SoTier

I agree with both points. IIRC, after the last big flooding along the Mississippi or Missouri Rivers (or maybe both), the feds decided that they weren't going to keep paying to rebuild homes located in flood ways (this decision was made back in the GWB's administration iirc -- around 2005 or so). So, a lot of homeowners were given the choice of either getting help to move out of the flood-prone area or getting federal aid one last time to fix their current homes within the flood-prone areas. There needs to be something like this devised for the coastal regions (maybe there is -- I think the Trump admin had proposed something earlier in the year or last year, but I don't know if it actually went into effect). FTR, numerous coastal areas flood frequently even without devastating hurricanes. We have enough data to know where those areas are, and it's time to start discouraging building in flood/storm vulnerable coastal areas. You want to live on a barrier island, then do so at your own risk. Otherwise, build back away from the vulnerable areas and leave the beach/coastal areas open for public recreation and served by temporary facilities.

IMO, the Bills are only a couple of steps from "mutiny" at present. Allen's play the last two games sort of reminded me of JP Losman's struggles after he was named the starter at the beginning of the 2005 season -- repeating the same mistakes over and over again with few signs of improvement. Mentoring Allen is the QB coach, Culley's, job, not the backup QB's, and especially not a street FA QB whose a couple of years removed from actually playing. If they wanted a QB mentor for Allen, then they should have kept Taylor -- like the Jests (who aren't as much jests as they used to be) kept McCown.

Believe what you want. Make all the excuses you want. This is NOT about starting a rookie QB who is clearly not ready to be a starter, although that is something that McDermott is clearly guilty of as well. It's also NOT about the starting QB getting hurt. It's about McDermott stubbornly keeping Peterman on the team when he is simply not good enough to be a NFL QB, not even a backup. The Bills shouldn't have wasted a fifth round pick on him in 2017, and he sure as hell shouldn't have been considered to be the starter in 2018 after his debacle as a starter in 2017. That he "looked good" in preseason means nothing when teams don't game plan or scheme, and especially since he got the "softer" starting spots in the first and fourth preseason games IIRC since most teams don't play their starters much, if at all, in those games. It's about McDermott and Beane trading away McCarron and not replacing him with a bonafide veteran QB until 5 weeks into the season because they apparently decided that Anderson was the only veteran QB worth pursuing ... I'm guessing because he was the only FA QB out there with a Carolina connection. The incompetence that McDermott's demonstrated with the QB situation underscores his unfitness to be a HC in the NFL in 2018 and in the future. IMO, McDermott was close to losing the locker room even before Allen got hurt. The ragged play on ST and the spate of pre-snap penalties on the offense against the Texans suggest that there was already a serious morale issue on the Bills -- and Peterman's latest performance may have been the nail in the coffin.

So, Kelvin Benjamin with his poor route running, lack of speed, and stone hands is a better WR than Robert Woods or Marquise Goodwin just because the Bills made the playoffs on a last second TD throw by Andy Dalton?

McDermott has a bottom five roster because that's what he wanted. He was hired with significant control over personnel decisions, and pretty much won total control of personnel decisions when he vanquished Whaley and sent him packing. He is the major reason that the QB situation is "majorly" screwed up so he should absolutely get fired for it. Accountability isn't just applicable to players. Russini doesn't even have to try "to make McDermott look bad". He's done that all by himself, most notably with his stubborn insistence that Nate Peterman remain on the team. He is NOT a NFL-caliber QB by any measure and shouldn't be on the active roster. Waiting around for five weeks to bring in a better backup QB than Peterman is inexcusable. Coaches have been fired for less. IMO, McDermott is on borrowed time unless Allen can come back before he loses the locker room and the Bills start getting blown out every out.

I can see where you're coming from, and I agree with you about many fans changing their tunes after the fact. However, my point is that the people who make personnel decisions do so without regard to fans' opinions -- or should make them without to regard to fans' opinions. With the Bills, I'm not sure that's true. Since Russ Brandon was handed control of the team in 2006, the Bills have frequently made personnel decisions based on how those moves would impact ticket sales. I think the signing of Mario Williams and drafting EJ Manuel (from a simply terrible QB draft class from top to bottom) were both examples of that. I think that Brandon's sticky fingerprints remain all over the current Bills team even after he was fired. Neither McDermott nor Beane would have even been considered without having Brandon's prior approval.

Totally agree. I think McDermott is a good game day HC, and his judgement of defensive talent is pretty good. On the offensive side, however, he simply sucks at talent evaluation of both coaches and players. Saying that Daboll is better than Dennison is simply saying one's noxious crap and the other's slightly less noxious smelling crap. That the Bills drafted a first round QB but didn't bother to upgrade the QB coach demonstrates how little McDermott cares about the offensive side or about developing his rookie QB. Hell, the Bills didn't even get around to bringing in a bonafide veteran QB until five weeks into the season when Peterman utterly failed as the starter in the season opener. Essentially, McDermott and his henchman Beane are pretty much expecting Allen to sink or swim on his own. I don't expect the Bills to seriously improve the team around him either because they'll use the excuse that they have so many holes on defense and special teams, which in McDermott's universe, are infinitely more important than the offense. I don't we'll see much on offense in the offseason. McDermott doesn't care about the offense, and even if he decided for some reason to go on an offensive FA spending spree, I don't think that any first rate offensive players (nor many second rate ones, either) will be willing to come to the Bills because of McDermott's Neanderthal offensive philosophy.

Why is it "bizarre" for the Raiders but not for the Bills? McDermott calls the shots while Beane does his bidding.

Do you watch any NFL football games other than the crappy ones the Bills play? Have you bothered to watch Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold, or Josh Rosen actually play? Have you even bothered to watch their highlights? Did you bother to watch CJ Beathard, a third round rookie QB drafted in 2017 who has only a few more starts than Allen, play in MNF? He threw 2 -- count 'em, 2! -- TDs to Bills reject Marquise Goodwin, and his team almost beat the Packers in Lambeau. Allen has a long, long way to go to reach the level of his peers, and I doubt that the current Bills regime is even capable of developing a young QB -- or any offensive player actually.

^^^ Of course reddogblitz is serious. According to the Bills faithful cheerleaders, any player that the Bills sent packing or that the Bills passed on in the draft to take another "project" is trash unless his team wins every out, even when the current Bills roster is filled with scrubs like it is this season because we all know that "next year the Bills have X $$$ for FAs and X draft picks" and the Bills will load up on superstars and win the SB.

Absolutely. Woods is not only talented, he's a gamer. Who, exactly, did you consult to determine "everyone said the Rams gave him too much"? The Pegulas? Russ Brandon? Jim Overdorf? Doug Whaley? Sean McDermott? More importantly, why do you care so much about saving the Pegulas a few millions by replacing quality players with trash players just to save some $? It's not like the Bills are giving fans a break on tickets because they put a crappy product on the field. I am so damn sick of seeing players whom the Bills (and their loyal cheerleaders) didn't think were "worth the money" going to other teams and flourishing. This isn't something that just started with McDermott and Beane, but has been going on for decades, especially under Russ Brandon's rule. That's the foundation of the real "Bills culture": money over talent. That's why McDermott is the Bills HC with control over personnel except where various Bills FO bean-counters have a say and Beane is subservient to McDermott. What's there to be positive about with the Bills in 2018? The offense is even more offensively bad than usual even when Allen was healthy. The vaunted defense may be great statistically but it's just as unable to come up with big stops/turnovers late in games when needed to secure wins as the crappy Ds that Rex Ryan fielded. For all the hype about emphasizing ST skills that McDermott spews, the Bills ST are more liabilities than assets. How the hell is any of this all that different than the previous 2 decades of Bills ineptitude? Boring, unwatchable, ineffective offense. Unclutch defense. Crappy ST. Same old Bills.

Wood and Goodwin also didn't buy into "the Process" which they apparently demonstrated by simply wanting to be paid market rate for young veteran WRs with their talent level.

It's NOT about just adding offensive players. It's about evaluating offensive talent so that you pick/pursue the right offensive players to fit your team's offensive philosophy and needs. That presupposes that the people/person in charge have a viable offensive philosophy. McDermott doesn't. He doesn't value or believe in building a good offense, just one that won't lose games for his defense. That's a losing philosophy in the modern NFL where teams need to have at least some kind of passing offense in order to have any real chance of success.

It's actually not even Nate Peterman's fault that he keeps sucking. He would certainly like to be a whole lot better, but he just doesn't have an NFL caliber arm, and the Bills coaches refuse to accept that. He should be a practice squad player or the third QB on the active roster, not the starter or the primary backup. The cluelessness of McDermott and Company about offensive football in general and QBs in particular is simply beyond belief.

Except that you are upset. You may no longer get "upset anymore" by the crappy teams that the Bills continue to put on the field year after year, but you obviously get "upset" with posters who still care enough about the team to complain about it. Why is that? My guess is that you're a "my way or the highway" kind of guy just like McDermott: because you're good with the Bills playing crappy, everybody else should be okay with it, too -- or they should just "shut up".

The Pegulas need to do this, or this team will continue to be a disaster for a whole lot more than just 4 years. They will never become a top echelon team as long as McDermott is HC because of his lack of interest/knowledge of offensive football, but if he's allowed to continue to mismanage player personnel as he has for the last 2 years, it will take 4 or 5 years after he's gone just to bring the team talent, especially on the offensive side, up to the NFL average.

This has always been my take on him, too. I would add Bortles into that same group, and maybe Winston, too. They are just good enough that their teams can not afford to let them walk, but they always come up short in actual games.

Peterman should not have been the Bills backup last season or this one because he was absolutely not ready to play. Maybe he shouldn't have even been drafted as high as he was since he lacks an NFL caliber arm. Maybe if he was afforded time to learn the nuances of pro football and been introduced slowly into game action (as in garbage time), he might have eventually figured out how to compensate for his physical shortcomings and become a modest backup QB. Now, I don't think he has any chance of doing that at all simply because McDermott had the need to "prove" that he was right about whatever stupid point he was trying to make ("football character" trumps talent perhaps?) by throwing Peterman into the fire.

I have questioned McDermott and Beane's competence about anything to do with offensive football since last TC when, after letting Woods and Goodwin walk in FA, they traded away Watkins, too, essentially stripping the offense of all its NFL caliber WRs and all its ability to stretch the field. At this time (even before Sunday's game), I have become convinced that McDermott not only doesn't care about offensive football but that he views it as a necessary evil, most especially that new-fangled invention called the forward pass. He apparently thinks to resurrect the 2005 Bears that went to the playoffs with a great defense, a great running game, and a rookie QB ... or maybe he wants to resurrect the 1973 Bills that rode rookie QB Joe Ferguson feeding OJ Simpson the ball on nearly every play (to the tune of 2003 rushing yards for OJ) to a 9-5 record. Whatever the motivation, McDermott and his henchman Beane are clueless about how to build a modern NFL offense. They don't value offensive football, and moreover, McDermott seems to be more interested in players' character or attitude than in their talent. Sorry, Sean, but work ethic and "buying into" your outmoded offensive philosophy do NOT trump talent.

I'm not shocked. I'm angry that McDermott and Beane spent so much on a first round QB and then set him up to fail by doing just about everything they could possibly do to insure he fails. If you go out and buy a brand new shiny Mustang, are you going to park it out on a narrow side street or are you going to protect your investment by renting a garage?

McDermott took over pretty much total control over personnel since before the 2017 draft. I believe when he was hired, he was supposed to share personnel selection with Whaley (that's sort of how it worked since Whaley was hired). Sometime between his hiring and the draft, McDermott won the power struggle, and Whaley was essentially a lame duck for the 2017 draft, being fired the next day. The FAs the Bills picked up before the 2017 draft generally have the "feel" of Whaley and the "old" Bills scouts ... bargain priced FAs who played pretty well. Think Hyde, Poyer, E Gaines (whom the Bills didn't bother to re-sign but who is playing decently for his new team). Even Ducasse wasn't a bad pick up since he was added to be depth at the G position behind Miller. The 2017 draft was McDermott's with apparently input from some of his pals already on board. The 2018 FAs and draft class belong to McDermott and the new scouts who were mostly refugees from Carolina. Beane is not a personnel guy, so I think he's the one charge with actually making the deals and dotting is and crossing ts for McDermott rather than deciding which players to bring in or send packing.

Minor point, but the Carpies also won that game ...

I never had any faith in the Carolina crew. It's not like Carolina has won 5 Super Bowls in this century ... or any other century, either.

The whole front office and coaching staff don't look really bad. They are really bad ... just like they've been again and again over the decades. In fact, if I didn't know it was 2018, I'd swear it was 2001 or 1985 or 1971 or 1968. 2018 has the feel of being about as bad as any of those.

Given McDermott and Beane and their scouts' wondrous ability to judge offensive talent, I doubt that those "wholesale changes to the offense" will result in significant improvement in offensive performance, especially since McDermott, Daboll, Castillo, Robiskie, and the rest of the current offensive coaches are still here. Swapping out stinky crap for slightly less stinky crap doesn't change any of it into treasure.