TigerJ

Id be OK with Wilks or Holcomb

"Forward progress" is one of the more subjective decisions referees have to make. In theory, I imagine sometimes in the circumstances that led to the Edelman TD, officials could blow the play dead citing forward progress. They didn't. Conversely, on some plays similar to the Foster catch where the whistle blew, another referee might have let the play continue a bit longer. I'm not thrilled with the level of subjectivity in the officiating of football, but I don't see a viable alternative.

I know of people who cut pictures out of the Christmas cards they receive and use them to make the Christmas cards they send out the following year.

Obviously, the Bills were terrible in run defense today, and particularly so when the Patriots used the WRs to run wide on the reverse. That's on the coaching to make adjustments. As far as Buffalo's running game is concerned, it is a continuation of what we've seen the whole season. Buffalo's offensive line stinks. Juan Castillo probably needs to bear some of the blame for that. The rest may be a personnel issue (the players aren't good enough. McDermott will be back next season. With plenty of cap room and ample draft picks, the Bills need to solve the personnel issues. We'll see if McDermott does something about Castillo. If the Bills are not significantly improved next season, then the Pegulas have some hard decisions to make. I sincerely hope it does not come to that.

Anthony Lynn would have been a good choice as a head coach, but he would not have had as much success in Buffalo because of a different QB situation. I'm OK with Sean McDemott and where the Bills are going forward

It's time to move on.

The nice thing about having lots of money under the cap and plenty of draft picks is that you can do things on both sides of the ball. But make no mistake, the focus needs to be on the offense.

Merry Christmas, Ice Bowl, and a better season in 2019 for both of us.

That would be my rule as well.

I think the Op has been hitting the Christmas spirits, not the other way around.

It's too early to tell, because we don't know the future, but early returns suggest that Brandon Beane knows how to find some players who could have staying power, which is what you need to build a team. No, he's not going to hit on everybody, but Buffalo may have a QB, and they may have a middle linebacker. Harrison Phillips is not wowing people like we thought he might, but he may still be a role player for this team, and Taron Johnson, when healthy looks like a keeper. I'm not citing players picked in 2017 even though Tre White turned out to be a terrific pick. That was a transition year, with picks based on scouting from the previous regime. The 2018 draft was all on Beane though.

Missing on players who become big stars for other teams does not bother me greatly. It happens a lot to every team. Buffalo has been a terrible drafting team over the drought years, not so much because they missed on players who surprised everybody because they became big stars, but because they drafted players in the first 3 rounds who ended up not being with the team three years later. They busted, or didn't quite fit what the team was trying to do, or we didn't have the circumstances to enable us to use him properly. Whatever the reason, we had no continuity in player personnel, which mirrored the lack of continuity in the coaching staff. Buffalo's longest term player was a fifth round pick. I'm glad Kyle Williams has had such a long and quality career with Buffalo, but the lack of first round picks who were with the team three years later is astounding.

Trying to make a big play when it just isn't there - forcing a pass into coverage when nobody is open.

Hopefully, Buffalo has the QB they need, so offensive line should be at the top of their priorities for improvement in the offseason. There should be enough money under the cap, and enough draft picks to do more than one thing, however.

It's the ageless game of chess that is played in the NFL. QBs come into the league with unique skill sets. Sometimes they do one particular thing in such a way it can only be described as unique. There are great runners from the QB position in the NFL, but none who are quite as dynamic as Josh Allen was during his recent streak. It's more than obvious that teams which play against the Bills are going to take that facet of the game away from him. It is a given that if the defense focusses on taking something away, there will be other things they can't defend as well. Josh Allen and the Bills for their part are working hard to develop other areas in his game, so that if someone proves capable of corraling Josh so he can't run effectively, he will be able to take advantage of things the defense isn't defending as well. As has been mentioned, Detroit tried to do that. Josh did well enough in other areas for the Bills to pull off the win. The NBC reporter was not wrong as far as he went. Josh Allen doesn't do a lot of things better than most other QBs at this point in time. He throws a nice deep ball, but he's only got one receiver who has been able both to get open and catch the ball Robert Foster. I'm sure Brian Daboll and Josh Allen are well aware of the situation, and Josh is working as hard as he can to become a well rounded QB who just happens to run extremely well and has the strongest arm in the league. In a year's time, hopefully if Belichick schemes to take away both Allen's opportunities for running and Foster's opportunities to get open downfield, Josh Allen will be able to hurt them in other ways. There's always a chance Buffalo could win Sunday, but it's not going to be easy. Next year, I think it will be easier.

I'm sad for Josh Gordon. I'm not sad for New England, or the fact that New England has lost their most gifted receiver.

Good! Maybe Belicheat hasn't had a chance to grease their palms yet.

"Instinctive" is one of those words we use without fully understanding what it is and where it comes from. "Players are born with it," you say. Yet by the time a player makes it to the NFL, most have been playing football in some form for 12-14 years or so. Did they have a fully developed instinct for the game when they started in Peewee football? Certainly there are kids of 7 or 8 years old who have something that other kids the same age don't have, but a whole lot of development still needs to take place. It's just about unprecedented for a player as young as Tremaine Edmunds to play in the NFL, to say nothing of the fact that the middle linebacker is the player who makes the defensive calls. He bears more responsibility than anyone else on the defense for recognizing what the offense is doing, and then putting his teammates in a position to succeed in countering what the offense is doing. Roquan Smith, the other highly rated rookie linebacker from the same draft, is older and came from an SEC powerhouse school where he had some of the finest coaching money can buy at the college level. It may be that Tremaine Edmunds will as you suggest never be as "instinctive" as Roquan Smith or Luke Kuechly, whatever that is, but I think it's really too early to get overwrought about his ceiling as a player. I'm thinking he pretty darned instinctive for a 20 year old kid. Everything I've seen suggests he's learning by leaps and bounds, and is far less likely now than he was three moths ago to bite on misdirection. My assumption is he's still on his learning curve, and a year from now his "football intelligence" and "instinct' are going to be far more developed than they are right now.

BTW, I watched the last episode, and as usual Chris Brown asked a question at the end which had been submitted by a fan. The question was, "Is there any exercize that you do regularly to keep your hands in shape for all that clapping you do on the sidelines during games?" Even Chris Brown gets it, that it's all in fun!

Absolutely. I hope he can overdome whatever issue he's had playing when it counts, and has a solid career as a backup. I think it's pretty clear he's not starter material, but maybe he can fix that tendency to throw interceptions.

Any time is a good time for a little humor. I love a lot of the responses so far. Besides, by May we'll have all forgotten about Coffee with the Coach.

Yes, it is a fluff feature of the official Bills website, but there is one serious question that needs to be addressed. Will Tim Hortons withdraw their sponsorship of this segment because of the refusal of both Chris Brown and Sean McDermott to drink any coffee? I think in one segment, Chris Brown actually held the cup of coffee, but neither of them ever took a sip the entire season. Sean McDermott left his sitting on the table in front of him and wouldn't even look at it. From the view of the Tim Hortons chain, that can't be a very good promotion of their product.

Like all teams, Buffalo is doing due diligence on a bunch of fringe guys, because you never know when someone might surprise bigtime on the upside. Think Isaiah McKenzie and Robert Foster. Bolden is obviously a return specialist. As far as QBs go, it's already b een noted that Buffalo only has one QB on the roster on a multi-year deal. I'm assuming Buffalo will seek to negotiate a multi-year deal at reasonable cost with either Barkley or Derek Anderson (preferably Barkley) but there are no guarantees. If they only re-sign one of them, they will want to pick up one or two more for training camp next summer. Gilbert's dad was a strong armed QB, regardless of the fact he didn't make it in the NFL. I think his kid is supposed to be the same way. It might make some sense to bring in a youngster with a strong arm. If he did develop into a serviceable backup, it might be advantageous to retain the capability of hitting the long ball if Josh were to go down.

How about like Mike Evans?

One would think that Sean McDermott, having a wrestling background, would appreciate good hand usage. McDermott;s football background is in the secondary,. but he would still understand how important it is. I know Washington didn't single anyone out. I wounder what he thinks of the new kid, Harrison Phillips. Phillips, like McDermott has a wrestling background, and one of his strengths was said to be hand usage and understanding leverage.