PBF81

Funny you mention that, I took a glance. Not one team in the league this weekend allowed more 1st-Downs. Only one team allowed more total yards, that was the Giants' D against Miami. Only one team allowed greater Time-of-Possession, that was the pathetic Pats. So we're essentially being asked to believe that considering the injuries, the D that we fielded yesterday was literally the worst in the entire league. That's a tough sell even if it were true. We lost for several reasons, primarily that we were simply outcoached. Let's not forget to give credit to Pederson and his staff, Lawrence and their team. They outplayed us. Otherwise, and to what extent, poor (travel) planning, injuries, and per the above, play-calling. Two of those three were entirely avoidable.

And worse vs. Thompson, in favorable Bills home conditions, than in any of his other two starts, one of which was against Minnesota and their 28th ranked defense last season.

Once again I never said that there was. I am specifically discussing the impact of the replacement, which should be obvious since I've stated it in other terms at least a half-dozen times in this thread so far. I'll give you some data though to validate the point. Going from White to Elam is huge. But the reason is a draft failure. And once again, we were without White last season so that's not a good comp. He hasn't been great even when has been on the field and hasn't been classic White since last '21. Going from Milano to whomever (you fill it in), is also resultant from not having better depth, or even another starting LB at anywhere near that level. All we have is average. And all of those claiming how well Bernard has been playing are going to see the impact of Bernard now taking over entirely for Milano and the failure to address the LB situation since Lorax left, ... by none other than Beane since that's his responsibility. For purposes of argument, if I could attribute it to our equipment guy since I don't care, but if we're going to be honest, that drop in talent level is on Beane. Thanks for the heads up!! We'll see how Ford does in his place, and on that note, that loss isn't nearly as impactful as you make out. The performance drop from Jones to Ford isn't anywhere near what it's going to be from Milano to whomever. In fact, if you look at Ford's first five seasons, he has more sacks, nearly double the TFL, and more QB Pressures in 13 fewer starts. He's also 28 to Jones' 32. The drop there is hardly what it will be from Milano to whomever. I'm also far from sold that Jones didn't simply shoot a load in the beginning of the season. I mean he was on pace for absolutely shattering anything he's ever done, which I would find to be ridiculously unlikely. It's quite possible that his play for most of the rest of the season would be where it's been throughout his career, namely pretty average. OK, on that note, I just looked. Not one other team in the league allowed more 1st-Downs for their opponent yesterday. Only one team allowed more yards and that was the pathetic Giants' D which allowed 524 to the Fins. Only one team allowed a greater Time-of-Possession, that was the pathetic Pats. So what your'e asking everyone to believe is that our D, as fielded yesterday, was all but literally the worst D in the the league yesterday. Sorry, no sale!

Agreed I don't envision the drop from Jones to him being all that much of a difference, who knows, it may be a positive. Either way, it's far from the drop from White to Elam or Milano to whomever.

I'm not sure what we disagree on primarily here. Seems as if we generally believe similarly with the exception that I contribute it to a depth and poor drafting issue related to depth, if not starters, particularly since Beane didn't even draft White or Milano to begin with. You say it's an injury issue, which is obvious. But the question becomes who's backing up those players. And again, White was out most of last season. Put another way, there's no difference from last season and the games he was out and this one in the games that he'll be out. Same for Miller's status. So yes, it's obviously an injury issue, but my point is that who are the depth players capable of stepping in to prevent the tragedy that you've referred to under certain circumstances? Also, I was addressing your statement that we'd be a bottom-dwelling D now, which you've since edited. Either way, you seem to have been referring to hypotheticals whereas I was referring to reality. Jones isn't out for the season. What's Johnson's injury? How long? From what I can tell the only players lost for the season at the moment are White and Milano. And as I outlined, other players have lost a key LB, like the Jets losing Mosely several seasons ago, and played decently, and better than they had in the prior season or subsequent season. Many other teams lose a key player on D even two or three and still play solid D. Again, I blame the lack of adequate depth on Beane resultant from injuries, that I've been pointing out now for at least two seasons, that if Milano ever went down we'd be screwed at LB, so this isn't exactly an "experts" only puzzle. You stop at the injury part of it. Look, I get it. But we need to realize that's where we disagree. Backfills for injuries are #GMthingz. You say, apparently, that they're merely injuries and that adequate depth is something other than a GM thing by implication. I get it. No need to argue further. But please understand the difference.

OK, our playoff defense has been good, without any trend or pattern of problems. I've seen the light.

One way or another we'll find out whether drafting Williams was a good use of a draft pick. BTW, how long is Jones out for? I can't imagine more than a few weeks. I mean honestly, if we need A-Team D to beat the next three teams on our schedule then we have much bigger problems than anyone realizes. Two of 'em are the two lowest scoring teams in the league, the third is 8th lowest scoring, all in the bottom quartile. That takes us through October.

I'm not arguing to argue. You're trying to use two games, one in which our D played a pretty bad offense relatively speaking, and this Miami game, to counter my argument that our defense has generally sucked in the playoffs and that the reasons for our elimination from the playoffs has a whole lot more to do with our defense allowing 38, 36, and 27 points in regulation, an average of a bottom-dwelling playoff performance of nearly 34 PPG, and allowed an average of 30 1st-Downs which is putrid, than it does with our offense that put up 36 and 24 in two of those playoff games. Let's suppose I agree with you that the Miami game was great D. But the Ravens game, yes, 3 points was great, but Baltimore had no one on offense that was worth a crap besides their TE Andrews. Not one single standout player otherwise. We still were eliminated from the '20 and '21 playoffs because of our D, and in '21, entirely because of our D and the idiotic coaching decisions involving the D and that ill-fated series. Last season the O sucked too, but the D did absolutely nothing in that Bengals game in allowing 30 1st-Downs, 412 total yards, and 172 rushing yards. Our hopes for a Lombardi rest entirely with our offense.

He's a very average player on a good day. Not sure that sacrificing the development of Williams/Dodson is a worthwhile exchange.

Ford is 4 years younger and at the same point in his first five seasons he has more sacks and nearly twice the TFLs and QBHits in fewer starts. Jones had a great start with us, but like the past two seasons, we've started strong and if the pattern held, the D would have cooled off some. Same for Jones, it's unlikely that his 10 season was the charm for him at 32 to shatter any prior season's best. While we didn't play our best on Sunday, it's also quite possible and likely that opposing offensive coordinators have started to figure McD's D out.

You're seriously defending our playoff D? LOL 24 points, Skylar Thompson, in the snow, in a playoff environment at home, AND, a 75-yard drive allowed at a key moment in the game to nearly cost us the game. Sure. They averaged 6 yards-per-play with Thompson going 4 of 5 for 59 yards en route to a TD at the most crucial juncture in the game allowing them to come within 3 and nearly win it. ... with a home playoff crowd.

You know that we're going to disagree here. My argument, and realize that I understand that we disagree, so just posing this as I view it, but White and Miller were out most of last season and we adjusted well. Rousseau disappeared after his first four or five games too. He'll be back too, so it's not as if he's out for the season. Jones is a loss, but let's look at reality here, the past three seasons we've started out strong defensively, as a team. It's seemed to me that we get a little too amped up at the beginning of the seasons as if thinking that if we go 5-1 or 6-0 we've achieved some kind of victory or something, and at the expense of later season consistent play. Having said that, we have no idea that Jones would have played all that strongly all season, and at 32, and amidst a team that has been playing emotionally high from a defensive perspective, he's a sack away from his former season best and 1 TFL away as well. I find it unlikely that he was going to continue to play like that, at 32, for the other dozen games. So I'm not willing to put him into that status. He's already outplayed himself from all 16 games last season. It's quite possible that much like Rousseau he would have largely disappeared much of the rest of the season going forward. There's nothing in his recent history to suggest that he would have posted the season that would ultimately render him one of the best players on the team. And frankly, when a DT that got a 2-year contract for $14M is "one of your best players," yeah, I'll put that into the GM wheelhouse for accounability. There obviously wasn't an enormous demand for his services. He has absolutely zero particular career accolades, so we need to stop talking about him as if he were Kyle Williams. Milano is obviously a huge loss, and you should also remember me having said numerous times that should Milano go down, then we'd be screwed at LB. I have no idea what alignments we're playing on D, it's unconventional to be sure. They're erratic at best. I haven't see another team do what we do. I've expressed that earlier and no one pointed out any that have. I don't watch much outside of highlights outside of here. But we don't play a traditional 4-3 nor a 3-4. I will give McD credit for that, but it's also a chicken-egg thing. Anyway, Milano was our only above average LB and the "glue" that held that unit together and allowed for its adapability and versatility. We're presently left with a bunch of average LBs at best, and a role-player in Floyd. But at the end of the day, my question is always going to be, which player that we drafted is there to step up? That's definitely a GM issue, at least to some significant extent, disagree as we may. Either way, take your list and remove the three players we were without for 2/3 of last season either in performance (Rousseau) or injury (White, Miller), and here's what we have; Milano, White, Rousseau, Von Miller, Daquan Jones. I'm not sure I'm willing to cut the kind of slack that McD's going to end up getting over the loss of those two. Milano yes, but again, that's entirely due to poor planning in six seasons by Beane. IMO it is a GM issue. Not sure I'd use the word mistake, but to the point. Keep in mind however that we signed Rapp, who is a very capable replacement, and possibly even better than Poyer at this point. Either way, it's not such a dropoff that it should be all that. We agree, I think, that the single biggest issue of it is Milano. McD has had to shift players around in unconventional alignments due to the lack of a much above average LB next to Milano, so we're about to see what the "defensive genius" does now, as well as how good our LBs after Milano truly are. But plenty of teams lose a starting LB and their D doesn't fall apart. The Jets lost Moseley several seasons ago for the season and their D was better than it was either the year prior or after. If ours does, then obviously it has to do with drafting, aka the GM. Just my two cents as usual. But talk about overreacting here, the only consistently performing player

24 offensive points allowed to a rookie 7th-round QB that absolutely no one had as ever being an NFL starting QB, and one that led the Fins on a 75-yard drive in the 4th Quarter to bring the game, which was a wintry home game for us, within a FG.

Agreed, McD hasn't come clean. Many take issue when I say that, but we do not know and that's because, ... well, McD hasn't come clean. LOL I don't think that the pressers will change, but at the end of the day what I find to be frustrating is the lack of accountability McD gets for the offense on the premise that "he's a defensive-minded coach." So TF what. One way or another, he's entrusted with overseeing the entire team, not simply the D while deflecting any and all criticism for the O off his sleeves.

This season will tell us where he is or not IMO he's overrated in that way.

All we know is that the reasons need to be addressed from the top down. If there's been one common theme to our weaknesses on McD's watch, it's been inconsistency, for which preparation is a huge factor. That's all but exclusively a coaching issue.

The Ravens game is the one game, but we wouldn't have even been there without the O. In that Chiefs game, spin it as you have, the defense was far worse. Skylar Thompson

That's the point, it's also his job to perhaps not give as much autonomy, or step in to correct if the OC isn't cutting it. Either way, him getting a complete pass because "he's a defensive minded coach" had gotten old and is immediately at this point. Maybe time for an offensive-minded head coach then given the absurd wealth of talent we have on offense, and FINALLY, this cannot possibly be overstated, a decent OL. Just sayin'.

Implying that McD is helpless to correct offensive issues is ridiculous, which is the general take here. IF that's truly reality, then sorry, but it's time for a head coach than can do that given the ridiculous underachievement/inconsistency on the offensive side.

No, but people do expect a 1st-round pick that was made with numerous other needs on the team, to actually play and be used effectively and to their strengths, particularly when they demonstrate that they're quite capable.

Not in a regular basis. And which game did it cost us besides the Bengals game last season? And you did realize that the only reason we even played that game was because of the offense, right? The offense has been responsible for the playoff success that we have had.

If it's not in the skillset of a head coach to be able to identify the simple things that we're identifying here, then it's time for a new head coach. Sorry, but that's the truth. The issues of the offense yesterday were obvious to anyone watching.

Fine in what sense? We're talking about significantly underachieving here. Getting less than we should be, with enough regularity that it should raise concerns. So sure, from the perspective of fans that are simply happy that Buffalo has a team and they enjoy the entertainment of it all, and $20 beer, for however long it lasts in a season, sure, they'll be fine. But for anyone hoping for a super Bowl win, these are likely terminal issues. THIS is exactly why we get out coached in the playoffs. Hoping to have circumstances overcome coaching ineptness for four straight playoffs games, against the best teams, QBs, and coaches in the league is not a sound strategy. If we make the most of what we have, great. But what we're seeing here is the opposite. We're not making optimal use, far from it in fact, with what's at our disposal. Hence the criticism and distraction, which frankly, is warranted.

Great points, but Torrence has made a huge impact. Expending a 1st-round pick that's on pace for 400 yards and 0 TDs begs criticism though. Seems the norm however, and for the life of me I have no idea why McD isn't taking more heat for it. He's the HEAD coach FFS.

The offensive play-calling was problematic. But my original point was in response to the issues that you mentioned, which are all categorically correctable simply by making the decisions to either do or not do them. They're also not complicated and not something that requires experts in offense. Any boob that watches football regularly knows the issues. Hell, my wife walks in during the game at one point and says why are they running these plays. If a head coach can't figure these trivial issues out, then he's not a great head coach. Same for Dorsey, but since Dorsey seems to struggle with it, it's on McD to tell him what to change. Which makes it's own statement about Dorsey. A few more games like this on the play-calling end and he won't be around after this season. But why hasn't McD told him to take his head out of his arse on this? The talent is there for this offense to be the best in the league, prolific and record-seeing. If that cannot be achieved this season, then the only thing holding it back will have been coaching, and given what you said, that includes McD. Right now or hopes for a Lombardi are directly tied to optimizing or offense.