SoTier

IIRC, Whaley and Brandon were pals going back to their college days or something like that, which is probably why he was originally hired to assist Gailey. I think Whaley was on board with Brandon's "money ball" philosophy, and accepted the Bills weird organizational structure where the GM was pretty much subservient to the HC as well being dictated to by FO bean-counters.

I don't "expect every single move to pan out" but some offensive decisions panning out would be nice. I just love watching ex-Bills who weren't good enough to play for the Bills tearing up defenses on playoff teams like NE, Philly, LA, and KC. You obviously love waiting ... and waiting ... and waiting ... for the Bills to build an offense that's NOT lost in the 1980s. Enjoy the wait.

Numerous defensive minded HCs have put together good/great offenses. Belichick is probably the most notable. But there have been some other HCs from defensive backgrounds who have attempted to win by with strong defensives and run oriented offenses that didn't lose games. The 1985 Bears under Ditka are probably the prime example, but this is NOT the same NFL as in 1985 or even 2005 when the Bears went 11-5 with the same formula with rookie Kyle Orton under center. In 2018 when offense rules, and yet McDermott is trying to build a team to be competitive in 1985. McDermott's is the guy who makes the decisions on personnel, and these decisions say he's clueless or disinterested or both when it comes to the offense. He was the guy who chose Zay Jones over JuJu Smith-Schuster and traded up to get him. He was the guy who decided that he didn't want Sammy Watkins on his team which completed the total dismantling of the most talented WR corps the Bills have had in this century -- and filled the Bills WR corps with has beens, never weres, and low draft picks and UDFA rookies. He was the guy who was okay with replacing two top notch OLers with backups and bottom feeders and trading away the best LT the Bills have had since they traded away future HOFer Jason Peters just because they had a rookie LT who played decently. He's the guy who kept Peterman and allowed McCarron to be traded away just because Peterman looked good against scrubs in preseason. If those four moves don't convince you that McDermott isn't the guy to build a competitve team going forward, I'm not sure anything can.

That's pretty much been part of the Bills "culture" for decades. Chuck Knox left because of it. Bill Polian was fired because he had an issue with Litman, Ralph's son-in-law. Whaley wasn't really an independent GM as most teams have as I think he was either equal to or subservient to the HC du jour. Brandon always had his sticky fingers in personnel matters going back to 2006 when he hired Jauron and installed Marv Levy as a figurehead GM. Probably Overdorf, too.

This isn't hard to figure out. It's called putting your QB in a position to succeed, which is a tried and true strategy (see LA Rams, KC Chiefs, Philadelphia Eagles, etc). The Bills drafted WRs Robert Woods (2nd) and Marquise Goodwin (3rd) in 2013, OTs Cyrus Kouandijo (2nd) and Seantrel Henderson (7th) in 2014, and OG John Miller (3rd) in 2015. He also signed LG Richie Incognito and TE Charles Clay in 2015 as UFAs and traded for LeSean McCoy. Even though Manuel was a bust, the offensive players Whaley assembled enabled the Bills to field mid-pack offenses with Kyle Orton and Tyrod Taylor at QB until McDermott decided talent on offense was apparently superflous.

You aren't the only who has "lived it" in the corporate world, dude, and you're just incorrect when you claim that you "developed it" because a corporate/organizational culture can't be "developed" by a single individual or even several individuals like a facilities maintenance plan or a new software program. It develops pretty much on its own over time from a series of interactions between management and employees. What you've described in your past posts seems much more like a corporate philosophy or a mission statement (for non-profits) which also brings customers/clients into the equation rather than culture, although the corporate/organizational culture can certainly impact customers/clients.

This is pretty much the accepted definition/description of corporate/organizational culture. Culture develops endemically over time based on the actual interactions between management and employees, not on management edicts or pep talks. Like a society's culture, a corporate culture develops over a long time without a distinct beginning or end unless there's some cataclysmic event -- like a change of ownership of a football team -- that results in massive personnel changes at the very top of the corporate food chain which changes the way the organization is run. The Bills have a culture, but it's not at all what McDermott -- and his supporters on TSW -- claim it is. It's pretty much the same culture that developed under Russ Brandon's aegis since he was put in charge of the Bills in 2006 after Tom Donahoe was fired. When Pegula purchased the Bills in 2013, if he wanted to change the team's direction, he should have parted ways with Russ Brandon, Doug Whaley, Jim Overdorf, etc and brought in his own people from the top down. Instead, he kept Brandon and his top henchmen. McDermott and Beane were hired because they fit the Bills culture that had developed under Brandon, which is why the Bills seem to being doing similar things under the new regime that they did under the previous regime and the one before that ... The real difference is that Beane and the scouting department he assembled after Whaley and the old scouts were fired seem to be incompetent as talent evaluators which accentuates McDermott's failure to field a competitive NFL team because of his "my way or the highway" philosophy.

Who says that this was a "once in a generation QB deep draft that doesn't come around often except for media draft mavens and draft picks' agents spreading hype? Every single one of the top five prospects in 2018 had serious flaws, and because of that, there wasn't a consensus #1 pick. Between 2000 and 2016, there have been four other drafts that yielded at least four first round QBs prospects: 2003, 2004, 2011, 2012. Carson Palmer came out of the 2003 as the #1 consensus pick. Eli Manning, Phillip Rivers, and Ben Roethlisberger all came out of 2004, with Eli being the consensus #1. In 2011, Cam Newton, again the #1 consensus pick, was the only successful QB. In 2012, only the #1 consensus pick, Andrew Luck, and Ryan Tannehill found success from among the first round picks*. So, in these supposedly "extra deep" QB drafts, only 7 of the 16 first rounders were/are decent NFL starters, which is about 44%. Since all of the consensus first rounders hit, only 3 of the other 12 first rounders were successful, which is a pitiful 25%, which means that how many highly rated (or more likely, highly hyped) QBs are in a draft class is irrelevant. It's totally on the quality of the QB prospects available, not how many prospects are available, because most drafts yield only 1 good or better QB. IMO, what is most troubling about the Bills draft in 2018 is that it appears that they decided to draft a first round QB well before they even knew what QBs would be available in the draft which suggests that they weren't looking at a specific prospect or two, but just "a first round QB". That smells just like the Bills decision to draft "a first round QB" in 2013 regardless of the quality of the prospects just to placate the fan base. In fact, the Bills signaled they were committed to drafting a first round QB in 2018 by trading away Taylor (in 2013, the Bills released Fitzpatrick just before the start of the new league year). That the Bills treated the offense as an afterthought during FA despite the loss of Wood and Incognito and that after they drafted Allen, they didn't draft another offensive player until almost the end of the fifth round further hints that they drafted Allen primarily to placate the fan base rather than as the cornerstone of a 21st century NFL offense. I'll reiterate what I've said elsewhere: Allen is being set up to fail by the decisions the McDermott and Beane have made in the past and are likely to make in the future. McDermott doesn't seem to value or understand offensive football, so I'm not at all hopeful that the Bills will invest either $$$ or high draft picks in offensive players. * The best QB of the 2012 draft is Russell Wilson who was finally taken in the 3rd round. Kirk Cousins, taken in the 4th round, ain't too shabby either, and Nick Foles, taken later in the 3rd round, is an excellent backup/average/low level starter depending upon the system he's in and the talent around him. The second-best QB in the 2011 draft turned out to be second rounder Andy Dalton.

The "fix" is to can McDermott and his henchman Beane. The Bills offensive and defensive performances this season attest to exactly how incompetent these two are.

What is this great plan??? Turning the clock back to the 1970s? They've made a good start. The current Bills are certainly as uncompetitive in the NFL as they were through most of the 1970s. ROTFLMAO. So, these clowns have spent 2 seasons getting ready to implement their great plan to turn the clock back to the 1970s? Got it. Bull manure! Since the Bills got rid of the last "my way or the highway" jackass (Dick Jauron) in 2009, they've had GMs who knew personnel (Nix and Whaley) and HCs who were at least smart enough not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The current regime is another "my way or the highway" HC with his 1970s mentality with control over personnel and a GM with no personnel experience -- and the sad state of the current Bills reflects that. The longer these two are in charge, the further the Bills will fall behind the rest of the NFL. Excuses, excuses, excuses.

Point 1: McVay tried to re-sign Watkins but KC offered more. Point 2: One good game against a flat team doesn't make a career. Milano is nothing special, and I'll stand by my statement that he might not make the rosters of many NFL teams. Point 3: The poster I questioned claimed that Pegula insisted on cutting cap commitments by the end of 2018. I don't believe that's true in any form. As I said, maybe Pegula wanted them to cut the amount the Bills actually spent on player salaries in 2018 and going forward, but that's not the same thing as "fixing the cap situation", whatever that means. , Except that the Jags, Rams and Eagles new HCs all kept their teams' best players and built around them, so that would be the opposite of McDermott and Beane. Hell, Marrone even replaced Bortles as his starting QB during 2017 preseason IIRC in order to put him on notice to get his act together -- and he did. And Dareus doesn't seem to have any trouble fitting into the Jags' "culture".

Probably not. Since the Bills will have the #1 pick, McDermott and Beane will trade the rest of their picks for the #8 pick so that they can draft a DE and another CB.

Who's fault is it that there's nobody else to start but Allen? I'll say what Dilfer was too circumspect to say: McDermott and Beane are not only setting up Allen to fail, they're using him as a fail-safe excuse to keep their jobs despite the awful team they've put on the field.

I don't buy your excuses. First off, where did you get the info that Pegula "exacted a promise to clean up the salary cap morass by the end of this year"? This is the first I've heard or seen a reference to anything such promise but maybe I missed this tasty gossip tidbit. Do you mean that maybe Pegula "exacted a promise to cut player salary cost by $x million by the end of 2018" since the Bills have one of the lowest, if not the lowest, actual player payrolls in the NFL primarily because they got rid of virtually all of their higher paid players and replaced them with bottom-feeder vets and rookies. Wood and maybe the strange situation with Incognito can be dismissed as "unforeseen" but all the other players who left the team were either not re-signed in FA (Gilmore, Goodwin, Wood) or traded away, resulting in huge savings in current salary but adding tens of millions to the dead cap space (which doesn't actually count against the Bills profitability). If you like what you've seen on defense so far, who am I to think you should expect more? I certainly do. The defense has looked better than the offense but that doesn't mean that it's all that good because the offense isn't even professional caliber. Aside from White, who from the 2017 draft is truly NFL starting caliber? Dawkins and Milano are starting because there's nobody better on the team. My guess is that they wouldn't be starters on most NFL teams, and Milano might not even make many teams regular rosters. As for Peterman, he's a waste of a roster spot, and your defense of him seems to indicate that you live in a fantasy world where every crappy pick/bottom feeder vet that McDermott and Beane foist on the team is a good choice. Since you like to accuse anybody who disagrees with your blind worship of McDermott and Beane as being a "troll", I have to ask: are you McDermott's mom or one of the Pegula's kids? McDermott and Beane seem to have real problems with their relationships with really talented players who are well-paid or who expect to be paid what they're worth. Meanwhile, coaches like Belichick, McVay, and Marrone seem to be able to build bridges to really talented players like Josh Gordon, Sammy Watkins, and Marcel Dareus.

Who's fault is it that they have $53+ million in dead cap space and gaping holes on both sides of the ball? Keeping Dareus would have kept them from being "gashed in the run game" last year and this -- and cut their dead cap space to about $40 million. Wood was 30 in 2017, and Incognito was 34 or 35. Maybe they should have drafted an OLer with the extra pick they gave up to move up to take Jones and taken some other WR -- I believe that Smith-Shuster might have still been available when the Bills would have picked. Groy was a career backup, but the reason he "fell apart" is likely because he's not playing the same blocking scheme that he played in 2016 when he looked at least semi-competent. That's on the coaching staff because it seems apparent that the Bills OLers still haven't come close to mastering the zone blocking system.

Sammy Watkins can catch passes. Benjamin would be the poster-boy for "stone handed WR" except that Zay Jones has on that.

What makes you think the Bills have a prayer of winning against the Titans? The Titans have a stout defense and an offense that's at least competent enough to score two or three times against a bad-to-mediocre defense like the Bills put on the field. The Bills have what? A good FG who'll likely not leave the bench except for half time.

I expected losses. I didn't expect ass-whippings every time out except when some opponent was in a trap game situation and didn't take the Bills seriously because of how badly they sucked in their previous outs. Can McDermott and Beane both, and their supposedly professional scouting staff, too.

Support was only "universal" for a "complete rebuild" in your own mind. Just because you jumped on the McDermott/Beane clownwagon from Day 1 and dismissed the opinions of many other fans who were skeptical or unsure about the current regime as being "stupid" or "negative" or "unrealistic" doesn't mean that they didn't exist. Get a clue. Not EVERYONE was on board with the BS that McDermott and Beane have been shoveling in the name of "planning for the future". Maybe you should check out the TSW threads on the Watson and Dareus trades. You'll find plenty of doubters in those threads, so don't even try to pretend that fan discontent with the McDermott/Beane clownshow is simply a response to the Bills being totally uncompetitive in 3 of their first 4 games, although there's that, too.

Stuff the "patience" bull manure where the sun don't shine. McDermott is a Jauron clone and Beane is his Stepandfetchit. If you think I want them gone, you're right and I make no bones about it. McDermott may be okay as a game coach, but his failure to select competent coordinators and assistants especially on offense, is making me think more and more that he's not up to being a HC. He and Beane are incompetent at team building as the sorry performances of the Bills so far this year attest, and giving those asshats control of player personnel has not only been a prescription for disaster, but it will doom the team going forward until they're both canned. The question is, how many more shut outs and blow outs will it take until Pegula pulls the plug on this clown show? It certainly can. The Bills went 9-7 in 2017 and finally managed a playoff appearance, and they seem destined for a 1 to 3 win season and a top 3 pick in 2018. McDermott/Beane spending "picks and dollars wisely" is a pipe dream. I can't wait to see how many picks they trade away and how much cap space they use on acquiring players who are then released or traded before the start of the regular season. If their "plan" is to build a defense first, then why did they waste so much talent and draft capital on a first round QB who is being set up to fail because he has no protection and no targets and no running game to help him have any real success? In case you didn't notice, their defense still isn't very good two years in -- and they've got numerous older vets like Kyle Williams and Lorenzo Alexander who are at about the end of their careers, so those holes will have to be filled next season. So, when exactly do the geniuses bother to get some help for Allen -- or do they assume that because he was a first round pick that he doesn't need to have help, that he can "carry" the offense all by himself?

What's laughable is your defense of McDermott's incompetence as a team builder by claiming he's building a "culture". The only "culture" that McDermott is "building" is a losing one.

It's amazing how virtually all those "non culturists" were most of the best players on the team -- Stephon Gilmore, Marquise Goodwin, Robert Woods, Sammy Watkins, Marcel Dareus, Cordy Glenn, even Tyrod Taylor, etc -- and the most of the "pro culturalists" that McDermott has brought in are busts, career backups, waiver wire/practice squad refugees, and other teams', especially Carolina's, rejects. Keep fantasizing about the juggerNOT that McDermott and Beane will build with that "100 mill cap space and 10 draft picks".

Mea culpa on confusing the guards. I knew that Ducasse was moved to the left side but the brain apparently wasn't totally in gear. I totally agree that the coaches rather than the players are the ones who have to "try harder", but there comes a time when the HC has to take the responsibility for poor game performance on himself. I'm not seeing that in a statement that essentially blames the players.

Except for Miller and Dawkins, the Bills OLers are bottom-level starters or career backups. They are what they are and what they've always been. Dawkins has taken a step backward after a decent rookie season playing beside Pro Bowler Richie Incognito instead of failed starter John Miller. Intimating that they could be better if only they tried harder is just so much bull manure. They simply aren't good enough to be better, no matter how hard they try.

LOL. Keep telling yourself that.