PBF81

Wow, so just to clarify you would put the greatest odds on us not winning the division then?

Yup. And Allen's not even as good as McNabb was.

Or of curiosity, where would you put the odds of those happening? A. Not winning the division B. Missing the playoffs C. Losing in the WC Round D. Losing in the Divisional Round E. Winning the AFC F. Winning the Super Bowl

It's all good now, McD has things right where he wants them, and it's not as if he's a control freak or anything. The entirety of our coaching staff, top 5 guys including McD, are the ones that led the Panthers to greatness under Riverra while McD was there. Collectively they're obviously the best coaching staff in the league because they all know each other so well. And honestly, can you even argue that with their trophy case! We're in good hands with the coaching staff that the Panthers had under Riverra, a world-class coach in his own eyes, here in Buffalo. I mean just look the collective season unit rankings and stories playoff histories. And just think about the greatness here! If we had McD here in the "Wide Right" game, it never would have happened, we'd have punted for better field position when the game had ended. Everything's going to be great don'cha know.

Could have easily been done in 2021. It essentially was done. We had it. Allen was on fire! So why wasn't it? Because the coach that just got extended made arguably the biggest reprehensible coaching blunder in the modern history of the NFL playoffs. He undid it. True story!

Like McD in 2017 & 2019, Belichick got in on an easy schedule with 8 of his wins coming from non-playoff teams and 7 of them coming from mostly the worst teams all with losing records. As with any coach, I'm not going to hand out particularly credit for capitalizing on an easy schedule, the "you can only play who's on the schedule" rap aside. That's true, but it does not alter things one iota. He got obliterated in those playoffs too, which says more than beating 8 easy teams en route to 10 wins. Anyway, no interest in debating McD v. BB, or even BB otherwise. The fact stands, that in 10 other seasons without Brady, Belichick's track record as a head coach wouldn't have gotten him anything else other than another DC job. Meanwhile, Brady went on to win another SB with a relatively average on a good day head coach, while leading the Bucs to a 32-18 record otherwise, something that that franchise has never achieved in its entire existence. Again, not really the point. The question remains, is the talent on this team being optimized? it'd be a great poll question. Go ahead and pose it.

True, but also entirely not the point.

Our standard as fans back in the '90s was a lot different. The drought era took its toll on the fans here. Now a good regular season record and simply "making the playoffs" is good enough. I remember being massively dejected with every Super Bowl loss except for the Skins one, which I kind of expected. Lead foot Rypien had the best or one of the best OLs in NFL history.

I'd rather have a coach that's proven he can at least be above average w/o a franchise QB. Belichick doesn't even have a winning record. He's 77-87 w/o Brady, two playoff appearances, got killed in both losses, and therefore has one playoff win, over the Bledsoe-led Pats, in the WC Round while he was at Cleveland. Like McD, he's lucky he lucked into Brady. He can thank Mo Lewis for that. He was stuck on Bledsoe like McD was stuck on Peterman.

I'm not sure about that, I'm well into the Brady entirely made Belichick rather than Belichick made Brady camp. I think that the jury's pretty much come back on that as well. Belichick is what, 1-2 in playoff games w/o Brady and has a track record no better than McD's, worse even, in that regard. He's only made the playoffs in 2 of 10 seasons, getting blown out in losses in both, in his other ten seasons of coaching w/o Brady at QB. I'll PM you as to who I'd have my eye on if we were open to a change after this season, which we're not.

Particularly against the Chiefs and Bengals in the playoffs. The Miami game, shutting down 7th-round rookie Skylar Thompson while holding his offense to only 24 points, 31 total for the team, well, lets just say that Bill Belichick would be proud. I mean what more can one ask than "13 Seconds," a cataclysmis coaching blunder for the ages. A few more of those and I agree, it will be "impressive."

LOL, thanks for the injection of humor at the end there. It's very much appreciated and not lost on me. Here's the point though, Allen can't play like he has forever, it's unlikely that he'll be playing that way for more than 4 or 5 more seasons, assuming he doesn't get injured, elbow or worse, so it's important to take full advantage of that, which we're simply not doing. Here's a hypothetical scenario. Suppose we continue, post good to great regular seasons, continue to underperform/underachieve in the playoffs, and in three seasons Allen suffers an injury that disallows him from being anything close to what he was, whatever that injury may be. Suppose by that time all we've done is "gone to the playoffs" those three more seasons, gone 1-2 in the Wild-Card around, and lost in unceremonious fashion in the Divisional Rounds, which at the present time is the standard. What would be the talk amongst Bills Mafia do you think?

Again, absolutely no one has questioned our ability to do exceedingly well in the regular season, despite a division full of crap QBs. We can't name one that's been any good since Brady left and we got annihilated going 0-6 vs. the Brady-led Pats, same coach. But again, you seem to imply that by pure coincidence and "enough shots" it will happen. Is that our hope? So again, the question to you as well, is how many seasons of "enough shots" would you say that they get before we move on if they cannot get it done? Polian was here the same number of seasons as Beane now, McD the same as Levy's first 7 seasons. We have Allen who's indisputably better than Kelly ever was, even in his best season, and even accounting for differences in the league then v. now. Levy's team in his first 7 seasons, went to the Super Bowl 4 times, won the AFC Championship four times (same thing I realize, just restating), was 5-1 in Divisional games, 1-0 in Wild-Card games, was 2-2 on the road in the playoffs, 2-0 in his last four seasons. McD's team in as many seasons has never gone to the Super Bowl, is 0-1 in AFC CGs, 1-2 in Divisional games, 0-4 in road playoff games, and 3-2 in Wild-Card games with two of those wins having been barely and another two against two teams led by a rookie QB (Jones) and Skylar Thompson (one of the down to the wire games also), two QBs destined for career backup status. So if I get this straight, you're favorably comparing the two, right? And you're completely ignoring the fact that we have Allen today, arguably the most unique QB, positively, in league history. Meanwhile, you conveniently skirt the fact that most of the best talent on this team has come from that same Free-Agency that you use to counter the argument. I understand though. If there's no answer there's no answer.

That's all fine and dandy, but the question that I keep asking the most ardent McD (and Beane) defenders in the forum here, yet which to date has yet to be answered, is how many years should that "some point ..." take to occur? Also, in your post there seems to be an underlying premise that with better coaching that would happen, or already have happened (AHEM, "13 Seconds" in 2021), but that our hope lies in pure happenstance. Just sayin'

Yes, in 7 seasons. Three wild-card wins, once over a Skylar Thompson led Fins, which we barely won, once over a pretty bad NE team led by a rookie QB that seems to be destined for career back-up status, once more in a wild-card game whereby we were outplayed yet won a down-to-the-wire squeaker, and one divisional game whereby the offense played its worst game of the season. 0-4 on the road, 1-2 in divisional games with that last aforementioned game as the win, and 0-1 due to a historically noted horrific error in judgement by the one you're defending. On top of all that, a trend towards the worse, and doing less with more. It would seem that this has become the standard for Bills football these days. The drought era damaged our fanbase's expectations for what good football really is in a very serious way.

I'm getting ready to do an analysis on Polian/McD/Kelly contrasted with Beane/McD/Allen. Just looking at the data, both now thru 7 years, except for Beane who has only 6, is telling.

You're skirting and making excuses, not answering the question. So we'll take another approach, I'll cater to your arguments. To start, McNabb also wasn't great, he was hardly Favre, Manning, or Warner either, much less Brady, his peers in those days. In fact, McNabb was a pretty average, at best, QB. Likening him to Newton is fair, they both had similar trajectories. So let's rephrase the question, how would Reid have done with Favre, Warner, or Manning at QB? I mercifully left Brady off of there for you. BTW, would we even be having this conversation if a QB the caliber of McNabb had been drafted by Beane instead of Allen? I don't think so. Well, if they make it to the end of their extension without having done so, Allen will be entering his back-9.

The question boils down to whether or not McD, a defensive head coach, has what out takes to turn that ticket into a winner.

No one is questioning our prowess in the regular season, no one.

If Reid had had Allen in Philly, do you think it would have changed anything in that way?

Well thanks Tuel, one of your more congenial and substantive posts to me. 🙂 Having said that, three wild-card round wins, two over crap teams without QBs, and twice barely, and a single divisional round win, all with Allen, arguably the most athletically gifted and unique QB in league history, hardly stacks the evidence for a future Championship in your corner. For contrast, compare the 90s team's playoff performances with a notably lesser QB. We keep hearing from your side about this "positioning," perhaps you or some one can explain how many seasons/years of "positioning" is sufficient before a Championship can be expected?

The "word-of-the-day" appears to be stability. Stability is one thing, ultimate competitiveness entirely another. It's quite possible to have stability without being ultimately competitive. But given what you said, what are your expectation(s) for the team this year? Our playoff history isn't great here.

You just drastically altered the argument by the post to which I responded. Is that a standard to be held aloft as being great? Our 90's era team blew that out of the water and Kelly was no where near as good as Allen. Just sayin'

This season will be a huge piece to the answer to that question.

This season is going to be incredibly interesting, more so than most, on the field as well as here. LOL