Mikie2times

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

Why can't our great culture allow for us to sign guys like Pickens? How strong can your culture really be if we can never consider prospects like this?

I don't know if I like this thought or not, but it would be pretty wild. The clock only runs in the last 2 minutes of each half on a completed forward passes.

To assume Allen is playing in his late 30‘s is crazy to me. It might happen. It just as easily could be 35. He will be a billionaire by then. Probably with kids and a wife that would rather he hangs it up. Beaten body probably falling apart. Appreciate this now, it could change quick.

Edmunds made the defense better based on his range in coverage, size, and athletic ability. While Bernard is unequivocally a better pure football player, this is the NFL. You don't just get to subtract 3 inches, 30 pounds, a massive wing span difference, and a tenth of a second on the 40 and call it a day. It matters. McD went from Luke Kuechly to Edmunds to Bernard at a critical position that defends the entire middle / intermediate area of his defense in zone. Edmunds prevented a lot of pass attempts and a lot of plays that led to a lot of positive things for our defense. To pony up the money he wanted was not an easy decision and I'm not faulting the regime for that move, but I will 100% fault the regime for extending Bernard. That was a classic example of us locking up moderate talent at a critical position and then no longer pursuing ways to get better.

Olave is hands down the best of this group. Never had solid QB play. Young and the closest to being a real #1 out of any in the group. Concussion concerns are overstated. If that was a huge concern to our regime we wouldn't have signed a guy like Benford who is in a similar spot.

And he's a former Panther

If you really want to jump off a bridge look at his history in Carolina. This is who he is. Diggs is the absolute crown jewel of his WR acquisitions over his entire career.

We rank 12th in DVOA, it's the lowest we have been ranked since 2019. This isn't a Super Bowl team right now. This isn't a team that is going to just catch fire come playoff time. They have the largest regular season to playoffs regression in NFL history based on EPA. The team will need to be playing well enough that it can survive some of that regression. I just can't sign up for actual improvement in the postseason given how overwhelming the data is at this point. Our scheme is easy to beat with prep time and postseason talent and that's been proven even in years where we had some talent. We don't have the horses right now and are getting carved up by 2nd year QB's. Lord help us for what this will look like come postseason without major changes.

I don't think he's handicapped per say. We didn't break the bank to bring in John Brown, Cole Beasley, Hyde, Poyer, and several others. These were massive value adds at the time. We just aren't bringing in players of that level at this point. Then you look at guys like Diggs and Miller. Which in my opinion were the correct moves. But I think it left Beane feeling a bit burned. Now he seems gun shy to consider "A" talent moves outside of trying to get them in the draft. It seems like all of our signings are complimentary type signings. When during the first build those signings felt more like foundational pieces. Our foundation has now become the drafts of the last 3-5 years which even if looked at favorably have not produced a lot top talent. Then we haven't been creating high level competition for those drafted players. We challenge them with FA depth pieces. But we don't say, can I actually do better than a Daquan Jones, Cole Bishop, Rapp or Bernard etc. I'm not even sure any of these guys even start outside of Buffalo. Then we walk right into a situation where if we can't draft a day 1 starter Tre White is starting for us. That was literally the plan. It's just so badly executed at this point. I don't know what has happened with Beane the last few years but he's just not the same guy.

I was just agreeing with the comments. I didn't even look at the video.

They play for McD is to me is the grossest exaggeration and disconnect our fan base has. They play for each other. McD is not the loveable coach that players will hoist up and carry off the field if we get a trophy, nor is he despised. He's the HC of a team of professionals with largely self correcting character, a trait that this team pursues above talent in many circumstances.

This thread is about playmakers, not McD. You made it about McD.

Oh yes, the standard rebuttal of the McD fan club. Wait each year for every promising candidate to be poached, then mid season say, see! Nobody is available. Works every time.

Not to mention, a hall of fame TE, even if eroding in skill, is consistently open. They bring a lot of speed and scheme players open. You can watch 1 quarter of Chiefs football and see more open WR's than we will have an entire game. The comparison is laughable.

I would start with HC