Mikie2times

So your argument contains the logic of intentionally ignoring how we have performed against KC. Then outright ignoring that the Bengals even exist. Sounds good.

All you do is side step the Bengals domination of us and how much better KC has performed against Buffalo than other teams they have played more than once. The information is right in front of you. If you want to ignore it that's your choice.

Rivers and Brees both played under Marty. Marty wasn't a lifetime coach for those players. Rogers played under LaFleur. He wasn't a lifetime coach for Rogers either. Was it not humorous that your examples overlap with some of the most notorious regular season champions of all time? What is the point you're trying to make here? That other QB's in NFL history have been very good and just won one Super Bowl because what? Other teams are also very good? It's not just KC. Burrow is 14 of 14 on opening drives, 3 TD's, almost 200 yards passing. They have outscored us 58-21 in two games. The Colts dropping over 450 yards in the playoffs, 25+ first downs, and coming back from a 14 point deficit to nearly win. The next year under Carson Wentz dismantling us 41-15 in Buffalo. Who else have we played with with any semblance of an offense in the postseason? Baltimore in a wind storm and two teams without NFL level QB's? So if we have faced an offense that is actually competent we haven't mustered enough o be a speed bump. This, after holding Top 10 ranking in the regular season. Speaking of KC. It's not just that KC is good. They're even better against us. You know that, everybody on here knows that. 3 of the 6 top QBR's Mahomes has posted are against us. Just look at the performance he has against us vs other teams he has faced multiple times in the playoffs.

It's just Kansas City. Keep telling yourself that. By the way look up Mannings stats in the playoffs. Just how atrocious they were. One of the worst all time. Rivers and Brees played mostly under Marty. Rodgers LaFleur. These examples are too funny. As I said, 3 coaches in NFL history above .600 and no Super Bowl apperances. You hit all three in your response.

You know you're right. The 3 point victory at home over Skyler Thompson wasn't something to focus on. I was more concerned with Joe Burrow going 14 for 14 for 181 yards and 3 TD's across 3 separate opening drives. Houston scoring 22 unanswered points in the 2nd half. Indianapolis nearly coming back from down 24-10 in the 4th quarter dropping 472 yards and 27 first downs on us. KC's Tommy Townsend punting 4 total times in the playoffs vs Buffalo. A total that was tied or beaten in one game in half the playoff games in the Mahomes era. Three coaches in the Super Bowl era have a .600 winning% and no Super Bowl appearances. Marty Schottenheimer is one of them. Yet you think this will go the way of Andy Reid? You know what Reids playoff record is without Mahomes? 11-13 and with Mahomes it's 15-3. So who is going to be McDermott's Mahomes? Isn't that supposed to be Allen?

We were better than Houston. We should have lost to the Colts. The Dolphins played us to a 3 point game with a 3rd string QB. We have been a lot closer to a devastating first round loss than a Super Bowl.

I believe it was the most yards allowed in NFL playoff history in a Victory

KC did whatever they wanted in that game. They completely dominated us. The only thing that prevented 40 was our offense being on the field all game only allowing KC 47 plays. They scored on every drive except the end zone fumble and running out the clock. It's fine if you don't want to -1 for McD this game (and the failed fake punt) but he sure as heck isn't a +1.

3 coaches in the Super Bowl Era have a winning % over .600 in the regular season and have never been to a Super Bowl. Marty Schottenheimer, Matt LaFleur, and Sean McDermott.

About the best way I've heard him described. He shrinks the floor and ceiling at the same time. I think that's what has made him so polarizing.

Yup, a lot reasons we could start slow.

Bengals if Burrow stays healthy. It's nice to be forgotten about. The opposite of forgotten about is Houston. As much as we want to apply logical progression to them the league rarely operate in logical ways.

I'm much more bullish on Claypool than most. We don't sign him unless he has a lot of good answers for why things went the way they did. His career is over if this doesn't work out. He likely needs the money. It's not a stretch to me that he might have just realized what he was about to lose. Easy to say he's already had those chances but those experiences might have been enabling if anything. It was probably a bit of a wake up to see nobody wanted him.

Do teams want a corner isolated on Claypool or Coleman while Allen goes madden mode? I don't think we need to run past them to threaten them downfield. Both these guys are a mismatch one on one downfield especially with the threat of Allen extending plays.

I would go Moulds but something intriguing about Lee Evans

I think it's a better group. It's the first time we ever complimented Josh with guys who are open when covered. He is going to make a ton of plays downfield that are off schedule. Even more than the past. Even if Coleman is slow coming along he will be hard to deal with when Josh breaks contain. Which is such a huge part of his game that wasn't maximized with the smurfs. You just don't want Coleman singled up downfield in a jump ball situation. You certainly don't want Claypool in that spot either. It's going to put a lot of pressure on defenses to stay in two high looks which will open up the run game and underneath stuff. Speaking of underneath stuff Samuel is really the first of his kind since Allen got here. A poor mans Deebo who can do a lot of similar things. That space the deep threats will provide will give him a lot of wiggle in WR screens and underneath work. That is something Shakir can really excel at as well with his YAC ability. Then perhaps one of the least talked about additions of this team is Kincaid being in his 2nd year. I think a pro bowl TE is more valuable than Diggs or Davis and perhaps both combined. I expect Kincaid to be at or near that level after this year. Claypool looks like he understands its now or never. If so what a haul for us. This IS likely a #1 WR we added for peanuts. I'm not very bullish on Coleman year 1 with how daunting it can be to be for a rookie in our system but I do think Coleman will add a ton of RZ value and contribute in the ways I discussed above. Also with some underneath possession work which he has shown strength in. Davis was the definition of a one trick pony. Diggs was not himself for most of last year. Shakir and Kincaid had yet to reach max output until maybe the very end of last season and perhaps they never did. This was a very weak group last season. I think the star power of Diggs and comfort of a returning starter in Davis covered for just how bad the diversity was. By the end of the year that one and two option was barely even used and I don't think it was random. Easy to scheme for, easy to take away. The passing game will be much more unpredictable this year and it will threaten teams in more diverse ways than anything we have seen in a long time.

It is confusing. Sort of the round peg in a square whole to most "theories". It very well could be situational or strategic in some ways. Maybe Reid doesn't go into his bag of tricks in our regular season match ups. Several of those games took place prior to the bye when the KC machine didn't fully take off. Even last year they were hardly in rhythm when we played. Not like we were either, but I would certainly rather they not be. I will break it down at some point but if you looks at both the regular season and playoffs it almost as straight forward as us performing against bad teams and not performing against good ones, especially on the defensive side. The Bengals have done whatever they want. The Colts did whatever they want. Both did so in postseason and regular season. Our dominance has come against awful offenses . Which maybe that's true for everybody? But I don't believe that's enough to label us talented. This is just our performance last year. Look at this cesspool of QB's. If we added 10+ EPA it was tagged Excellent, if we lost 10 EPA it was tagged bad. Every QB with a pulse is tagged bad besides Dak and Baker, and I doubt Dak has a pulse on the road. Zac Wilson x2 Excellent x1 Sam Howell Excellent Bailey Zappe Excellent Mac Jones Bad Trevor Lawrence Bad Joe Burrow Bad Mahomes x2 Bad x1 Tyrod Taylor Baker Mayfield Russel Wilson Dac Easton Stick Tua x2 Mason Rudolph Jimmy G

I mean, we subscribe to the theory that McD just craps himself in the postseason. Which I'm still more aligned with. But to me it's not a huge leap to think a Top 3 QB and an elite front running defense can have incredible success against average teams in a horrible division and hit a wall against better competition.

Our defense is like the option in college football. It's good enough to make average teams look really bad. It completely folds as the competition rises. Perhaps that's McD as many have pointed out, perhaps we just don't have the talent as we play better teams. If you run a query on playoff performance dating dating back to 2000 Buffalo's defense has the 27th rated EPA out of every team that played in the postseason. Since 2019 in the regular season we have the 5th rated EPA defense. We should at least consider that we overestimate our talent based on the performance we see in the regular season. Our system is set up to destroy teams that abandon the run and without a QB like Allen that would no longer be the case. I do think Cousins on Buffalo would field a competitive team but it would expose a lot of warts that people don't see as a result of his impact on both sides of the ball. Look at where we fall since 2000 in the divisional round or later.

I don't know why its so inconceivable to people to think we just aren't as talented as the higher level teams. This is PFF's breakdown of the Top 100 This is Prisco Top 100 https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/nfl-top-100-players-of-2024-patrick-mahomes-reigns-again-myles-garrett-top-defender-in-priscos-rankings/ Both have Josh Allen as the only Top 100 player. You can argue about Johnson, Oliver, Milano but it's an argument. While these "sources" aren't gospel they aren't completely inaccurate either.

More so Beane. If anything this thread is calling out how good Allen is. If he wasn't it would be easy to replace him.

I really don’t think you need to be that talented to win the AFC East and a wild card game with a top 3 QB. So ultimately I don’t know how talented this team actually is. I’m not saying I know anything for sure. It’s just a little silly to me that on one hand many people say how talented we are and on the other people basically make it sound like without Josh we have no chance. We can’t be that talented if Allen is the entire team.

Winner! That is what sort of prompted this thread. On one hand I was saying to myself how elite Beane is. On the other I felt like we would completely fold if something happened to Josh. I don't think both those statements can be true. Perhaps they can. I'm not sure. The playoff season we were outscored by 57 points in the regular season. The year prior we had a +21 point differential. Have you ever heard of Pythagorean theorem? That’s all that season was. Us being on the right side of it. Minnesota had a 50-37 record with Cousins and made two playoff appearances. They made it to a divisional round game. They came into Buffalo and beat the Allen led Bills. With Allen we have basically ended up no further than Minnesota did with Cousins. So it’s not exactly a leaping conclusion to think if they swapped places we might produce a worse result. Teams with a 65 or better QBR out of the QB position are 211-73 since 2020. Allen has done that every year since that time. That’s a better record than we produced. If the argument is “we would have different players” with Cousins, which is what you tried to turn it into, well, shame on us. We shouldn’t be handicapping ourselves because we have an elite QB. It doesn't feel like it's a huge stretch to say a team with low end talent and a top 3 QB will hit a wall at the divisional playoffs. So while everybody wants to look for the 3rd gunman on the grassy knoll maybe we bow out at that time because we aren't that talented. I know that's a crazy thought.

By all means you're welcome to contribute your thoughts on how this team would be materially different. It was asked like 10 posts ago.

I'm presume Beane will draft BPA whenever he can. If the modification is a slight tweak in style to better accommodate an immobile QB then maybe you think we would dedicate more resources to the OL? I don't think we would. Would we be pursuing different defensive players because I don't think we would do that either. We already had smaller WR's in the first iteration of Beanes build so maybe a few tweaks to what we see today but not a lot. Would you expect more investment where? I don't see it. So yes, the rest of the team would be largely the same.