GunnerBill

I mean 2018 was kinda his fault.... we might have lost anyway but he started Nathan freaking Peterman.

What substantive points did you want to the question "if different things had happened would your opinion be different?" Seriously.

Well of course if different things had happened the overall outcome would have been different. Jesus your argument isn't just falling apart it is nearing insanity.

Agree. Nonsense. They are squeezing the rest of the ever expanding NFL year into gaps it doesn't fit in and yet this weekend seems to be sacred. You wouldn't need to move anything else, just get rid of this strange pre-season bye week.

They kept the Colts 4 points below their season average. This is exactly the point. The Bills defense is intentionally bend but don't break and fans HATE that style cos most of them play way too much Madden. So sometimes they give up a lot of yards and some first downs you will find frustrating. It is the risk of that style of defense. I repeat.... the Frazier hate is way over the top. It is borderline deranged.

472 yards but only 24 points. A critical turnover and couldn't move the ball second half. Easy to pin that on the defense but they kept the Texans offense below their season average for points. Whereas their defense had one of their better days and beat their season average by 6 in holding us to 19. That loss was on the offense. Pure and simple.

I don't agree they played poor vs Indy. And the 16 point lead was in part blown by the offense turning the ***** thing over.

You guys are like broken records. Yes, the last two playoff losses have sucked. But the criticism of Leslie Frazier is way over the top. The man is a darn good football coach. His record shows that.

Oh okay so historically bad if we only count two games. Got it. Nobody is denying they have played badly in those two games.

Historically bad??

Excellent post. And the fact is they HAVE had success against Mahomes blitzing him zero times on one occassion and I think just twice another. They just haven't played their best football on defense against KC and Cincy in the playoffs. Against Cincy they don't have the regular season proof that they can do it either, I get that. But the fact is in the NFL it is a lot about playing your best come playoff time. The Bills haven't managed that on defense yet but I don't think that is nearly as much on gameplans as it is on execution. You can't heavily blitz the elite guys they eat you up. Yea it is an old quote they have dug up to pile on Leslie. Cos that is the cool thing to do these days. He is responsible for all the Bills' ills in recent years. And he probably caused Covid. I bet he has ranch on his wings too.

I don't think he is tradeable or cuttable with that contract. A trade makes sense for Arizona but the trading team has to take on $37m salary. Nobody is paying him that much.

He'll be 26 by the end of this season. He is who he is who he is. A big bloke who won in college by being a 23 year old man running over kids. When the guys on the other side are as big and as strong he has nada, nothing, zilch.

No. He has no way to win in the NFL. That was true when he came out of Wake Forest and it is true now.

Yea we disagree. I think there are at least 5 or 6 teams worse than them as long as Stroud is better than terrible. If Stroud is terrible it is possible, of course, because they will stick with him and take their lumps you'd think rather than go back to Mills. But even playing at the level Davis Mills has played the last two seasons I think Houston would be comfortably better than the 3rd worst team in football. I think there might be two worse teams in their own division. I think he is very good, yea. I thought he looked special when he started some for Oklahoma in 2021, and while I didn't watch much USC last season, I did watch a lot of Jordan Addison film in the draft process last year and Williams definitely flashes as a thrower. I'd want to dig into the tape a bit more on the technical elements but just watching him on TV I think he is super impressive.

I know what Vegas thinks of them. I'm telling you now they won't earn a top 2 pick. I actually think they have a legit shot to come 2nd in their division if Stroud is anything above terrible.

I think more of the weaker teams should be in the NFC this year. The one AFC team to keep an eye on IMO is Denver. I think Russ is on a short leash. He gets 6 weeks but if they are 2-4 or 1-5 or something like that they will pull him and hit the tank button hard.

Hmm. Not if they end up 1 and 2. Houston won't be bad enough this year to draft in the top 2.

It makes him the 8th best paid right tackle in football. I don't think that is ridiculous at all for where he is. The only guy he will jump above who I'd say is clearly better (not including guys on rookie deals obviously) is Jack Conklin who the Browns have at a pretty bargain price.

Sure. Did we play 3rd string QBs all season?

I didn't mean it like that. I meant you'd almost have a very clear organisational divide where all the big programmes play in the two big conferences. Not that the difference in standard between the SEC and Big 10 and the rest isn't already great. It is. While for now I see the sense in Clemson staying put I think medium to long term to economic reality will be that they need to be in the SEC. Florida State getting back to something like competitive helps the ACC but long term it, like the Big12, is substandard in comparison to particularly the SEC but the Big 10 too. No I don't think winning the PAC12 should automatically get you in to a 12 team playoff. If we get to the two premier conference approach I talk about above my expectation is that the majority of the 12 team playoff would come from those conferences. It should take a kind of Cincinnati of two years ago season for other teams to gatecrash the party. If you want to make it from a non-SEC / Big 10 conference you should have to be a 0 or 1 loss team and have a quality win or two on your schedule. Equally, as you will no doubt recall, I have not been an advocate of the 12 team playoff. Personally I think there was a case for a smaller playoff expansion (I'd have gone to 6 with #1 and #2 getting a bye) but I think increasing to 12 just means playoff games for teams with no chance of a national title.

Yea I think at some point Clemson, FSU and Miami end up in the SEC. But I think there is a viable second tier of conferences that is the ACC and Big 12 that still has some decent programmes in them. Though agree geographically there is nothing Atlantic about the ACC anymore.

I agree. I don't think it is the ideal solution or the answer you would design if you were starting now with a blank sheet of paper and without the history, tradition and politics within the structure.... but I do think ultimately we are heading towards a situation where the Big 10 and the SEC are the Premier Division of conferences with, loosely, the Big Ten as the North and Western division and the SEC as the South and Eastern division. And I think that will make for better matchups although the scheduling will still need some work. You'd almost then have the ACC and the Big 12 as the second tier conferences. I know at the moment we have Clemson, Florida State and the U in the ACC and Oklahoma State still in the Big 12 etc and that might still need some shuffling.... but I do think those two conferences feel viable but not on the elite tier.

True, the NFL has a monopoly. But the fundamental point I was trying to make stands. The reason they break the rights up in the way they do is to maximise their profits and they don't care about the impact on the consumer. If the consumers respond by finding ways outside of the law around the monopoly then it is a bit rich for the monopoly to cry about it.

I think the predictability is a much better point than the aggression. Even the creative things they did do in terms of some of their coverage matching (although they could do less of that once the Hyde and Poyer axis was broken) and the double A gap blitz look that they used to drop and flood zones from teams just got a bit used to them after 6 seasons of the same coordinator. Remember go back to 2019 and Bill Belichick no less was saying no defense in the NFL disguises its looks better than Buffalo. It just gets hard when you have had the same DC and a lot of the same core players - White, Poyer, Hyde, Edmunds, Johnson, Milano even Oliver together 4,5,6 seasons - to keep things fresh and to keep evolving. Teams are going to study film on you and find ways to break down what you do. I get that the D did not play well v the Bengals in the playoffs. But they held Miami to two drives of more than 30 yards in the entire game in the Wildcard and ended the regular season as a top 5 defense despite all their injuries. It was a hell of a coaching job. I think McDermott will call plays differently because no two play callers are ever the same even if the scheme is similar and that might break some tendencies that offenses had keyed in on under Frazier. Hopefully it does refresh what we are doing a bit. I just wonder if it might be undermined by the glaring hole at MLB.