SoTier

You're very good at twisting what critics of the Bills say when you can't refute them honestly with facts. What I wrote was, "The most NFL successful teams don't hire inexperience HCs, give them control of personnel, and then hire inexperienced GMs without experience in managing personnel to do their bidding." Comparing what the Ravens did to the Bills are doing is a f$#&ing joke. In fact, it is the exact opposite, which may be why the Ravens have won 2 SBs and fielded playoff teams with regularity while the Bills missed the playoffs for 17 straight years in that same time span. FYI... Ozzie Newsome was the VP of Player Personnel (defacto GM) back in 2000 when the Ravens won their very first Super Bowl. John Harbaugh wasn't hired as Baltimore's HC until 2008, and he was not given control of player personnel. That remains squarely in the hands of Ozzie Newsome, who is retiring after this season ... and he'll be succeeded by his assistant GM next year. The Ravens (formerly the Cleveland Browns) has never had the HC in charge of player personnel, and have gone 190-162 with 2 Super Bowl wins in the 22 years since they moved to Baltimore. Apparently former owner, the late Art Modell, learned his lesson about giving personnel control to HCs after his experience with Bill Belichick (36-44, 1 playoff appearance in 5 seasons) as defacto GM during the Browns (later Ravens) last years in Cleveland. Modell promoted Newsome from Director of Pro Personnel with the move to Baltimore, and there he's been ever since while the Ravens have gone through three coaching regimes: Ted Marchibroda (3 years), Brian Billick (9 years) and John Harbaugh (10 years). Billick was fired IIRC because his teams didn't perform up to snuff despite a SB win, and rumors persist in the NFL that Harbaugh will get the axe if his team doesn't at least make the playoffs this year. How is that anything like the Pegulas hiring McDermott, a rookie HC and giving him control of player personnel, and then hiring Beane, who was in charge of logistics or facilities or whatever as assistant GM in Carolina, to do McDermott's bidding?

Good post. However be prepared to be attacked by the resident Bills cheerleaders who take it as their mission in life to refute any criticism of whatever stupid moves McDermott and/or Beane make or have made ... Well you're right but not in the way you think. It's the same old Bills manure show that we've seen for the last twenty years, just new names and faces for the incompetents. Groy was playing between Incognito and Miller when all three were playing in a blocking scheme that suited their skill sets in 2016. He only played in 1 game last year in the new blocking scheme. It's playing between Ducasse and Miller that's the issue. Miller played beside Mills in 2016. Miller struggled in the current blocking scheme last season, which is why he was benched last season. That may be true of Mills as well. Again, that's on Dennison and Castillo who took a decent OL from 2016 and decided to force them into their own system even though the Bills continued to have a run-first offense.

The most NFL successful teams don't hire inexperience HCs, give them control of personnel, and then hire inexperienced GMs without experience in managing personnel to do their bidding.

Others' bigotry doesn't excuse yours ... or make it acceptable.

Maybe the Bills should have thought ahead in 2017 and taken Mahomes or Watson rather than trading back. When the opportunity to draft a franchise QB presents itself, a smart organization acts while an incompetent one trades back and takes a DB.

FYI, how an OLer plays in games is influenced by how well or poorly the OLer(s) beside him play. That's why teams can have decent/good OLs even when not all the OL personnel are particularly good. Furthermore, like all football players, OLers are better at doing some things than others. Between 2016 when Groy played 7 games for Pro Bowler Eric Wood and 2018 when he was named starting center, the Bills OL underwent a major transformation which significantly undermined its effectiveness, including a new OL coach, Juan Castillo, and a new blocking scheme that the OLers struggled to adjust to. In 2016, Groy played between Pro Bowl LG Richie Incognito and promising rookie RG John Miller under OL coach Aaron Kromer who used a blocking scheme that suited the lineman the Bills had. In 2018, Groy is playing between career back RG Vlad Ducasse who was moved to LG and RG John MIller who struggled in OL coach, Juan Castillo's, blocking scheme last year. Miller never really adjusted as he was benched early on and never challenged Ducasse for the starting position. Groy played in 1 game in 2017 in Castillo's scheme, so there's no evidence that he adjusted to the new blocking scheme any better than Mtiller. It's entirely possible that the only reason Groy and MIller are starting is because the dogs the Bills signed in FA are even worse.

28-7 at the 2 minute warning for those of you can't watch the game.

The Bills' talent level is expansion level, so how are they THAT dissimilar to an actual expansion team?. McDermott and Beane are the ones who need to get their heads out of their butts. Groy was an UDFA who bounced around various teams' PS until the Bills signed him in 2015. He was never good enough to challenge Wood in his tenure with the Bills. That he's better than Russell Bodine doesn't imply that Groy is a starting caliber player but simply demonstrates just how poor a signing Bodine was.

Absolutely. IMO, he shouldn't have been on the roster in 2017, and shouldn't be on the roster this season. At best he might become a backup QB, but that would be after he'd hung around the NFL for a few years on the practice squad. He doesn't have a good enough arm to ever be a starter for an NFL team. At present, he doesn't have the experience and knowledge to make him a realistic backup prospect, either. He's played okay against other backups in preseason, but he's clearly not up to playing QB against first teamers when games count. I'm completely mystified how an NFL HC can not see that and name him the starter -- twice.

You might try reading the article again, only this time for comprehension, not just to find ammunition to blast "the media". Sherman criticized using so many picks to get only a QB and a MLB when there were so many holes that needed to be addressed and weren't.

Sherman pretty much said most of the same things I've been saying since the end of last season. BTW, do they even have a practice squad player who can impersonate a QB if Allen or Peterman gets hurt?

It will take even more amazing coaching for McDermott to get this year's edition to 4 wins. I think the Bills current roster is as bad as the Bills 2009 roster, which was four years into Jauron's run. As I said, I think McDermott is a good game day coach, but giving him personnel control was stupid when he had no previous HC experience and no experience coaching offense. I'm never in favor of HCs have control over players, even experienced ones, because they tend to have a short-term view whereas good GMs take a longer term view. For example, Belichick has been very successful while having control of the roster but almost all of the success rests on Brady and the revolving door of FA role players that the Pats bring in with regularity. They haven't been very successful at drafting since Scott Pioli left, although somebody in the organization does know how to spot OL talent because they do seem to find good OLers in the draft pretty regularly.

I agree. Peterman really doesn't have an NFL arm, so his ceiling is probably, at best, a career backup. He should have been on the practice squad last season, and probably this season, too. I'm still convinced that the Bills should have just kept Taylor and let Allen develop before they put him in on the front line.

They also went out and signed Whitworth, Cinci's long time LT, in FA. IOW, the Rams gave Goff better protection and better targets. The improved OL enabled Gurley to run wild. This year they added more talent on both sides of the ball, which is key, because even great offensive teams can't depend on putting up 30 or 40 points a game. In today's NFL, between the salary cap and high player salaries, successful HCs coaches need to be exactly that because teams that want to win consistently can't afford to get rid of a talented DT and incurr a $13+ million dead cap hit just because he and the HC or his DC don't see eye to eye. Make a good hire in the first place works for me. That's where there needs to be some kind of "process". The Bills have never really done that, and the Pegulas aren't any better than Wilson in that regard. My guess is that Terry Pegula doesn't hire key personnel for his enterprises simply on a whim like he did Rex Ryan. I also doubt he turns over full control of any of his enterprises/projects to people who've never held similar jobs before like he did with McDermott and Beane.

Jauron was an incompetent game day coach, and McDermott is infinitely better. However, Jauron was not nearly as ruthless as McDermott has been in getting rid of players to bring in "his guys". It wasn't until 2009 that Jauron succeeded in gutting the team. It's barely been a year and a half since McDermott was hired, and the team is as talentless, perhaps even more so, than Jauron's 2009 roster. I'd say that makes McDermott worse than Jauron.

I have no problem with McDermott as a HC. I would prefer him to be less conservative myself but I think he's capable of getting the most out of the talent he's got. In that he's probably significantly better than Levy. I think that if he had had the teams that Levy had, he'd have brought at least one Lombardi to Buffalo. However, giving him control of personnel has already proven disastrous. He absolutely seems unwilling to tolerate players who don't fit his narrow mold, as the trading of Watkins and Dareus last season demonstrated. Both trades had serious negative consequences for the team on the field in 2017, and the Dareus trade saddled the 2018 team with a huge cap hit as well as necessitating a major investment in a new DT that prevented the Bills from addressing other needs in FA. Beane's handling of the personnel e v a l and acquisition, even in his short tenure, is seriously suspect. The result is that in less than about a year and a half, McDermott and Beane have taken a middle of the pack roster in need of upgrades and turned it into an expansion-team level roster that resembles Swiss cheese. In this respect, McDermott is worse than even Dick Jauron who took about 3 seasons to gut the Bills roster.

If McDermott really felt that getting a QB was an "absolute necessity", why didn't he grab Mahomes or Watson in 2017 when the Bills had the 10th overall pick? Having won the power struggle with Whaley, he ran the 2017 draft, and he traded back to take a DB and get an extra first rounder in 2018, which is nice but a team doesn't build a winning team by missing opportunities, especially when obtaining a better QB is an "absolutely necessity", and McDermott missed a big opportunity. Of course, taking Mahomes or Watson would have eliminated McDermott/Beanes favorite excuse that they had to trade away current talent in order to move up to draft a QB. AMEN!!!!

It says that at least he has potential to get better because he's so raw and a rookie. That's better than Ducasse, Bodine or Newhouse.

Peters is a two time All Pro and a nine time Pro Bowler who has come back twice from devastating injuries (Achilles and ACL). In his prime, he was acknowledged as the best LT in the NFL, and even at the end of his career, he's still embarrassingly better than any OLer the Bills have ever had before or since. He's one of the greatest LTs in the NFL since the merger. Mack's a newbie compared to Peters. When his career's finished, we'll see how he compares to the greatest DEs in the NFL since 1970.

This reply is disingenous, and it hardly proves that McDermott isn't ultra-conservative. The Bills had many other options for a veteran QB than simply keeping Taylor or trading Taylor and going with Peterman. McDermott and Beane chose to go with Peterman rather than with Taylor, McCarron or another veteran QB. The same with the OC options. The choice wasn't just keep Dennison or go with Daboll. There were numerous OC candidates with much better credentials -- ie, real success as NFL OCs -- than Daboll.

Facts: Marcell Dareus started for the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday. Stephon Gilmore started for the NE Patriots in the last SB. He had an INT for the Pats against the Texans on Sunday. Cordy Glenn is now Cincinnati's starting LT. Nigel Bradham was a starter for the SB Champions Philadelphia Eagles in 2017. Woods caught 56 passes for 781 yards and 5 TDs in 12 games with the LA Rams in 2017. He caught 3 passes for 37 yards in his first start for the Rams in 2018. Marquise Goodwin caught 56 passes for 962 yards and 2 TDs in 2017 for San Francisco. Sammy Watkins caught 39 passes for 593 yards and 8 TDs for the LA Rams in 2017. He caught 3 passes for 21 yards in his first start with the 2018 KC Chiefs. Preston Brown is the starting MLB for the Bengals in 2018. Ronald Darby started for SB Champions Philadelphia Eagles in the 2017 Super Bowl.

^^ ^^ Adept at drafting? White is a nice pick, and Dawkins may become a good LT but nobody else from the 2017 draft is even promising. Milano is an undersized LB who wouldn't be a starter on many other NFL rosters ... but spending 2 picks to get Zay Jones and wasting a fifth round pick on Peterman makes the 2017 draft look pretty crappy already even though it's still too early to judge 2017. Since Allen, Edmunds, Phillips, and Johnson have played in exactly 1 NFL game, nobody knows how good -- or bad -- they'll turn out to be. As for Teller, the supposed "potential starting guard," he wasn't even active for the game. When these guys have been in the league for 3 years or so, then you can fairly judge if a draft is good, bad or indifferent. Of course, part of judging a HC/GM's drafting prowess is how decisions. For instance, many Bills fans crucify Whaley for trading up in 2014 to get Sammy Watkins when he could have taken another top WR like OBJ or Jarvis Landry who were both available at the Bills original spot, but they conveniently ignore that trading up to get Jones when better prospects like JuJu Smith-Schuster would have been available may be even worse if Jones turns out to be a bust. Moreover, evaluation of McDermott/Beane's drafting prowess will not only be judged by whether or not Allen develops into a franchise QB, but it also upon how good Patrick Mahomes, DeShaun Watson, and Josh Rosen -- all QBs McDermott/Beane could have taken instead of Allen -- turn out compared to Allen. ^^ Pot, meet Kettle. Calling people who dare to disagree with your views "trolls" is hardly "a general kindness". In fact, the OP has been repeatedly attacked, insulted, and mocked by posters who disagree with him/her in this thread while only 2 or 3 "positive" posters actually attempted to refute what he had to say in his original post.

The Minnesota Vikings would beg to differ. Check out their record since 2000 ... and then see who was under center for them. Except for bringing in Favre for a season or two at the end of his career, their QBs have mostly been mediocre. Last year, they were a game short of going to the Super Bowl with backup Case Keenum as their QB.

They were impressive. If they continue to play like that, the Bills opportunities to even smell a win this season have shrunk from 6 (Indy, Titans, Jets, Miami) to 4.

My guess is that while you may not be a troll, this entire thread is certainly a troll thread. The "debacle on Sunday" wasn't a fluke, and pretending it was is disingenuous. And FYI, you aren't going to shame or intimidate me into silence about how McDermott and Beane have screwed the pooch over these past two years.