HappyDays

In another thread this is how I ranked my options: 1) Kevin Stefanski (if the Browns fire him) 2) Brian Flores 3) Robert Saleh 4) Klint Kubiak 5) Kliff Kingsbury/Vance Joseph I favor picking a retread coach because the clock is ticking on Allen's career and I'd rather not have someone learning on the job if I could help it. Flores and Saleh would have to come with the right OC but Allen is going to be successful regardless of who the OC is and I'm sure they'd have their pick of the litter given the career opportunity of getting to coach Josh Allen's offense. Kingsbury and Joseph I kind of just threw in there as the other retreads floating around the league who have since had successful stints as coordinators, but I'm not sure either of them have the right temperament to be a head coach. At a certain point though I'd be willing to try even them over McDermott because I just can't imagine a significantly lower floor. Kubiak is the easy choice if you're trying to pick the young offensive coach. Like I said I'd rather not waste too much time on a newbie learning on the job but his coaching resume is legit and he could probably build an almost unstoppable offense in Allen's remaining prime years. I could be convinced he deserves to be higher on this list. The head coach picks the GM these days so this question is irrelevant.

If the year ends in similar disappointment as every other year, the fanbase will be restless. Having a brand new coaching staff in place as the new stadium opens would be extremely marketable. "Come watch the next stage of Josh Allen's career." The excitement in WNY would be palpable. Like you couldn't draw it up any better than that. By the way I don't think Pegula is actually going to fire McDermott after this season no matter what happens. But it won't be because he's thinking about dollar signs. It will be because he genuinely likes McDermott as a person and I don't think he has it in him to put his head on the chopping block unless the bottom completely falls out. As long as we're going to the playoffs he'll convince himself good enough is good enough.

Philly goes into this weird funk every year, it's unexplainable. I guess the difference there is that I know the skill position talent is a lot better than the production they've gotten out of it, so I have more faith that they can turn it around as they did last year in the playoffs. I don't think the Bills have the personnel to suddenly become a dominant offense that can steamroll opponents.

It was not just the one game though. The offense fell into a rut against the Saints and Dolphins too. Against the Saints we had 4 consecutive drives in the 1st half that ended with no points. We were struggling to move the ball for like 50 minutes of the Baltimore game. Everything came to a head against the Pats but those issues did not mysteriously appear out of nowhere. They are fundamental issues and unlike the defense there aren't any reinforcements coming to potentially fix them. We're still going to win a lot of games but the goal is to win a championship and it's questionable if we can achieve that goal with the issues that have been showing up on both sides of the ball.

Presented without comment:

Yeah you definitely need some defense. The discrepancy in investments though is shocking over the past two offseasons. Out of 6 picks in the top 100 the Bills have taken an offensive player with just 1 of them. This past offseason their only meaningful offensive addition was Joshua Palmer. On defense they handed out meaningful contracts to Bosa, Hoecht, Ogunjobi, and White, and spent their first 5 draft picks on that side of the ball. All of those investments and the defense is pretty much identical to last year's. Unless Hoecht and Ogunjobi are going to singlehandedly raise this defense to a top 10 level, it feels like a lot of those resources would have been much better spent on a legit weapon for Allen.

The Colts and the Lions look like the two best teams in the NFL right now and it's not with dominant defense, it's with offenses that are steamrolling their opponents and running up the score. They've made their defenses practically irrelevant. I think it is still possible to build a dominant defense, just look at the Browns, it's just a lot harder in the modern NFL. And this regime has never been close to having a dominant defense. Even in the Leslie Frazier years when we ranked top 5 in a lot of the relevant statistics we laid down and died in the playoffs on an annual basis. So I just never had any faith that this regime was going to invest their way into a dominant defense. They chose to lean into the one thing that they've never gotten right, instead of the one thing that they nailed.

Yes this is exactly correct and it's what I was worried about all offseason. The common refrain from the fanbase was that the offense was already elite so all the investments needed to go to the defense. And McDermott and Beane clearly agreed because that's the script they followed. My concern was that all the investments in the world wouldn't make a difference on the defensive side, and that we should instead go all in on investing around Allen because he represents our best shot at a championship. Unfortunately all of my fears have come to fruition. In a vacuum I understand blaming the offense more for this loss. But we have a defensive head coach with his hand picked DC, and we've spent the vast majority of our draft and FA resources on the defense over the past two offseasons. What is the point of all that if we can't even win one ugly defensive battle? If we're doomed to lose every single game against a decent opponent where Allen and the offense aren't at their best?

Copy pasting myself from another thread: "I'm stealing this information from Joe Marino's all-22 analysis. Leading up to the game Joe said the Pats have weak coverage LBs, and that one of our priorities should have been to get them into their base personnel and throw the ball into it. In his all-22 analysis he revealed that we got them into base personnel on 14 plays. But we only passed on 2 of those plays. Both passes were 20 yard completions to Kincaid. The 12 runs averaged 2.8 YPC... That represents a massive missed opportunity. We got the looks we wanted but didn't take advantage on nearly enough of them because our identity is that we run out of heavy personnel and that's that. Stubbornness hurt the offense on Sunday night." I'm starting to worry that Brady game plans for his players' strengths but he doesn't game plan for the opponent's weaknesses.

Thanks for posting this Dave. I'm going to copy and paste a few short snippets, and none of this should be a shocking revelation: As Joe points out later in the article, it was a known issue in the offseason that we had no vertical threat on the roster. Even more shockingly, we had the same problem on the roster last year which forced Beane to trade for Cooper. So he doubled down on his previous mistake and his answer to the problem was to yell at Jeremy White on live radio. Real nice. This regime has neutered a lot of what makes Josh Allen special and that more than anything should spell the end of them if they don't make a drastic change soon.

Yeah I'm kind of at a point now where the experience matters more than the specialty. Anyways Allen can be successful with pretty much any offensive coach as we've seen so if anything a defensive guru that can form them into a legit top 5 defense might be better for his last few prime years. The offense has always done its job against KC no matter the coach, if the defense can just show up we're racking up Super Bowl appearances.

Now you've got me thinking @Buffalo716 so a couple other names to add on - Robert Saleh and I imagine a lot of people are rolling their eyes because of how his stint with the Jets went, but was that him or was that abysmal ownership and QB play? If nothing else he always had his defense playing at a top tier level and even showed an aptitude for slowing down Josh Allen which means he can slow down anyone. San Francisco's defense has played very well this year despite being banged up. If it were Saleh the OC pick would have to be right, and I'd again lean towards Mike McDaniel who I think works much better as a coordinator than as a head coach. And just to throw out one name that isn't a retread, I'd look for the young offensive upstart coach and the best name available that fits the description would be Klint Kubiak. He had the Saints offense rolling last year until Carr's career ending injury and now he has Sam Darnold playing the best football of his career. If I was going to rank the options I've laid out: 1) Stefanski (if he gets fired) 2) Flores 3) Saleh 4) Kubiak 5) Kingsbury/Joseph So now you know I'm not just blowing smoke when I talk about replacing McDermott. There are realistic options out there and I don't think the floor could really be much lower as long as Allen is in his prime. We've got maybe 5 years before his physical abilities start to really decline and it's going to be a real shame if we waste all of them because we're trigger shy.

I'd be more in favor of a retread because the clock is ticking and we don't have time for someone learning on the job. Vrabel to me was the perfect candidate but too late for that. If Cleveland fires Stefanski that would be by #1 pick and he can bring Schwartz with him. Brian Flores would intrigue me, perhaps paired with Mike McDaniel as the OC. After that it's Kliff Kingsbury and Vance Joseph as former head coaches that have since had successful stints as coordinators although I'm not gonna say I feel especially confident in either of them. At a certain point though it just has to be time to try something different and Allen entering his 30s seems like the obvious threshold if the current regime can't get it done.

Or even before the playoffs. The Jags have a new DC. After the game Mahomes told reporters they "got him" with the coverage on the pick six. Their tendency on film had been cover 0 blitz in that exact goalline situation, but on this play they broke tendency and had the LBs drop back after faking the rush. That tendency breaker created a 14 point swing. After the AFCCG you had multiple Bills players tell reporters that the final blitz on 4th down was something they had not seen on KC's film all season long. I certainly can't recall any opposing player saying those sorts of things about our defense. They know where our holes are and they're designing plays to exploit them because we never break tendency. Same thing happens on offense honestly, Allen and Cook and Shakir are just so talented they make some of the predictable play calls work.

Yeah I don't know. It is just bad play design. Cook as the checkdown is drawing the attention of both LBs, so why isn't one of those verticals breaking off left into that massive voided space? It's hard to tell what the intent even is here. Our personnel isn't built to run all verticals on 2nd and 10, especially into the teeth of a talented and well coached secondary. The goal here needs to be pick up 6-12 yards to either move the chains or get into a manageable 3rd down. I don't like that our offense has that restriction but Brady has to call the offense around the personnel he's been given. Throughout this whole game Brady got away from what we do well.

Nah that's just basic hand fighting. That's never getting called nor should it be. DBs are allowed to place their hand on their man in coverage as long as they not forcibly restricting their movement. If DBs weren't allowed to do that they wouldn't be able to orient themselves in coverage and you might as well just eliminate pass defense at that point.

Their secondary reminded me of how our secondary used to look when Leslie Frazier was here. They were synchronized, getting appropriate depth on their drops, passing guys off well, and when it came time to plaster they plastered. Ours used to look like that until Frazier left and since then it's never looked the same. Vrabel is an excellent coach and it looks like they found their QB too. They need to add more legit pass catchers and more edge pass rush to be real championship contenders but they are probably one offseason away from being a real threat for the division, if they're not already there now.

I can't speak for all of your notes without going back and checking each play, but this is one I know you are wrong about. Here's the 2nd and 10 play: Cook isn't running a crosser, he's just the checkdown option and he ends up double covered. Allen quickly gets through his progressions and back to Cook because everything else is blanketed. However as he gears up to throw to him he sees the right most LB's body leverage has him in position to crush Cook even if the pass is completed. He wisely turns down the throw and goes into scramble mode because that's the only remaining option. And Knox (or Kincaid?) is never getting the ball on the scramble drill because his defender is directly behind him ready to break it up. Allen briefly points left as if to signal to him to break to the open space but Knox/Kincaid doesn't see it and at that point Allen has no options so he throws it away. I put this play's failure on Brady. The first read is Coleman running vertical against their best CB Gonzalez? Yeah that's not gonna get it done. It's hard to see the exact routes on the trips side because the all-22 camera weirdly doesn't show everything but it looks like everybody is just running verticals and all of the routes are easily capped. It doesn't look like this play ever had any good options unless Coleman flat out beat Gonzalez. Brady needs to be better than this in critical moments.

I tend to agree with everything you said here but I believe in Vrabel and it's easy to flush that week 1 loss when you consider it was their first game under a totally new coaching staff. They've been getting better and better since then so I'm inclined to believe that the team we saw the last two weeks is closer to the truth. That team still has flaws and will probably lose a couple games they shouldn't, but then again you could say that word for word about the Bills and not sound crazy.

This season McConkey has less yards, less TDs, a lower catch %, and a substantially lower receiving success rate than Coleman. While playing from an easier position on the field. Worthy has been banged up all year and his role has been easily supplanted by Tyquan Thornton who KC picked up off the scrap heap. Coleman has frustrated me this year but I'm willing to give him until his 3rd season to develop. The flashes are there but he needs to be a lot more consistent, otherwise he'll never be more than a jump ball role player. I still think the biggest mistake wasn't necessarily taking Coleman, it's that they only took Coleman. They either needed to double dip at WR in that draft to maximize the probability of success, or they needed to bring in a legit outside WR so Coleman wasn't forced into a high volume role too early. If Coleman never ends up developing into a legit top 2 WR I can forgive them for that, but I can't forgive them for leaving themselves such a low margin for error at the position by investing so little into it.

I know you're just joking but we have to be at least a little concerned about the Pats threatening for the division. They, like seemingly everybody else in this middling conference, have an easy schedule the rest of the way. Their toughest remaining games are at Bucs and at Ravens (assuming they are fielding a normal team by late December). And then of course their 2nd matchup against us which might decide the division, seriously. If they keep pace with our wins the rest of the season and beat us in that game, the division is theirs. I wouldn’t bet on it of course, they're still a young team and have some legit flaws on both sides of the roster. But I wouldn't bet on us running away with this thing either.

Okay so 1-2 players each. The OP points out 7 players the Bills have done this with just this season. It is a pattern, no denying that. That one year we rolled up a sprinter van to the nursing home and brought out John Brown and Cole Beasley. Every year they are choosing to wait to fill roster deficiencies with players that know the system instead of being proactive and filling the positions with talented players. And a bunch of the players that "know the system" have actually regressed this year so I don't even know what the benefit is anymore.

Wow. In Tremaine Edumunds years that's equivalent to 63 seasons.

I want the most talented players we can find from the top of the roster to the bottom. I am not at all worried about the exact number of LBs vs safeties on the PS. I want players that you can reasonably expect to call up and have them perform. Spector isn't that. He's someone they're comfortable with, that's all. For me it's less about this one move and more about the overarching philosophy that continues to get this team in trouble.

Okay my take is that I would rather have CJ Gardner-Johnson on the PS instead of Spector. Do you disagree? One of those guys has at least a small chance of helping the team later this year and one of them has no chance. We have to stop always choosing the culture fit that knows the system over the more talented player. That's how you end up with Tre White and his rubber band legs covering Stefon Diggs 1v1 in a meaningful game. I don't really care about the PS but the constant inability to be self-aware about ther own bad habits is really depressing.