SoTier

You are assuming that because Manuel ended up being a bust that his play sucked from the very beginning and because Allen has done well in his first two starts that he's going to be successful. That's not how things go -- as numerous posters have shown by their examples. It takes about 3 years to determine the quality of a starting QB, and that evaluation can be distorted by a number of factors, including coaching and team talent. Furthermore, it's not as simple as either a QB is great or he's a bust. Very few starting QBs in the league are great, and the busts don't last long as starters, so the majority of starting QBs are on a spectrum from very good to mediocre to solid-backup-but-not-really-a-starter. I'd put guys like Tannehill, Carr, Winston, Mariota, Keenum, Cousins, Smith, Prescott all in this middle group. Complicating matters is the fact that QBs can look really good or really bad for a short time or an extended period, frequently because of the team around them and coaching. The definitive example of this, of course, is ol' FitzMagic himself, but JP Losman had a respectable season in 2006 and looked to be on his way to being a decent NFL QB before the wheels fell off his cart.

The problem is that, in reality about half of all first round QBs are busts -- they'll never be better than expensive backups. Even for consensus first pick QBs, 20% fail. Add in the first rounders who aren't busts but are disappointments (I'd put both Mariota and Winston in this category), and the chances of getting a true franchise QB is probably maybe 3% (1 out of 32) since most drafts yield, at best, only 1 excellent QB, and great ones are even more rare. Some drafts, like 2002, 2007, and 2013, don't produce even 1 mediocre QB. What happens if there is no potential franchise QB to draft as your current franchise QB is at the end of his contract? What if your guy is only in his fourth year, and you see this great QB to draft ... but if you do, then you'll have to trade your starter early or waste a year with your new QB. This theory is simply unrealistic.

I'm not sure that McDermott and Beane understand the very basic offensive concept that even the greatest QBs need protection and targets. If they don't believe that, then they should ask Tom Brady. If they do, they don't act like they do because they seem to be totally disinterested in really doing anything about providing their QB with either ... and this goes all the way back to the FA period in March. Maybe that's the real reason that the Bills have such sucky WRs: it's the nature of WRs to be primadonnas, and the better they are, the more likely they are to want opportunities to catch the ball. Good WRs who are team-first guys are few and far between, although it's easier to convince them to be team first guys when they're on winning teams like the Chiefs, Eagles or Pats. Coaching can't compensate for lack of talent.

The Bills have been claiming that they can't "afford" to keep the best players they developed because of "the salary cap" for the last 20 years while numerous other teams have repeatedly managed to do just that. Some teams have built and maintained dynasties during that period. Others have built juggernauts loaded with expensive players that have produced multiple successful playoff seasons. Most other NFL teams have at least had a few seasons where they won more than 9 games. The Bills haven't done that yet in the 21st century ... and even with new ownership, new coaching, new FO organization, they are still trotting out the same lame excuses which their fans faithfully repeat to defend the same old manure wrapped in new paper. No, the Bills couldn't afford to keep Goodwin, Woods, and Watkins, but they certainly could have afforded to keep one ... and their WR corps would be 100%, maybe 1000%, better than the excrement they've got out there now -- and if they didn't waste so much cap space on players Beane brought in and then shuffled out, they would have more $$ to invest in better players.

ROTFLMAO! Who's fault is that????? Who didn't want/care that Goodwin or Woods re-signed? Who drafted Zay Jones? Who traded away Watkins and traded for Benjamin? Who traded for Coleman rather than waiting for him to be cut and wasted $3.5 million in dead cap space? Who collected the rest of the scrubs that make up the Bills WR corps?

Another disingenuous Bills cheerleader making excuses for McDermott's poor decisions with personnel. You can pretend this is about scrubs who aren't on the current roster but you -- and every other knowledgeable Bills fan -- knows this is a reference to the three top class WRs the Bills didn't re-sign or traded away in 2017: Goodwin, Watkins, and Woods and were replaced with the slow, stone-handed bunch the Bills scraped up from among the NFL's worst scrubs. Since you seem to have "forgotten" that these WRs were Bills pre-McDermott, I'll remind you that last season, the three WRs the Bills got rid of all blossomed with their new teams: Marquise Goodwin caught 56 passes (53% of targets) for 962 yards and 2 TDs; Watkins caught 39 passes (56% of targets) for 593 yards and 8 TDs; Robert Woods caught 56 passes (66% of targets) for 781 yards and 5 TDs. This season they've all continued to shine. In fact on Sunday, Goodwin, Watkins, and Woods had 4 TDs among them.

28-17 Packers. Playing at home after a road loss and seeing what the Bills did to Minnesota will eliminate any chance that the Packers sleep walk through this ×game.

That's not correct. Peters' sheer athleticism in a man his size was impressive, but he didn't really have the speed or hands to be more than a low-end NFL TE which is why the Bills OL coach at the time convinced him to try out at OT ... and the rest is, as they said, history. Maybe the posters who suggest that Foster switch to DB are on to something.

One of the criticism of Luck in the past is that he tried to throw long too much, and the Indy coaching staff did little to curb that tendency. My guess is that Reich is trying to make Luck into a more disciplined -- and more effective -- QB who depends less on raw talent and more on intelligence, patience, knowledge, etc. Most successful QBs today aren't throwing lots of passes that travel long distances through the air.

I'm not "being angry". I'm skeptical. McDermott/Beane are 10-10, including a playoff loss. Including ass-kickings by LA Chargers twice, New Orleans, New England twice, and Baltimore. Including losses to Carolina, New England, Jacksonville and Baltimore in which all the Bills could muster in each game was a FG. That's not exactly impressive but pretend it is if it fits your fantasies.

Soooooo what? A single win after two horrible losses in which the team was totally out-classed doesn't give McDermott and Beane redemption although you're free to anoint them "great" if you want.

It was 1 game, so no, it's not "time to revisit" anything just yet. Bojoquez and Lewis were very late pick ups from other team's waiver cuts/practice squads (both from NE I think), and they were never particularly lumped in with the rest of the FAs the Bills brought in during the off season. They may turn out to be the best of the Bills off-season FA signings. I don't think the criticism of the Ivory signing was so much about his on-field play as about his age and contract; most critics thought that the Bills should have gone with a younger RB. I think Ivory is an okay sub for McCoy, and he and M Murphy did a nice job replacing Shady against the Vikings. Does that last? Who knows? With Star and T Murphy, the problem I have with them is that they are very expensive for what the team gets: Star has not played well for a couple of years, and T Murphy has been injured and then suspended for PEDs for over a year IIRC, and their play has been "okay" at best. So, they're a couple of JAGs getting paid like they're top notch players at their positions. Finally, Phillip Gaines has been a liability at CB opposite White, so maybe it's just as well that he's injured and Lewis replaced him.

We have to hope that Allen continues to learn, too. At some point every QB stops learning and improving. For most it comes fairly early in their pro careers. For a few, it comes much later, which is why they're considered great. Actually, 27-0 at the beginning of the third quarter is not an insurmountable lead for an offensively talented team like the Vikings. I expected the Vikings to come out in the third quarter and at least make it a game, and I was surprised that they never did. If they had scored a couple of TDs early in the third quarter, then the narrative for the remainder of the second half changes dramatically.

Amazing game! Congrats to the team! I really thought that the Vikes would come out in the second half and make it a game. That never happened. I think they didn't even get into the red zone until the fourth quarter.

Okay. That makes more sense. I thought that you were equating a team covering the spread as winning the game. Maybe to gamblers it is, but to team fans, it's sort of "whoopty doo".

There's no divide on the Bills because all of the scouts were fired shortly after Whaley got the axe and replaced with hand-picked pals of McDermott and Beane, mostly from -- surprise -- Carolina. IIRC, there was a report shortly after the Raiders traded Mack that Gruden's move caught the Raiders FO somewhat by surprise. I'm guessing that that report stemmed from this divide.

I thought of this while watching one of the football commentary shows last week and they were discussing Aaron Rodgers' bad knee. If the Bills crap the bed again against the Vikings, I wouldn't at all be surprised if Kizer started for the Packers when they play the Bills. First of all, while it's likely a player a team intended to rest would be inactive, there's no rule that he has to be. He could just not start. Secondly, there's a big difference between covering the spread and actually winning.

Point. Set. Match. Blaming the players for a team's failures is like blaming foot soldiers for losing battles rather the generals.

In order for the Bills to be like 2018 Bears in 2019, they have to can McDermott, give control of player selection to Beane, hire an offensive minded HC, and finally trade for Von Miller or some other game changer on defense. That ain't happening, which is probably just as well because after seeing the crap McDermott and Beane have put on the field in the form of FAs in 2018 and the stupid trades the Bills have made under Beane, putting Beane totally in charge of player personnel would make the Browns FO at their very worse look astute.

PFF's ratings of OLers and QBs seem to be seriously flawed because they consistently seem to rate lesser players higher than they ought to be and better players lower than they should be.

I totally agree with your assessment of Mayfield. I'm usually very reluctant to jump on the bandwagons of young QBs because so many fail to continue to develop and become true franchise QBs, but Mayfield's performance against the Jets was absolutely amazing. I've never seen any rookie QB -- or any QB in his first start -- come into a game and simply take it over.

If there's one thing that Bills fans know about, it's "not exactly a high caliber franchise" since they've been cheering for one every football season for the last 20 years. In your opinion. His teams have hung tough both last year and this so far, despite all the losses, and that's impressive. His teams have been well prepared. He's smart enough to hire two first rate coordinators. Coaches have different styles, and Hue's style may fit today's players -- especially younger players -- better than other some coaching styles. For the first time in his tenure in Cleveland, he's got talent on both sides of the ball. Bills fans have been brainwashed into thinking no WR is worth the going rate for top proven vets for their position. Well, now they've got their potential franchise QB and he has crap for a receiving corps.

It wouldn't be too hard to be better than most of the Bills OLers with the possible exception of LT Dion Dawkins.

This is an excellent post! Congrats! As I've said numerous times in the past, Allen has been set up to fail because the team around him is so bad. In any field, the individuals who succeed without some kind of support from family, friends, teammates, teachers, etc are very rare because no one exists in a vacuum.

The Bills get embarrassed again by giving up 30+ points in the first half while scoring a FG themselves. The Vikes work on honing their running game in the third quarter and give PT to their subs in the fourth, which keeps the score under 50. 48-10 Vikes. ********************************************************************* Holy crap!!! This has got to be the biggest upset in the NFL so far. Maybe in the entire season!