PBF81

Presumably you're referring to the Indy WC round game in the 2020 playoffs. It isn't in and of itself, but when you have a D that allowed a 10th ranked offense to log more yards, more 1st-Downs, their 3rd-most Rushing & 3rd-most Passing yards than they had all season, while allowing well over 5 YPC, and in the case of the 3rd's, only worse against a 1-15 team and both teams having bottom ranked Defenses, it's hardly a feather in the cap of coaching, especially when you barely win and the game goes down to the wire. There's no way to spin that other than to say that it was a significant underachievement defensively speaking. For us, we allowed the 2nd most yards that we did all season and 4th most 1st-Downs on defense too. Indy's offense was good, it wasn't that good. IMO Reich gets a lot of credit for that, more than McD. Then Philip Rivers in his last game in the league at 39. Hardly impressive. I wouldn't use that game as a strong example in support of coaching. Why would anyone use such an underachieving game as evidence of great coaching? That makes no sense. Our offense in that game was good, but it was a very average offensive outing for us on the season. So the coaching didn't step up there either. Otherwise, it would depend upon the team and circumstances. Giving up 24 to a team that averaged less than that, particularly using a starting QB that wasn't on the field when you played them, would seem to likewise indicate defensive underachievement. No? I mean what would have happened had Tua played in that playoff game last season, do you think we still would have won? To me it's doubtful and if it were the case, the narrative and ensuing discussions would have been a lot different now. We allowed 31 points, at home, to a team that didn't average within a TD (7 points) of that during the regular season with their starter at QB, but allowed 31 at home in the playoffs, to a QB whose only other NFL start, at home in Miami, led to three straight drives averaging 25 ypd, all resulting in punts, against the Vikings, who had the 28th Scoring Defense and 31st Yardage Defense, ... before getting yanked in favor of Bridgewater. (Ouch!) Our big-bad 2nd-ranked Scoring and 6th-ranked Yardage Defense shouldn't have allowed more than 20 if even that under those circumstances. That's hardly a good game to cite in defense of McD, a defensively-oriented coach, being good. You said some interesting things there and made some good points. Some of it is nits though and we can pick those apart forever down to the cleats and the playing surface. (largely joking, but to the point) In addressing the bolded part of your post, wouldn't that seem to be incumbent upon coaching to figure out? It seems as if that's your implication, just reinforcing it. That's what coaches get paid to do, figure out what the opponent does best, and craft a game-plan around them being able to do that. We haven't seen that yet in any even remotely sustained manner by McD. Just sayin'. McD talks about a lot of things. To date I challenge anyone to actually define what this elusive "Process" is. It's a mystery. LOL We'll see what happens this season, but the excuses seem to be wearing thin amongst both fans and media alike. We cannot every season say, "he finally has the pieces in place," then after the season talk about all the holes. LOL But that's what's been happening. I see some holes this season too, not least concerning that of MLB/ILB. AJ Klein ain't gonna cut it. I'll be suprised if he even makes the team. Will the rookie Williams? Bernard? In the meantime, GO BILLS!!! The season approaches, let's hope for the best! No sense in wallowing in the past right now. It's far too late to make any major changes in pretty much anything

While whistling as he steps over the trend & pattern of the straight facts. Sure.

And naturally the contexts only favor your argument.

Well, that's where we more or less part ways on the issue. While Allen isn't perfect, he's also the all but sole reason for our success, to whatever extent we've had it. "Allen being Allen" and "Gunslinger Allen" is the reason why we're good. I'll cite another example. I think that we can both agree that McD is not as good as Belichick in crafting Defensive scheming. If not, then this won't make any sense to you, but assuming that you agree .. I've said for many years that Belichick has only had the success that he's had because of Brady, and I've had to listen to incorrigible Pats fans lecture contrarily. To their credit, over the last year or two my several ardent Pats fans now agree with me. It was my position all along that without Brady, Belichick is an about .500 coach otherwise. That's actually born itself out in 10 seasons that he's coached, five now with the Pats, where he hasn't had Brady. In those 10 seasons he's made the playoffs twice, is 1-2 in them, and only beat the Bledsoe-led Pats while he was in Cleveland where he had Testeverde. As you likely know, Bledsoe was a horrific playoff QB. Either way, in both of his two losses he was obliterated, once by us two seasons ago in the WC Round, the other time following the game vs. the Pats in the D Round. At the end of the day, after what, nearly 30 years of head-coaching, without Brady, he's been a perfect 25-25. McD's not even as good as Belichick, no one would reasonably argue otherwise. I view it no differently for McD except that I'm not even sure he'd be a .500 coach w/o Allen. I guess the only we'd ever find that out for certain is if he ends up leaving here and coaches elsewhere. I see very little indication that on game days McD contributes more than the average coach does towards winning.

A fair post, and I agree with the bolded. Still, the history stands and has set a trend/pattern. At some point that needs to be broken and turn into a positive trend/pattern or all we're doing is the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. HIs ardent apologists use even less applicable things that you discount above and use them to the n-th degree in his defense. So there's that as well. I don't recall seeing you make the same argument going that way, in fairness to the discussion. Maybe you have, I simply don't recall it if you've done so. At the end of the day we've generally been a better team than the teams that we've lost to in the playoffs with one exception, which was botched due to an inexcusable error in judgement. That needs to change and pretty darn quickly if he's to remain on. Wasting the Allen era while he's trying to figure out how to personally get over that hump doesn't work for me and many if not most other fans. It certainly isn't supported by fans and media outside of the Bills' fanbase.

I suppose that you have a point there, but I still think it's somewhere in the middle, as in you also have to look at the entire body of work. Look at Belichick's defensive rankings as a DC in NY and Tomlin's as a HC in Pittsburgh. It's also remiss to then imply that McD's compare favorably with theirs.

Ahh, gotcha. But in defense of his post, he's not wrong. Per my post, the one you just responded too, it would be even worse cherry-picking if he picked the few defensive-minded head coaches that did win a Super Bowl and claimed commonality with them when there's even less commonality there. So he has a point whether people like it or not. This thread has prompted me to perform an analysis of McD's performances as a DC/HC in the playoffs. I'll squeeze it in when I have time, but I've already found it to be interesting based upon my aforementioned post. Don't you? I mean to suggest that that's irrelevant in the context here would be entirely remiss while exhibiting a ridiculous bias in favor of McD.

Yeah, I get it, but taking an unproven athlete or coach at a certain level, then trying to prove a negative by introducing directly unrelated superlatives, some in a different era of football, and using them to make a contrary point isn't much different. At this point in time, and contrasted with his modern peers that also had QBs of Allen's caliber, McD's closer to those that haven't made it than to the Belichicks and Tomlin's of the world. That's pretty much indisputable. I also don't recall Belichick or Tomlin much less some of the others giving away playoff games like McD has either. Certainly "13 Seconds" ranks up there with the historical worst. On that note however, and given your statement of "taking the conversation somewhere else," I wouldn't mind breaching the narrative that McD was something other than an incredibly average DC in Carolina and how that may relate to him calling the D here this season, on top of taking care of the head-coaching duties. The narrative is that he was some kind of stellar DC in Carolina. I view him as having been incredibly average. He also had Keuchly, one of the best MLBs of the modern era and in league history. Yet, his Scoring defenses ranked 27th, 18th, 2nd 21st, 6th, and 26th and with yardage Ds not ranked much better. In short, on average patently average. In his big moments to shine, namely the Super Bowl in the 2015 season, where the Panthers which had allowed an average of 19 PPG that season, lost the Super Bowl to an offense ranked 19th in Scoring (22 PPG) by allowing them to score 24. Perhaps the most damning element of that is that Denver was led by Peyton Manning at 39, who posted a cataclysmically horrible season throwing for 9 TDs (31st), 17 INTs (31st), and a rating of 67.9. (34th) leaving the Broncos entirely one-dimensional. Yet, despite allowing an average 19 PPG, McD's Defense allowed 24 points to that team that had averaged 22 PPG. Now, I'm not saying that this is what we can expect, I'm also not saying that we shouldn't expect "more of the same" as such, but it without any question further fuels the fires surrounding McD's big-game capability and competency. In the playoffs the year prior, 2014, the Panthers were ousted in the Divisional round also largely fueled by poor defense which allowed 24 points and 348 yards to a team ranked 10th in offense. Either way, his D definitely did not step it up. In their only other playoff appearance in the year before that one, 2013, McD's third in Carolina, McD's 2nd ranked Scoring and 2nd ranked Yardage D which had allowed an average of 15 PPG that season, allowed Colin Kaepernick and the Niner's 11th-ranked scoring offense to score 23 for the loss. Despite what some want to see, there's an extended history by McD of underachievement and choking in the playoffs. Care to discuss? And BTW, I didn't cherry-pick anything there, that's McD's history as a DC in Carolina and in every final playoff game of the three seasons that the Panthers made the playoffs.

So it's speculating that there's an existing issue between Diggs and Allen/Dorsey? It's speculating that we were told that the issue was non-football related, but that this "non-existent issue" actually is football related? Well, OK. I suppose if they were talking about the actual pigskin ball then sure, it wasn't football related, so technically they were telling the truth. LOL

Belichick had Brady. Are you comparing McD comparably to Belichick then?

That's fair. But here's the thing, something's clearly up with Diggs. We know what we know, but some of what we know is that McD hasn't been honest in dealing with the public. So in part he's responsible for a lot, most, if not all of this. Secondly, there's clearly a rift between/among Diggs/Allen/Dorsey, and since Dorsey was (apparently) Allen's hand-picked OC choice, it would therefore line up that the rift is between Diggs and Allen/Dorsey. Point being, when you (McD) don't come clean, then contradict yourself, when it gets put out that it's not football related when it clearly is, you're more or less inviting the speculation and criticism. And frankly, which is worse, the lies/spin/contradictions, or what may very well be dishonest reporting as you imply here? Then there's the thing with Frasier. More obscuration there. Who was really responsible for "13 Seconds" and the idiotic Cincy D play-calling? If Frasier was that problematic for McD, why didn't he get rid of him earlier? Did Frasier quit? Was he "forced" out? It wasn't his contract like some state, he still had it. There was obviously some dissent there between the two. What about Daboll? There are also rumors there of similar. And what for the love of pete is this obscure "Process" that we've heard about. Sounds more like some mechanism to say "STFU, you don't know anything" specifically designed to keep criticism at bay, more than anything that's been defined or which has even remotely become clear. This Diggs thing isn't going away whether we want it to or not, unless we play a perfect season that is and Dorsey makes the most of the offense while keeping Diggs and Allen, the two top paid players, satisfied. Odds of that happening? This "lazy, bad media trend" that you point out has been around for decades in sports, probably longer. It's nothing new. But couldn't similar be said about the media handling of the same issues and internal affairs by McD? I mean we hear all this rhetoric about character, but when you behave like that you contradict yourself. Just something to think about in contrast. As much as many of us would like for this season to go smoothly, everything and all of the offseason changes to work our perfectly, for us to go 14-3, win the division, and finally win the AFC and the Super Bowl, that's incredibly unlikely with the way things sit right now. McD would do himself a service to start coming a lot more clean when addressing the media, aka the fanbase, because IMO he's in over his head this season taking on both the head-coaching duties alongside calling the D, in a league where D-minded coaches typically don't ultimately succeed, A, and also given his quite average 17th ranked scoring D performance over 6 seasons in Carolina, his only stint as DC. Are we going to get his 2nd or 6th ranked scoring D in two of those 6 seasons, or are we going to get the 26th or 27th ranked ones, including his last season there, or something in between like his other two 18th and 21st below-average Ds? He may wish he'd have bought that good-will with fans and media here at some point soon. Just sayin'.

The source is "someone close to the Bills' locker room" according to one of the prominent articles on the topic. As to this "disliking" thing, I have to question why everyone that's critical of a player or coach, or GM or owner for that matter, "dislikes" that person. Couldn't it simply be that they are critical about their professional performance without some sort of dislike or otherwise "hate" (hatred) or other animosity for them? I'm extremely critical of both McD and Beane, but I have it on great faith that both are really nice guys. I've never met either one, never been invited to anything by them, gone out for wings & beer with them, been at any social gatherings with either. I don't know either one personally, how could I dislike them? Again, I am critical of their coaching and management. So what? Criticism is an expected part of the fan element and aspect of this sport. And quite frankly, unless they're beyond criticism what's the problem? This is a business we're told. How many people have known people at work that are great people as people go, but simply not particularly competent in what they do? It's difficult to imagine that anyone doesn't know one or more. I don't understand this personal emotional offense taken whenever McD is criticized. The notion that they think otherwise is understandable, but that's not personal, it's professional. As to defensive minded coaches, they're generally taking a hit in today's NFL, and why not, they're not as effective generally speaking as offensive minded ones are. FWIW

On that note, I'm more or less expecting what he did there, which was incredibly inconsistent. In 6 seasons, 4 were below average in Scoring D, twice way below at 26th and 27th, one of which was his last season. His successor, Steve Wilks, came in and made it 11th the following season. He averaged 17th in scoring D and he had some great players too, Kuechly among them. On top of that he's gotta run the entire team. I'm not sure it inspires confidence. McD doesn't seem to be very good in new situations. IMO, if there's any hope this season in the playoffs it's going to have to come from changes and improvements in the Offense.

Still concerned about MLB/ILB. But to your point, they have Floyd to keep MIller's spot warm until and if he comes back with anything. At 34 coming off of a major knee injury is hardly a shoe-in to be above average. Either way they have Floyd. Not sure how they use Floyd when Miller does get back though. I can't imagine him replacing Rousseau on the other side. I'm more thinking that the offense can be a monster, best Bills offense ever if they conduct it optimally. That would include running more and by hook or by crook find our short higher percentage passing game. I hope Allen's elbow is 100%. The Flaming Homer?

Warm as in what, precisely? How many seasons of doing that with the expiration date on Allen getting closer before a change is made? I don't have shred of confidence that after Allen's time we'll ever get closer.

I know where you stand! Sheesh! 😁

OK, so same question to you that I asked Doc but haven't gotten an answer on yet; Suppose that it plays out that we go through the season again, make the playoffs whatever the circumstances, and lose either in the Wild-Card or Divisional Round by not playing our best and/or by losing to an inferior team. What are your thoughts then?

Well, 9-8 plus 4 more wins is 13 wins. Going 14-3, or better, winning a WC game and losing in the D round, or even winning in the D round and losing the CCG would result in more wins. I'm only asking because some that I've exchanged with here have stated plainly that they're quite content with merely winning seasons and winning the division regardless of what happens afterwards. I only bring it up because that would be a huge explanation as to peoples' differences in the way that they view our coaching. I'd take slinking into the playoffs at 9-8 as the 7th seed, taking third in the division, with a Super Bowl win over the Patriots' 2007 season any day.

Well, I thought that I was being pretty reasonable. LOL

You don't care about a championship? You'd rather go 14-3 and lose in the WC or D round than to go 9-8 and win it all?

Losing season? LOL ... come on now. They could put Allen on any one of the teams during the drought era and we wouldn't have a losing season. Is that your expectation, minimally, a winning season? As to looming issues, if you don't see any then that would explain any differences in our views. To start, I'd be willing to make a friendly wager that the whole Diggs issue revives itself and in no small way at some point during the season.

Well, I can, I did, based upon other indicators. But at this point what's the sense in arguing over it? The season's going to play out one way or another, right? No one's going anywhere before the season. Is anything that you or I say going to alter it? But allow me to ask, and hopefully you'll answer the question. Suppose that it plays out that we go through the season again, make the playoffs whatever the circumstances, and lose either in the Wild-Card or Divisional Round by not playing our best and/or by losing to an inferior team. Will your stance then be the same? As to his play-calling on Defense, here's what I'm expecting, about what he did in Carolina, which was an average of I believe it was 17th ranked Scoring D and 13th ranked Yardage D on average, essentially perfectly average, and that with players like Kuechly, one of the league's best then, Davis, Johnson, Addison in his prime, Lotulelei when he gave a crap. That while also keeping an eye on the offense. Should be interesting, perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised, I hope so, but for purposes of forming my opinions I'm big on expecting what patterns and trends have revealed. That's the only one we have to go by since everyone here says that to date it's all been Frasier.

The season hasn't started. LOL But allow me to ask you, do you know with absolutely certainty that this season is going to go well? Do you see any potentially looming issues?

Not sure I see anyone diminishing what he's accomplished. All that's being said is that he's plateaued. Hit a ceiling. If there's stuff to criticize, as you say you do, then it's possible that those issues are terminal to us winning a championship. Right? His apologists claim that we don't know the "inside stuff" for lack of a better term, but to wit, we also don't know the inside stuff on Diggs, Frasier, Daboll, Dorsey, etc. Those are all significant issues that once known, either directly or indirectly, can easily do terminal damage depending upon the truth. Otherwise, as to what he's accomplished, part performance is not a guarantee of future performance. He may have been great to bring us out of our drought funk, but the question as to whether he's capable of closing looms large.

Let the season play out, no sense in arguing this now. At the end of the season McD's apologists can transfer their opinions to that Eating Crow thread. If not, then we will, and we'll be happy. The NY Post Diggs piece linked on the homepage tells us all we need to know. Anyone thinking that this is going to be a drama-free season is going to be disappointed. How McD & Beane avoid accountability for that remains to be seen. And BTW, they said that it was a personal issue and not football related. It certainly not only was, but is a football issue and it wasn't personal. So those were now exposed lies told to us, questioning what else they've lied to use about. Looking Frasier & Daboll's way here.