HappyDays

I think what he has going for him is that he's the best RB we've had in the Josh Allen era. Singletary was fine but clearly had limitations. Moss was a bust for us. Cook showed up and immediately demonstrated the potential of an above average RB with speed playing on the field with Josh Allen. Make no mistake - him being the #3 RB in yards from scrimmage last year was as much a function of Josh Allen as it was of Cook himself. Could we have better, sure, but his skill set is probably the ideal skill set to take advantage of how defenses play Josh Allen so for that I am satisfied with his play. I actually don't worry about his drops because they were ALL drops in or near the endzone. That tells me it is a matter of overthinking, not skill. He has zero problems with his hands. He just needs to get over whatever mental block screwed him up on those opportunities, and I find that much easier to overcome than a true physical limitation.

This is my fear. Next offseason Pegula and the fans will justify it as "it was a planned rebuild year" and Josh Allen will be 31 years old before we decide to try again with different people in charge. Personally I think five years of elite QB play is more than enough time to make a judgment about a head coach, excuses be damned. But yes I suspect that's where the conversation will be next year, unfortunately.

Yeah it's not even a debate. Allen with the Bengals playoff defense would have been in two Super Bowls by now. That's without giving him their receivers. People on here just say whatever. When your conclusion is "McDermott is a Super Bowl caliber coach," you kind of have to make weird justifications elsewhere to support that. At this point I don't expect anybody to change their mind. Can everyone at least agree that if we're in the exact same boat next offseason, McDermott should 100% be fired? Can we not make pre-excuses or justifications and just concede that if we once again fail to even come close to a Super Bowl win that it's time for a change?

Andy Reid and Steve Spagnuolo turned in signature coaching performances in the AFCCG and Super Bowl this past year. If you don't think coaching has an impact on the outcome of the game we are miles apart in our thinking. But also in that case why are you so resistant to moving on from McDermott? If it's just a management job?

This is an argument that he is a good regular season coach. Not that he's a championship caliber coach. What, to you, is McDermott's signature playoff coaching performance? The only answer I ever get to this question is the Ravens game in hurricane winds. And you know what, even accounting for the hurricane winds, I will concede that McDermott has done a great job of containing Lamar Jackson over his career. You could argue he and Leslie Frazier wrote the book on how to do that. But also that isn't enough. Super Bowl championships require consecutive great coaching performances as much as they require consecutive great player performances. And there just isn't any evidence that McDermott is capable of turning in that sort of streak.

If Claypool has a great season you let him walk, for sure. Like the Chiefs did after JuJu Smith-Schuster's good season there, and then he predictably became his usual hobbled self at his next stop. Enjoy the free comp pick and let some other team make the obvious mistake.

Either way bringing up Kyle Shanahan kind of dodges the whole point of the conversation. Ditto for John Harbaugh and Mike Tomlin. Because none of those coaches have had a QB of Josh Allen's caliber in recent years. When Harbaugh and Tomlin had QBs performing at Allen's level in the playoffs they parlayed that into a Super Bowl win. It kind of tells on itself that nobody on the pro-McDermott side has any facts to bring to the table. It's all a bunch of whataboutisms and finger pointing. Because frankly that's all there is to defend him. Not one statistic, not one data point, works in his favor as far as being a championship caliber coach. Quite the opposite actually. When you're at the point in your argument where you've stopped defending the man in question and you've instead started criticizing his peers, you've already lost the argument. There's nothing anybody can point to that says McDermott is going to suddenly become a championship caliber coach. It is just blind faith. I just hope everybody is on the same page about what needs to happen if the team once again falters in the divisional round. If we're having the same exact debate next offseason with the same exact points that would really just be absurd, yes?

I thought Purdy was outright bad in the Super Bowl. And the NFCCG for that matter. Any hint of pressure in the pocket and he just can't get the ball out cleanly. If it's a tight window he can't fit it in. Absolutely a limited player that will be a career backup as soon as he's out of Shanahan's shadow. Personally I think he's closer to Nick Mullins than Kirk Cousins but I know that's an unpopular opinion.

He has not. @Mikie2times has posted the stats. San Fran's defense has performed better against Mahomes in the playoffs than we have. Shanahan's problem is he has been burdened with below average QB play for his entire tenure. It's a testament to his coaching that he's even gotten close to a Super Bowl win.

You realize this is an argument against McDermott, right?

It's not even really a debate, it's just a hypothetical thought exercise. Nobody has any clue if we had a better chance winning by scoring right there or by picking up a potentially easy 1st down. The question we should be asking is, what player/coaching errors earlier in the game led to us facing such an impossible scenario? I mean the whole debate over that play never even exists if Mecole Hardman doesn't fumble the ball through the back of the endzone. So talking about that one play ad nauseum is the definition of missing the forest for the trees IMO.

And Chris Jones in turn should credit the Bills coaching staff for leaving him 1v1 on a throw designed to go to the endzone. The coaches choked, again, for the entire 4th quarter. Stupid fake punt. Horrible game management on the final series. Attempting a tying FG which everybody knew was an automatic losing play. But hey maybe in year 8 our coaches will stop choking in the playoffs. It has to happen eventually, I guess.

Look at the degree of difficulty though. In the 13 seconds game Mahomes tosses a slant to Tyreek Hill that he runs in for a 65 yard TD. Allen is dodging free rushers and launching a 60 yard pinpoint bomb over the entire defense. Not much different this past divisional round. Mahomes is calmly standing back and finding a wide open target on every single play while Allen is standing on his head doing magic tricks just to move the ball forward 5 yards at a time. It's not Mahomes' fault that he has had an easier time in those matchups and he's certainly made the most of those opportunities but I give Allen the edge in those matchups because he has gotten his team so close to winning despite objectively much more unfavorable circumstances.

Where did he say that? This is what he said in his report on yesterday's OTAs: https://www.newyorkupstate.com/buffalo-bills/2024/06/buffalo-bills-otas-week-3-observations-von-miller-flashing-keon-coleman-gets-physical.html I'm not going to read anything into two random OTA reps anyways, but sounds like he flat out beat Ingram.

That's my thought process too. It's not that I expect him to become a superstar for us. It would just be nice to have a legit starting outside WR on the roster because as of right now we have ZERO proven players in that spot if not Claypool.

Yeahhhh I had that thought too. But he is by far the most physically gifted WR on the roster, one of the most physically gifted players on the roster actually. Is he going to turn into AJ Brown? Obviously not. Can be he a legit starting outside WR though? I think there is a path for that at least.

I don't want to get my hopes up too much. Wouldn't it be nice though to get lucky if he turns his career around here?

This already happened once, at a bare minimum. You could argue it happened this past January depending on how you define disinterested. This has happened three times. Please don't say missing DaQuan Jones for a game where the opponent had a backup OL doesn't count. Like I said, I don't think you really have a line in the sand... The lines you've drawn have already been crossed. Breaks for us, breaks against us, none of it has mattered. The result has been the same. It's not about the situation, it's about the people in charge. After seven years and a myriad of failures we can safely say that.

So you do give him 10 years? As long as we keep winning in the wildcard round? I think you've tied yourself into a pretzel. I get it. Being 100% optimistic all the time is more fun. I am finding reasons to still be optimistic about the upcoming season like I always do. But I still have my line in the sand. If you're never willing to move your line, I think you've just accepted being satisfied as an also-ran. Which is fine. I personally cannot be satisfied with that. Mostly I just get upset thinking about a Josh Allen career that never ends in a Super Bowl win, or even a Super Bowl appearance, which becomes closer to reality every year that passes.

I mean this is just factually not true. Jimmy Garappalo and Brock Purdy have gotten closer to hoisting the Lombardi than Josh Allen. Yes I will absolutely say I was wrong about McDermott if we win a Super Bowl this year. I'm not going to make pre-excuses. If he wins one he can be the coach for life, you can hold me to that later. We're entering year 8... So next offseason you will be saying it's time to move on? Are you willing to hold yourself to that?

So your argument is that McDermott can get us over the top if we get several breaks going our way and none going against us. I guess, sure. Mike McCarthy managed to win one with that formula. To be honest though the 2022 playoff run was our chance at that... That's what's so depressing about it. We had no major injuries and our offense/QB was bowling a 300. Our kicker wasn't missing and the opponent's kicker was. We parlayed all of that into a divisional round loss... So I take it back, I'm actually not convinced McDermott can win a Super Bowl even under perfect conditions. The biggest gap between KC and Buffalo by far has been the coaching staff. Allen has outplayed Mahomes in every single match they've played since 2021. I don't want to hear about Donovan McNabb... he never approached the level of QB play we've seen from Allen in the playoffs. You know it, I know it, everybody knows it. Even Joe Marino knows it, he just misidentifies the source of the problem.

I agree. Like being lucky enough to have the opposing kicker leave 4 points on the board and the opposing defense lose their starting safety. Or being lucky enough to have the opposing offense lose half their starting OL to injury. Or being lucky enough to have a fumble go out the back of the end zone when the game is otherwise over. One day we might get that lucky.

Allen >>>> Alex Smith is more important than Reid >>>> McDermott, I don't think anyone disagrees with that. It's pretty sad though that McDermott with Allen has basically matched what Reid did with Smith. I mean really, that's the difference in quality we're talking about here. Hopefully Babich is actually the DC, play caller and all, and he happens to be an elite coach. Hopefully Brady happens to be an elite offensive guru. That's my sliver of hope for getting past the Chiefs this year.

Andy Reid at least got to the precipice of the Super Bowl constantly in those years. McDermott has done that once. With six years of Josh Allen. And that one time we got laughed out of the stadium. There's really no excusing that track record, but whatever he's here this year so as usual we'll have to wait and see. But I'd like to think the fanbase as a whole will draw a line in the sand this year. Eventually he just has to get it done. No excuses. Just get it done. In fact just get close. Even a close loss in the AFCCG would represent progress.