Chaos

The Case for Keeping Sean McDermott forever The Bills have historical had some incredibly bad head coaches. Lots of them. For many years. Sean McDermott is a very good head coach, probably top 10 in the NFL currently. No sane organziation would risk going backwards to the days of Kay Stephenson or even Rex Ryan. McDermott is arguably the greatest build of espirit de corp in the modern NFL. The Bills are a team, built to win together or lose together. He has embraced the concept of the Bills mafia to make the team the NFL's version of "La Cosa Nostra" (our thing). He is not going to cast aside a Leslie Frazier or hire an OC from outside the Bills organization. It is just not fathomable. He isn't going to instantly insert a new player (see Hines) into the rotation until he has passed his initiation. I don't follow other NFL teams as carefully as I do the Bills, but I feel confident in saying the Bills have the best team chemistry in the NFL. Most weeks the Bills come to the games ready to play. They seem focused and like they have a plan each week. When the plan clicks they dominate. Coach McDermott is passionate and wants to succeed. He does not seem like the paycheck is the main motivation, he wants to win. The Case for Considering a Coaching Change Josh Allen is really good. It is actually hard to imagine missing the playoffs with any credible NFL coach with Josh Allen as your QB. Virtually no QB at Allen's level is home watching the playoffs the first week. McDermott is not a necessary ingredient to making the playoffs. History is not on McDermott's side. Since 1960 only one time has a coaching/QB combo appeared in their first championship game after their fourth season together (Ken Stabler/John Madden, 1978). It has never happened in the free agency era. Past is not prologue, but it is probably worth understanding this dynamic. It is worth noting, that on numerous occasions after a team had its franchise QB in place, making a coaching change led to a Super Bowl appearance. McDermott does not appear to be a great game day coach. More than one of his losses has reached the level of epic NFL game meltdown. He very well may have missed his opportunity with HIS 13 seconds collapse. In public he does not own the mistakes. He more or loss always blames problems on the "execution" of his obviously correct decisions. (should be noted 100% of all NFL coaches expect 100% of the callls they make to work if perfectly executed). McDermott seems to want to win his way. Winning his way seems more important than simply winning. (random movie analogy - McDermott is Roy "tin cup" Mcvoy (Kevin Costner) the lovable character who loses the US Open in his attempt to reach the par five in 2. Bill Bellicheck is David Simms (Don Johnson), the unlikable guy who lays up and actually wins the US Open. The Dr. Jekyl / Mr. Hyde portion of the thread title, is because I fall into both camps. A bit part of me wants to win or lose with these guys. Another part of me just wants to win a super bowl, and not be emotionally connected to who the personnel who actually get the job done.

Jackson played all 67 defensive snaps in the game. He is one of a handful of guys holding the rubber band , duct tape and glue defense together. This is one of the most awful threads in the history of TBD.

You do realize Allen is injured don’t you?

Seems last year all of the pieces lined up. Only one major injury (Tre White). That scenario is not going to happen again.

Vikings must have played their super bowl against us

There is a word for people who are blaming Josh for the teams struggles : Idiots.

Why is it impertative? Do other succcessful teams overpay aging players based on past performance? I think your hearts in the right place. But conventional wisdom is that it is better to lose a player a year too early than hold on a year too long.

I have always been in the no dome camp. But I have recently reconsidered this. As the season expands to 18 games, it is more of a war of attrition than ever before. It seems to be a built in disadvantage to have to spend decemeber and january playing 60% of your games in potentially brutal conditions while, your competitors are playing in comfortable conditions. Based on the recent history of the Patriots and Dolphins, its is certainly arguable that this does not matter at all. But I suspect having brutal condition games down the stretch does not really help.

The lions sure dont

no one is saying its not hard. these guys get paid millions to be the best at it. It is reasonable to say that the Chiefs are better than the Bills during Beane's era This means the chiefs have better talent or the chiefs have better coaching or the have chiefs have better coachiing and talent. Beanes options are too stand pat with the strategy and be the chiefs second fiddle (like the colts to the patriots or the raiders to the steel curtain steelers) or make moves to have better talent and/or better coaching than the chiefs. Second best in the AFC is pretty good. Puts us ahead of 14 teams (although several would dispute we are second best). I think calling the second best Roster/Coaching combo "poorly constructed" is a bit of an over statement. It is hard to say it is the best however.

I am going to say Chiefs

It’s called no pressure defense

It pains me to say this. We need Edmunds back.

I don't put myself through hell at all. So I agree with your comment.

I don't follow the Brown's as closely, and trust you are correct, and have bet accordingly. I fear Nick Chubb. But the Bills may score 40.

Awful of lot of assuming on your part bud.

It tells the story of the teams that WIN the super bowl. Yes the most common patterns for the teams that WIN the super bowl are A) 1)teams find franchise QB 2) Team has/finds coach that clicks with franchise QB 3) win Super Bowl during first four years of the combo B) 1)Teams find franchise QB 2)Coach does NOT win with QB after several seasons) 3)team fires coach 4) Team finds coach who clicks with franchise QB 5) Team wins super bowl during first four years of new combo What has happened only once in the Super Bowl era (1978 Madden/Stabler). C) 1)Team Finds with Franchise QB, 2) Team sticks with Coach Franchise QB combo more than five years. 3)Team wins super bowl. Past is not prologue. Anything in the future is possbible. But the facts of what happened in the past are what they are. NOTE: I realize many fans feel that all but the 78 Raiders won the super bowl the wrong way.

Ignorance is bliss as they say.

Winning today is critical. A loss today raises the real spectre of actually misssing the playoffs. The way the AFC is split between good and bad teams, it is possible an 11-6 team misses the playoffs. 10-7 almost certainly misses in the AFC. The Bills have four divisional games remaining: 2 against the patriots who we rarely sweep, 2 against teams who already beat us this season. All of these teams are hungry and in the playoff hunt. Going two and two out of these four is the most likely scenario. This means we can't lose any of our other four games. Our other four games are against the Browns, Lions, Bears and Bengals. Browns are a terrible matchup for the Bills. The Bengals are defending AFC champions who are dangerous on any given Sunday. A loss tomorrow to the Browns will be devastating. As they say D-Day was a must win, this is just a football game. But if the Bills lose today, the path to a championship becomes very narrow. If the Bills win today, it will still be a slog to get home.

Quoted for idiocy.

Just to be clear, the stat is for FIRST super bowl together. Obviously, Bradshaw/Noll, Montana/Walsh, Brady Belicheck and a couple of others went on to later championships. You may or may not realize that Reid was fired along the way. And the team that fired him won a super bowl before he did. Winning a super bowl does not even necessarily generate guaranteed employment in the NFL. Ron Rivera, Doug Pederson, and MIke McCarthy are current coaches who were all fired by their teams after post-super bowl failures. Rivera could not replicate the magic he found with Newton. Rodgers himself decided McCarthy was wasting his talents. And Green Bay concurred. Its hard to stay employed as a coach in the NFL.

Fair point

I was attempting to evaluate the patterns of the winners.

Not sue it is weird. It seems to indicate that when owners think they have a potential Super Bowl winning QB they only wait about 1/3 of said QBs career before trying another route.

Bills will abandon the nickel dime strategy and sell out to stop the run. Brissett has a career day and passes for 350. Frazier refuses to adjust and speaks proudly about the Bills holding Chubb to under 50.