SoTier

This is simply untrue since Allen, Edmunds, Oliver, and the other Beane draft picks haven't proven how good they actually are. This roster isn't even as talented as the one that McDermott inherited in 2017 and immediately started dismantling. Most of the supposed veteran talent on this team is mediocre, and the young talent is largely unproven. Only White and perhaps Milano have shown themselves above average NFL players. How come you conveniently chose "the last fifteen years"? Oh, yeah, because in the 2004 draft Tom Donahoe traded Dallas the Bills' 2005 first round pick for the Cowboys' first rounder to take JP Losman. That doesn't fit your story line, of course, because Losman busted, and you don't wish to raise that idea in your defense of this regime. As for FA signings, maybe if McDermott and Beane hadn't chosen to strip away so much talent, they wouldn't have been forced to overpay for mediocrity and could have spent their money on better FAs. If "the proof is in the pudding", what has Beane proven exactly? That he can gamble a lot of draft capital on relatively few prospects with big question marks? If Allen has a HOF type career, then Beane got him cheap. Anything less, and he paid way too much --- including Watkins. The Bills last won a playoff game in 1995, twenty five years ago. Since then the Bills have had 5 winning seasons and 3 playoff appearances. Between 1970 and 1994, twenty five seasons, the Bills had 10 winning seasons, 6 of them between 1988 and 1993 under Polian and Levy.

Yeah, they've been wrong about the Bills sooooo often ... especially when predicting the team making the playoffs.

Has he? He spent a fortune in draft picks and talent to get Allen, and if the Bills go 6-10, without serious injuries to key players then it's probably because Allen hasn't grown into a franchise QB as hoped for -- and isn't likely to develop into more than a modest mid/low level starting QB. The Bills have had several of those over the last 2 decades. He's also spent more draft capital trading up in both his drafts, so unless those picks prove out this season, then he didn't get much for the extra investment. Except for Morse, none of his FA or trade acquisitions have been impressive. Some, like Benjamin, have been terrible. He over paid for mediocre talent like Lotulelei, and we're still waiting to see if Murphy can regain his pre-injury form.

A good running game is absolutely a young QB's best friend. There's no way that Mahomes or Wentz or Goff would have been so successful so quickly without having had great running games to give them reliable options. Going back a few years, both Ben Roethlisberger and Russell Wilson had tremendous success as rookies by relying on strong running games.

Like Coloradobills fan, I'm skeptical because if a sudden rise in sea-level destroyed these supposed civilizations, there would still be evidence of those civilizations under water. AFAIK, that evidence is missing although evidence of known civilizations or parts of known civilizations that were destroyed by earthquakes that resulted in the coastal areas where they were located sinking into the sea. More recent climate change isn't a new phenomenon in Africa, either. Within historical times, the Sahara Desert was much narrower in width and wetter, allowing for trade routes across it from the Mediterranean coast to cities in present day Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sudan etc. where today's desert areas had much more savannah-like climates. Keep in mind that just because some civilizations aren't very well known to the general public doesn't mean that they aren't known to archeologists.

Big backs frequently drag smaller tacklers, DBs and undersized LBs for 5 or more yards until they're gang tackled. We saw this ad nauseum when Jauron filled the defense with smaller, fast guys in an era where numerous RBs outweighed the smurf defenders on the Bills roster. This was also a reason why there were so many injuries to Bills players. I''m not saying that McDermott is going down that route, but the team has to be prepared to deal with power running backs. A better defensive line would help immensely. This is the way it always is. The NFL has often been called a copycat league. One team does X on offense and has success, and numerous other teams try to emulate that. Defenses get surprised at first but then 1 or more DCs figure out how to stop it, and the offenses find something else to try. It's an endless game of chess moves.

Except that the Bills haven't proven they can score "lots of points" against anybody under McDermott. They mostly have lots of points scored against them. It's why their points scored differentials have been massively negative in both of McDermott's first two seasons. Last season they not only couldn't score "lots of points", they gave up "lots of points", too. Hopefully experience helps Edmunds and the other young LBs improve. Unfortunately, the laws of physics are pretty immutable: when a bigger body smashes into a smaller body, it's the smaller body that gets knocked off its trajectory while the bigger body's course is frequently unaffected by a smaller body smashing into it.

Optimism without results to justify it is just fantasizing. The Bills need a lot of pieces to come together to have a successful season in 2019. They need to have a lot of young players become outstanding/elite players in the next year or so in order to become a regular playoff contender. They need their offensive coaching staff to prove they're significantly better than their predecessors. They need their HC and DC to prove their can match wits with Belichick and his staff. The Bills could put it all together. They could also fail to achieve some or all of these pieces and be just as mediocre as they been for the last twenty years. There are no guarantees.

Famous. Last. Words. A couple of other posters mentioned the Pats going run heavy last season -- and they added another RB in the off season. The Jets have added Le'Von Bell. The Ravens are apparently building a run-first offense and the Lions seem to be trying to give Matthew Stafford a running game for the first time in his career. The Seahawks have always been a run-heavy offensive team in the Pete Carroll era. Power running backs haven't become obsolete, either. Most playoff teams have one -- Todd Gurley, Mark Ingram, Ezekiel Elliott, etc.

What other true franchise QB -- somebody whom everybody agrees is an elite or first tier QB -- who didn't show much improvement as a second year starter but "got it" as a third year starter and developed into a first rate QB in the last quarter century? You might make an argument for Cam Newton but his passing is mediocre, and he's not considered "elite or first tier". He's led the Panthers to only 3 winning seasons in 8 years ... and Carolina is a very feast-or-familne team during the Rivera/Newton era: if the stars all align correctly, they have a blockbuster season but otherwise they hang out with the league's bottom feeders. That's hardly impressive.

^^^ The reality is that a QB who doesn't show significant improvement in his second year as a starter isn't likely to get significantly better later in his career. How a young QB looks at the end of his second season starter pretty much exposes his ceiling. Drew Brees is the only great QB since 2000 who had an unimpressive second year as a starter who later blossomed into more than a "decent" QB of the caliber of Tannehill or Cutler. Most who don't make significant improvement in the areas where they're weakest as sophomore starters may commonly decline. If Patrick Mahomes doesn't improve greatly in his second season as a starter, he's still going to be a good/great NFL QB because he played so spectacularly as a first year starter. Allen didn't play well for an NFL QB as a rookie. He made plays with his legs, not so much with his arm, and that needs to change if he's going to become a true franchise QB. How much he improves will be a good indicator of what kind of QB he'll become but most QBs only improve incrementally after their second season as starter. As for McDermott, if he can't produce a decent team -- minimum 8 wins without significant injuries, a positive scoring differential, half as many blowouts (losses by more than 20 or more points), an offense and defense at least in the top half of the league (16 or better) -- in his third season as HC without a team that fits his model, then he's not likely to magically turn things around in his fourth or even his fifth year.

That's not a great accomplishment unfortunately.

I disagree. I had Directtv for about 7 years but I went back to Spectrum (cable) because it had gotten so expensive. I was paying as much just for Directtv (with 4 tvs) as I now pay for tv and internet plus HBO and Showtime. I only have to pay for 1 tv because I use basic ROKUs to stream from the Spectrum app for the other three -- and I don't have to go out in the cold to clean snow off the satellite dish after a snowstorm. I can also add more tvs simply by purchasing more ROKU units.

Is this Curtis Rush guy the same guy who advocated a few months ago that regularly letting proven franchise QBs walk in FA rather than paying them and replacing them with a rookie was a viable strategy for NFL teams? IIRC, that article was from Forbes also. It was a great justification for teams putting profitability ahead of winning, and this article on the importance of having a top WR (or in Rush's case, not having one) seems to be in the vein. It works if $$$ is more important to a team than winning lots of games. Teams have #1 WRs because they're weapons, which teams need to have if they're interested in winning a lot of games in the modern NFL. You can make all the excuses you want for the Bills not having a top flight WR but don't pretend that it's "better" for the Bills chances to win games to not have a WR of the caliber of Beckham, Bryant, Cooper, etc. on the team.

My first two cars not only didn't have AC, they only had AM radios. I have central air in my current home. I put it in 16 years ago when I had the furnace replaced. I replaced the furnace two years ago, but I use the AC infrequently (less than 2 weeks a year on average), so it probably has been used about as much as a 2-year-old unit in other parts of the country.

I don't think you're alone in that assessment of the Bears. I've seen several media types question how good they are. I guess part of that comes from whether Trubisky will continue to develop from "decent" to good, but part of that also comes from the belief that the other NFCN teams all took steps to get better. BTW, Miami had a worst-to-first rise, albeit briefly, a decade ago: the Carp went 1-15 in 2007, changed regimes, and went 11-5 and won the division in 2008 (the year that Brady missed virtually the entire season). It was a mirage ... they soon returned to mediocrity.

I think this is a myth. What teams in the last decade or so have done this and had long term (ie, mutliple year) success as measured by playoff appearances and wins? Lots of people talk about this but the examples they give aren't very recent, so they aren't good models for the current NFL. The teams that have made sudden turn-arounds in recent years like Philly, the Rams, the Chargers and Chicago all built around the talent already on those teams, even when the team as a whole was underperforming.

Actually, there's been considerable positive buzz about Flores on the NFL Network and other shows. It's more than just his cred from being a Pats assistant. Apparently, he's brought an entirely new mindset to the Carp. The one I really don't get is San Francisco because Garoppolo has done squat in his five year career except ride the pine and collect checks either because he was a backup or he was hurt. He's had 10 starts total going into his 6th NFL season.

Thank you for posting this. A related issue to mental illness and CTE is PTSD. All of these conditions can radically change the behavior of people but they have different manifestations in different people -- and as you note, you don't know if one of these conditions actually caused a specific action.

I think that you are being totally unrealistic. It's easy to say "stay out of bars for the next 8 years" but what should a young rich guy with his pockets full of money do for entertainment then? "Going out" to bars, dance halls, and honkytonks to drink and have a good time has been part of American culture since Prohibition, especially for young guys in their 20s, and that's a prescription for trouble and always has been. How many "respectable citizens" today were hell raisers in their twenties? I think that Hunt's best course is to work with a counselor/coach/advisor to control his alcohol consumption and develop strategies for dealing with confrontation/provocation without resorting to violence (anger management) since becoming a monk or hermit until he grows up probably isn't in the cards.

I agree. The reality is that the NFL and/or the NFLPA getting involved in stadium issues opens that nasty can of worms called "violation of anti-trust statutes". Unlike MLB, the other professional sports teams aren't protected from anti-trust scrutiny by the federal government. If an individual team wants to threaten relocation to pressure local or state taxpayers to ante up for a new stadium, that's an "individual action". If the league or the NFLPA tries to do the same, the federal courts could very well consider that an action "in furtherance of a monopoly". Congress could hold hearings and possibly compel NFL teams to open their books to public scrutiny (which as privately held businesses they aren't currently forced to do). It could get nasty.

The opposite of models who have to starve themselves.

Priceless!

Tell me they couldn't be twins!!!!

Especially the hair cut ... he looks like the guard from the old tv comedy "Night Court".