SoTier

They made roster moves in order to improve the talent at those positions. "Gutting the roster" means that current players are cut and replaced with lesser players instead of better ones. What positions did the Bills actually improve other than CB and S? Certainly not WR or OL

Poor baby. If you don't like what posters are writing, you can always put them on "Ignore" ...

Keep making excuses for McDermott.

Chuck Knox coached the 1981 Bills to the playoffs. Mike Ditka coached the 1985 Bears to a Lombardi. Bill Parcells coached the Giants to a win over the Bills in the 1991 Super Bowl. All these "successful" HCs supposedly without great QBs had their success 2 or 3 or more decades ago.

Are you serious? How, exactly, are KC and Philly examples of "the plan"??? Both of those teams are offensive powerhouses embracing offensive innovation not trying to resurrect the 1980s. This is 2018 not 1981, 1985 or 1991. McVay didn't gut the Rams in order to bring in "his guys". He built on the talented players already on the Rams on both sides of the ball even if his experience came from the offensive side. He wouldn't have gutted the Bills offense just because they played for his predecessor. He'd have hired first rate coordinators, too: DC Wade Phillips, OC Ken Whisenhunt, STC: Jim Fassel.

Yes, I would. The Bills offense in 2016 was about the best it had been since 1999, and played well for Lynn when it struggled under Ryan's original OC, Greg Roman.

Anthony Lynn wanted to be the Bills HC permanently. Instead, he went West to the Chargers. He coached the Chargers to 9-7 and missed the playoffs last season on tie-breakers, and has the Bolts at 5-2 this season. I guess he wasn't committed enough to "The Process" to suit the Pegulas.

Except that Goff hardly looked all that great as a rookie so there was a real question about whether he was a massive bust. Wentz was the only one of the 2016 first round QBs who truly looked promising after his rookie campaign.

Are you serious? Actions speak much louder than words, and in the first half of the season opener against Baltimore, the Bills played so poorly on offense that McDermott started Allen in the second half but you can pretend that that wasn't a clear message of how the team felt about Peterman if you want.

I see them all on the channel guide and when I click on any of them, I see the game. I'm in Jamestown.

McDermott is in charge of personnel. He reports to the Pegulas, as does Beane, but McDermott makes the personnel decisions, and Beane simply sees to it. It's similar to the way that the Bills have operated since 2006 when Russ Brandon took over the team. Levy was a figurehead GM in Jauron's first two years, then Jauron ran the team until 2009 when Buddy Nix came in to oversee scouting apparently. Nix had a more traditional GM role as he hired Chan Gailey but Gailey was more interested in coaching than selecting personnel. In 2013, Whaley became GM with shared personnel responsibility with the HC. It lead to issues with Marrone, and may have led to some issues with Ryan. The Pegulas changed the situation when they fired Whaley and turned personnel responsibility over to McDermott with Beane being the guy who works out the details. Beane also has limited, if any, player personnel experience. His role in personnel in Carolina was similar to that of your company's HR director rather than player evaluation.

When do you think that will happen? I'm not optimistic that it will happen any time soon because McDermott doesn't value offense, and he's in charge of personnel decisions. More distressing is that in the last two drafts, the Bills have seemed to fixate on particular prospects and be willing to give up too much to get those particular players. In 2017 and 2018 the Bills got relatively little for the draft capital that they had because they traded up several times. The success of high draft picks (rounds 1-3) is too iffy too often to make trading up frequently a good strategy. Yes. I think he was maybe the second QB taken in 2003 behind Carson Palmer. Lots of Bills fans wanted him, too.

^^^ Isn't part of the OC's job to evaluate the talent available to his offense? How can an experienced offensive coordinator NOT recognize that Nate Peterman's very serious physical limitations make him a questionable backup for even the most experienced, durable QB playing behind a great OL, much less for a team without even a solid OL, a non-NFL caliber WR corps, and an anemic running game? How can a competent OC name Peterman the starter at the beginning of the season when his teammates are not behind him? How could Daboll not "feel" that the team wasn't behind Peterson despite his supposedly good preseason showing? If Daboll is responsible for these decisions, then he's incompetent to be a NFL OC. If Daboll's opinion on offensive players' talent and likelihood for success is being trumped by McDermott or somebody else in the Bills FO, this team is so dysfunctional that bringing in another OC -- if anyone would be desperate enough to take the position -- would be useless. Excuse me, but the lack of NFL caliber players on the OL and in the WR corps is NOT something that McDermott and Beane inherited. They made the decisions that resulted in the hot mess they have in both units. They gutted the competent WR corps (Watkins, Woods, Goodwin) they inherited in 2017 and replaced them with trash. The OL wasn't great in 2017, and then they lost Wood and Incognito to retirement, and replaced them with career backups and bottom-feeder FAs. Then they traded away Glenn. That was all before the draft -- a draft that after taking Allen at #7, they didn't bother to draft another offensive player until almost the end of the fifth round despite the desperate need for improvement on the offensive side. No team can expect to build a decent offense using primarily sixth and seventh round and UDFA OLers and WRs.

Who's saying that the Colts are going to blow the Bills out except possibly the Las Vegas bookmakers? Most don't think the Bills can score many points, so all Indy has to do is score one more.

Right. We all know that media professionals in general don't bother to prepare for their jobs, especially former NFL players.

Unlike many Bills fans, especially the homers, the "experts" watch numerous NFL games every week so they have a good idea of how futile the Bills are on offense ... even before they had to start their QB du jour.

Maybe McDermott "had a good blue print" for the 1970s or 1980s but this is 2018, and his philosophy of great defense, strong special teams, and a conservative, run heavy run game with limited passing simply isn't sustainable. Teams that want to win consistently have to be able to score more than 1 offensive TD a game. As for McDermott's supposedly "Super Bowl caliber" defense, that's hyperbole. The D is good enough to win against limited offensive teams but not against great ones, shown by the Bills got their clocks cleaned by the three of the four good/great offensive teams they played. Ummm ... the Rams canned the coaching staff that ended up "DEAD LAST in virtually every offensive category", and Goff was hardly "the WORST quarterback in the league". More importantly, the Rams GM Les Snead makes the personnel decisions, including hiring the HC, not the backassward way the Bills do things with the HC answering to the owners and the GM subservient to the HC, so there's not much to compare between the Rams and Bills.

John Elway is absolutely NOT any kind of "proof" that Allen can be an effective NFL QB despite his inaccuracy. Elway was drafted 35 years ago. If he had been drafted 30 years later (2013 rather than 1983), you can bet your last $ that his completion percentage would have been significantly higher (consistently in the 60s).

Seriously dude, after the Bills play the Colts, they face NE, Chicago, the Jets, and Jacksonville. Even if you allow them a fighting chance against the Jets (I wouldn't at this point but it's the most likely), Derek Anderson is never going to develop a "hot hand" against the Pats, the Bears, and the Jags. Not happening.

You're confusing Doug Whaley with Russ Brandon. The HC cannot ban his boss from football operational meetings. Brandon wasn't fired immediately after the draft, and his firing had nothing to with football but with other issues in the Bills FO.

I'm not "conflicted" at all. The job of mentor belongs to the QB coach. If there's a veteran QB on the team who is willing to offer the rookie advice that's great but that's NOT HIS JOB. Too many posters here are posting stuff as if it's Anderson's job to counsel Allen, and it's not. I'm afraid that the Bills have gone back to their old ways of hiring the cheapest assistant coaches they can after the Pegula's short term extravagance with Rex Ryan and his entourage, hence crappy offensive coaches like Dennison, Daboll, and Culley among others.

Russ Brandon was still head honcho on the Bills during the 2018 draft. I have little doubt that he's the one who decided the Bills would draft a first round QB in 2018, and set McDermott and Beane to doing it ... just like he set Whaley to drafting a first round QB in 2013. The similarities in the moves the Bills made in handling the QB situation in 2013 and 2018 are so remarkable that it suggests coming from the same source: shedding the competent albeit low level starter from the previous season well before the draft (Fitzpatrick and Taylor) drafting a "project" QB in the first round (Manuel and Allen) failing to address serious deficiencies on the offense in the draft or FA (in 2013, the Bills had Glenn and Wood on the OL but not much else; their TE was Lee Smith; and CJ Spiller was their starting RB) adding a veteran backup QB who was almost guaranteed to fail so that the first round QB would have to start some time during the season: Kevin "Glass" Kolb who couldn't even stay healthy enough to make it to the preseason in 2013 and AJ McCarron who undoubtedly objected to being third string behind Nate Peterman and was shipped out to Oakland Replacing veteran QBs with trash QBs who shouldn't even be in the NFL: Jeff Tuel and Thad Lewis, both UDFAs, in 2013 and Nate Peterman, fifth rounder, and street FA Derek Anderson in 2018. The Bills even drafted a LB high in the 2013 draft: Kiko Alonso in the 2nd round. Brandon was a marketing guy, and since he took over the team, it's been run on a "money ball" philosophy. Cutting Fitzpatrick and trading Taylor saved the Bills millions in current salary. Signing bottom feeder replacements or rookies for the good young veterans the team developed, for good veteran players who retired, and other veterans who were traded or cut also saved millions. More importantly, drafting a first round QB insured additional ticket sales for several years as the fans waited for said first round QB to "develop" and provided the FO and coaching staff with cover if their great plans for domination by defense don't pan out. Even though Russ Brandon is gone, his ghost lives on in the like-minded assistants he hired, including McDermott and Beane. That's a pretty cynical view, but the current Bills team is so similar to so many previous Bills teams since 1999 that there's really nothing about them that indicates things will get any better any time soon. If Allen develops into a good NFL QB, it's going to be despite the Bills FO and coaching staff.

No, no, no! McDermott is nothing like Jauron because he's gambled a few times on 4th down and he's way more animated on the sidelines! //sarcasm off

The idea that Allen needs a "mentor" in the person of a veteran QB is utter nonsense. His QB coach is supposed to be his mentor. What Allen needs is a competent QB coach not David Culley, who has never played QB in the NFL (or apparently any other position), has never been a QB coach in the NFL, and whose last stint as an actual QB coach was 30 years ago at SW Louisiana State. Having a competent veteran QB as an additional mentor would be a bonus, but I don't think that Derek Anderson, a street FA who's started 4 games in the last 7 years and only had 1 successful season as a starter (2007), qualifies as a "competent veteran QB". Apparently, his Carolina connection (7 years as Cam Newton's backup) trumps all other considerations, so the Bills pursued Anderson since the summer to the exclusion of all other candidates -- another example of the Bills having become the refuge for ex-Carolina players and coaches in need of a paycheck.

The HC for that game was Dick "Play Not To Lose By Too Much" Jauron who was on his way to being canned before the end of the season. Depending on whether or not McDermott loses the locker room, he may also find himself unemployed.