BullBuchanan

I was devastated that I didn't have the chance to bust out one of my most prized possessions today.

These two items are things that look glike reasonable arguments on paper, but they aren't at the heart of the issue. The problem with McDermott isn't that his team isn't executing because of injury on defense or lack of experience in the case of Dorsey. It's simply that his team is not ready. We're being outcoached on a regular basis. People bring up the defensive injury thing all the time, but it really doesn't have much merit against the criticisms. We aren't having defensive problems because we're simply outclassed. We're top 10 in both passing yards per attempt and rushing yards per attempt. Our defense is actually playing very well, except situationally. We routinely put opponents in 3rd and long only to get destroyed on low percentage plays that are not particularly creative. That's a pattern and I don't think it has much to do with talent. It's a lack of preparedness and poor judgement on behalf of McDermott and his staff. We have similar problems on offense. Our Red Zone offense jumps off the page as an immediate flag. Usage of Dawson Knox is another. He's been coming up massive in big spots late in games this season and is invisible in our offensive gameplan the other 55 minutes of the game. We deployed a balanced offense against Minnesota in the first half to great effect and then jumped right back into pass-only madden mode in the 2nd half with a depleted WR corps and QB1 with a bum elbow. Nyheim Hines has been electric whenever he touches the ball on special teams, yet the team has made no effort to get him involved on offense. And then we're still making massive strategic mistakes. Against the dolphins, when it was a billion degrees out we put together a gameplan that had us running 90 offensive plays to our opponents 39 yet still somehow being unable to outscore them. 90 plays in that heat and humidity. For reference, our season average (where we're ranked 7th highest) has us at just under 66 plays per game. We punched ourselves out and it took a toll in the weeks that followed as even more players were unavailable as they recovered from that. When this team is firing on all-cylinders, they can beat anyone. And when i say that, I mean any team - ever. The problem is that too often our staff makes decisions that put our players behind the 8 ball. Often they succeed in spite of it, but when they don't, and especially when they start to snowball, it starts to look very ugly. When we look back at 13 seconds - that wasn't us getting unlucky - it was an eventuality of this team not being prepared to win when all the chips were down - and that falls squarely on the coaching staff. I'd be lying if I said I felt like McDermott has learned anything since that day.

Anything besides winning a super bowl is a disappointment. This is especially true considering how weak the league is right now. I'll get ove rit if we don't win, because I'm accustomed to it, but the stakes need to be high for the coaching staff and front office.

Did you mean to quote me? Seems we're making most of the same points except that guaranteed money gives players more money. You're right that the size of the pie is the same, but the amount paid to individual players is not, because there are lots of contract terminations that leave these players with unpaid deals. There's nothing that would prevent teams from releasing players and paying new talent, so I don't see how it reduces the player pool at all except if owners are reluctant to pay a player they no longer want plus a new one. It's not a problem in hockey though.

If all contracts were guaranteed, negotiations would be a lot more straightforward. Outside of it being guaranteed, they paid market rate for what they believe is a franchise QB who led the league in passing during his last season. Not sure what's so stupid about that, beyond the gamble on the legal side of it, which worked out in their favor.

What I'm talking about are back-loaded deals that will clearly never come to pass in term of playing games with the gap. Baseball is totally different because they don't have a cap. In football, whether or not the deals are guaranteed should mean less to ownership, because how much the players are entitled to and the minimum amount teams must spend is fixed. every team in the league more or less spends the same amount of money, and it's all paid for by the TV deals. None of it comes out of anybody's pocket, so all the teams are on a relatively even playing field when it comes to their ability to afford players. The only thing a team has to do is decide how they want to spend it and make sure that they make good decisions. Explain how a non-guaranteed contract leaves more money available to other players.

No. It's over.

You failed to support your thesis here. Whether or not deals have guarantees has no bearing on the slice of the pie that players get and it shouldn't. The only thing it would impact are the individual deals, but not the total spend for the roster. Fully guaranteed deals are a massive boon for players not only because of injury, but because of games teams play with the cap. Guaranteed deals can still have escalators and options baked in, but should otherwise be baked in. You'll likely end up with shorter deals overall and a little off the top in some cases and it should all even out in the wash.

That's collusion to price fix a market. It's an inherent defect of a "free-market" system, and we've decided as a society that's not acceptable and in some cases illegal. If contracts become fully guaranteed then yes it's likely offers get reduced a little bit to compensate and I'm sure most people would take that trade. I can't see this as anything but a net positive.

Are you aware that other sports exist already with fully guaranteed contracts? The NFL is the last of the major 4 that don't. basketball is a bit weird in how they do it, but it's mostly handled through options and voids.

And they tried to dump Akers a couple weeks ago. 🤣

How does it benefit you to be anti-worker? There's a simple solution to that - don't offer him a contract you can't afford.

That's where I'm not so sure. More likelable? Absolutely. Softer hand? Absolutely. Infinitely better? I'm not sure he's infinitely better than anyone. To me he's the re-incarnation of Marv Levy, and while that's a significant compliment as a man and a leader, it's also an indictment as a coach.

NFL deals should absolutely be fully guaranteed. I hope they get it. To offset they should also reduce or eliminate the concept of dead cap.

Fair enough, and I admit I was wrong about that. I'm still not sure a 1 win difference is significant though. Both Rex and McD had identical records over their first two years.

He's maybe the best #4 in football, but as a #2 he's terrible. Sorry. He just isn't good enough.

I remember hearing Dareus say the playbook was too complicated, but I have a feeling he would have thought a coloring book was too complicated. It's definitely a reasonable hypothesis though. Still, Ryan averaged an 8-8 record while he was here and didn't have the benefit of a top 2 QB and a top 10 WR. McD ended our playoff drought with a 9-7 record while Ryan was only able to claim the first winning season in a decade with the same record. If Both Ryan and Whaley were allowed to stick around one more year and were able to select Mahomes instead of trading out of the pick when QB was a glaring need - I think Ryan's history would be written a lot differently.

And what?

Where is the amazing part? Rex Ryan was loved by his players too, and if had the benefit of the Bengals putting the Bills in the playoffs with his 9-7 record like McD did, maybe we'd probably be calling him a legend too - especially once he got Josh Allen. Don't get me wrong, Process McClappy is a nice guy but I'm not sure he's a very good coach, let alone a legend.

he's 31. He could easily play through a 4 year contract at peak performance. I don't get why people keep making a deal about his age when safety is often a good role for older players.

I'm not sure many people are making the argument we should replace Edmunds with Dodson. I would expect a former 1st round pick to be better than an undrafted depth journey and an overdrafted and undersized rookie. It doesn't mean that we don't need better production from the position. Milano had another monster day yesterday with Edmunds out of the lineup, but we didn't see the same from Edmunds when Milano was out.

Except when it mattered though, right? I seem to remember us giving up a game tying drive with 13 seconds on the clock and then allowing that same team to march down the field again for a touchdown to begin OT. Vanity metric like yards/points allowed don't tell the true story of a defense's performance. If you're a good overall defense but terrible situationally (like the Bills), you aren't a good defense.

Yea, no. The issue is that our situational flaws which have resulted in defensive meltdowns are now being exploited more often, like on practically every 3rd down. If you keep giving up 3rd and 20 and 4th and 18, you aren't going to keep defenses under 200 yards passing a large percentage of the time. Also, average is pretty meaningless when you take into account they had 3 games where opponents had 61 or less passing yards. Our schedule last year was a joke.

Is that the game where we played against Teddy Bridgewater and Tua's scrambled egg brain? It's not a recent issue at all. Fraziers defense's have been poor against big passing plays since he got here - especially on drive continuing plays like 3rd/4th and long, or game winning drives. We've fallen apart in these scenarios regardless of talent or roster health.