GunnerBill

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.

Embarcing variance? As in accepting the chuck and duck, boom or bust nature of his offense? That isn't modern. The Oilers were doing that in the 80s. Just asking Josh to go deep all the time was putting even more of the offense on his shoulders. And he ran him more in his one full season than anyone else. Still not seeing it.

Josh had a career high in carries in Ken Dorsey's only full season.

There was nothing modern about Dorsey's offense. It passed a lot (though at about the same rate as before he took the reigns) but other than that what do you think made it modern? It had predictable route combinations and formations, conventional play action and almost a total absence of pre-snap shifts and motion. Not disputing the second half of your point - Brady went ball control when he took over and if that persists into this season it is a concern - but I don't see the modernity in Ken Dorsey at all. It was a mid 00s passing attack just with more volume.

Daboll was too fond of his gadget plays, I don't dispute that. But his offense actually tried to win with scheme especially in the way they attacked the middle of the field with crossers and man beaters and outside with his high-low combination routes. Dorsey just tried to win by talent running a handful of shot plays over and over and as soon as he didn't have Stef Diggs playing at an all pro type level it fell apart. His scheming was beyond simple and put a really high tariff on execution. You want to argue that had the Bills done a better job of providing outside receiving talent it would have been more productive for longer? No dispute. But it was so predictable. They were bottom 5 in the NFL running motion, they were conversely near the top of the league in 2 by 2 sets from which they ran mirror concepts at a really high rate and defenses just didn't have a ton to prepare for. It was way too predictable and when defenses really started to key into what he was doing and the offense spluttered and at times stalled out he had no answers.

Actually only surprise for me there is Hollins over Coleman which is surely a rookie earn it thing.

Oh I am not lamenting his loss. I was mentally prepared for his departure a year before it happened. But he had 2 terrible games to start last season and it set a narrative that didn't hold. After that he played pretty well.

He wasn't a top 60 player but I remain after the first 3 weeks Poyer had a decent year. He wasn't all pro Po anymore but he was still a perfectly decent NFL starting safety. Hyde looked closer to the end IMO which is why him being unsigned is not a surprise to me. I think he knows and will only play if the Bills need him in an emergency.

On the first point it isn't $2.2m that could be spent on another player late in the season. His contract is $2.25m fully guaranteed broken down into £1.35m cap hit this year and $900k dead money in void years. If he is on the roster this season he costs $1.35m on this year's cap and $900k on future cap. If he is not on the roster he counts $1.35m on this year's cap and $900k on next year's cap. They don't gain more money to spend on someone else by keeping MVS on the roster, except for the fact that if they cut him then they owe the salary of player who makes it instead of him and that money would come off their ability to make moves later in the year. The candidates for that are Claypool ($1.085m), KJ Hamler ($1.055m), Tyrell Shavers ($799k) and Zach Davidson ($799k). So those are the actual amounts that cutting MVS "costs" them. The money on MVS's contract is a sunk cost. They are on the hook for that whatever they do. Is $1m the difference between signing even a useful depth guy late in the year or not? Unlikely. Agree on Claypool and Hamler though. They have not shown anything to make me think they are preferable options and Claypool has been nicked up which hasn't helped his cause.

Daboll was a better OC than Dorsey. I actually said when he was in the running for jobs I never loved him as a HC hire. Again - didn't think he had the temperament for it.

I'm not persuaded Watson is going to bounce back at this stage but I think he is still likely better than Wilson. Wilson has been absolute trash the past two years.

Think they have said they are out....

Controversial view, I'd still trade Deebo to pay Aiyuk if it was me. But Deebo is such a specific Shanahan offense piece I can see why they aren't doing that.

Presumably it is a "minimum" of 4 games?

Agree on the New England loss. That was a disaster class from McDermott. The worst defensive gameplan of this entire regime IMO. I thought he should have handed over playcalling at that point because he wasn't doing either job particularly well. He managed to find his groove later in the year and the defense played really well down the stretch until the injuries ripped the entire second level outta the side. That said, it doesn't change my view at all on Dorsey. He was a good time coach. When things were going well they kept on rolling. Once they hit a road bump he looked over his head and the offense looked miserable. It wasn't just inconsistent or failing to finish off drives... there were entire halves where they could barely move the ball. I have met plenty of those types of coaches in my life. The guys who are great in the good times but struggle to lead in adversity and I think Ken Dorsey exhibited some of those traits.

Yea it is a numbers game. Saturday will be instructive as to where the edge guys are in the competition based on who plays and in what rotation but from the reports I have seen of camp Toohill has struggled for time with the 1s.

They carried 4 a few times, definitely. They also had one year they just carried Gronk and Hernandez and ran the most 12 in the league (think it was the 2nd Superbowl loss to the Giants year from memory). So there is that.