HappyDays

McDermott is usually very reserved and doesn't typically comment on his players' mental states like this.

This all sounds pretty bizarre: Ealier this week McDermott was asked about firing Dorsey and said "OC is a leadership position." Is it possible he felt that Dorsey wasn't getting Allen and the other offensive players into the right mindset and energy? And this more than play calling is what led to the firing?

I think you're safe if you have a great DC. I doubt Lou Anarumo, Steve Spagnuolo, and Jim Schwartz are getting head coach opportunities in the near future. It just isn't the way the league is trending. Demeco Ryans got the job with Houston, that was one exception. We'll see what happens when their OC Bobby Slowik inevitably gets hired as a head coach and CJ Stroud gets a new OC. Oh I completely agree. Just because McDermott has been the cause of a lot of team's issues, doesn't mean Dorsey was just a scapegoat. He didn't have his side of the ball working as well as it should. I do think though that firing him is somewhat of an act of desperation by McDermott. He knows his job security is slipping away and he was very close to losing the locker room and the fanbase, if he hasn't already. A big change in the middle of the season is, if nothing else, an announcement that McDermott knows his operation hasn't been good enough and needed some kind of spark.

They might get a good OC, even a great one. Who knows, maybe Joe Brady is the next up and coming offensive mastermind and is about to prove it. But in a best case scenario that great OC will be hired away as a head coach in 1-2 years. And then we will have to hire another one. And so on until the day Allen retires. That's how it works in the modern NFL. If you have great offensive coaching it's on borrowed time unless that coach is your head coach. Look at the Falcons after Kyle Shanahan got hired away. That's the inevitable fate of a defensive head coach.

Dorsey was a bad hire from the jump IMO. You have an offense led by Allen and Diggs in their prime, and you hand the keys to a first time play caller. We were his first audition at the job when we needed an experienced play caller to take over a championship ready offense. This was entirely predictable. Our offense was past "potential." These were our best years and we threw them away for on the job training. Look at what Daboll had to do to work his way up the chain. He spent a while learning under two of the greatest coaches of all time in Bill Belichick and Nick Saban. He was given the keys to untalented offenses with unserious QBs for years, learning what it takes to do that job at the NFL level without any lofty expectations weighing him down. Then, finally, after years of thankless work he was given the keys to a franchise QB. And after all that his replacement is just a QB coach that had learned under the likes of Ron Rivera. It was an awful hire. And McDermott ultimately has to take responsibility for that failed hire. Allen may have endorsed Dorsey but Allen is a kid and was riding the highs of several years of elite offensive football. McDermott is the coach and needed to step in and make the mature practical decision, not the "I'm loyal to my guys and that's that" decision. Long term the only way we are getting elite offensive coaching for the remainder of Allen's career is to replace McDermott. That is an undeniable fact.

They still are! 70% completion percentage, 3rd highest in the league even with all of the drops, and they want him to take LESS risks. It's crazy. It's a no-win situation with this personnel though. We can't throw the ball downfield, and our pass catchers have no YAC potential. Basically our only avenue to success is run the ball effectively and try to work down the field meticulously.

This is a result of us doing what the fans have wanted and going all short passing all the time. It's great for completion percentage but it also creates long meticulous drives with a lot of chances for something to go wrong. Defenses have no reason to fear this group of pass catchers getting behind them so they can squat on short and intermediate routes which means they're getting tackled at the catch point. The margin for error is too low in that kind of offensive structure.

I will criticize McDermott as much as anyone, but the bolded is objectively true. Every drive that we stopped running the ball was a bust. Our best looking drive of the night featured zero pass plays. I don't understand the resistance to running the ball on here. Look at the highest scoring offenses in the league this year and you'll see an elite run game. It's the natural response to how defenses across the league are now playing.

So my one point of contention is that with mobile QBs, beating the OL in front of you isn't enough to count as a win. If you beat your man and then rush yourself out of the play I wouldn't really call that a win. It's just a good 1v1 rep. But I understand what you're saying.

Maybe you saw it differently but I thought a lot of the pressure was undisciplined. Like Oliver running right by Wilson at full speed and giving him an easy lane to step up into multiple times. Sure it counts as a pressure but it doesn't lead to a negative outcome. Or a blitzer failing to account for the leaking RB - we gave up big 1st downs several times on this same play, and it was especially frustrating to see Denver hit it on their first play of the last drive for a big gain which immediately took the pressure off them and put our defense on its heels. I don't understand why we hadn't adjusted to it by then. I watch other defenses against us and they wisely have spies making sure Allen can't just step up like that or dump the ball off to a RB with 10 yards of separation. They do a mush rush where they barely even try to sack Allen off the snap, they instead prioritize making sure he can't escape the pocket and slowly compress in on him from all sides. Whereas I felt that most of the night our pressure looks let Wilson off the hook and gave him easy answers.

Just posted this is another thread: He has had awful turnover luck this year. As far as I can remember zero dropped interceptions and every one of his fumbles has been recovered by the defense.

I mean this is crazy: I know "turnover worthy play" is kind of a subjective thing, but we have all seen that almost every single possible interception has been caught. Some plays that shouldn't have been intercepted have turned into interceptions. Every one of Allen's fumbles have been recovered by the defense. It is unprecedented bad turnover luck driving a lot of this conversation.

Not this year though. Mahomes and the Chiefs are struggling for the same reason we are, a poor group of pass catching weapons that don't complement each other at all. They are winning because of defense. I mean we crow about how well our defense performed against the Dolphins giving up 20 points. The Chiefs defense gave up 14 and scored 7. What frustrates me most about the McDermott/Beane era is they have completely stripped away what makes Josh special. And to be fair, that is what a lot of Bills have inexplicably been asking for. Fans on one hand lash out at Josh for failing to throw checkdowns, and on the other hand say they wish we had 2021 playoffs Josh back. Does anybody on here actually remember what he did that year? He wasn't checking the ball down when Gabe Davis racked up 200 yards and 4 TDs in a single game. So what do we do to a QB with elite physical skills and arguably the greatest arm in NFL history? Try to turn him into Tom Brady and surround him with average physical talents. Throw potshots at him in press conferences over his willingness to put his body on the line. Ask him to execute 12 play drives throwing the ball to smurfs over the middle. That just isn't who Josh has ever been or ever will be. I mean his downfield weapon this year is Deonte "Turf Toe" Harty?? Give me a break. We missed an opportunity to create a historically amazing offense by going all in on pass catching weapons that fit the mold of what Josh does well. And then fans get mad because he doesn't hit a 4th and 2 pass on the run to his smurf WR with t-rex arms. The more I think about it the more I am certain they need to reset everything in the front office and coaching staff. Get an up and coming offensive mastermind to lead the team and a GM that will start prioritizing the right pieces.

But the defense and special teams isn't taking any pressure off the offense either. We are constantly losing field position and time of possession. That stuff actually matters. Field position more than anything is why a lot of analytics tools say that our offense is better than the eye test would make you think. Our defense doesn't get turnovers. No big kickoff or punt returns. We don't force 3 and outs. And so our offense which features exactly zero explosive pass catchers is being asked to work 75+ yards down the field over and over and over again. So you get these weird statistical outcomes where Allen is leading in a lot of production and efficiency metrics but it isn't showing up on the scoreboard. And almost every play we make in the pass game ends at the catch point so Allen's right arm is solely responsible for moving the ball down the field. No championship offense in recent memory has been built like that.

Again I think people need to place Josh in the broader context of QB play right now. Honestly I think defenses as a whole have just finally caught up to modern QB play. It's not just a Bills problem. I know nobody wants to hear this but the best offenses in football right now are able to run the ball at an elite level. Look at the Ravens, the Browns, the 49ers, the Dolphins, the Eagles. Defenses are selling out to stop big plays downfield. You beat that philosophy either with pass catchers that have elite physical talent and can win downfield anyways on pure size or speed, or you beat it by punishing defenses on the ground over and over again until they finally are forced to try and stop it. We don't have either of those answers (or when we do like against the Broncos, we inexplicably get away from it). So it is left to Josh executing perfectly on slow meticulous drives with every pass in a tight window or just over the hands of a leaping zone defender. And then every drop or sack is a drive killer unless he makes a miracle happen.

I agree. The miracle plays are still there, just not as frequent. So Allen's top end play this year has not been as good as we've seen before. But on the other hand he has by far his career best completion percentage which means he is playing "normal" QB better than he ever has before. That's what I mean when I say it's been his most consistent year yet. And it's not like he has an elite group of weapons or an elite offensive coach making it easy for him. The bad plays unfortunately really stick out this year because all of them are turning into the worst case scenarios of themselves and our team as a whole has zero margin for error so every mistake looks worse. He's also come up clutch in the 4th quarter while trailing this year more times than I can ever remember, but his defense has let him down every time (or tried their damndest to in the Giants game).

This is going to sound crazy but I think this is actually the most consistent year of Allen's career. A lot of efficiency and production metrics point in that direction, and he's doing it with the worst group of pass catchers he's had since 2019 and the worst defense/special teams of his career which is putting him in worse positions than usual. I see so many people say "I miss 2021 Josh Allen" but forget that he had some real clunkers that year. The 9-6 Jacksonville debacle. 3 INTs thrown against the hapless Falcons. But all of that is forgotten because of his historic playoff run that year. I think two things are making it look worse than it is this year: 1) Awful turnover luck. To wit: Yesterday was the first time this year a defender got his hands on the ball and didn't complete the interception. Literally the first time! That has to be an unprecedented streak in the modern era. 2) Less miracle plays. Allen this year has not been elite when throwing on the run as he has been in the past. The miss to Shakir on 4th and 2 is an example of this. For 90% of QBs that is not even an attempt, certainly not with a smurf WR as the intended target, but with Allen we have seen him hit that throw a dozen times and so we expect it. He also, as has been pointed out many many times, is not picking up chunk yardage with his legs like we're used to. But overall on a down to down basis I genuinely think Allen is mostly playing the best football of his career. Bad luck, zero help from his pass catchers, and incohesive offensive play calling have let him down more than he's let the team down. JMO. P.S. The whole obsession with checking the ball down needs to stop. You know what else moves the ball against defenses that drop everyone back? Just keep running it at them. You punish defenses on the ground until they're forced to commit to stopping it. Something Daboll and now Dorsey for some reason never understood. 11 play short pass drives are cute in theory, until the 7th play features your WR2 letting a ball pop into the air and into the arms of a waiting safety. Until an offensive lineman gets beat off the snap which leads to a sack and suddenly you're behind the sticks. Until you make it all the way to the goalline and call shotgun runs for negative yardage. You need explosive plays somewhere along the way.

I have been wondering this for a few weeks now. Like in that Dan Orlovsky clip going around about the 4th and 2 from last night, I have seen people criticize Josh for not looking to Kincaid on the zone beater side after the pre-snap motion clearly indicated zone. But there's no way Josh just chose to ignore that. Anybody that has played Madden knows that the motion indicated zone. Josh as a long time NFL QB clearly would have known that too. So I have trouble blaming him for that read because there's just no way he would unintentionally look away from his zone beater side and follow a different set of progressions. None of it makes any sense. And I have seen similarly bizarre reads several times this year, so ultimately something had to change.

Quinton Spain 👀

It was the last card McDermott could play to try and save his job.

I kept asking, how many times is Wilson going to step up and pitch it to his RB leaking out before McDermott actually does something about it? It happened over and over and over again, including the first play of their final drive. The defense played their asses off, but the scheme and play calling was Rex Ryan levels of bad.

Here's the INT as dots: Josh shouldn't have thrown the ball. But what are we doing here? This hole shot play has been picked several times this year, defenders are keyed into it. And we're running it with Deonte Harty with 27 seconds left in the half from our own side of the field? Dorsey is not putting his players in favorable positions.

Josh is more than fine in his personal life. Last I heard he and Hailee Steinfield are engaged. He's mega rich. No personal issues to speak of at all. If anything I think he has just gotten sick of the losing. He doesn't have confidence in the system or the players around him, and it's impossible to play fundamentally sound football when you lack trust in the elements around you. I don't think this is anything close to a Carson Wentz situation where Allen has lost the locker room and completely stopped caring about football. Personally I think it is an easy fix. He just needs a totally fresh support system around him this offseason. A new scheme to learn from an experienced offensive play caller that knows how to build the offense around his players' strengths. A head coach that isn't wound so tight and doesn't put players in the doghouse for occasional mistakes. A real WR2 would also help. Overall I think the entire team, Josh included, has forgotten that football is supposed to be fun. They need to get some new energy in the building ASAP.

This is nuts! I hope he gets torn apart by the national media tomorrow. Asked about 12 men on the field and he says "we practiced that substitution this week and didn't execute." I mean holy crap!