BullBuchanan

You know those teams never actually "broke through" right? They lost and in doing so became a perennial laughing stock. We look back fondly at those times because it's our only option - but let's pray to any gods that will have us that our current team is nothing like them.

If the Bills are in the Super Bowl, I'd rather watch the game on TV than be at the game. The TV feed is a better spectator experience most of the time for me.

Because Sean McDermott didn't have a team of scouts analyzing players for the Buffalo Bills while he was the defensive coordinator of the Bills. he was hired 3 months before the draft. The board was probably 95% done by then. Also, the draft had Whaley's DNA all over it.

Whaley drafted both White and Milano.

No, you're the only that's trying to excuse the awful preparation on the part of the coaching staff that decided not to expose the Bengals biggest weakness (oline) like KC did and instead decided to give receivers a 10-15 yard cushion all game because of a littany of unrelated reasons of things that happened int he WNY area that were almost 100% unrelated to Bills players with the exception of player-specific issues that wouldn't impact anyone else (Knox, Hyde, Miller) and the Hamlin issue. Everything else in your list is irrelevant. They are things that happened int he past that were long since over by the time the game rolled around and had 0% to do with the outcome. Those reasons don't explain or excuse the defensive or offensive strategy, the game time decision making, the lack of effort, or the lack of execution. I understand since you started the thread, it would be convenient for you if they did, but I've seen no argument that supports that claim. Really since the Green Bay game. The Chiefs game to me was the last time we played like a team that should win the Super Bowl - like the Eagles are still playing now.

it's not about it happening again, it's if his body was damaged to the point that he can no longer be an elite athlete. He's still on oxygen. The road fromt hat to peak cardiovascular health seems long. We don't even know at this point if he'll be on oxygen forever.

So you're saying that the whole of western NY was going to work everyday with a shooting that happened 8 months ago or their Boss' wife's health, or the death of a coworkers brother 4+ months ago just eating at their mind and reducing their competency to the point of gross incompetence? ridiculous.

I can't possibly think of anything that had less to do with the Bills than this. It's disgusting to co-opt a tragedy on their behalf that happened nearly half a year before the season even started. Stop it. Kim Pegula's mystery illness is also preposterous. Any team that ever lost a starting QB to injury went through more than what Buffalo did when it comes to being an actual football team. What you wrote is just a lit of nonsense that has nothing to do with how a team should perform on Sundays and how coaches should prepare during the week. I wonder how many Buffalo workers got to wipe away their negative performance reviews because it snowed a lot. What a pathetic list of excuses for why DBs were playing 15 yards off their man on 3rd and 4 and why Josh Allen was bombing it deep on 3rd and 2.

Simply put, Oliver is a massive disappointment based on his draft position and expectation. He's at best a borderline #2 DT and ideally he'd be a #3. I wouldn't paya penny over $3M a year for his production.

Probably not, but even if he does come back, he is a backup-tier player.

The Bills red helmet is up there with the all-time worst helmets in the super bowl era.

AI has much better composition.

The last two have - Kyle Pitts and TJ Hokenson. The 3rd is playing in the AFC championship as Cincinnati's TE #1. Noah Fant is the 4th and while not a star to date has been a reliable option. From 2017 OJ Howard was a bust, Evan Engram just finished a career year and will be a major FA target most likely, and David Njoku finished 9th in yards for TEs despite being hampered by injury. You have pretty high odds of getting a quality TE in round 1 Pettigrew and Keller suffered serious injuries that ended their careers early. Olson was a star before them. vernon Davis and Marcedes Lewis (still in the league) before him. Heath Miller was a stud. Kellen Winslow flamed out in 04 not for a lack of ability and Dallas Clark was a HOF Caliber TE in 03. So in the last 20 years - you had 2 busts, 2 couple players whose career was cut short by injury, a couple solid players and a handful of superstars. There might not be a safer position to draft in the first round based on that. http://www.drafthistory.com/index.php/positions/te

I would fire McD and I would have had a talk with Reich before he got hired in Carolina. I'd also talk to Peyton - with the condition that I'd want to know what he would have done differently with a similar level of talent on Defense and who he would have on his list for d-coordinators. For too many years, defense sunk NO's battleship. As for Beane, I would want to understand his past methodology behind picks of players and especially behind guys that seemed to be reaches like Epenesa, Bernard, Cody Ford and Zach moss. If I felt like the methodology was sound I'd let him know where I expected us to improve and give him another kick at the can. If I felt like he panicked to get a player at a position of need without strong evidence they could contribute at or above their draft stock, I'd fire him too and consider promoting from within based on scouting analysis. Otherwise, I'd definitely talk to Jon Robinson who drafted some great players in Tennessee and if it wasn't for his handling of QB and his trade of AJ Brown, he'd probably still be employed. Given that QB would be set for him here, I'd be fairly confident about the rest of what he brings.

We have more secondary talent than the Ravens and they did just fine. We also have an all-pro linebacker and another linebacker many folks like to argue is a "top 10". I'd like to think Harbaugh would have done a FAR better job with the same group of players.

Whew. Glad that's over.

Cinci. In KC the coaching staff was situationally unprepared and the defense came up short when we needed them to. In Cinci the coaching staff was completely unprepared to the point where it's conceivable that someone's dog ate the gameplan and both the offense and defense were listless from the get go. It was worse than the 2018 Jaguars game.

Absolutely. He'll be gone after next season and is unlikely to provide consistent value after 4 up and down years. Time to move on from this failed Aaron Donald 0.125 experiment.

Derek Carr is just a worse version of Prescott. I won't say there's no way this happens, but it would be colossally stupid unless the plan is to draft one early and have Carr be a cheaper bridge.

This statement is objectively false. Their drafting is poor by any standard. For all of the flack that people gave Doug Whaley, he's drafted the only All-Pro on the Bills roster. If we didn't have Josh Allen, Beane's tenure is a failure. As for coaching, I'd put our gameday coaching and game-planning in the bottom 3rd of the NFL. McDermott is a nice guy and gives leadery quotes though. Is that what you mean when you say we have one of the best coaching staffs?

No - it's evidence that picking late in a draft doesn't mean you have to draft poorly when other teams do it just fine.

Not specifically no. You can see the same problems in October that show up in January but Josh Allen and the leagues highest paid defense can cover it up for a while.

Ejiro Evero sounds like he'd be a good fit: Head Coach of the Super Bowl Champion Rams, Sean McVay, is not surprised by Evero's success in Denver, "Incredibly smart, intelligent, great disposition, demeanor," McVay said of Evero. "[He] knows how to connect with all types of guys, knows how to be able to help them reach their highest potential…[He's an] absolute stud. Least surprised person of how well they've done and how great of a job he's doing leading the defense is me." Evero is not married to one scheme, whether 4-3 or 3-4; he will let the players he has to dictate that, but one philosophy that he will always subscribe to is the importance of getting to the quarterback. "Regardless of how it turns out, you have to affect the quarterback," Evero said. "That's the No. 1 deal in terms of stopping the pass game in the NFL. We have to pressure the quarterback…" https://247sports.com/nfl/cleveland-browns/LongFormArticle/Cleveland-Browns-NFL-Defensive-Coordinator-Updated-January--197818983/#197818983_1

Not that much. In every draft we've had over the last 5 years you can look at a team that's drafted after us and picked a superior player excluding Josh Allen. We traded up for Edmunds who underperformed until year 5 and could have had Shaq Leonard a round later or Fred Warner 2 rounds later who have been superior since their rookie year. We drafted Cody Ford the following year and could have had any number of superior playmakers including all pro WRs in AJ Brown and Metcalf. Additionally we panicked after runs on players out of need. We drafted Moss as the 9th RB taken in the 3rd round, well after the value was gone. The top 6 have all been meaningful contributors and the rest have been ineffective depth. You can't do that with a 3rd round pick. Similar situation with Epenesa in a weak EDGE class in the 2nd.

The problem with the way the NFL and sports fans use the term "analytics" is that they mostly focus on aggregate scores that show everything is great and don't take into consideration specific situational outcomes that would indicate why this team comes up small in big situations - this would be referred to as "insights". Why is that? Because it's a lot harder to do the latter. You need to know the questions to ask and you need to understand domain knowledge enough to make use of it. Without it, you might as well go by "the eye test".