a crap shoot though the odds do vary with draft position. The smart route I suppose is to try and try again - and do it in the early rounds. That's not the tactic the Bills have followed.

So says Gil Brandt. Some say Gil's over the hill but this guy was the vice president of player personnel in Dallas for nearly 30 years. Gil knows more about football than any of us, maybe more than any ten of us. This doesn't mean Gil's right. Even the experts are often wrong about the future of QBs. Bill Walsh was famously a fan of Trent Edwards. To provide an opposite example, how many experts predicted Matt Ryan's success this year? But it does mean that the idea of keeping Tyrod is a credible one and that keeping Tyrod won't prove that Whaley is a clueless idiot as some have said.

This is why I'm rooting for the Falcons. They're our brothers in Super Bowl misery. I wish them the best, and hope they wish us the best when it's finally our turn. It's like a watching a fellow POW being released after years of confinement. I can only be happy for them - though that happiness might bear the slight tint of envy. Let me ask a seemingly silly question, why do you root for the best team? If two boxers are fighting and one's an A-hole of the nth degree while the other is a good guy, I'm rooting for the good guy regardless of who's better. Both teams have 53 players but millions of fans. So I take the fans into bigger consideration than the players. And the Atlanta fans have been disappointed long enough. They deserve this win.

I really wanted to keep Hogan. But his offer from NE was a surprisingly sweet one. I don't blame him for leaving and I don't blame Whaley for not keeping him at that price. The Pats are a passing team. We were a running team. It might have made sense for the Pats to pay him that much but it wouldn't have made sense for us. Though I hope the Pats lose the SB, I wish Hogan well.

I'm all in favor of replacing TT. 100%. Just as soon as we find someone better. Until then, he's the starter.

We also knew the Bills needed a RT. If anything frustrates me, it's that one. But when you're building a ground and pound team, you draft defense. Finding a backup receiver to play behind Woods and Watkins is not the priority.

This is a fun thought exercise, but the truth is that if any of us were the GM, we'd be worse than Doug Whaley. Leave us in power long enough and we'd end up as loved as Matt Millen. Like most professions, being a GM looks easier from the outside than it really is. The job requires a lot of professional expertise, years of experience, organizational leadership skills, and a solid network of other insiders.

You can't build a team that's strong everywhere. Whaley built us a running team - the NFL's best running team. When TT was under center and Lynn was OC, this squad scored an impressive 27 points per game. That's more points/game than most of the Kelly/Thurman/Andre years. While there were some things he could have done better, you can't say Whaley failed on offense. But here's where some things did go wrong. Our starters were fine: Woods and Watkins on the outside and Clay at TE. That's a good group of pass catchers for a running team. And then Whaley filled up the rest of the receiving roster with journeymen who had some production in the past. When Woods and Sammy got hurt, Tyrod's flaws were highlighted. Taylor doesn't like to take chances with the ball. Maybe he doesn't trust his own accuracy. He likes to see the receiver get separation before he throws. Our backups weren't the types to get a lot of separation. And Tyrod didn't trust them enough to throw them open. So TT became more indecisive, held on to the ball too long, and all that. Not having our best guys out there and healthy really brought out the worst in Tyrod, given his proclivities. And we still scored 27 points per game with the Lynn/TT combo.

Let's do a thought exercise. Let's say we had the Eagles D instead of the Bils D in 2016. The Eagles D - not ranked in the top 10 in points or yards - allowed 20.7 points per game. If only Rex could have delivered that. So let's say we gave up exactly 20.7 games on D every game. We would have finished 11-5, maybe 12-4 if TT had been allowed to play the last game. Here's another point of view. With Lynn as OC and TT under center, the Bills scored a whopping 27 points per game. Let's compare that to the glory years of Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas and Andre Reed: 1990: 26.8 1991: 28.6 1992: 23.8 1993: 20.6 Tyrod is a flawed QB. He doesn't lead enough 4th quarter come-backs. His accuracy is inconsistent. He waits for receivers to get open instead of throwing them open. Etc. Nonetheless, he led a potent offense that would have been a lot less potent with a less dynamic QB. Tyrod played well enough that - with a competent defense - the Bills should have been in the playoffs.

Rodgers can't win close games. He's bad in clutch situations. And yet he's got the 2nd highest passer rating in the last 5 minutes of a game when trailing by 8 or less (among the QBs examined). Funny how statistics can tell two opposite stories.

Hmm, I'm not so sure. But I'm glad to see him going. A great Bill who deserves all the recognition he gets and more. Hope to see him stick around another year or two. More importantly, I hope he gets the chance to win a playoff game in a Bills uni.