Mango

I agree. I feel like I’ve been yelling at the clouds that we haven’t been playing quality football despite their wins. I didn’t love the Miller signing because I thought it best to just sign your own for the next year or two. We invested enough in the DL. At some point you have to live with that and make the rest of the team better too. I also said I wouldn’t blame the team for cashing it in post Damar. And I also stand by that. It’s very confusing because we didn’t just lose, we lost in spectacular fashion because of issues we saw coming since the 2022 offseason.

Beane is not a witch. Beane is a pretty decent GM. You can do worse. I think I’m a little higher on McD here than others. We’ve seen the defense get measurably better; even in game, when McD takes over play calling. I think (hope?) he gives his assistants enough rope and support to both fail and succeed which is good as a leader. I wouldn’t be shocked if we walk away from Frazier. And if we have another draft where top 100 picks don’t see the field more than 1/3 the time, we may see Beane hit the road as well.

I’m tempted to agree with you l but the defense generally levels up when he takes over play calling. I think McD is the CEO of all of this. If he doesn’t move on from some combination of Beane, Frazier, or Dorsey and things get rough he’ll lose the team. No matter how good a coach is, once he loses the roster it is really difficult to get back.

Interesting that Beane did a bit of talking about how “lucky” Cincinnati was to get good by being bad and rookie contacts. …but didn’t mention KC with a QB on his second contract. They also have $15M in space for 2023 and $106M for 2024. So when he says Cincinnatti got lucky, what he really means is “please don’t pay attention to our peers” EDIT: For reference, the Bills are estimated at -$5M and $19M the next two years. Unless KC starts making some major personnel blunders, we’re likely losing a lot of ground.

At the time I was flamed for saying the Miller signing was bad. It was a very expensive fix to a very expensive problem we created. I am glad he is here, but it was just as bad of an allocation of resources 300 days ago as it is today just based on how terrible our draft picks and roster allocation has played.

I am actually upset that he didn’t seem in control and that somehow this season just sort of got away from him. Not that there were/are any major issues with the roster/cap. Like this season and roster just happened to him and other situations/rosters were better based on their luck, and what he did was just fine. .

I thought he looked a bit dear in headlights. When you talk about Brown, Hines, Bernard, the DL, and how tough it looked for this team to just play football for half the year so much of it comes down missing on a number of drafts in a row and poor cap allocation. He said “we have to nail this draft” he knows he hasn’t every nailed his top 100 picks and his time is likely coming near.

McDaniels seems to have the Bills number in year 1. No matter what we do, or who they play, we have had difficulty closing out Miami. The Jets defense is no joke. The Bills could have issues if they find a QB. The division was never a given in 2023 regardless of how the Cincinnati game turned out.

I agree with this. My take has always been that Brees is an all time great QB or Payton is a HoF coach. Both cannot be true at the same time. Firing McD for Payton is putting all your chips on Brees being a system QB. That gives me pause. I believe this is McD’s defense so I am tempted to side with people who say “it won’t change until McDermott is gone”. But we’ve seen McDermott pull play calling away from Frazier in the past and the defense has gotten drastically better. Brandon Beane shouldn’t go without major blame. Arguably as much or more as anybody on the coaching staff.

There’s a huge middle ground between what your complaints are and what Diggs is doing. I agree the team could use some nastiness to it. But this isn’t that. Anecdotally I’ve won 12 national championships (6 coaching 6 as an athlete). I’ve had big fights with my teammates. I’ve had a shoving match or two. I was a bad teammate at one point or another in my career. But I would never leave my team at their lowest. And I certainly wouldn’t double down and just say “what you want me to be ok with losing”.

He is literally one captains of this team. How is leadership not part of the job description? A actual quote from Diggs on what he needs to do as one of the captains of this team.

“You don’t deserve me” isn’t how anybody successfully leads in any scenario in life. More often than not it’s people who behave like Diggs that need the most leadership.

He’s certainly allowed to be upset and vent. But bailing on your teammates and hanging them out to dry alone makes you a Schitts Creek leader. He is in fact not Him.

Daboll, Dorsey, nor Allen seem to have any interest in throwing to one TE with any regularity, let alone 2 TE and TE2 are just unicorns this staff and fan base keep chasing, just like a RB who is a receiving threat. Cook has been good lately and only played like 1/3 of snaps with zero targets.

We are going to have to borrow from the future just to put a team on the field in 2023. We have so many holes in so many places that when we borrow we do it to at least provide some stability. So I think you have to figure out Edmunds and Poyer. We’re likely a mess without them and cannot afford to spend the draft capital on MLB, SS, and OL.

We struggled against zone in 2020 too. Beasley helped, but it was still an issue.

This was supposed to be a cap reset year for KC, then they absolutely smashed their draft out of the park. They have some room for 2023 and not a huge amount of named FA. But 2024 they have $100M. I wouldn't be so quick to anoint them even though the Bengals do have some space this year as well. Both teams are in better cap situations than Buffalo at the moment. We have an uphill climb given our recent drafts. Outside of QB/WR, I don't feel significantly better about our current cap/roster situation than the cap hell/tear down Beane put us through in 2017/18.

I think Dorsey is calling the plays, but Allen is taking the shots downfield anyways. At least that is the way it looks via A22. I think this is where Dorsey and Daboll go their separate ways, Daboll would chew Josh out in those moments. Dorsey seems to relish Allen's physicality. Allen is so clunky throwing underneath. It always comes late into the play and the WR, RB, TE etc always seems to be flatfooted by the time he throws the ball. Neither OC puts Allen under center often. Daboll said it helped Josh read the defense better. But it is year 5 and Allen still never takes snaps from under center and is still one of the worst QB's in the league against zone. I think both are a big reason why the underneath stuff looks clunky. It isn't just long developing plays, it is taking too much time to process and he bails himself out with athleticism. One thing I never seem to see Dorsey call is the curl routes that Allen used to love throwing to Diggs.

I think Dorsey likes Allen's big play ability. But boom or bust is also part of who Allen has been going back to Wyoming. It is what it is at the moment. He will likely never be the type of passer Burrow is but still a great QB for the Buffalo Bills.

Burrow is the better prototypical passer. Allen is the better athlete/footballer. If Burrow had some Allen in him, or Allen could harness some of the things Burrow does well, they'd be.....Mahomes.

A post 6/1 trade frees up $8M this year but costs $25M next year in dead cap. Which is about the same as it would cost to have him here. I am not in the "cut/trade Diggs" camp. But I am certainly not happy with him. If this were a better draft for WR I would start to consider it for 2x firsts.

I think you can replace Beane without tearing the whole thing down.

I questioned bringing him down at half time again. He is already around. We are all so lucky to have him back and alive. But I’m not sure what that does there?

It’s not just the offense vs. defense. It’s the misfires by the FO over and over again. We’ve devoted a million resources to the defense and it sucks. So now the solution is to have that same person devote a million resources on the other side of the ball. The last 3 drafts suck and our cap situation sucks.

I think GM/Beane deserves a stand alone spot. So much of the frustration yesterday is just not having enough talent at a number of position groups and allocations of resources.