PBF81

I think he was referring to the Ravens playoff game in the 2020 season. He and I were discussing playoffs. You're right. I'm starting to see this more clearly now. I've set the bar too high for our #1/#2 Defenses. I'll go ahead and readjust it to allow for season high performances from our opponents as being solid performances. I'm sure that'll help me view things more realistically then. Appreciate the insights.

We'll, you're right, the fact that he didn't do anything in 80% of our games, while giving away the most important ones means he's very good. How could I have been so blind. The Colts posted their best offensive game of the season against us. Obviously a phenominal defensive coaching effort. I mean what else can one expect from a coach but to game plan to allow opponents to post season bests against us, in the playoffs. 472 yards What am I thinking.

One game, in nine, and a divisional game? Against a team with hardly any offensive talent? How about the one before it or after it? It's hard to take an argument seriously when someone uses an exception to formulate a position.

Good catch on the Gators trend. I hadn't noticed that. You a Gators fan?

I discount that Miami game, generally speaking, simply because of the unbearable and dangerous heat element. We've all been in that kind of heat and worked in it to some extent, it becomes difficult to think straight under those circumstances, which were absurdly anomalous. Again, not in argument, just as an outlier in assessing or analyzing the team overall.

How are you viewing that trend? Thanks for the chuckles. Laughter is good for the soul.

No one ever forced you to read them all. LOL You crack me up. Out of curiosity, where would you rate Dorsey as an OC from 1-to-10? Similarly, our OL? I personally think that the criticisms of Davis are over the top. What is your opinion of our WRs last season?

As long as he doesn't bring any bad vibes to camp and the season. There are going to be a lot of interesting sideshows this season. Diggs, McD running the D, how the offense performs with the additions of McGovern, Torrence, Kincaid, the LB-ing situation, a tougher schedule after several seasons of them being on the easier end, Dorsey, etc. That's a lot of stuff to pull together and a lot of ways that the wheels can fall off the wagon too. As to Diggs, he's one tantrum away from starting to lose the fans from where I sit. Allen's had his back, but much like Brady & Brown, there's only so much that a QB can do to defend that kind of stuff.

To start, thanks again for validating my statement. Otherwise, LOL, classes in reading comprehension and logic may help you. Not for me. I shed the hostiliies and ad hominems. I thought I was referring to other people, as stated. But hey, maybe I'm wrong and don't know what I meant when I wrote it. LOL Contrarily, perhaps it's time you took a break, you seem to be a little spun up, and over what exactly? I mean seriously, wasting time on this? .... whatever ... Have a great day!!

This is just a general comment, but it's interesting, because when we traded for him, his attitude wasn't going to be a problem here, he was going to be the difference, etc. His play in the playoffs in our last five playoff games, with one exception, has not matched his status. He doesn't have a single TD in any of those five games. Anyway, I always find it interesting how the narratives change and why they do. Thanks for validating my statement. Appreciate it.

I'm not sure about that, I simply think that the people that agree are reluctant to post much for fear of the ad hominem and hostilities that await them when they do. Either way, the tone and sentiment is definitely different in WNY contrasted with nationwide. This season I believe will be a big one in terms of where the narrative on McD sits following this season. He's got everything he needs to prove his detractors wrong this season.

What is "the Process." It's never been defined or explained. Is "13 Seconds" a part of it. LOL Agree on the 10-15 range. Until he proves that he won't be outcoached by his peers in the playoffs ...

Food for thought, we're not the only team with injuries though, they're an expected part of the game. Case in point, regardling last season: Cincy entered the game with 3 backups in on their OL. We were still bested up front. How do we reconcile that?

LOL I don't know whether you're joking with belief, or joking in disbelief. I'm not big on the Harris signing. IMO we don't see anything better than average rushing out of him. Singletary was a more complete and 3-down RB, which Harris is not. Harris is a downhill runner with limited receiving skills. I think that we're going to miss Singletary, who, ironically, was among Beane's better draft picks, which I realize isn't saying much, but nonetheless. As I've pointed out, Had Singletary gotten the same number of carries as Dalvin Cook, he'd have outperformed Cook on the season based on averages. Many have clamored for Cook (Dalvin), but we send Singletary packing despite a better YPC and similar stats elsewhere. It makes little sense. I've surmised that we like Harris because he's eaten us alive. HIs best games are easily against us. 25% of his career TDs are against us. But are we a good measure of how good RBs are? We've had some of the worst RBs in the league post big numbers against us under McD's coaching. Other than playing against us, he's an incredibly average RB otherwise. There's no reason to believe that he'll run against our opponents as he did vs. us. Will that change now that he's here? Is our OL going to be better than what NE had? Sure, we have Allen, but we've had Allen, and everyone's still dissatisfied with our RB performances, and Singletary's not worse and had a higher YPC average. IMO it's not wise to hope that all of a sudden Harris is going to emerge into a better RB. But here's the thing, is strength is power [downhill] rushing. Lots of talk about using him in goal line situations. But honestly, let's say 2nd and 2, do we really see us abandoning a receiver, putting Harris in, and going UTM? I don't. I see us still trying to spread out the D, and with Allen, having the same option with fewer defenders in the way and per his read, and an open-field short scramble for the goal line if no one's open. So we'll see. But he's one of those players that IMO people are getting too overly excited about. I don't see him making any kind of significant impact on us winning games.

Interesting that you bring him up. Agree with you that it was more Brady than BB for their sustained success and Championships. Belichick is a shrewd in-game tactician to be sure, something that I and many don't see with McD. Both are defensively oriented, BB better, but their similarity is that neither has the same ingenuity or skillset when it comes to offense, McD even less so. In a league that's driven by offense these days, that's a huge impediment. That's what the core complaint about McD seems to be. Here's my issue with that, not that I disagree, but you don't go far enough there. Sure, Josh didn't play well vs. Cincy, but neither did the D, horrifically in fact, and that has nothing to do with Allen directly. We can argue about how Allen's play impacts it indirectly, but that's relatively moot here. Where I will disagree is that it was coaching that had our defensive players, repeatedly, set so far back on 3rd-and-relatively-short plays, as to all but hand them the 1st-down yardage in that Cincy game, shades of "13 Seconds" even. That's 100% coaching and cannot be put onto the players, and apparently a lesson not learned, which is a huge issue here. As to gameplans, he may have pieced one or two good ones together, but it was a commonly repeated issue right here last season, about how the gameplans sucked or were not obvious, etc. McD doesn't help himself in that way in pressers by explaining them. Again, we've beaten this to death. It will be interesting this fall, we can have an intelligent review following games to track what the issues were and the like, and see how the fall unfolds. We're on the same sheet insofar as McD creating a winning culture. Obviously you know that I'm not in the camp that believes that he's the one to finish the job and take us all the way. There's nothing wrong with that as long as someone realizes it and makes the appropriate [business] moves there. I view him as a sort of middle-reliever in baseball. I will say, one thing that has always bothered me about fans, is that when a coach is fired or let go, the fans generally get on the bandwagon that he sucked or the like. There is the possibility that a former coach had his strengths, they played out, but then the team entered a different phase for which he was not particularly suited to "taking it from there." Obviously IMO that's McD. But the point is that simply because a coach is "fired," does not mean that they didn't serve an important role up to that point. Often it does, but it doesn't always, which is the case here per my viewpoint. But this is what you sign up for when you hire a first-time head-coach, no? I don't recall when we hired him that many were saying he'll do what he's done. There was a whole lot of "let's wait and see" here. He's definitely had some luck in generating his narrative: Cincy beating the Ravens on that last play to put us in the playoffs in 2017 in a season where we all but entirely beat a list of nobodies and only one team that won a playoff game and that being only a wild-card game, and drafting Allen. But it's entirely possible and as I see it, more than likely based upon the established patterns/trends, that he's reached a plateau. Fans tend to send coaches off in shame, but there shouldn't be any shame here. At the same time, if the team wants to take the next step, then they have a tough decision to make. Having said that, as Clint Eastwood said in Magnum Force, a man's got to know his limitations. This season will reveal much, now with Frasier gone and Dorsey in his second season, and with zero excuses in the receiving dept. or at RB and OL now. It's been interesting, every season we as a collective say, we finally have a set of good receivers, but then when the season ends, all of a sudden our receivers suck. If we still finish DFL in rushing apart from Allen's rushing, if we still abandon the run in games where we're averaging well above average YPC, if the defense falls to mediocre in the rankings, etc., then I don't think that McD weathers that well. It'll be fun reviewing games with you in the fall.

BTW, 22 is too low, not agreeing with that. But until he figures out how to coach up in the big games ...

Agreed. No RB in the past five seasons for us has averaged more than 11 carries/game.

Well, after 7 seasons of coaching one would think that there'd be a pattern towards improvement, but he appears to be getting worse if anything. But even if he's stayed the course, that's hardly a sign that he's the one to get it done, right? I mean if he hasn't sorted himself out in that way after 8 seasons, how many should he need? He's the coach for this season, but with Frasier gone he's not going to be able to get away with firing the Safeties Coach again. We'll know more in 6-7 months. Who knows, maybe we'll win it all this season. I will say this however, we have the players on offense that with a few tweaks to the OL we could easily have the 2023 version of Air Coryell with someone that knows how to optimize that offensive talent. That'd be an incredibly well-balanced offense that could lead the league in every facet of offense. Strangely, McD's a defensive guy, but the problem in the playoffs has been defense, I can't imagine an offensive head-coach doing worse defensively in the playoffs.

That's fine, as you wish. But the question remains, it's true, therefore is it relevant? Other prior coaches that finished 7-9 or 8-8, or even the same 9-7 but failed to make the playoffs didn't have such luck. Since it's schedule, it is luck. Pumping it up as if it's some sort of coaching marvel is entirely disingenuous.

Yeah, it's too bad that we were talking about 2017, not last season.

He made the playoffs because of one ridiculously unlikely play in Cincy's last game. 7 of the 9 teams we beat that season finished with 4, 5, or 6 wins. We were embarrassed by the Bortles led Jags in the Wild-Card round and put up our 4th worst offensive performance of the season. So if it was a referendum on beating up on the league's weak and feeble, yeah, it was a good season. For us to win a Super Bowl he's going to have to coach as if he's among the top, because those are the coaches that will be standing in his way come January.

From the Ross Tucker coach ranking thread, ... per Tucker: I find absolutely nothing to argue with there. You do. That's the delta. It would appear that I don't have an irrational hatred against and bias towards McD. Clearly I'm not the only one. Argue with him.

I know that you didn't say that, but as I pointed out, you've also shown nothing indicative that among the primary reasons for those wins is McD either. If you think you did, highlight them and point it out. I didn't mean to make it sound that way, as if you agree that it's McD's fault. I'm simply pointing out that all you did was defray the negative, you didn't state positive reasons attributable to him for wins. Once again, and I cannot stress this enough, but it's not that IMO he's a bad coach, although he definitely has issues that are problematic, but again, it's that he's not doing much to help this team win in the playoffs. As I've said, he seems to have reached a ceiling. We'll see whether that changes this season. Relax a little bit, because if that plays out then he won't continue to have a majority of support from fans and far less from media. I understand your point. You've been relatively fair. But again, reread your statement on the playoff games. No one's going to find anything positive about his contributions for winning those games in them. And blaming the play of our D on their defensive players also does not accomplish that task given the monumental choke involved in the 2nd-half, it only accentuates it. Look, I realize that we're not going to align here. So let's just see where things sit come December. Until then it's only discussion, right. I'm not asking you where his coaching cost us, I'm asking where it was instrumental in wins. You've come up empty there, plain and simple. You're not getting this despite making a ridiculous claim that I ascribe everything to coaching. Really? I'm equally critical of Beane not putting the talent in place for us to be able to perform better in a bunch of areas, OL being primary among them. You should know that. My claims are that Allen covers a host of coaching failures and underachievements. But I don't think that any informed and knowledgeable football fan would try to pull off that a 19-point effort led by nearly 300 yards of offense in the second half, and featuring only a single premier player, is anything but a coaching failure. Otherwise, fine, blame it on Beane for the lack of talent. Are we really going to have that discussion? You can't argue out of both sides of your mouth so to speak.

Agreed. FWIW, three of those 36 were in the Vikes game this past season. 1 was in that @ Miami game which no one can fault any of our players for not playing well. 2 more both INTs in our loss to the Jets this past season. He had one in our win @KC. He had one in our win vs. Miami. One each in our wins @ Balitmore and @ Detroit, and two in our blowout win @ Chicago. He had another 3 in our playoff win vs. Miami. He's also the reason we won those games. That's 15 of 'em. We're 6-3 in those games because of him.

Agreed. There should be some kind of Big-Play to Turnover ratio, for which I'm pretty sure he'd rank near the top. Speculation on my part, but he makes so many big plays that it's easy to overlook a TO here or there, particularly when they're not key. Also, I'm curious how many of those TOs have been in wins vs. losses. There's more to look at there. Maybe I'll look it up. To add to your implication, it's the lack of offensive balance due to both our inability (against good Ds) and unwillingness (against bad ones) to run the ball.