SoTier

This is pure fantasy. There is absolutely no certainty that there will even be decent veteran OLers or WRs available in FA or that the Bills will be willing to pay the market rate for them or that FAs the Bills want will sign with them. As for the draft, it looks to be a more defensive draft, especially at the top, than an offensive one, and the draft is very hit or miss, and the success rates for Day 3 picks (rounds 4-7) are probably only about maybe 20%. That's where most of the Bills extra picks are. Moreover, it generally takes 2 or 3 years for an OLer or WR to develop into a competent player. The Bills got "blindsided" by Eric Wood's injury, but Richie Incognito was 35-years-old so he was nearing the end of his career. They should have had a replacement for him already on the roster in the person of a young LG obtained either through the draft, signing a UDFA prospect or scouring the waiver wire which they didn't do because they were so busy weeding out talented players whom McDermott/Beane/Brandon/Pegula/whomever deemed "too expensive" to keep -- and finding bottom feeder bodies to fill the holes. The same BS is going to happen along the DL either this off season or next when K Williams and Alexander hang up their cleats. Both are/will be 36. Will the Bills be "blindsided" by those retirements, too? Will they send Alexander packing to save some dollars because Howard looks promising as a rookie -- just like they did to Glenn at LT because Dawkins was serviceable as a rook? What about Trent Murphy? He's missed more games than he's started I think, so he may be gone, too. Frankly, there was never any real plan except to get rid of most of the well-paid players on the team in 2017 and replace them with lesser players that McDermott and Beane knew from Carolina or who had some prior connection to McDermott -- or were the cheapest FA bodies they could find at that position. Why do you think the Bills waited for a month to get around to bringing in a backup QB after Peterman proved his incompetence??? They were waiting for Anderson, another Carolina discard, to finish his golf tournament. As I've said repeatedly, there simply aren't enough decent players available in FA and the draft to fill all the current holes that McDermott and Beane have created. The Bills have two units, OL and WR, that are simply not NFL-caliber. Maybe 1 or 2 of the players from both units might make contending NFL teams -- as backups. The DL could also be in a similar state in 2019 because of retirements and injury. Maybe McDermott (2017) and McDermott/Beane (2018) shouldn't have wasted so much draft capital frequently trading up to chase after specific players to fit their narrow criteria. After all, JuJu Smith-Schuster was still available when the Bills traded up to grab Zay Jones. This is why McDermott will fail as a HC, especially when given control of which players to keep and which to bring in. Talent trumps everything. Dedication, desire, and hard work can enhance talent, but if it's not there to begin with, no amount of dedication or hard work is going to create it. The Bills have thrown away too many talented players in the McDermott/Beane era because McDermott can't see that. Kelvin Benjamin is simply not fast enough to be a WR1 or WR2 in the modern NFL, and studying tape is not going to ever enable Nathan Peterman to regularly throw out routes to his own teammates rather than to the other team.

Thank you for an excellent, well thought out post. Unfortunately, you'll probably get all kinds of criticism for daring to point out the McDermott/Beane regime's failures.

I wasn't talking about McCoy. I was talking about offense in general ... maybe next week against the Jets will be the week the Bills offense gets into the EZ.

Doh! I didn't know all that. Actually I did and I do. Stop making excuses for incompetence. That "cap space" that you're so worried about saving was attached to a competent NFL QB, a veteran who was an experienced and reliable starter and a proven good teammate. Allen is a raw rookie who needed to sit for at least part of this season and could use some advise from a guy who's "been there, done that". Taylor hasn't caused any kind of "locker room divide" in Cleveland in the very same situation that he would have had with the Bills (although apparently former Browns HC Hue Jackson did cause issues). Where the hell would this "locker room divide" come from exactly? The Bills should not have signed McCarron at all. If they didn't know that he wanted -- and expected -- to be the starter at least in the beginning of the season, then they had to be just about the only ones who didn't. McCarron left a cushy backup gig in Cinci to look for an opportunity to be a starter. McDermott claiming that McCarron wasn't what he "expected" is either an admission of his incompetence in handling players or an attempt to shift the blame to McCarron. Moreover, I don't give a rat's scrawny behind how good Peterman looked in practice. He doesn't have an NFL caliber arm and cannot make the throws that every QB, even an occasional backup, needs to be able to make. The rest of the team knew that, which why the team played so crappy against Baltimore. The whole QB competition BS was just a reflection of the incompetence of the coaching staff ... and it was slanted so that it favored Peterman by scheduling him playing mostly against 2nd and 3rd stringers while McCarron faced first string players (which how he got hurt). If the Bills aren't trying to win football games, then they should refund ticket holders' their money. The NFL is a professional league, not a little kids' T-ball league where participation is more important than winning. Maybe if the Bills hadn't traded away Cordy Glenn just because Dion Dawkins looked serviceable at LT and signed a better replacement for Eric Wood than Russell Bodine, they wouldn't have two injured quarterbacks. They could have done that if they'd kept Glenn (they would then have had several more million in cap space), and moved Dawkins either to LG or RT, both positions that probably suit him better. Of course, the idea of providing QBs with protection -- much less sure-handed targets -- has apparently become a foreign concept for the brainiacs at OBD since the ascent of McDermott and his henchman Beane.

I have serious doubts that it is.

A QB who can't make outside throws does not have the potential to be a "serviceable NFL backup". Not in this century it hasn't, not even during the Jauron years. I'm not sure that the QB situation was this dire even back in the 1970s and early 1980s as the Bills had Joe Ferguson as their starting QB for most of that period. Ferguson was a pretty decent QB for most of his career despite playing frequently with crap around him. That kinda leaves a small window in the 1980s between Ferguson and Kelly. I don't think that's a serious fear. I can't see Peterman NOT throwing at least one pick six against the Bears. He can't throw outs, and the Bills OC can't stop calling them. Ergo, a pick six is inevitable unless the defenders can't catch.

I didn't vote because Peterman shouldn't have been on the team last year, and he should have been cut before the season started unless the Bills intended to keep 3 QBs. At best, Peterman is a third QB or PS player. My guess is that Peterman will score as many points for the Bears as he does for the Bills if he's lucky and Bears DBs can't catch.

What is there to defend in the QB situation??? They got rid of a competent veteran QB in Taylor to save some $$$. They signed a backup QB, McCarron, who plainly was looking for a starting gig to prove himself and saw Buffalo as a good place to do it. Then they trade McCarron when he objected to being third string behind Nate "Picksix" Peterman on the very specious argument that Peterman looked better playing against scrubs than McCarron did playing against first stringers. The dead cap space the Bills incurred by trading Taylor and McCarron was around $10 million, but hey, that's okay because they saved millions in current salary by getting rid of these guys. That extra cap space could have gotten them 1 or 2 or maybe even 3 better offensive players than the ones currently on the team, but dead cap is only "on the books" it's not actual $$ out of the owner's pockets. When Peterman crapped the bed in the season opener, the Bills were fine with going with raw rookie Josh Allen and the incompetent Peterman for a MONTH before they finally got around to adding a competent backup QB, in this case a washed up 35-year-old who hadn't played a snap in 2 years and hadn't started in 7. Now, they're back to Picksix Peterman as the starter backed up by Matt Barkley who's only been on the team for a few days, but hey, the Pegulas are making a fat profit by filling the stadium while fielding the lowest paid roster in the NFL, so all's good.

Why should he do that when it's so much more profitable for him to hire neophyte HCs and GMs like McDermott and Beane and have the lowest current salary level in the NFL? Bills fans are like lemmings -- they'll continue to fill the stadium no matter how bad the team. Right-o. No Bills fan could possibly "connect the dots" and come to a conclusion on his own that maybe some of the Bills decisions during the McDermott/Beane/Pegula regime are influenced by individuals' race. It has to come from some "outside agitator" from NYC because we all know there are no racists in Buffalo and WNY while NYC is rife with them.

Tony Romo, Jake Delhomme (I believe) and Kurt Warner were all UDFAs, so a very few do come in and do well. Nathan Peterman was a waste of a fifth round draft pick in 2017 -- the Bills could have easily signed an UDFA QB to play as poorly as Peterman has. Peterman's last pick six wasn't because of failed OL protection; it was because he got suckered into attempting to make a throw he doesn't have the ability to make. It's his poor arm and brain that are the problem not the Bills OL as crappy as it is. Actually, both Kirk Cousins and Matt Ryan have had very nice careers, with and without Shanahan. ROTFLMAO. The only two things that the Bills are doing "right" is demonstrating how clueless and incompetent the entire Bills organization and its ownership are ... and how to play the worst offensive football seen in this century.

Yadda, yadda, yadda. What excuse will you use next year at this time when the Bills are likely to have about the same record and an only marginally improved talent situation???

I used to park in the little lots along Sheldon Road which is off Abbott a block north of Southwestern Blvd (US 20). The Abbott Road Animal Hospital is on the NW corner and there's a gas station/convenience store on the SW corner. It's a decent walk to the stadium but they're not only cheaper than the stadium lots, they offer easy in/easy out access. In From Thruway Exit 56, turn left at the end of the off ramp, taking Milestrip Road (179 ) to McKinley Parkway, turn right at the light, drive past the Mall and then the little strip mall with Wild Birds Unlimited. Turn left on to Brompton Drive/E Highland Parkway and follow Brompton to Sheldon Road where you turn left. Once past Windom Elementary School, start looking for likely spots. The prices increase the closer to Abbott you get. Out Take Sheldon past Windom Elementary (the way you came in), turn right at McKinley. I'm not sure if there's one or two left hand turn lanes at 179 but that left turn is the only bottleneck. Once on 179, you will want to get into the right most lane because the Thruway entrance is just down the road. Remember, Hamburg, Dunkirk, Erie, etc are "West" while W Seneca, Cheektowaga, Buffalo, Amherst, Rocherster, etc are all "East" (even if the Thruway is going more or less north and south at that point) See Google Maps. Get directions using Abbott Road Animal Hospital as your destination.

What part of McDermott realized that he'd lose the locker room if he started Peterman don't you understand??? This was widely reported after the Baltimore debacle. It's why McDermott started Allen. Peterman's pick six in the Houston game simply cemented that Peterman wasn't going to start for the Bills again except under duress. Well, duress, in the form of Allen's elbow and Anderson's concussion, makes Peterman the Bills starter. This game may be a reprise of Peterman's disaster against the Chargers last season in which it appeared that several Bills players just went through the motions. If the defense doesn't come to play on Sunday, the Bears are going to put up 45 or 50 points on them because there are probably more players who are convinced that Peterman is a pick six waiting to happen whenever he drops back to pass. I agree that McDermott is doing the best in a bad situation, but the reality is that McDermott has no one to blame for that situation except for himself. McDermott controls player personnel on the Bills; Beane is the guy who sends the guys McDermott doesn't want packing and brings in the guys that McDermott wants ... or the available guys whom the Bills can afford (because they dug themselves into dead cap hell by trading away Dareus and Glenn -- that's about $23 million in dead cap) that McDermott can tolerate. The Bills lack of talent is totally on McDermott.

How do you know that the Pats -- or other teams -- didn't try to move up to draft Mahomes? Moreover, some teams already have franchise QBs and are trying to build championship teams, so they have other needs. Others had/have young QBs prospects that they drafted in the last 2-4 years. Some other teams may have gambled that Mahomes would be there when it was their turn or that they simply liked Trubiskey or Watson better. Not true. Historically, QBs who are going to be good QBs long term generally take a huge step forward sometime in their second season as starters. This is true even for QBs who don't look very good as as first year starters. When you look at the careers of most of the good current QBs in the league, most were significantly better in their second seasons than in their first, including Brady, Rodgers, Newton, Wilson, Cousins, Wentz, Goff, etc. There have been some precocious QBs who looked good as rookies and continued that way: Ben Roethlisberger, Joe Flacco, Andy Dalton, and Derek Carr. QBs who look good in their first year as starters and then failed tend to be QBs like Colin Kaepernick who depend upon running rather than developing as passing QBs. This looked like maybe DeShaun Watson would be that kind of QB, but he's developed his passing skills, and can't be considered a "run first" QB any longer. IOW, Kaepernick was essentially a running back who could throw the ball, not an athletic QB who can run the ball like the young studs like Wentz, Watson, and Mahomes. The QBs who need 3-5 years as starters to show if they're any good are highly unlikely to become true franchise QBs. At best, they seem to be not "good enough" to win consistently with but "too good" to relegate to backup status. Jay Cutler is the poster boy for this type. Ryan Tannehill, Blake Bortles, and Marcus Mariota seem to be this type -- and maybe Jameis Winston, although that's questionable at this point.

What I said was, "Compared to franchise QBs, shut down DBs are virtually 'a dime a dozen'." If you quote someone, use the entire quote, not just a part you can make fun with a cutsey image. No excuses for you any more than for McDermott.

Passing on a potential franchise QB to take a DB because the team didn't re-sign the Pro Bowl DB that the team had drafted in the first round just five years before simply cannot be justified, no matter what mental gymnastics McDermott defenders try to employ. If the Bills had gotten a great edge rusher or a DT to clog up the middle of the line, there might be some legs to the argument for taking him over Mahomes, but a DB, even a great DB, is simply not that valuable. Compared to franchise QBs, shut down DBs are virtually "a dime a dozen". No excuses.

Isn't that exactly what the Bills have done in the last two drafts under McDermott??? They passed on two excellent QB prospects in 2017 who have turned into decent NFL QBs (at their low end) for a CB because they needed one. They then traded away their starting QB and their starting LT to move up to take the fourth best QB prospect in the 2018 draft. Why would they change "their plan" to stock up on offense in 2019 just because the best talent in the draft is on the defensive side?

McDermott is no longer a rookie head coach.

Maybe you should be pissed at the organization that has orchestrated the Bills ineptitude that has led to "radio hosts who don't even have a local team" to abuse the team.

Wilson probably saw $$$. Before he was hired by the Bills, Brandon's claim to fame was his infamous dismantling of the World Champion Florida Marlins the season after the won the World Series. Marlins went from one of the highest player payrolls in their championship to one of the lowest, which likely increase profitability since player salaries are obviously the major component in the team budget. The Marlins also went from World Champions to the worst record in MLB, but winning was never Wilson's top priority, so Brandon was perfect. McDermott didn't "cut him (Brandon) out of the football department". Brandon was promoted to be in charge of both the Bills and the Sabres so he simply was much less involved with the football side. Since Brandon was essentially the boss of every Bills employee until he was fired, there's no way one of those other Bills employees, even the Bills HC, could "cut him out".

Certainly their tenure as owners of the Sabres suggests that. Specifically, I'm very concerned that in response to the Rex Ryan fiasco, they seem to totally bought into Russ Brandon's "money ball" philosophy, and if that's the case, then winning will continue to take a back seat to making $$$ despite Brandon's departure.

Neither is the mind-numbing, outdated style of football the Bills play under McDermott and his pal Beane. This is 2018 not 1978 or 1988.

Yeah, but at least Fitz gives you something to cheer about once in a while ...

Since Russ Brandon was the Bills head honcho when McDermott and then Beane were hired, why would expect anything to be any diffferent? Since he was okay with how McDermott and Beane before he was fired -- with no indication he wasn't -- why would he not be okay with them if he hadn't been fired? Winning was never Brandon's top priority; maximizing profits was. FTR, Brandon didn't hire Rex Ryan and give him a virtual blank check to hire his relatives and pals. That was the Pegulas who were reportedly "wowed" by Ryan during his interview. McDermott was much more the kind of HC that Brandon liked to hire rather than the expensive, flamboyant Ryan.

My definitions of project QBs are those who need to work on physcial fundamentals before they have a real chance to become NFL QBs. Frequently, that involves fixing their footwork or throwing motion or release. Brady, Romo, and Cousins all improved key aspects of their ability to throw the football. I wouldn't consider Phillip Rivers a "project" because the coaches in SD never tried to change his sidearm throwing motion (which he still uses BTW).