GunnerBill

I agree with your (2). It just isn't what we have seen with McDermott here. Everyone wails on about him being a defensive guy but he has let his OCs run some of the most pass heavy offenses in football. If he really believed philosophically in small ball the last 6/7 years would have looked very different. My concern is I am not sure I agree with your (1). Stretching the field isn't just about team speed. It isn't a 100m race. You have to have guys who can win and separate 1v1 down the field consistently. That is about release, it's about speed, it's about footwork, body control, route running... that is a bit my worry.

No I think managing to hold Jax as long as they did was pretty remarkable in the circumstances. The offense gave them no shot in that game. Had they got even a little bit of help who knows.

No but your point was the D shoulda been able to hold them and on that day with that personnel that isn't a fair or realistic expectation I'm sorry. They actually did remarkably well to hold them as long as they did.

And the defense was down to the bare bones. Kendal Vickers, a practice squad defensive tackle, ended up playing 52% of the defensive snaps at defensive end. And they kept the game in hand until the final 8 minutes. Jacksonville scored 11 points in the previous 52 minutes against an injury ravanged defense. In that time the offense managed 7 points and basically one drive. Our drive lengths to that point: 3 plays 3 plays 6 plays 4 plays 11 plays and a TD 4 plays 4 plays 4 plays We had been out time of possessioned 35 minutes to 17 at that point. Yea. That isn't a good game to make your point.

True but you were picking that game specifically. And I don't think it isna great example. The offense sucked that day until the game was outta hand.

The Jags loss though we did score a TD when the game was done. In Cleveland it isn't his offense and he isn't calling plays. Not the place to judge him IMO.

I am not sure I agree on the competition point firstly. Secondly it stems from teams were still playing the Bills last year to try and take away the explosives. In 2022 under Dorsey we were top 2 in explosive plays. So to an extent at the end of the season when we decided we wanted to play small ball it was there for us because that is what teams wanted us to do. Not taking all credit from Brady or Shakir and Kincaid who stepped up at all but the Bills were playing with a favourable hand. Teams watch film. And if they don't think the Bills are the same explosive threat you better believe they will come up and play closer to the line. They will stack the box on Cook, they will flood the intermediate zones for Shakir and they will come up on Coleman and ask him to make every catch as a contested catch. That is the sustainability concern. And that style has a lower ceiling. It has less room for error. I don't think it will cause the Bills to fall of a cliff or anything but if they want to contend for a championship? Yea I doubt it is a sustainable way for them to play offense.

Nor will I if it proves sustainable against the better teams in the NFL. That is where my concern is.

The move to shifty guys in the middle of 2018 was Daboll driven. Who knows what the shift the other way has been driven by this time. Does Brady have that influence? Is it Beane and McDermott? Or is there a scheme / talent mismatch which you know, seems odd give how close the GM and HC are, but then Kaiir Elam was a classic mismatch for this scheme and they did that sooooo...

That is the fear, but let's see. I do worry they don't have a guy that can separate and win going downfield 1v1 on the outside with any regularity.

You mean inflated.....

I agree there is accountability upstream too. I have been on the "they are undervaluing wide receiver" since before it was cool. Indeed I was on the "I'm worried Brandon Beane will undervalue receiver" pretty much the moment he was hired. Because he came from an organisation with a history of doing it where they had some relative success (two Superbowl appearances in a 10/11 year span) despite it.

Yea cut for Kareem Jackson.

My point is their track record on getting those calls right has been pretty good. If Coleman doesn't ge a starter's share of the snaps straight away then I am sure he will be getting very clear direction from the staff as to why and what he needs to do differently in order that it changes.

Surprising. Don't love Josh playing. Unless this is his one appearance and they wanna do it at home?

Beane drafts the players. That is a fact. Is McDermott involved in the process, yes. But the calls on personnel are taken by Brandon Beane. As for "just throw them out there." I am generally in favour of playing guys early and exposing them to things. And so are the Bills. But there are circumstances where you have to say "hang on this guy isn't ready" and you can do damage either to them or to your team asking too much to soon. Elam is the classic example of that. On Keon, I think he will play a ton week 1. I am not going to get into does he start or not... Rex Ryan started Matt Cassel week 1. Who lines up where on the first offensive snap isn't that important. But I think he will be one of the three highest snap counts among receivers in week 1. If he isn't, however, I will trust that it is because he isn't ready to be. The only two times they have got that decision wrong were Josh (and he arguably wasn't really ready but was still way better than the alternatives) and Ed Oliver and they corrected both by week 2.

McDermott did blow the end of the Denver game but the offense blew that game for 3 quarters at the same time. It was a disaster class. I was slightly surprised Dorsey was fired at the point he was but I didn't think there were any signs of him finding a way out of the trough the offense was in. I'll be honest I thought the season was done, the offense would continue to splutter along and they'd fire him after the season (possibly as part of a house clearing even). If you'd asked me the morning after the Denver game that was where I was. By the afternoon (UK time) Dorsey was fired. As for what happened next I think Brady did a reasonable job of finding a way to run a low risk offense with a spluttering passing game and move the ball. It was sustainable as a 6 or 7 game exercise to save a season I don't think is sustainable as a long term offense for the Bills if their goal, as it should be, is to be a championship football team. If they try and run that offense in 2024 I will be very critical of it. I have been totally against the "establish the run better" narrative for as long as we have had Josh Allen. Establish the pass. Run just enough and efficiently enough to keep the defense honest.

Ideally I'd have one exhibition game, two weeks before the season begins. The reason I wouldn't completely do away with it is the covid year of no pre-season the number of UDFAs making rosters dropped significantly (from a 10 year rolling average of 2.79 per team to 1.28). That to me isn't desirable long terms so I'd try and find a way of restricting rosters for that game so that is just an evaluation game for bottom of the roster battles / rookies and UDFAs.

I think I am a bit lower on what the talent ceiling is there with Claypool than some. I was coming out too. I liked Gabe better than him as a prospect and I don't see anything in the NFL that has changed my mind. Is he more talented than some of the other bottom of the roster options? Yes. I don't go along with talented enough to make any 53 in the league though. I think his talent has been a bit overrated right from the start. He is athletically gifted, but his football talent isn't quite on the same level. I'm a bit more optimistic on his teams ability though. He was a very good special teams player in college. I know he got out of the habit in Pittsburgh but he did it last year some for Miami (not telling you I paid enough notice to know how that went) but this isn't like some of these low end of the roster longshots we have had before where you say "he can't play teams so he HAS to be one of the top 4" in my view. I don't think Claypool will make it FWIW. He was nearly out of the league this offseason and my guess is by next offseason he will be. But if he can screw his head on and it comes together he has enough ceiling as a receiver/experience playing teams to be in the mix for those last couple of roster spots.

What is interesting is while both Stefanski and Dorsey come from WCO roots they very much represent the two different branches that the west coast offense tree is now represented by in the NFL. Stefanski is from the Shanahan / Kubiak stretch zone branch and Dorsey represents the Andy Reid spread principles branch. It's also of course NOT the offense that DeShaun Watson's success came in, before all of his off the field behaviour came to light, which was the EP with Bill O'Brien in Houston. I wonder if the reason for the Dorsey hire is his familiarity with the EP and the verbiage from it through Brian Daboll in Buffalo and his ability to help translate some of those concepts into the WCO scheme? Will be fascinating to observe that conceptual marriage and how it works.

Again, his offense over his entire time here is not the relevant comparator. It is what happened in the six weeks before his firing where things majorly dropped off and he had zero answers. It isn't just me who makes those criticisms of his offense. Go look at what Dan Orlovsky and Kurt Warner and the likes of those guys were saying about it. It was predictable, simple (that is different to poorly designed btw that is you putting words in my mouth) and placed a high tariff on execution despite the fact he knew what he had talent wise. To run Ken Dorsey's offense you need to have a different talent profile (and we are all agreed on the Bills have under invested in offensive playmakers). If you haven't got that you need more creativity and variety in your offense that schemes some easier opportunities and places less of a tariff on execution.

First of all "he" doesn't draft them. Beane does. But they started White, Jones, Edmunds, Knox, Rousseau, Benford, Kincaid and Torrence week one out of the box and Allen, Oliver by week 2. That is without the likes of Milano, Johnson, Dawkins, Singletary, Brown and Cook were starters later in their rookie year. They start the guys when they are ready to play.

This season may go south, but it won't be because they don't have Ken Dorsey.

Again, there is elements of truth in this. He was outcoached by Spags twice in 2020. Not just the AFCCG but in the regular season game as well where he found a way to break down the Bills protection schemes (against an otherwise good offensive line in 2020). On the oline the scheme and talent match on the oline was constantly off for a number of years and Beane, McDermott and Daboll all take a chunk of the blame for that. But it was bad Dorsey's full year too. Indeed that was and remains the most Josh had been sacked since his second season. Again I don't put that exclusively on Dorsey. Beane screwed the pooch on Saffold and on going all in on Bates based on a small sample size. But it was only really in 2023 where the oline started to come around. As for am I about style over substance, no. It goes back to where I started on Dorsey though. He was a good times rolling coach. When it worked his simplified approach looked like a master stroke. But once it went wrong, teams cottoned on and the Bills O began to struggle he wasn't the man you needed to turn the ship around. And that is the issue with scheme simple, execute high level. Once things go south your only option is to complicate in a search for answers at a time when confidence isn't high. It's easier to go the other way. As the Bills did actually under Daboll in 2019 when after the Cleveland defeat they really pared back the number of formations they were using became a lot more 11 personnel dependent in an effort to try (and they succeeded) in finding a bit more consistency.

Josh has done that his whole career. And he always will.