hondo in seattle

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.

I wish I could ignore BB's Super Bowls. Wish they never happened. But the point is a good one. Coaches can be awesome but players still need some natural talent. How do you know who Dennison is? Have you worked with him? Spent time picking his brain determining his football IQ? Just what do you actually know? You say not to pretend Dennison is Sam Wyche (not sure anyone was) but then you pretend he's Curtis Modkins with the same lack of evidence. Dennison's resume only tells us so much because he's been under Kubiak's shadow, not running his own show. That doesn't mean he can't run a show. He's been around a long time and has had good mentors. And he's been on 6 Super Bowl teams and learned how SB teams prepare. I won't pretend to know the guy or be in a position to evaluate him. He could be Sam Wyche or Curtis Modkins, I don't know. But McD - who's done far more due diligence on him than I ever could - thinks enough of him to hire him. For now, I have to content myself with that. I'll save my personal evaluations for the regular season when I actually have something substantial to go on.

I'm going to play the grinch today. I don't think most fans really understand what position coaches do for a living. How much time do they spend working on physical technique? (As I recall, Bill Walsh one said they broke down a D-linemen's job into 30 different individual skills which they practiced relentlessly). How much time to position coaches spend reviewing film with their players of upcoming opponents? Or film of their own performance and how to improve it? How much time do they spend reviewing the upcoming game-plan and the plays that will be run? How much - ideally - should they spend on each of these? What's the best way to maximize the impact of these kinds of activities? How much latitude is the position coach given by the OC? Even though we don't know what actual positions coaches actually do, nor what they should do, nor how they can do it more effectively, we have strong opinions about whether they're good or not.

Agreed. McD talks about character and building a winning culture. Character? Culture builder? Are those the things that come to mind when you think about Johnny Football?

He says he's got his head right. Who knows. The guy has (or had) poor mechanics, a selfish attitude, no discipline, no respect for authority figures, an alcohol problem, a drug problem, a violent temper, zero leadership ability... What's there not to like?

You may be right. I don't think Marrone is as egomaniacal, socially inept, and downright evil as some make him out to be. Watching the Bills offense in action, though, I never got the impression that he was an adept student of Sean Payton. Marrone doesn't seem like a bright Xs and Os guy. But some say Hackett is. And now with some extra years in the NFL, Hackett might be ready to attack an NFL caliber defense. Marrone could provide the leadership and discipline while Hackett adds the tactical acumen and cheerleader energy. It might work.