SoTier

Teams don't decide to obtain players without input from their scouting departments -- or they probably shouldn't. Player evaluation, both for college players and veterans, depends upon good scouting, and the Bills haven't been very so far that good with McDermott and Beane calling personnel shots. They hit on White and probably on Dawkins, but Jones looks like a bust in the making. The rest of the 2017 draft class hasn't shown much. It's really too early to judge the 2018 draft class but the 2018 FA signees are almost all terrible. Under Whaley, the Bills continually found success with bargain FA signings and trades as well as with draft picks outside the first round, which says that the Bills had a pretty good scouting department at the time.

Edmunds hasn't proven squat yet, but a good GM can find good and even great players outside of the first round. Maybe the Bills need better scouts. In fact, I'd say, that they definitely need better scouts.

Holding penalties and jumping off-sides on both sides of the ball are often the result of players being overmatched and trying not to get beat.

How is Allen supposed to show "signs of being a real honest to goodness franchise QB" when he's playing behind a crap-arsed OL and throwing to slow, stone-handed receivers???? McDermott and Beane have practically guaranteed that Allen is going to suck this season -- and probably into the future because I doubt that the Bills will be able to fix both problems, not with all the other holes that McDermott and Beane have created. He stopped a Giants' drive by sacking Eli and forcing a 4th down when the Giants seemed to be building some momentum on offense. How many sacks did Star have today? Damn right. Beats the crap out of perennial .125 - .1875 football. Dareus > Star. Taylor > Peterman. Glenn > Dawkins. Dawkins could have then been moved to RT, giving the Bills a much better OL than they have now.

Boo hoo! Whose fault is that except the current HC and GM who are incompetent in handling personnel matters? Maybe McDermott and Beane should have considered the dead cap implications of getting rid of Dareus ($13.6 million) before they gave him away to the Jags. He wasn't a locker room cancer; Frazier and McDermott failed to get the best out of him, although he seems to be flourishing again in the Jags DL rotation under Marrone. A good HC figures out how to get the best out of the very talented players on his roster, even if they don't necessarily get along well. The Bills also should have considered the cap implications of trading away Taylor ($7.6 million) and Glenn ($9.6 million).

Ah, the "wait 'til next year" line! That's what "trust the process" means from the Bills coaching staff and FO, just as it always has. Bills fans have been "trusting the process" for this entire century and all they've gotten for being true believers is 3 9-7 seasons, 1 playoff appearance, an embarrassing opening day loss in 2018, and another promise of the team being "better" next year.

I'm sure they'll take a 6th rounder for him when he dares to criticize McDermott or the FO, and all the McDermott/Beane cheerleaders will claim that Shady was an "underachiever" who "didn't want to be here". Watch it happen.

Bull manure. McDermott did coach the Bills to the playoffs in 2017, I'll give him that, but nothing else that he or Beane have done beside that demonstrate any competence at all in talent evaluation, in cap management or any understanding of how to build a winning football team. All those supposedly "underachieving" players are playing successfully for numerous other NFL teams, many of them playoff contenders, while they've mostly been replaced by non-NFL caliber scrubs. The Bills got relatively little in the 2018 draft for the bounty of draft picks collected and all the talent they gave up to get them. Their cap management has been non-existent, as their $52 million in dead cap money attests, as demonstrated by the Bills trading for Corey Coleman and adding $3.5 million to their dead cap money when they cut him a week or 10 days later. Spending numerous draft picks to move up take a first round QB and NOT provide him with a solid OL or decent receivers is further evidence of McDermott and Beane's incompetence.

Peterman isn't even a competent backup. All he is is a cheap backup. The Bills were determined to insure that whatever QB the Bills drafted in the first round would have no competition from any other QB on their roster long before the draft. Consequently, they traded away Taylor, and they signed McCarron, a career backup with very limited experience as a starter rather than pursuing a QB with more starting experience. Then they traded away McCarron, leaving them with Peterman and Allen which easily guaranteed that Allen would quickly inherit the starting job when Peterman crashed and burned. The Bills did something similar although less blatant in 2013 ... determining they were going to draft a first round QB early on, cutting Fitzpatrick (who threw for 400+ yards in a win today BTW), and winding up with a pair of UDFA scrubs complementing their rookie QB, but in 2013 the Bills actually signed a veteran QB, Kevin Kolb, to be the starter, but he was injured even before the first preseason game. I thought, with new ownership, that the manure the Bills spewed all over Bills fans under Ralph Wilson would become a thing of the past, but apparently not. New names and faces, but the Bills are still spewing the same old manure.

Since I also see McDermott as much like Jauron, I'll give you my reasons which are that both Jauron and McDermott were/are conservative, defensive-minded HCs who believed/believe that work ethic and team work trump talent. They both are "my way or the highway" coaches, and are more than willing to send talented players packing rather than put the good of the team ahead of having players who fit their mold around. They both play far too much not to lose rather than to win, although McDermott at least tries to win games rather than playing not to lose by too much. Both discount the importance of the offense, and both seem to prefer improve the defense with only token improvements to the offense. Both use their influence over personnel decisions to draft for need rather than talent. Both also rely heavily on players who played for them previously to fill team needs rather than giving younger/more talented players chances. McDermott is a significantly better game day HC than Jauron ever was, but the similarities are depressingly close. The AFC is really sucky again this season, so that might give the Bills some hope. Only the Pats and Steelers are considered real SB contenders. Most of the top teams in the NFL are in the NFC against this season.

"Unless they're really bad"? His QBs are Josh Allen, a raw rookie not yet ready to start in the NFL, and Nathan Peterman, a former fifth round draft pick whose experience consists of starting 2 games (but finishing neither) with 2 TDs and 5 INTs playing behind a crap OL and throwing to a receiving corps lacking speed and sure-handedness. Like Josh Allen, Daboll seems doomed to failure because of McDermott and Beane's attitude towards and/or understanding of offensive football. I figure that Daboll won't be fired after just one season because McDermott's already fired his first OC after one season ... unless McDermott gets fired himself.

The most notable recent advocate that was a believer that work ethic + teamwork trumped talent was Dick Jauron. In 10 years as a HC, he had a 60-82 win/loss record, 1 playoff appearance, 0 playoff wins. In his 4 years with the Bills, his teams won 24 games and lost 33, with each of his teams performing worse than the year before as he replaced talented players with "his guys". The crowning glory of his last losing season with the Bills before he was finally fired was a 6-3 loss at home to the Cleveland home, probably the most unwatchable games the Bills have ever played.

Keep telling yourself that ... The primary reason that the underperformed in 2015 and 2016 was coaching. Instead trying to salvage some of the talent the team had, the Bills couldn't wait to start dismantling the talent that was on the team, allowing its best DB and 2 of its 3 starting WRs walk away in FA and trading away its best WR and its 2nd best DB in preseason. These players were replaced with a first round rookie DB, a slow WR with chronic knee issues, and a couple of JAGs and numerous scrubs. That continued into 2018, so now the Bills have a virtually talentless roster that is going to take multiple drafts to rebuild if it ever does ...

In 2017, Stephon Gilmore, Robert Woods, and Marquise Goodwin all walked away in FA with McDermott as HC. Beane traded Sammy Watkins the year before his contract would have expired, and Ronald Darby 2 years into his rookie contract. In 2018, the Bills failed to re-sign Preston Brown and Seantrel Henderson, who while only a backup, was better than any of the scrubs the Bills currently have pretending to play LT except for Dion Dawkins.

Are you implying that Levitre wasn't healthy? That seems to be a favorite excuse that some fans make for the Bills' questionable move, but the fact is that Levitre started every Bills game during his four years with the Bills. He then went on to start 32 more games in 2 seasons with the Titans and another 32 more games in his first 2 seasons with the Falcons. In fact, the three games that Levitre missed in 2017 were the first 3 games he missed in his entire career ... and he's back to starting for the Falcons once again. He started 128 straight games for three teams. Most successful teams have a GM who's more than a glorified scout and scapegoat for a string of mostly less than competent HCs, which has been what the Bills have had since Tom Donahoe was fired in 2006 and Russ Brandon took control of the team.

Ah, yes. The Bills ALWAYS want to keep the best young players from the draft or as UDFAs that they develop, but they can't "afford" to keep them, so they let them walk rather than re-sign them or trade them away because the Bills "wouldn't have been able to re-sign them anyway" , and Bills fans applaud Bills management for making "the right move" ... again and again and again.

Except that the current regime seems to be emulating the old regime. The shedding of the best players rather than paying them, replacing good young veterans with bottom feeder FAs and rookies, drafting for need at the top of the draft while passing on better prospects because the incumbents at those positions were traded or allowed to walk in FA, ignoring the offense -- especially the OL -- has continued, so the ghosts of Ralph and Russ continue to haunt the Bills in the present. Only the names have changed. Jason Peters wanted to stay with the Bills until he found out that they tried to cheat him by low-balling him on his new contract and then they refused to renegotiate until he forced their hands with a hold out. Plain and simple, the Bills signed Peters to a contract that was modest even for a JAG RT rather than the Pro Bowl LT he had developed into. By the time they even offered him a new contract, Peters was done with the organization and announced that he would play out his contract but not re-sign. He was traded within days of the Bills finally offering him a new contract. "He didn't want to be here" was the line that the Bills fed to their sycophants in the media to try to save face with the fan base. Obviously they did their work pretty well since their propaganda continues to be defended by Bills apologists all these years later.

Except by the Bills. The Peters trade was easily the second worst trade in Bills history, only topped by the trading of QB Darryl Lamonica for a couple of scrubs from Oakland back in the 1960s. They also traded Cordy Glenn to move up to get Allen. If Dawkins doesn't continue to develop off his good rookie season or Allen doesn't become a top tier franchise QB, then they will have screwed the pooch again -- and any QB's success is pretty tightly linked to OL success, particularly LT. Ask Eli Manning about that.

Ah, the "players are greedy and selfish and want out of Buffalo" Bills apologists heard from early on.

Totally agree. I'm not at all surprised that the Bills were the overwhelming choice of the FO commentators to get the #1 pick in 2019, primarily because of the QBs and the OL. The Bills will be especially vulnerable to teams with strong pass rushes or explosive offenses, and they will a gauntlet of nasty pass rushes and/or explosive offenses pretty much all season: @Ravens, Chargers, @Vikings, @Packers, @Texans, Patriots, Bears, Jags, Lions, and @Patriots. The only possible victims seem to be the Titans, @Colts, @Jets, @Dolphins, Jets, and Dolphins. The strongest reason that I can give for the Bills not going 0-16 is that it's hard to do (I think it's only been done twice since the merger in 1970).

TBF it really doesn't matter. Dawkins struggled. Then he was injured for the third preseason game. Meanwhile, his linemates got beat like drums in game 3 until Cinci put in their second/third/fourth stringers, and weren't impressive against scrubs. The starting defense got ripped by Cinci's first stringers in game 3. I can see fans pretending poor performances in preseason don't matter but bravado by players in the face of such poor play is simply whistling past the graveyard. Since when is it "trolling" to point out facts? The OL play stunk against both Cleveland's and Cinci's first team defenses. Both McCarron and Allen were forced from the game. McCarron injured his collar bone while Allen banged his head on the turf complements of the Browns' and Cinci's pass rush. Did you watch those games? McCarron was getting dumped or scrambling all the time he was in there. The same with Allen in the first half against Cinci. What has been Beane and McDermott's response to the loss of Wood and Incognito? Bringing in a FA OC who couldn't even beat out Wood's backup plus adding a bunch of other scrub FAs who likely wouldn't make most NFL rosters. Trading away the team's veteran LT after letting the third string LT, Henderson, walk in FA. The Bills finally got around to drafting an OLer in the 5th round of the draft. Obviously, the OL was not any kind of priority. What was Dick Jauron's response to the Bills trading away Jason Peters in 2009? Jauron tried to force RT Langston Walker to play LT, and he promptly "retired". I think he came back to play for the Raiders later that season. At least in 2009 the Bills spent some draft capital on the OL, drafting Wood at the end of the first round and Andy Levitre in the 2nd or 3rd round .... .... and I think I should change my comparison of McDermott and Jauron: McDermott values/cares about the OL even less than Jauron did, something that I thought was impossible. The Bills went 5-11 that season, and Jauron was fired before the half way point IIRC.

McDermott's response to losing both Wood and Incognito quite suddenly in the off-season reminds me of nothing so much as Dick Jauron's response to the Bills trading Jason Peters in 2009: denial. That worked out well.

Poor OL play got AJ McCarren hurt in game 2. Poor OL play nearly got Josh Allen sidelined indefinitely with a concussion in game 3. The OL played so poorly in both games that McDermott played the starters longer than he had originally intended. How could the team watch game film and not see that they were not playing well?

IIRC, the last time Dawkins played in the preseason, he got embarrassed by Miles Garrett. The team's performance on the field is exactly what inspired the Bills "NFL-long" Super Bowl odds.

I totally agree on your points about Brandon and Ryan. I too hope that they learned from their mistakes but I have a niggling suspicion that Beane is a Russ Brandon "money ball" disciple. The way the Bills have handled the re-signing (or lack of) of the good young vets they've developed hasn't changed a bit from the way they were handled during the Brandon regime, and allowing the HC to dictate to the GM about personnel is exactly what the Bills have done since Russ Brandon took over the football team in 2006. The same with the draft. The difference between 2017 (Brandon/Whaley) vs 2018 (Beane/McDermott) in personnel matters is the quality of the talent evaluation and the wheeling dealing. The underlying philosophy of replacing young vets due for big days with draft picks and lesser FAs continues.