Beck Water

Serious question: How do we know McDermott can't relate to his players?

So there's a difference between stating what happened, and criticizing decisions, and "attacking someone's character". And Dunne's article, what has been shared or I can access, goes far beyond what McDermott said or did. Let's look at the truck story that was just posted above: "Chad Hall played wide receiver, was much closer in age and — clearly — has a gift for managing egos in his room. The Bills receivers loved Hall so much that they bought him a truck for Christmas in 2020. An objectively touching moment that Isaiah McKenzie shared via Instagram. In the dark, in the rain, you see Stefon Diggs and Andre Roberts lead Hall out to the driveway with a beanie over the coach’s eyes. On the audio, Cole Beasley says that this was originally Gabe Davis’ idea and that they all chipped in. It's impossible for any sane person to watch this heartwarming video and not feel happy for Hall." OK, stop right here. When I watched that video, not long after the Titans debacle where they got together outside the facility to practice and Denver being forced to play without a QB - my primary emotion was TERROR. I thought the league would see that video and come down on the Bills like a load of bricks. Then I switched to hoping it would be too bad PR for the league to object to a feel-good moment. Question my sanity if you will. ( Pretty sure I got receipts of this too) "Obviously, this coach had made a profound impact on those receivers’ lives — why anyone gets into coaching in the first place. But Sean McDermott? Oh boy. Sean McDermott was not pleased. One source described this as “a dark day at One Bills Drive.” Not only was the head coach pissed that players were gathering as a group during Covid, McDermott told his staff he pays them to be a coach. Not a friend. Other coaches could not believe his cold response. They had never seen anything like this in their careers." So far we're pretty much at stating what happened and criticizing decisions. The receivers bought Hall a truck, and McDermott was critical because 1) the players were gathering as a group at Hall's house, during Covid - contrary to league rules that other teams had been penalized for 2) he stated that he pays his staff to be a coach, not a friend (and by inference, felt that inspiring the receivers to purchase a truck for him indicated Hall was too much of a friend to the WR group) But here: "He’s insecure. He wants the relationship that he can’t have with the players. Because he’s not physically, mentally, or socially able to.” Can we agree that's going beyond "what happened" or even criticizing McDermott's response as insensitive to Hall and to his assistants, into an attack on his personality and character - "he's physically, mentally, or socially" unable to have a relationship with the players? Again, the fact is that it's a fine line, when you're supervising someone - you want to be friendly and show that you care about them as people, but at the same time, if you get too far into being friends, you make it difficult to get on their case if you need to. How can you bust the chops of a WR for making sloppy cuts, not playing physical against press man, or not using proper hands technique when catching, when he bought you a ***** TRUCK for Christmas? In theory you can, but in practice, will you?

Former reporter for TBN and for Bleacher Report. Good reporter, at his best writing in-depth pieces. He struck out on his own to start a subscription-based sports feature publication called "Go Long" - he's got a website with articles and podcasts and I think if you're a subscriber he emails articles to you. From WNY and makes his home there. I thought it was a brave concept and wished him the best, but I'm not a fan of his implementation.

Anyone want to bet against the chance that Josh McDaniel is a narcissistic control freak? "Narcissist" is a term with a specific psychological meaning that gets thrown around far too widely these days, but to the fundamental point - I think you're exactly correct. Football HC have to be dialed in and focused. The buck stops with them, so yes they want control. Who was Sean McDermott's coaching mentor? Want to bet Andy Reid isn't a demanding control freak? That said: A lot of coaches come in to a team and the team (if it's average) sustains that level or improves the coach's first or second year. They're novel, players want to win, the coaches get the benefit of the doubt ("buy in"). Then the "honeymoon" wears off and the team slumps. Gase got Miami to 10-6 his first season, playoff game, whoo hoo they're on their way. Flores 10-6 the team's second season, likewise whoo hoo. So the difference is, can the team sustain success and build? And McDermott, whatever he is to work for or play for, has managed that for the Bills. I've said it before, I'll say it again, I don't find it difficult to believe that McDermott is a control freak who wants it 'his way or the highway' and who has definite ideas about how things should be done, and definite expectations of being 'heard and obeyed' when he says something. On the other hand....I find it very difficult to believe that he could sustain success with the Bills for 7 years if it's true that "He has zero relationship with the offensive players. Zero. None. Absolutely zero" and "He wants the relationship that he can’t have with the players. Because he’s not physically, mentally, or socially able to". Because coaching professional sports now a days is very much about building and managing relationships with the players. So is McDermott the Dale Carnegie Award Winning Self-Aware COTY, maybe not, but there's a lot of room between that and "not physically mentally or socially able to" have relationships with the players and just pooping on his assistants. I could see big development in Brian Daboll from his first year with the team to his fourth, from being a stiff-faced guy who flirted with throwing his players under the bus in pressers, to being an affable guy who expressed concern for both players and reporters. Usually (not always) people develop in their job because it's asked or even demanded of them to change.

Got a linky? Not that it's a surprise.

They have Mahomes and Kelce. That ain't nothing. Rashee Rice seems to be emerging nicely as a #2 WR, similar stats to Davis, and he's on injury report but practicing in full. But Pacheco has BY FAR been their leading rusher, so unless Edwards-Helaire and McKinnon step up, it may make the Chiefs significantly more one dimensional.

Thanks So Hall's salary vs. that paid to other assistants with similar experience would be an objective stat. Across the league, young assistants just transitioning to position coaching are not, I think, well paid. Objectively, the team and the players could have been penalized for gathering as a group at Hall's house during Covid. How much of the harshing on the truck thing was due to the possibility of punative action from the league? Zero relationship with the offensive players? Allen says he meets with McDermott weekly. Diggs has been seen on the sideline with McDermott talking to him, and apparently altering his mood - later Diggs said that McDermott is great because he always knows the right thing to say. Funny that could occur if McDermott has "zero" relationship with the offensive players. It is a fact that coaches need to walk a line between being a coach, and "being a friend". Where that line is, is a matter of perception, and whether Hall crossed it in a way that affected WR performance especially in some big games, can't tell from this. It IS a fact that in Dunne's "Isaiah McKenzie Show", I heard a lot of blame-shifting to Allen for "throwing the ball too hard" and to conditions where the ball was "wet and slippery". The Bills WRs seemed to have trouble making cuts and hanging on to the ball, in conditions where the opponents WR and DB were not having trouble. I'm pretty sure that Dunne was told what he reported here, but there seems to be a lot of personal opinion from the unnamed assistant mixed in.

Maybe it had to do with "Gary", Jerry's alter-ego, who Tre White described as "terrifying" when he was a rookie - and the "unsportsmanlike conduct" penalties he drew https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/H/HughJe99/penalties Not to mention his confrontation with a referee and his continuation in the tunnel after the game. Hughes may have been justified but I'm pretty sure McDermott would view the way he expressed himself as "conduct detrimental to the team"

I apologize, but my best efforts can't find this tweet or the "chad hall truck story". could you summarize please?

We're going to have to agree to disagree on this one. Goodwin was in my opinion a lousy route runner and poor at tracking the ball while he was with Buffalo. It was only when he got over making "career decisions" to save himself for his Olympic dreams and decided to earn his contract with San Francisco that his abilities as a WR leveled up. I mean, Come On Man, in his 4 years in Buffalo he had a catch % of 44%. Even in SFO his first year it was 53%. You do you, but painting that as "perfect for Allen's cannon" strikes me as highly revisionist. Foster Part Deux. You're entitled to your opinion but no, while I wouldn't say they were terrible, I don't think that's a particularly talented crew, especially for a raw rookie QB. I grant that the OL was halfway decent. You're kinda stretching Chandler's productivity. He did have one >600 yd year. Question: when has Tyler Dunne ever asked Sean McDermott a question, tough or otherwise?

Pacheco was a 1-man wrecking crew vs. Green Bay and vs. several other teams this season. "Angry Runs" all game. If he's unable to go this week, that would be a bit of a help, theoretically.

My take-away from that presser is the Dunne article and dealing with the follow-on (+ and -) has been a major distraction for McDermott this week.

OK, thanks for answering, fair enough. People who know Dunne do say "no", but your point about him being very close to people with well-honed axes is germaine.

From what I know, that's 100% correct. HC in the NFL are highly competitive and driven and have strong egos. That translates to "control freak" for many. But being a HC these days is also about motivating people, which requires being able to relate to them successfully. If McDermott's people-skills are as bizarrely bad and he's as actually lacking in personal accountability as the impression people are giving from Dunne's article, it's very difficult to imagine him having a 7 year record of 109-68 in the regular season as the Bills HC and 5 years of playoffs while being so out of touch and unable to relate. Caveat that I AM one of those who have not read the entire article. And I will also add that being a solid HC, and having the ultimate ability to be a SB winning HC, are different things - but we have seen examples where someone spent a long time as the former before becoming the latter. My jury is out on whether McDermott has, or can develop as, that ultimate warrior SB winning HC, but there's a lot of room between that POV and the feeling that he's a bizarre out of touch coach who can't relate appropriately to players.

Um.....Doug Marrone spent 5 years as the HC of the Jacksonville Jaguars after Buffalo, and after a 1 year gap, got employed as the OL coach of the NO saints. I 'get it' that people have different values of "washed out quickly", but by NFL standards, 5 years as the HC of another team ain't quick.

I'll grant you Bobby Trees. He had a good year, and I loved him as a player. Goodwin had 1 catch on 9 targets that year, so I don't think he supports your argument; I don't remember the story with Spiller, if he was injured or what, but also not contributing much that year. Chandler for me falls squarely into what Beane said once about "we never got to a point where opponents said we got to stop their TE from going off"

"ST lost game 1". You mean the season opener Jets game where Allen threw 3 INTs and fumbled? Any idea what the W-L stats are when a team has twice as many turnovers as their opponent? OK, I'm outta here. Not doing this with someone who comes to that conclusion about that game. Just for the record, I have never said the defense played well against Jacksonville ("what a wonderous game the Bills D played allowing Jax 500+ yards?"); it is logically consistent to feel the the defense has overall played well and kept us in games while the offense wasn't scoring this season overall, while not extolling defensive performance in one specific game. In the Jax game, there was an almost 2:1 edge in TOP for Jax.

My point is that there wasn't a lot of talent on that offense, and that the OC in name/HC do not have a track record of getting the best out of their QB - and rookie Allen was a very raw talent who needed his energy and competitiveness to be channeled and developed. Specifically, there are cases where you have a situation where a QB's performance drops markedly under one coach, then revives markedly under another, and in the case of Russ Wilson and Hackett you see that. I guess you could also argue that perhaps he got the most out of Blake Bortles in '16-'18. And just for the record, the bolded is nothing I've said or that should reasonably be inferred from what I've said. I think it would fall within "fair use" to share that and what they said.

Where on earth do you get that from anything I've written on this board at any time?

I know you have a background as a journalist, but I would have guessed it was sourced over more like a year. I would guess that as Dunne talks to people, he collects notes and quotes on what they say on several topics and of further sources to follow-up with, and collects them in literal or figurative "folders" which he reviews periodically in view of likely current topical interest. But are you saying that Dunne timed the release deliberately to damage the Bills season and to maximize the possibility that McDermott gets fired? Because journalists who know him have spoken out that Dunne is not a guy with an "axe to grind", but timing an article's release to maximize damage to his home town team's season and its head coach, kind of would sound like an ax. If I'm misinterpreting you, please do clarify and correct.

Leaving aside ToS, there is this thing called Copyright Law

Maybe. The 2014 Marrone-led Bills went to 9-7 on the strength of a #4 overall defense. They had a fading FredEx as their leading rusher, and Watkins (best season as a pro), and not much else as weapons. The OC was nominally Nathaniel Hackett, whom Aaron Rodgers likes a lot and who got a chance to flame out as the Denver HC based on that liking. He hasn't done a lot otherwise, which one could attribute to having Blake Bortles as his QB in Jacksonville and Zach Wilson with the Jets. Or one could look at it as, Hackett has yet to demonstrate that he can develop a QB nor work with a QB who showed success elsewhere (Wilson). I personally think this kind of revisionist speculation is pointless, and certainly debatable, but with the huge growth in Sports Betting it wouldn't shock me if you could actually make such a bet. By the way, a number of lines of evidence point to Marrone having a pretty giant ego, at least while he was with the Bills. Remember "Saint Doug"? And there was a reporter who wrote about a wierd private interview session he had with Marrone after publishing some info that made Marrone look bad, that had shades of the "Godfather" about it. I seem to recall several articles at the time.

The public also received the viewpoint recently (from an NFL insider) that McDermott's job will be evaluated after the season. There is a thread about that on the board. Like I said, I don't want to put words in your mouth. When you say "articles like these are required when a head coach is not getting the job done and an article comes out with sources close to Pegula saying there's no chance he gets fired after the season", are you saying Dunne specifically researched and wrote this article as a response to the Athletic article saying McDermott's job is safe?

Prior to the season, a number of people here expressed concern about Dorsey returning as OC. Serious professional journalists - Joe Buscaglia for one - tagged "returning Dorsey as OC" as the Bills riskiest off-season decision. So this isn't some "we all thought Dorsey was brilliant and now he's McDermott's 'Escape Goat' " revisionist thinking. I defended Dorsey's performance last season on statistical grounds and on the grounds that he lacked some critical pieces. This season, he got an upgraded OL and a first-round draft pick to work with as well as some solid journeyman acquisitions at WR and a "gadget" guy who was alleged to be an upgrade on McKenzie. The result IMO was objectively under-whelming and under-performing. Yes, the Bills D gave up some game winning drives, but if the offense is functioning at the level expected for a "gift from the Football Gods" QB, there shouldn't be so many games where a drive in the final minutes can turn the game - and the defense is also objectively depleted by key injuries at every level and has frankly done better than I expected. My opinion

Correct, I do not subscribe to "Go Long" and will not do so just to access this article; Boyst's work around didn't work for me. He probably did, but facility access is more than just pressers; not being in the facility does limit the people he will meet/develop relationships with/talk to.