HappyDays

For sure. My point is that if he was on the Bills it wouldn't matter. Which is what the conversation was about...

See the difference between you and me is I watch the games. So I watched Mahomes' surrounding cast maximize every play he made in that Super Bowl. His 182 passing yards is exactly what he earned as a player. Allen meanwhile lost, what, 100 yards and likely a TD on just the three dropped deep passes. But also you just made my point for me... Allen plays with his hair on fire, but the exact production that Mahomes won a Super Bowl with was not enough for Allen to advance past the divisional round. Think about that. You're well on your way to understanding that team accomplishments do not equate to QB accomplishments.

So when I said three years of that situation I meant three years... But okay thanks for acknowledging that Allen would win 1 Super Bowl with three years of arguably the greatest surrounding cast that a QB has ever had. I don't know why you ever doubted this to begin with. Hell let's look at just last year. Imagine if in the wildcard round Allen missed 20% of snaps to injury. Is it likely our journey ends there? I would say so. But let's say somehow the team gets through it and wins. The next week against the Bengals in the AFCCG Allen leads the Bills to just 23 points. In crunch time he inexplicably fumbles the ball at midfield and the Bengals take over with a chance to win. In fact on his final 4 drives Allen leads his team to just 3 points, which is aided by a drive starting at the 50 and a roughing the passer penalty. But for argument's sake, the Bills somehow win. Now we're in the Super Bowl against the best team in the league. Allen throws for just 182 yards, adding another 44 on the ground. Be honest - do you think if everything I just described happened in the exact same manner but to Allen and the Bills instead of Mahomes and the Chiefs, would the Bills have won a Super Bowl last year? Personally I don't think they would have made it out of the wildcard round and certainly not the divisional round. Outcomes are relative. Individual performances are not.

You don't think Allen with three seasons of the GOAT pass catching TE, the GOAT vertical WR, the GOAT offensive coach, and the best defensive coordinator in the league, would win a Super Bowl in that time frame? You might as well just say Allen will never win a Super Bowl. I honestly think any top 12ish QB would have a very strong chance of winning one Super Bowl in that situation.

Zero WRs drafted on day one or two with an elite QB in his prime. Exactly one big time move to add an impact WR in four years. That is outright malpractice by the Bills. We wasted the cheapest years of Allen's extension on overpaid defensive linemen and now we have just one capable outside WR on the roster. They have to double dip at the position in the draft. Two WRs between rounds 1 and 4, non-negotiable. That will at least be a start in making up for a giant mistake.

Beane may have slipped up in his postseason presser: I hope this is not true and that Beane merely misspoke. I hope Brady is not getting handed the job without any kind of objective external interview process, even though I think he did a lot of good things.

I want an experienced play caller. That's been my desire going to back to the 2022 offseason when we hired Dorsey, and I was not a fan of that hire for that reason. That being said it is not realistic to only interview experienced play callers. There are simply not too many of them that are worth interviewing that don't already have jobs. But there are people like Ben Johnson and Bobby Slowik and Shane Steichen who had never called plays but found immediate success in year one as OCs. So it is possible to find a home run from that pool of candidates.

Different conversation from the Rooney Rule, but I for one will not be satisfied if the entire interview process amounts to just Thad Lewis and Joe Brady. We have an elite QB in the prime of his career. Any offensive coach looking to take a step up in their career should be pounding on our door. Run a full and extensive interview process, approach each candidate with complete objectivity, and hire the best one. If that's Brady, so be it. Part of me wonders if Dorsey getting fired will make some potential candidates hesistant. You're choosing to work with a defensive head coach who has a history of not spending ample resources on the offense, and one OC already got the axe after leading a productive offense. I think most NFL coaches are arrogant enough about their own abilities to look past that, but it's something to consider.

Ironically, this common reaction is evidence of why the Rooney Rule needs to exist.

No doubt.

If Allen played the way he does in the playoffs all the time he would have a short lived career. The irritating thing is that he has to play that way at all, because the weapons around him aren't good enough.

It isn't unfortunate for Thad Lewis, who gets much needed interview experience with one of the best organizations in the league. Maybe he surprises us and we peg him for future jobs. Things change very quickly in the NFL. I am a proponent of interviewing as many qualified candidates as possible since there is nothing to lose.

1) Allen/Mahomes 3) Jackson/Burrow 5) Stafford 6) Herbert 7) Stroud 8)) Prescott/Love 10) Cousins The rankings with 2 QBs I couldn't see enough of a gap between them to separate the two. If I took injury history into account I would have Burrow all the way down at #6 but I just went based on pure abilities.

I think on reflection I would prefer to move on from Brady. It's nothing he did specifically. I just still see an overall lack of crispness in the finer details of the offense and that's what separates champions from divisional round losers. The routes aren't precise in a way that opens up other routes, the players aren't always on the same page, there appears to be an overall lack of accountability. I think Brady is a perfectly fine play designer and play caller. But I want a true coach at the position. Someone that the players respect and fear. Brady is probably too young to have that kind of reputation amongst 20-something multimillionaires. He still has his dues to pay in the league. So for me I think my preference is Eric Bieniemy. He has a reputation that players don't enjoy working for him. I take that as a positive. He isn't afraid to hold anybody accountable, not even Mahomes when he was in KC. That more than an offensive whiz kid is what I think this offense needs to be more consistent on a week to week basis. He learned under the best of the best and for a time was even making Sam Howell look competent. He is a complete 180 from the coaching styles of Dorsey and Brady... maybe that's just what we need.

Well we had stopped them on the previous drive, twice actually because of an incorrect DPI call. McDermott had finally figured out (too late) that Siran Neal needed to be on Kelce and Dorian Williams needed to be on the field. We had found a combination that at least had the capability of stopping them. It is just a lot to ask of the offense. It's hard enough to score TDs against an elite defense in the playoffs. Asking them to do it within a certain amount of time remaining on the clock is not fair. And FWIW the Chiefs were not giving up easy dink and dunk on the previous several drives, they were calling run blitzes and sitting on short routes. End of the day we had an opportunity for a TD and took it. I can't fault anyone for that decision.

Yeah, what about a totally different throw in a totally different situation. Good point.

Seemingly a lot of people on here don't understand what a QB's job is on any given play. They think QBs are playing Madden and have a top down view of the field. If anyone thinks he was supposed to throw to Diggs right away they are flat out wrong. That part of it is not even up for debate.

Allen had 4 game winning drives this year (should have been more but whatever). He has 19 in his career. Mahomes had 2 game winning drives this year. He has 16 in his career. Can't wait to see how you try and talk yourself out of this one.

You know it wasn't his decision, right? He is following progressions. Diggs is clearly like 3rd in the progression. Shakir is 1st and they got the exact coverage (cover 2) that they wanted to throw the TD. If people want to criticize Brady for being too aggressive with the play call I guess that's a conversation we can have... But it's patently ridiculous that we're asking the offense to thread an impossible needle of scoring a TD with just the right amount of time on the clock, all because we don't trust our head coach's defense to make a stop. I place the blame for that problem where it belongs. A lot of people are to blame for this loss. Allen, Brady, and Shakir are the exceptions.

It seems like Dan Quinn will end up in Seattle and Ben Johnson in Washington. I'm surprised Vrabel didn't get a job, seems like the Panthers were the only team that gave him due consideration and he may have not wanted to be part of that awful situation. Next year I expect Vrabel and Mike MacDonald will be the hottest names on the head coaching market. Perhaps Bobby Slowik too if he follows up on a great first year.

Unfortunately I really don't think they can. Last year there was a path to affording Hopkins if they pulled the right levers and approached free agency the right way. This year the most cap space I could create with realistic moves using Over The Cap's simulator was $8-9million. And that was with me pulling pretty much available lever that makes any kind of sense. A good chunk of that available cap space will have to go towards replacing the players we lose and the draft class. I don't see any way we can make a splash signing. Beane missed his chance last year and now he's stuck in a position where he HAS to draft a WR high. It's non-negotiable.

I wouldn't say instant. They are in major cap trouble this year. I would bet the plan is to take an intentional step back for one season while Harbaugh institutes his culture, and then be competitive in 2025.

I am going into next year assuming that the Diggs we got down the stretch is just who Diggs is now. If he gets back to the elite WR he was, great. But I think the Bills have to assume the worst and plan accordingly. With that in mind, they have so badly mismanaged the WR room that I think they need to come away from this draft with two different types of WR - one with elite speed, and one with true alpha X receiver potential. And I don't mean some late round flyer. Get two high end WR prospects in this draft. Increase the odds that you come out of the draft with a true home run at the position. Enough is enough. Having researched the WR prospects as much as I could this week, my preferred draft outcome is Troy Franklin in R1, and then one of Ja'Lynn Polk or Brenden Rice in R2. That gets us the elite speed guy, and then a true outside WR with alpha traits that hopefully develop further. How about this offense heading into 2024: WR1 Diggs WR2 Franklin WR3 Shakir WR4 Polk/Rice TE1 Kincaid TE2 Knox RB1 Cook Now we are really getting somewhere. Probably will add a cheaper veteran WR too, someone like Noah Brown to round out the room.

When have I dismissed this?

Reid was known for not being able to finish the job. 5 NFCCG appearances and 1 Super Bowl appearance. He did that with QBs that were not as good as Josh Allen. McDermott with Josh Allen has reached 1 AFCCG. It's not remotely comparable. Even Spagnuolo is a better defensive coach than McDermott. So we have exactly zero coaching advantages over them. You're the one that asked what explains the difference between the Bills and Chiefs over the past few years. I guess you've landed on QB. For me, even if you want to say Mahomes on the whole has been better than Allen, it's pretty obvious that the drop off between the rosters and the drop off between the coaching staffs is much greater than whatever drop off exists between Mahomes and Allen. FWIW I think Allen and Mahomes have alternated who was better than who in each season since 2020. Mahomes was better in 2020 and 2022, Allen was better in 2021 and 2023. It is not enough of a difference in either direction to account for the vast difference in playoff success between the respective franchises. Sure, we can make up extremely unlikely scenarios in our head all day. Kelvin Benjamin was with the Chiefs after he left the Bills. He was great there, right? Kadarius Toney really turned it around in KC, yeah? Tyreek Hill fell off the map when he left? I don't know why it is so hard for so many fans to evaluate talent independently. Mahomes is an elite player. So is Allen. You can still watch the players around them and make judgments about their abilities. It's not that complicated. And it figures that the one year the offensive talent around Mahomes is somewhat comparable to the offensive talent around Allen that the Chiefs defense becomes elite. Forget switching QBs in yesterday's game. Just switch the defenses and nothing else and it is plainly obvious who ends up winning the game.