PBF81

I'm not all that down on Dorsey at the moment as you may think, but the offense needs to be far more rounded this season, more balanced between passing & rushing (RBs rushing that is, not Allen rushing). But I will say, if after this season those issues still persist, then IMO it's time to consider another OC. I was incredibly high on Dorsey before last season began. I was an enormous fan of his while he was at Miami. So it's hardly like I came in with a preconceived bias. I'm not as big a fan of Rivera as you seem to be. IMO he's not a good coach. He's achieved nothing significant. As a HC his passing Ds have been poor. His career W/L record is barely above .500. (.521) I don't want to bring Beane/Gettleman into the convo at this point. No need right now. That's after the season stuff. Interesting post! Another poster recently made the comment that Buffalo doesn't own a single sports championship trophy in any major league sport, with the implication that until it does, will always be considered a second-rate sports city. I guess that's a topic for debate.

The word irony strongly confess to mind. 😉 With a fraction of the brain. Homer Simpson comes to mind when thinking about Young's intellectual assets.

I'm sure you don't as I'm pretty sure you know what the results of that poll will be. Nearly everyone refers to Allen as a "generational talent." He's notably more athletic than Kelly ever was, rules aside, and had a much stronger arm. Kelly want even consistently in the top 5 of his day. You do realize that, don't you?

That window could very well be even smaller for Allen given the incredibly physical style of his play, he's not the ordinary QB. If he wants that window to be longer, he'll have to turn into a top notch pocket passer too using his skills only to buy some time to throw, not perpetually challenging the top rusher on the team for yardage. But what are your direct thoughts on the composition of our senior coaching staff right now? Other than Rivera we have the Carolina staff from 2011-2026. Does this sit well with you? Are you comfortable and inspired by that? For the life of me I can't see why anyone is.

I'm still shaking my head when I think about it. I wasn't big on either Daboll or Frasier, but going from them to Brady, Washington, and Holcomb, I mean what has any single ones of them done? Nada! They've all been demoted at some point except for Brady who was awful as an OC in Carolina and otherwise had incredibly limited experience. Then there's Dorsey who doesn't seem to understand how a running game can compliment a passing game. I still say he's living out his collegiate career again vicariously thru Allen. Those are the guys everyone's pinning their hopes on. It's remarkable. IMO McD's desire to keep such a right grip in the control of this team is going to backfire and ruin a good thing. A country mile I tell you! Someone's you just have to laugh at yourself. 😁😎 Thank you! 😉 😂 😎

Well, if it happens it'll be tragic, to start. The same people defending McD now will be up in arms saying that they should have ditched him sooner, and not that that will matter, just sayin'. Otherwise I was being somewhat sarcastic. Many NFL teams have never had a top-3 QB let alone coaches. I can think of a few teams that had two great QBs offhand, SF with Montana & Young, GB with Favre & Rodgers, but unless you count Seifert getting Montana's last two years before transitioning to Favre I'm not sure another coach has. It's definitely very unusual at best.

You don't always agree with me. Hmm, I thought you did. 😁 Yes, all of your X's haven't escaped my notice. LOL Agree with you on Dorsey to the extent that we as fans have little clue as to what was going on "in the both" or "on the sidelines." I would say that he didn't embarrass himself, but he did once with that childish tablet incident that McD had to call him out on and reel him in. Otherwise, when your QB provides both the passing and primary rushing element, IMO it's a reach that he leaned towards the optimal. Let me ask you tho, since there's a lot of criticism but no one addressing the fact, and it now is an absolute fact that the top five coaches on the staff and ones that will be making 99% (or so) LOL, decisions, are now literally the same ones that ran the Panthers while McD was there, a team that also underachieved with lackluster results. Does that really inspire you? I think you'll answer that honestly. No one else has responded to it. And go beyond the soft intangible stuff. Yes, I realize that he's comfortable with them, knows them, trusts them, has worked with them, blah blah, etc. But that's not enough as lots of people that have worked together haven't succeeded in that way, there's no need to even mention name, it's also common sense. If this were 2020 and he did that, I'd envision him getting run out of town.

Hmm. You're really reaching here. A. I believe that Kelly has said the same thing; B. I dare you to post a poll here asking which of the two is the better QB straight up. I thought you were being sarcastic until I got to your conclusion. LOL

Yes, cute. The manifestos in fact are the viva la Ron Rivera Coaching Tree "power to the Carolina way" types that insist there's nothing better than a McD coached team, entirely rooted in the emotional and the apple that fell from the Ron Rivera tree. Thanks for addressing the facts in my statement. LOL I'm happy for those of you that place so much faith in the former Çarolina coaching team sans Rivera. I wish I had as much blind faith. I realize that McD's right behind Ron in getting his first SB win. If the pattern holds, McD will be fired following the '25 season. The suspense continues to build. LOL If it plays out that way, you too will be questioning why they didn't jettison him sooner for someone capable of getting the job done. The room for all of you later this season likely won't be big enough and should be quite interesting. Let's hope you can mock the daylights out of me in 7 months, if so then I'll be a happy man. 🙂 Go Bills!!! Let the games begin!

Well, it is what it is. I understand it, obviously I don't agree, but different minds work differently, some are more emotional, some are more/less analytical, some are more/less skeptical, etc. We'll simply see how it plays out, we've beaten this thing to death 9-ways-to-Sunday and then some. For me, at the end of the day, the top five coaches on this team and the decision-makers are essentially the ones that ran Carolina under Rivera from 2011-2016, and look at those results. 6 seasons, 3 playoff appeareances, 2 Divisional Round losses, the first one as the #2 Seed, and one trip to the Super Bowl where McD's D was outplayed and where he allowed an offense led by a QB that had 9 TDs, 17 INTs, and a rating of 67.9 on the season, beat him. The team that made it to the Super Bowl that season had the league's best Win %, most Wins, and largest Point Differential, and was the favorite to win it all. But shhhh, don't tell anyone, they also had the easiest schedule in franchise history to date. McD, our OC, and all three Senior Assistants are who are going to be making the decisions for this team come this fall. The reason why all four are coaching here? Because three of the four, Shula, Holcomb, and Washington at the ages of 58, 52, and 53 have been completely unable to hold down roles as Coordinators elsewhere much less head coaching positions with any significant degree of success. So they all end up here. Is that inspiring? Yeah yeah, McD's hiring people he's familiar with. I'd prefer people that are competent and have proven something, not a one of them has, least of all Dorsey, who's competence will be required if we're to make any progress this season and improve. Then, Dorsey at the age of 42. These guys under McD are supposed to inspire us? ... We'll see how this works out, but I suspect not well at all. And is it coincidence that now that McD has "outsiders" Daboll and Frasier out of the mix, that he hasn't assigned a Defensive Coordinator? Smacks of a desire to control it all to me, but that'd be applying common sense and logic. There's no sense in arguing this anymore, we're all hoping for the same thing, some of us simply dread another five seasons of imaginary improvement and offseason moves that were fine going into the prior season but after it were problematic, and with McD further hiring people that have zero track record of any sustained success simply because of his relationships with them, which is worthless when it comes to winning. At some point it becomes the boy-who-cried-wolf scenario as well. We've reached that point IMO. At the end of the season if we finish 2nd or even possibly 3rd in the division, lose a Wild-Card or D-Round game, then we'll have at least four more seasons to look forward to. If not, great, people can hammer me all they want for me being wrong, it'll fall on deaf ears as I'm enjoying the celebration of a Super Bowl win. My money goes on further underachievement however. I don't see that cast of coaches doing a damn thing in the way of improvement. There is no Rivera Coaching Tree and they did absolutely nothing noteworthy in Carolina except underachieve then too.

He won't have that long, he'll have until Allen's spent. Them they'll decide that they need to go in another direction. LOL

With regard to Shula if say he would have won more. Marino was one of the top QBs on the league then, but the defenses back then that he had were not good. Some free-agency tweaks there and it's reasonable to think that need have been more helped than hindered there.

Gabe has been fine in the playoffs. Who cares about the regular season, that hasn't been a problem for us. Why is that so difficult for people to grasp. We can say "we've won the regular season" in essence. 17-0, 10-7, as long as a team makes the playoffs, it's what the team does therein that matters. Every player on the team will tell you that. As to the playoffs, once again, we had the AFC Championship in '21 won! ... and likely the Super Bowl as well. The reason why we lost it wasn't because of talent; it wasn't because of Davis, to the contrary in fact regarding Davis; it wasn't because of Allen, it was 100% because of McD, who, once again, snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, something that is difficult envisioning any other of the 31 coaches in the league doing. The offense played lights out ball. The D not so much, more impugning of McD, our marvy D-minded coach. What, it's a real reach to think that a new coach wouldn't do things that are that galactically stupid? I'm not sure how else to put it. It was idiocy and/or incompetence at its finest. We have a perpetual place now in the annuls of NFL playoff dunderheadedness as direct result. But we're expected to believe that someone that did that and other dunderheaded things in the playoffs will one day pull his head out of his a$$ far enough to be able to breath and see straight for 4 entire playoff games against the best teams in the league when we can't even get our O and D to both bring their A-games to any given game with even the remotest of regularity? IDK, that's simply seems like misplaced faith and hope if you ask me. Again, this season will spell out much. We essentially have the Panthers' coaching staff from 2011-2016 guiding our team this season. So should we expect more than they delivered during those six seasons in Carolina, which is about what we've gotten here to date? Other than this faith in completely nebulous things, I'm not sure what there is concrete to offer the hope that everyone has. That's what many of us see. Of course we hope that we're wrong, but there's nothing indicative that that's the case. Go Bills!!!

Honestly, with Allen & Diggs alone, and with increased utilization of a running game that we are bottom-dwelling in, I fail to see how most coaches wouldn't make the playoffs regularly. As to the regular season record and seed, who cares. The entire isn't isn't the regular season, which by implication you cite as the seeming standard from which not to regress. Otherwise, no, I don't possibly see how we would do worse in the playoffs. IMO Saleh, McDaniel, Belichick, all, to start, would have won us a Championship in 2021. Think otherwise, but in response to your question, "do I think progress is linear," apart from not really understanding what you're asking, I think that there's been zero pattern of improvement regarding coaching on McD's watch, none, nada, even as Allen's gotten better every season, or perhaps particularly in light of that. If I understand you correctly, you're implying that there's not constant improvement from season to season. But there most certainly should be a trend upward in general if there truly is improvement, even if only in the 2-steps forward, 1-step backwards mode. This whole "made the playoffs" stuff is superficiality at its finest. Apart from the New England game, you cannot name one playoff game of the other 8 whereby both the O and D showed up and both brought their A-game. And in that game we were facing a rookie QB with receivers that would have qualified as our depth WRs, and coached by a coach that also has zero wherewithal as to how offenses are efficiently run, so why would that even have been significant in this way. That's problematic for any coach that's 6 seasons deep with an ever worsening record of playoff futility. I can see the argument if we hammered Skylar Thompson's Fins, in our own house, and then played a tight game down to the wire vs. Cincy by simply lost, but the opposite is true, Skylar Thompson nearly beat Josh Allen, IN Buffalo, and Cincy handed us our a$$e$. Our last playoff game prior to that, we had the AFC won and could have prematurely celebrated our Lombardi, but McD singlehandedly gave the game away. So upon what do we place out future playoff hopes on? It's anything but improvement. Fans continually crying about not having the talent is wearing pretty thin. I mean what, we need an All-Pro roster to win a Super Bowl? That'd be absurd. We have the best QB by a country mile in the history of this franchise, and we cannot advance past the Divisional Round more than once, while giving the season away on a silver platter immediately following that, and which Levy's team did 5 times in his first seven seasons. It's going to be an interesting season to be sure.

That's a question that I keep asking myself. The only answers provided are "stability" and "consistency." Well, I'm not sure we need to be more consistent, rather, we need to break the current mold and exceed its output come playoff time. As to "stability," WTH does that even mean other than a feel good term for what in essence ultimately seems to translate to doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. Once again, we had the 2021 Chiefs' playoff game won, and likely would have beaten the Rams in the Super Bowl for our first Championship and Lombardi trophy. The one single person that prevented it was the one that everyone's placing their faith in. He singlehandedly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. That's not even disputable, yet people simply ignore it as if it's entirely irrelevant.

Good point, but what, accompanied by fans so worried about "returning to the past" that they're perfectly willing to forego improvement to achieve the ultimate prize, for fear that what, they won't win the division instead? ... or "make the playoffs" so that we can be embarassed in the WC or D round? Ben Franklin once said ... “Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.” We have a fanbase today that appears to be afraid of growth and progress. This team's efforts at "growth and progress" are limited to roster moves, which is unfortunate.

I can see a little merit in what you say, but that last part I'm not seeing. Let's look at the 2018 season, Brady still posted top numbers with Edelman, Josh Gordon, and Chris Hogan as his top-3 WRs, he won the Super Bowl. Which validates that point alone. Rodgers is another great example, he's hardly had great talent and generally not much more than Brady had, but he's posted very good passing numbers. As to the rest, I would agree entirely if the opponents that we played all had top passing defenses, but they didn't. Last season Cincy had the 16th ranked passing D and Miami the 27th, which allowed both Diggs and Davis to post good games vs. Miami. It's not as if Cincy's passing D was "unsolveable," right? That's what good coaches do. In 2021 NE had the 2nd ranked passing D and KC the 27th ranked passing D, and against KC, one of the worst passing Ds in the league, Diggs had 3 catches for 7 yards. Chase, Burrow's #1 had 6 for 54 and a TD against the same team in the playoffs. In KC's game vs. Pittsburgh in the same playoffs, the washed up Roethlisburger's #1 also had a better game with 5 for 34 and a TD with Roeth spreading the ball out efficiently, which also feeds into the greater point. Again thought, fairly, there is some validity to your point in general. Let's also not lose sight of the original argument, the better QBs do more with what they do have. It also hasn't escaped notice that every single offseason we talk about how our WRs suck as if we can only be good enough if we have several of the top-10 WRs or something. It makes me wonder that if a QB really needs all the best WRs then how can he be that good. I digress on Brady and the "ancient history" argument to an extent as well. It's not as sexy to have a bunch of average WRs, but the emphasis in the league these days is passing, but that doesn't mean that a team cannot succeed without a "top-5" WR. To me, my argument from the onset is the lack of properly optimizing our WRs. I wasn't happy that they released Beasley, who was Allen's outlet during his best season easily, but most disturbing re: that was that they made no backup plan, at least not a good one, to take his place. I understand the negative sentiments, which wouldn't have made me get rid of him or renegotiated his contract, but if you do that you should at least have a plan in replacement, we did not, at least not a good one. Then there's Hines, who was the Colts 3rd leading receiver in his rookie season in 2018, their 2nd leading receiver in 2019 & 2021, and leading receiver in 2020, and here he had 9 targets in as many games, catching 5 of them, whereas in Indy he averaged 68 targets and 52 catches/season. You're never going anywhere if that's how your talent is managed.

You actually said a mouthful here. You hit the nail right on the head, and I think that the big disconnect between the two sides of this is the overlooked-by-many fact that in the playoffs McD is routinely outcoached, not even by noted top coaches or by teams with as much talent as we have. The other thing that is seemingly overlooked that you touched on, is the 2021 season playoff loss. We actually had that game won, and the entire reason why we lost it is precisely because McD prevented us from finishing/closing. In the meantime he hasn't done even a shred of anything to overcome any notion that he's capable of improving. The strongest argument that I can see by those arguing that he's not holding us back is that some day if he's here long enough the stars will essentially align, whether it be an easy schedule, back luck by our top opponents (like QB injuries), us peaking, or a combination of things, etc., then he too can win a Super Bowl. But at the present time, McD's been a liability come playoff time. We haven't outplayed most of our playoff opponents, including the games we've won. The only playoff game where both the O and D showed up was vs. the Patriots in that blowout and Allen was a man possessed in that game on our offensive side, while on the defensive side the best WRs that the rookie Mac Jones had that season were Jakobi Meyers and Kendrick Bourne who are like our depth WRs here. Imagine the outcry here if those were our starters.

OK, let's start here. What has Diggs done in our last five playoff games that Davis has not done? Secondly, what's your explanation of our 2021 season KC playoff game? Thirdly, back to my point, taking simply Brady's second and third Super Bowl seasons, Brady had as his second WRs in those seasons, first in one of them, Patten and Givins. Are you suggesting that either one of those was better than Davis? Before you answer that you may want to take a look at their career stats, catch%, etc. What you said is simply mimicking the narrative. There's little behind it. Remember, our problem is in the playoffs, not in the regular season racking up stats.

By a regular season #1 or #2 Defense on top of it. Then factor in our playoff loss in 2019 whereby our Defensive geniosity collapsed entirely in allowing the Texans to log nearly 200 yards of offense in scoring 19 points in about 20 minutes at the end of the game, to ***** defeat from the jaws of victory and a 16-0 lead. The rest of our playoff victories were hardly impressive and the only one that both sides of the ball showed up in was the Patriots WC round game in the 2021 season. We had that middle KC game won too, but our genius head coach seemed to think that handing the game away on a silver platter was a good idea at the time. Our playoff history is anything but impressive, if anything it's the opposite. We now have as our top-five most senior coaches, coaches that were with McD in Carolina. Not coincidentally, Carolina's playoffs track record seems to mimic what ours here is. It's definitely going to be an interesting season.

No QB should need the best WRs in the league to shine if they're any good, which Allen is. He might need more mentoring on the importance of the much higher-percentage short-medium passing game, but otherwise he has what he needs, particularly with Kincaid. There's some misperception here that in order to succeed a QB seems to need two of the five top WRs in the league or the like. Look at what Brady did, often with incredibly average WRs. In fact, he took very mediocre WRs like Welker, Branch, Givens, Brown, Caldwell, and Edelman, a 7th-round draft pick from a nothing school and made his living with them, largely. Sure, he had Moss for a couple of years, and Gronk, a TE who was often injured and only posted four 1,000+ yard seasons contrary to some perceptions, but generally speaking Brady didn't have top WRs. Favre, Marino, and a whole bunch of others didn't always have more than very good WRs, and yet they were at the top of the league in passing regularly. The problem with us is that you have to use the players that you have optimally, and that isn't something that we've seen to date with Allen at QB. Whether that changes this season remains to be seen. But if not, at some point we have to quit blaming the WRs or bust draftees. Judging by last season, Dorsey's got his work cut out for him.

Interesting. I guess if I had to order them, here's how I'd place it in greatest odds order: 1. Losing in the WC Round (Good) 2. Losing in the Divisional Round (Good) 3. Not winning the division (aka being a Wild-Card) (Good) 4. Winning the AFC (Poor) 5. Missing the playoffs (Slim) 6. Winning the Super Bowl (Slim to nil) Where I'm probably underestimating is that this will be the toughest AFC East division since Levy's days, possibly even longer since only Miami/Shula/Marino were consistently good back then. It should also be the toughest conference that we've seen in many many years, predating McD's arrival. We've had it pretty easy 'til now, except for Brady's Pats against whom we were 0-6 against with average PF/PA of 10.7 / 24.8. But for now I'm finding it difficult to think that we'd miss the playoffs unless Allen misses a significant amount of time. If that happens I'd put the odds of us even making that playoffs at Slim-to-nil. Agreed, it's shaping up that even more so than last season Beane's gone all-in this season. Toughest division in decades though. This the first time in decades where there's been more than one two good QBs in the division, and NE with Jones/Belichick, unfortunately, cannot be ruled out either.

I would have trouble with losing in the WC or D Round again, which should be considered entirely unacceptable by every loyal and true Bills fan given that we have Allen. People constantly compare McD (with Allen) to Reid (with McNabb), which besides being absurd for that reason, is even more absurd when we consider that in his first 6 seasons Reid lost in the D-Round once, went to the NFC CG four times, and advanced to the Super Bowl once. McD in his first 7 seasons has lost in the WC-Round twice, lost in the D-Round twice, and lost in the CG once, with each and every playoff loss being humiliating, arguably more humiliating then the one before. In 2017 we posted our worst offensive performance of the season and lost to Marrone's Jags with Bortles at QB. In 2019 we allowed nearly 200 yards in the last 20 minutes of our Wild Card loss to Houston, giving up 19 points and not even being able to score a FG in OT. In 2020 we were blown out by the Chiefs who posted one of the best offensive games of the season against us. In 2021 we had the AFC Championship won, but McD decided that we didn't want to win and handed it to Reid and the Chiefs in what is the biggest playoffs coaching blunder in modern history if not in league history altogether. It would have been the equivalent of punting on the infamous "Wide Right" play so as to improve our field-position as the clock hit 0:00. Last season, 2022, LOL, worst overall playoffs to date, barely eking by Skylar Thompson, who likely won't ever start another NFL game, before getting utterly blown out by Cincy. So yeah, what's not to get excited about come playoff time, and now with increased competition and better opposing coaching. Like someone said, McD's the third best coach in our division. Saleh had his team playing far more inspired football with fire and passion than McD did, and that was with historically bad crap at QB. McDaniel whowed more imagination last season than McD has in 6 seasons here. See above.

Well, it will definitely be interesting to see how relaxed everyone is following this season now that we have the Carolina coaching staff from McD's days @ Carolina. Why am I not inspired.

People overrate the extent to which McD is responsible for our success, and underrated the extent to which he is responsible for not winning it all. Give any coach that we've had over the past 20 years this team with Allen, and they don't do worse. As to 2017, he was a game better than Ryan's team two seasons earlier with a similar roster, had the same record as Marrone in 2014 did with Orton at QB, and made the playoffs on pure luck with two other notably more qualified 9-7 teams missing out. And nothing says success like giving up a 16-0 lead to a mediocre Houston team in the playoffs while allowing 264 yards in about 20 minutes to lose in the WC Round there. I mean what, absolutely phenominal defensive coaching there, superlative. LOL Other than that, the only success that McD has had was after Allen exploded to become one of the best QBs in the history of the game. It's beyond comprehension as to why he'd have ever achieved more than 7-10 wins, ever, without Allen taking that leap. It's mindboggling to assume anything else. The only reasons are excuses.