hondo in seattle

He seems to blame Brady for his drop in production... Last season, Diggs started off the season in Buffalo hot, with more than 100 receiving yards in five of his first six games. But he didn’t go over 100 yards—and he notched only two scores—for the rest of the season. If it didn’t look like Diggs was having fun that’s because, well, he wasn’t. “Last year, I was in the worst mental space I’ve been in since I’ve been in the league,” Diggs says. “If I'm not in a good space, obviously that's not the best for me. So that's when things had to start shaking out...” Later, when our conversation circles back to his time in Buffalo, he has more to say, specifically highlighting the fact his drop in stats coincided with the Bills’s decision to replace their offensive coordinator. “The games looked a lot different,” he says. “You can blame me. I don’t mind blaming me. I got big-ass shoulders. But pay attention, pay real close attention. Watch the game. Of course there’s plenty of plays I want back. But there’s a lot of plays that didn’t go my way... You tell me about the last 10. What changed? Were there changes going on? I just pay attention to what really happened and not what people try to act like happened. Like, for the last 10 games, I forgot how to f***ing play football?”

I'm just as frustrated as you over the playoff losses as you are. But also not being a professional football strategist either, I look at them a little differently. I think McD schemes and calls plays for playoff games for the playoffs much like he does for the regular season. And based on regular season results, he's pretty good at it. Where things go wrong in the playoffs... Injuries. I think injuries to key defensive players, as you mentioned, have been critical the past two seasons. Athleticism. I think there have been games where our defensive scheme was as good as the other team's offensive scheme. They just had better athletes and won the one-on-one battles. Luck. Bass makes most of his field goals. Diggs usually catches well-thrown balls. But sometimes the Gridiron Gods and laws of probability just don't work out in our favor. The ball bounces the other way. The ref makes a borderline judgment call against us. Bass misses. Diggs drops. The Big Three. Few teams in the modern era have been blessed with a HC/DC/QB combo as talented as Reid/Spags/Mahomes. We're cursed to have them around when we have a team that's almost as good as theirs. I think we'd have a Lombardi by now if not for that trio.

This is both interesting and hopeful. There have been studies that show employees are more productive and better committed when they are engaged in the decision making process - even when their opinion doesn't win the day. The opposite to engaging leadership is "command-and-control" when the boss simply tells you what to do you and you go do it. When management authors discuss command-and-control leadership, they often use the military as an example. As a former army officer, I think this is funny. Obviously, when bullets are flying and decisions need to be made NOW otherwise people are going to die, we don't stop for a consultation. But in the planning phases, most leaders I knew were very collaborative. We actively sought out the input of our subordinates. You don't want engagement to devolve into full fledge democracy. That usually doesn't work on the battlefield or, I suspect, the gridiron. But I hope what Brady is doing is soliciting the opinions of his players and respecting them. And getting the opinions of his coaching staff. And combining the input he received with his own insights, experience, and knowledge. Then coming up with a cohesive game plan that effectively blends all that collective wisdom.

When I look at our defensive roster this year, I think, "Yikes! Where are the stars?" Milano is injuried. I'm not confident Von will ever regain his past greatness. Tre, Hyde, and Poyer are all gone. It won't be a dominant D. But I believe McD will mold these comparative no-names into a capable (above-average) group of defenders. And I'm hoping new stars will emerge.

I've never been #6 in my neighborhood at anything. She's currently #6 in the world and has been ranked as high as #3. Impressive. I would love to see her win a Grand Slam event though, especially the US Open, just because I think she feels that would make her career complete. She clearly has the talent. But each Grand Slam invites the 128 best (more or less) tennis players in the world to compete. It's quite a gautlet to get to the trophy. She's got three more matches to go - against players who are all playing great tennis right now. I'm rooting for her.

Pretty much the only sport I watch any more is football. And mostly just the Bills. But because she's a Buffalonian, a Bills fan, the owner's daughter, and seemingly a nice lady - I do watch Jess from time to time.

As someone who likes to try new foods, I'm embarrassed to admit I never had a garbage plate.

Onto either Iga Swiatek or Liudmila Samsonova next. Either the #1 in the world or the #13. But she's beaten both before.

Weirdly, we've won every game I've ever attended though I've only seen 4 or 5 Bills games in person including the Miami playoff game in the 1990s and the regular season thrashing of the Chiefs a couple of year ago. I can be bought, too, btw. Given my streak, I think you guys should pay my way to the Super Bowl when we go. Btw, this thread makes me feel like a lousy fan. The only game I've ever rewatched was The Comeback which I used to own on DVD. I've never even seen the first SB. I was in Desert Storm at the time, far away from any TV, and was never inclined to watch a painful replay.

FWIW... Based on a single simulation, ESPN projected a 7-win season for the Bills. "It turned out the Buffalo Bills needed a No. 1 receiver after all. Under offensive coordinator Joe Brady, Buffalo took a more run-heavy approach in this season simulation, but it resulted in the offense taking a step back and quarterback Josh Allen having his worst statistical season since the early parts of his career. The defense couldn't make up the gap, either, resulting in a disastrous 7-10 playoff-less season for a team that was considered a Super Bowl contender entering the season." But their Football Power Index, based on 20,000 simulations, has the Bills as the fifth best team in the NFL behind the 49ers, Chiefs, Ravens, and Lions. www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/41034817/simulating-2024-nfl-season-predictions-playoffs-super-bowl-champion

@Don Otreply, this is a cogent response and I'm not trying to be argumentative. But let me ask... What changes in scheme do you think McD needs to make? What effective concepts are other teams making use of that McD isn't? You make a good point about the benefits of hiring from the outside. The benefit to internal promotes is that you know them, can guess their likelihood of success, know if they're good culture fits, know their work habits and interpersonal skills, etc. The advantage of external hires is, as you say, they sometimes bring in fresh ideas. I think perhaps the best course is to mix up it up: use both internal promotes and external hires. Though if I had to pick one, I'd pick internal promotes because in my experience, the success rate is higher. But because they don't necessarily bring in fresh ideas as you say, I always encourage internal promotes to be curious, explore, talk to peers outside of the organization, and otherwise find ways to learn & develop new ideas. I don't know how insular the Bills coaching staff is but I suspect they study other teams in detail and there aren't a lot of innnovative concepts in the NFL that they're not aware of and understand. But I may be wrong.

As someone who's traveled in something like 46 states and 25 countries, if I won a billion dollars in the lottery, I'd buy four homes. One each in Buffalo, Seattle, and the Philippines because my wife and I have family and friends in all those places. And, of course, I'd want a place to stay while attending Bills home games. The fourth house would be in San Francisco.

As someone who visits San Francisco often, I don't see the ruination that's often talked about in politically biased media. It's true that SF has a homeless problem. And, yes, downtown hasn't entirely recovered from Covid. Occupancy rates are still lower than pre-Covid and downtown retail & restaurant businesses suffer as a result. Nonetheless, San Francisco thrives economically. San Francisco is the heart of the Bay Area with a GDP of $729 billion, about 10x more than metro Buffalo and more than many countries. The only metro areas in the world with larger GDPs are NY, Tokyo, and LA. The average household income in San Francisco is about $119,000, one of the highest among the world's major cities. And San Francisco is safer than Buffalo. San Francisco has 696 violent crimes per 100,000 versus 736 in Buffalo. Buffalo had 14.1 homicides per 100,000 last year. San Francisco had 6.2. Then there's the diverse music scene, world class museums, tremendous parks, Michelin starred restaurants (as well as an amazing assortment of ethnic eateries), countless tourist attractions, and so on. Last weekend I took the Husky for a 14 mile jog starting in Golden Gate Park, one of America's premier urban parks, to Ocean Beach where we passed people surfing, to Land's End - a trail along rocky cliffs with amazing veiws of the Bay, through the pretty Sea Cliff neighborhood where Robin Williams use to live, to the Presidio where hundreds of people were strolling along the Promenade, enjoying the view of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge, and back to GG Park. I saw thousand of happy people and not a single homeless person or drug transaction. The city has its problems but it's hardly the post-apocolyptic smoking ruin some make it out to be.

I wish Kurt would do film work with Josh during the offseason.

Maybe... But Martin had the 28th best average in the NFL last season (26th Net). He had only one good year in his career - back in 2016. After 11 years in the league, he's probably not going to get any better than he was last season. And he wasn't good last season. Araiza is just beginning his NFL career. His trajectory probably points in a better direction.

9 spots higher than Martin?

Should have never released Punt God.

Makes it to the round of 16. Maybe this is Jess's year!

Ken's a very knowledgeable guy. If I was anywhere near Buffalo, I'd pay to hear him talk.

Agree. Like the guy a little more now after that clip.

I think you're confusing him with his dad. Bobby Babich has never been a DC before, let alone a HC. Though I forget how old he is. Bobby Junior looks like a college kid but is 41 and has been in coaching for 18 years now.

Sadly, this is exactly true. Woman's tennis doesn't have just one 'Super Bowl' each year, they have four: the US, French, and Australian Opens - and Wimbledon. Jess has won lesser events but, despite her talent, zero Super Bowl type competitions. Just like the Bills. And the Sabres. But another Pegula owned team, the Buffalo Bandits, has won six championships. So we do have that.

As a former army officer, I was trusted to call "plays" during game time because I was thoroughly trained to do so. This makes me wonder what kind of training Babich received from McD on play-calling. Did they watch film together with McD drilling him, "Okay, what are you expecting from their offense here? So what do you call? Why?" Did they do anything else?

For those who don't follow Jessica, she had injuries at the beginning of the year but has come on strong since. She won the Berlin Ladies Open as well as the Canadian Open (for the second consecutive year) and made it to the finals of the Cincinatti Open. Currently ranked #6 (off a peak of #3), she's won something like 8 of her last 9 matches against top ten opponents but has yet to win a Grand Slam and, at the age of 30, her window may be closing.

Yep. Warner wasn't even deemed good enough to be on a practice squad. He was only good enough to stock the shelves where the practice squad players bought their groceries. It's an amazing story. Sometimes scouts and coaches get things wrong, though it remains true that the vast majority of p-squad players don't become impact players.