Mikie2times

That's not my work, but good work still

Except when he hasn't developed any coaches. Babich could be, but......

I have worked with a lot of leaders in my career, many of which did not impact me and some impacted me negatively. I don't think it's fair to credit them for any of my success. If you asked Dabs or Brady, who is the most influential coach in your career at the professional level I would bet a few nickels that name is not going to be Sean McDermott. If your leader can't develop other leaders is that an issue or a different angle to consider in evaluating him? Dan Campbell has two coordinators as HC's. Kyle Shanahan has 2 and Robert Saleh. McVay has 4. Hell, even Todd Bowles has two. Sean has Daboll and Daboll doesn't even like Sean. So are we really linking them together?

I sort of feel that way, but I would really like to hear from some of his supporters. I have said before, I still think talent is a bigger barrier to success right now than coaching. But if the notion that one of all time winningest HC’s will never develop a future HC is laughable, how damning is that? It feels pretty damning from leadership perspective.

Some of the better leaders I have worked with have told me, you being an expert or great is not a sign that you’re doing your job well. How we perform when you aren’t there and how well you duplicate yourself with employees is. I think this logic clearly extends to coaches. To me it’s easier to validate who the very best are based on the number of future leaders and coaches they have been able to develop. Plenty of critical McD threads out there. I was hoping to focus this conversation on if anybody thinks McD will develop a coaching tree or has the capability of doing so, and if yes or no, how much does that matter in evaluating his success? Hypothetically, who would that tree consist of? I don’t consider Dabs, Frazier, or Brady as part of that tree. Does anybody here feel that is the case or could be in time? Maybe some influence? From my view this relevant as far as a different angle to evaluate his performance vs the standard stuff we hear on the board.

And I would say in a messed up way it could be the best thing for this franchise. Iron sharpens iron. Maybe getting knocked out of first will send a clear message to Beane that we aren’t a player away right now.

The combination of Allen and the AFC east being atrocious has allowed Beane and McD to largely run it back for many years, which shockingly, has largely led to identical outcomes. Our complacency is rarely seen in a non Super Bowl winners. But since we win and win a lot, the perception is we are close and larger changes aren’t needed. It’s all just flat out sad to me. Considering what could have been or what could be. McD will not consider any mass changes to his defense or his coordinator selection. Both are likely to be inexperienced guys who will fall in line. Just like Beane, his earlier decisions were just better. You certainly don’t have to love Frazier or Dabs, they weren’t perfect by any stretch, but they were both very experienced guys. They didn’t fall in line all the time. He’s not hiring A coordinators. It will never happen. Those guys don’t want to work for people where they don’t have full control. So from a scheme standpoint Sean has just boxed us in. Other coaches just don’t give a F. Best man for the job. Not Sean. You could argue it’s unproven that either of our coordinators are long term options in the league. Dorsey didn’t end up being such. Brady had Allen and is struggling of late. Babich just isn’t the guy. Almost no experience. Good luck facing Andy Reid. My god…. Then Beane refusing to invest more assets at WR. Awful planning at LB and DB. Over committing to average assets. Are Bernard and Groot guys we want taking top 10 caps the next few years? I don’t want that but here we are. But again, a great QB against a division of not great QB’s are going to give you a really high floor. Which isn’t the only things that allowed this run to happen, and the first build was fairly good. This one just hasn’t been. This team has basically been in a perfect cocktail of circumstances that allow for what is happening. For Beane and McD to have faults shielded and in many ways celebrated as master architects. It is the greatest fraud in Bills history. These guys are very competent professionals, but they fall short in schematics and player evaluation at a level where it is unlikely we will go any further.

Play fundamentally sound. Don't make mistakes, force your opponent to earn everything. With that approach, it leads to fairly conservative play on both sides of the ball. But really, in todays NFL, if you aren't dictating the terms, you're behind the eight ball.

In my career, athletics and professionally, the best leaders were never the most liked. They had a bit of an edge, invited confrontation, rubbed people at times, but that's just the nature of leadership. You can't always be kumbaya when you need to tell somebody to get it together. This team just doesn't have a lot of those personalities. It's not Allen's natural way either. Who is delivering this speech on our team? I don't think anybody is. Nobody on this team has this type of edge. This team misses Kyle so bad.

Bernard, Benford, etc.......we are doubling down on these guys, despite the injury history. At this point we are doing it to ourselves. I mean hell, take this back to the year Bernard got hurt in the playoffs. You would think the Bills would have drafted a few solid MLB's seeing how big a catastrophe that was. How many have we added since then? So when Bernard goes down we will go, awww!!!! Our lucks is horrible. When his replacement is a total scrub, we will say, awww!!! Bad injury luck. All the while Ray Charles could see what is actually going on and again, it points to Beane. Same story on depending on Max to start at CB or it's Tre White or Dane Jackson. Rookies don't tend to start for McD. Wallace and Benford are the only rookie CB's who have shown a pulse for this team in the entire Beane era. Yet that was the plan. Then Max gets hurt and it's awwww! Injuries! Well, we don't even know if a healthy Max is worth anything.

If I don’t think we can win a Super Bowl with Beane, I don’t see risk. I’m ok if it gets worse in the pursuit of more. I’m not ok living in a state of fear that we won’t make the playoffs.

Then we should just be like Beane and stay complacent

You call this roster loaded which sort of hurts credibility. We are so “loaded” we are forced to start rookies and backups you give credit to because we can’t find better talent. Thats how you reach the level Beane has with this roster. Your C rated draft picks either start with no competition (Bishop, Coleman) or out of pure necessity (Dorian Williams). Let’s say even some of what you’re saying is right in defending this garbage, what exactly was the plan at CB? You said yourself what we should and should not expect from a rookie or young player. Yet we come into the season completely dependent on a rookie or we are starting Tre White. After about 2 years of giving McD hell in nearly every post on the subject at the end of last years playoffs I made a post about the talent level and Beane specifically. Which might be hard to separate from McD. We really don’t know how much should fall on him from a talent perspective. But if I had to say what is more clearly holding us back between coaching and talent, it’s talent, and it’s not really close. We have an army of players that are fringe starters getting regular reps. Palmer is a #3 a best, Coleman might not even be a #3 at this point, Samuel is not even a #3, Moore is not a #3, Bishop is not a starter, Williams is not a starter, Tre White is not a starter, Bernard, Rapp, and Jones are fringe starters. That's over half our defense for gods sake and the entire WR room outside of Shakir. But what is the best part of all of this? Every single guy I called out besides Bishop is not just a one year starter, but a mutlti year starter. We got to see the suck last year and we said lets go with round two!

I was certainly not glowing, it seemed pretty obvious to me. We are doubling down on mid level players and locking out the potential to fill those spots with real difference makers. All of which made me pretty frustrated. Knox, Milano, Jones, Samuel make up 4 out of our top 10 cap hits this year. Beane did a pretty damn good job on the initial rebuild, but the 2nd version has been amateur hour.

Please invite our GM to your camp