Straight Hucklebuck

For 90% of the year I thought he played exactly like his scouting reports said he would. Capable of the superb, but raw and erratic. Hopefully the last game of the season becomes a glimpse of what he consistent level he can play at.

I need to see 10 wins from Beane and McDermott’s team.

I picked no. It’s hard for me to envision McDermott hoisting a Super Bowl or really being a Playoff winning Coach.

1. Garbage QB/Rookie QB/200 year old career backup QB 2. McCoy is past his prime and we don’t have a viable backup/3rd Down RB 3. Charles Clay is done and we have no other Tight Ends. 4. WRs are fringe NFL caliber Pretty much the Bills got the production they paid for.

Quarterback Play and Defense are what wins in the Playoffs, usually in that order, unless your team has a once in a decade level defense, 2000 Ravens, 2002 Bucs, 2014 Seahawks.

As always in the Playoffs it is coming down to Defense and Quarterback play.

Eifert is uninformed and I don’t want his son on the Bills anyway. Multiple serious injuries have sapped him of his athletic ability. The Bills root problem is poor drafting due to the wrong GM choices. The wrong GM does not acquire a viable Coach, Quarterback or players on the cutting edge of the league. Beane is the first GM with no connection to Ralph Wilson/Russ Brandon and they have taken a real swing at Quarterback. Now to Free Agency. While it’s not the primary way to properly build the team, I think the Bills have done well over the years. Mario Williams produced 40+ sacks in 4 years here, Alexander has produced 20+ sacks, Incognito made two Pro Bowls, Hyde and Poyer have been Day One starters. Bush is a competent NFL backup, Clay has been so-so, but the Bills haven’t been able to find a replacement in 3-4 years. When the Billd don’t hit on Free Agents, it has not been disastrous. Joe Webb, Mike Tolbert, Vlad Duccasse, Star L, Trent Murphy. Supposed laughing stock signings like Anquan Boldin or Vontae Davis never really got started to hurt much at all. Overall I am making the case that the Bills have done better than average in Free Agency over the years. Sure Derrick Dockery was a big miss, but guys like London Fletcher and Takeo Spikes were hits. The GMs for the Bills over the years did damage to the team by letting those guys walk. Reputation on is not reality.

I watched a few Panthers games down the stretch and I think you hit on it in the last sentence. Christian McCaffery is a talented player, but The offense relied on him so much that the net effect is he hurts the Panthers. Combined with Cam’s bum shoulder as the year went on, the Panthers offense went less and less vertical. Always checking down to the safe McCaffery throw. The ball was constantly in his hands and there was less play mix. I think the Panthers offense became simple to defend because every team knew that a checkdown was coming and that the WRs were not going to get the ball. Blitz Cam, he’ll checkdown, then tackle.

Yeah, I like this point. Given the Free Agents that are coming available, do you sign say a Golden Tate, or start putting together a package of assets for Antonio Brown or AJ Green?

Understood. I guess my only point is that I am not convinced a high end #1 WR is a requirement to win big in the NFL. Maybe they are similar to a #1 corner. They do make a difference, but an offense can target other corners and throw away from the shutdown corner. In that way a #1 WR can absorb a double coverage, but can't dictate an entire defense, especially for the Bills under McDermott, who are seemingly always going to try and run the ball. Of course you'd prefer Beane's philosophy of drafting and developing your own Antonio Brown, rather than paying the premium price (draft picks and his contract/salary) to pry him away from the Steelers, is ideal, although he is one of the best players in the league regardless of position. It's an interesting debate, I like reading the other comments about would you do it. A PFF article comes out about Levi Wallace and now their is attachment to including him in a deal, along with first round picks. The Bills did have the #1 secondary in terms of yardage this season, so would you potentially weaken that to bolster the WRs.

I'm still amazed that people who follow the NFL for a living assume an "elite defense" carries over to the next year. What the Seahawks did from 2012-2015 was the exception to the norm.

Ever since Tom Brady took Reche Caldwell and Jabar Gaffney to the AFC Title Game, I have tended to believe you don't need a superstar WR to be a Playoff team. When I watch the Playoffs, I think they tend to boil down to Quarterback play and Defense. So I think its important that the Bills improve the depth, but chasing a true #1 who is "open when he's not open" has not been a fruitful venture for the Bills in the last 5 years.

This is a great topic, thank you for presenting. I think with Whaley you have to trace his time with the organization back to the beginning. Whaley was brought in as the Assistant GM under Buddy Nix in 2010, at the handoff point of power from Ralph to Russ. Nix was 70 years old and so fans knew Whaley was being groomed for the job. Nix was GM for the 2010, 2011 and 2012 seasons. I think his chief failure was allowing the defense to switch back and forth from a 4-3 to a 3-4 to a hybrid, back a 4-3. Gailey chose weak defensive coordinators and the Bills blew all over the road on scheme. He also didn’t look for a QB. He started Trent and when that failed two games in, he promoted Trent Edward’s backup and stuck with him for all three years. So fast forward to 2013. Gailey is fired, and the HC search begins with Nix, Brandon, Overdorf (this is important for later) and Russ. Five whole days out in Arizona. Marrone was a Russ hire, and they came beating the Marrone’s a New Yorker drum. At this point the Bills have no Quarterback because Nix was caught on tape bashing Fitzpatrick in the prank call with the Bucs GM. So here the trap is set. The Bills got nothing out of the 2010 Draft (Modrak), the 2011 Draft produced Dareus and remember Williams was started at corner for his first two years and was awful/hurt, and 2012 yielded Gilmore and Glenn. Not much in the Draft, no Quarterback. So I think Nix was phased out and Whaley was thrust out of training and into the contrasting role of fresh, new, young GM. And with his first move he immediately over-drafted a marginal college QB. That move immediately backfired, EJ was not good. And so he went all in on EJ. Trading up, drafting Sammy, Karlos Williams, spending money. I think the key in all of this was Whaley didn’t have the whole scope/vision of what a GM had to do. First he was never the face of the franchise, Russ was, then Marrone. He didn’t pick any of the three coaches (Gailey, Marrone or Rex - Pegula’s fell in love with him). I don’t think the upper management ever really gave him 100% control of the organization on the football side. Two, in those days Overdorf managed all the contracts, Whaley had no say in any of that. He didn’t know the in and out. Whaley existed in the final days of the Ralph Wilson dysfunction with Littman, Russ, Berchold, Overdorf, and then new ownership came in and he was forced down another peg. Three, his best trait was what he studied in Pittsburgh - Pro Personnel. Which leads to Free Agency. Whaley struggled with the Draft because he was saddled with a failure at QB from 2010 on.

I know you’re not allowed to say this on here but McDermott was here 2 months and Beane was in Carolina when Hyde and Poyer were signed.

Couldn’t we say that every position group on an offense that finished in the Bottom 3 is a candidate for improvement? Beane sounded confident with McCoy and Ivory is under contract another year. Still, I think in keeping with the tone of Beane/McDermott, they’ll bring in competition.

I did. He referenced Wilkes only getting one year and intimated it was unfair. Then he mentioned black GMs with long tenure and I immediately said outloud Ozzie Newsome.

Rex got fired after 2 seasons here. Rob Chudzinsky got fired after 1 season in Cleveland. Josh McDaniels lasted less than two years in Denver. Jim Tomsula got one year with the 49ers Cam Cameron got one year with the Dolphins. Sorry Nate you have no case.

Best moment: Being judicious with the cap space. Most questionable moment - Finding a way to work Cam Newton into his answer. I swear his head is still in Carolina.

I agree with all of this. I am excited for this offseason and ready to see what the Bills FO does.

Responses attached.

Doug Whaley is a pariah I get it, but he was the GM and head of the Pro Personnel department. McDermott was coming off a season in which he was a DC, and was a HC for 2 1/2 months at the time of those signings. Furthermore, your owner said that Whaley and McDermott were working hand in hand on FA and the Draft, and there was crying when he was let go. McDermott gets the credit, but he was not a scout and did not run the scouting department pro or college.

10 wins is the bar. Not 8-8, 9-7 hanging on with play-in scenarios. Miami will have a new Coach, Jets will have new Coach and Brady will be 42 next season.

Using a golf analogy, I'm at par with Beane and McDermott. 1. Record wise, they are the same as Marrone and Rex through two seasons. I hear you on the Playoff birth, watching the fans jump for joy and the Bills locker room erupt was great. But they scored 3 points and got bounced immediately on a day where Bortles was horrid, so it's not going in the keepsake of Bills moments for me. 2. They've shipped off many of the Whaley cornerstone's with only McCoy, Clay, Hughes, Mills and Alexander as holdovers, and have given the Bills a clean slate in terms of cap space. They were right on Watkins, right on Dareus, as I don't think those guys together add one win to the Bills total this season. 3. Their free agent signings so far have been average. Murphy and Star were ok. Vlad Ducasse is below average as has been replaced. Tolbert is a 260 pound Fullback and was kept as the only backup to McCoy in 2017. Ivory is ok. Their WR trades have not worked, Matthews, Clay, Coleman or Benjamin. Boldin was way past his prime, Vontae Davis was hurt/old, Philly Brown was a fringe player, Joe Webb stuck for one year, our punter needs replaced. They missed on Peterman and McCarron. The Rick Dennison offense was from 1974. 4. They've had some hits in the Draft, but have largely spent any excess capital trading up for players. So in the end I'm excited to hear Beane speak to the media this afternoon. I look forward to FA and the Draft. I just want the bar of expectation to be raised. I think in Buffalo we give too much credit for ordinary things. Finding an average starter in Free Agency on a non-Playoff team, for example. Fans go back to the old phrases when there are no results, new schemes, new culture, new receivers, blaming past regimes, learning how to win, being "young". The good and the bad together leave me at, just win in 2019. We heard Buddy Nix all those years ago say that we aren't that far away. Eight years later we're still not a good NFL team. So let's see the baby and stop telling me about the labor pains.

I think a realistic view of that Playoff berth is in order. On the whole it was positive. Ending a 17-year Playoff Drought was a huge monkey off the back. But, they benched Tyrod for Peterman and that blew up in their faces immediately, and the Coach "regretted the result of the decision". Then they scored 3 points in Jacksonville on a day when Blake Bortles was atrocious. Yes, you ended The Drought. But that performance was poor. The 3-points that day foreshawdowed the 31st ranked offense we saw for the majority of 2018. Like fans are supposed to hold onto the memory of a 3-point output in Jacksonville in the time capsule of their memory banks as an elite moment. They went one and done, went out of the Playoffs with a whimper. Just shy of a miracle? Now come on. The Bills were 15-17 under Marrone, 15-16 under Rex, and now 15-17 under McDermott. Theoretically they have set themselves up to get better with the cap space. But, look at the FA WR's ready to hit the market. The receivers they've traded for have all bombed out. The running backs they've signed are old. If the bar is finding a veteran starter on a sub 0.500 team then I don't think that's a very high bar. Bills fans give the team tons of credit for finding average starters on non-Playoff teams. Where are the difference makers? Alexander was a Whaley find, so was Hughes, so were Hyde and Poyer, so was McCoy (who is done). My question to you is - when does the excellence start? When does the team get to 10+ wins? Not hovering around 0.500 hoping to gimp into the Playoffs as the 6th seed?

I never understood that hire.