PBF81

BTW, quick curiosity question. We often hear people here and elsewhere say that the highly paid coaches and GMs know a lot better than we do. While for some things that may be true, for others, many controversial things, it isn't despite opinions to the contrary. So my question to you is this; Where on the "football knowledgeability scale" would you rank our "13 Seconds" debacle? A few options are, that everyone knows that you don't give Mahomes/Kelce/Hill 25 yards of open space to work when they only need that for a reasonable FG try; every good coach would have done the same or similar; only the most astute fans can even grasp that it was not a good decision given the tempo of the game; most football minded fans know that it was a bad decision; etc. Put another way, how "football smart" does one have to be in order to have known, before hand, that doing what McD did was not a good idea? What say ye? Have a great weekend if we don't talk 'til Monday!!

A number of people here think that McD is a great coach. Apparently you've missed their posts. I don't go by hires and the like, many many people have been hired over the years that haven't been competent. Look at some of the coaches we've hired, look at Ryan and the fanfare that accompanied him. Players too. That's not something to go by. We got duped in that Bledsoe trade too. My point has never been that McD is a horrible coach per se, it's two things, first that he's not the coach that's going to bring this team to a Super Bowl, by a long shot. Time will tell, but IMO that starts to play out in the next couple of years. To me that's obvious, to others not. But also that he's not all that much better than some of the other coaches we've had. IMO Williams was a better coach than McD. I'd put McD in the Jauron category however. Defensive minded, doesn't really demonstrate any ingenuity or creativity on the offensive side of the ball whatsoever. But, and look, you've dismissed the "13 Seconds" thing, but that's a pretty egregious coaching error, say what you will about it in defense. It cannot be ignored, the fact that a coach would allow that to occur. Same for the defensive alignments in the playoffs last season. If that continues, playoff wins will be few. You say that "I just don't like McD," which isn't true, but then leapfrog and explain away monumental errors of judgment that quite frankly no good coach does so regularly in the most important games. We can argue to the nines here, but time will tell. It would hardly be the first time that we thought we had a winner but didn't. I don't think that too many coaches in the league would be having this team under .500 the past few years, and IMO five or six may have won a SB with a good dozen or so doing about the same with the talent here. Unfortunately, we can beat it to death right now, but we'll never know. BTW, I probably should have used last season's lineup. We'll stick with this tho. You'll see. I don't want the reason to affect your ratings. TEs, RBs, ... what, Knox, Kincaid, Cook, Harris? Top 2 each. Oh, and BTW, I probably should have said, or we agreed, that 4-6 is the average range, 1-2 terrible, 9-10 premier/impact. If you want to change any based on that, feel free. I think that those are fairly obvious tho.

We've had the #1 and #2 defense the past two seasons, and comparable talent offensively. We've lost because of coaching, not talent, you know that, so why are you implying differently. "13 Seconds" was coaching. If not for that, we'd have been in the SB. That's on no one but coaching. The way that our defense played in this past season's playoffs is entirely on coaching, not talent, otherwise I'm open to explanations as to why our guys were lined up way way off the ball on short yardage situations, and why our #2 ranked defense allowed more PPG than any team that played in two or more playoff games by a long shot, and otherwise comparably to teams ranked in the bottom half of the league defensively. That too is coaching, not talent.

OK, now top-3 WRs, what, Diggs, Davis, what .... Harty? You pick the three and rate those.

It's going to be very interesting when the consensus eventually becomes that he simply can't get it done and isn't that great a coach. Stalling at the wild-card or divisional level due to coaching issues when you have Allen isn't going to cut it until Allen can't play anymore or leaves.

Things will clear up the next season or two. Time will tell. Right now however, there's no way that these teams have been doing the most that they possibly can with the talent that they've had. The division tightens up now and our formerly freebie East isn't so freebie anymore, which will make a huge difference. I'll change my viewpoint if we don't regress significantly this fall.

And BTW, you seem to be missing the point entirely. You now admit that those teams would have been better with Allen, but you refuse to admit that McD would comparably be no better than what Allen would have propelled those teams to earlier. You cannot have both. As stated, 1-10 each individual player.

Well, OK, fair enough I suppose. I completely disagree. This season will reveal much more, namely how this defnese performs. I can't think of any coach, not even our worst ones, that would have put up a "13 Seconds" or had the D play the way it has in the playoffs for us, so far back as to may as well move the chains in favor of the opponents ourselves. That's hardly all as well. And yes, McD is Allen. Take Allen away and I'm simply not seeing how he competes offensively, at all. His running games have sucked, our passing games are 100% reliant upon huge plays by Allen a good chunk of the time. I don't see us having anything but a bottom 10 offense without Allen, and our defensive play would have been heavily impacted as a direct result.

Thanks Bear with me. Let's start with the OL, you name the five starters, I'll put out Dawkins, McGovern, Morse, Torrence, and Brown Swap the ones you want and rate 'em, the starting five that is.

Talk about nonsense, our D back then was no different than our D now. We also had Kyle Williams whose better than any DT we've had since him. Hughes was here, as was Lorax, so was Lawson in his prime. We had Poyer, Hyde, White too. Offensively we had McCoy, also better than any RB we've had. The WRs weren't great but Taylor also threw for half the yards that Allen does and half the TDs, and that was hardly all because of the WRs. It's ridiculous to suggest that that team wouldn't have been incredibly better than 9-7 with Allen playing the way that has otherwise.

Also for instance, put Allen on the teams that Bledsoe had, or Williams' teams, and IMO Brady and Belichick are short three SBs and we have 'em.

If you're interested in rating each of our starters from 1 to 10, let me know. There's a reason for it. : D

What I said in the post that you responded to, again, ... Allen easily adds 4+ wins to any team that doesn't have a top QB in mine and many other peoples' opinions, it's not a reach by any means. So, as a case in point, take the 2009 team, the one where Fewell finished the season at HC for Jauron. We were 6-10. 10 wins makes the playoffs. Convert just the 5 games we lost by 7 or fewer points to wins and we not only make the playoffs but win the division at 11-5. Put McD on that team and it finishes no better than it did. I wouldn't even say those 6 wins.

You completely leapfrogged the point.

Outside the QB position, numerous teams that didn't make the playoffs during out drought years were better than what we have on the field today or have during Beane's watch. If we had the opportunity to swap one or more of those teams wholesale, while keeping Allen, we'd have a stronger team with some of those swaps. It's incredibly difficult to imagine even those 6-10 or 7-9 teams making the playoffs with Allen at the helm. That's the point. It's easy to envision Marrone's or Mularkey's 9-7 teams finishing 13-3 or better had they had Allen. Does that mean that Mularky or Marrone were good coaches? No. But their teams overall had better talent at the other 23 positions, generally speaking. Imagine if you will, how would McD have been coaching ANY of those teams from 2000 'til 2016? It's ridiculous to think that they would even had a chance at the playoffs.

Allen has turned the Bills around from being a laughing stock. Most of or past coaches would have done the same, some that got 9 wins without him. Those two have underachieved, I suppose it's possible that they don't continue to underachieve, but i'd say is unlikely.

That's a big part of the issue here. They've essentially been running it, and apart from them only succeeding to the extent that Allen does everything, they've underachieved, ... drastically. The tough question (s), in keeping with the thread topic, is good much longer will that continue, and what will be done about it. If they stick around, why would they manage/coach differently than that have? It's been 6 seasons. Just asking the questions.

Allen needs an offensively-minded head coach. The team and fans need a coach that is capable of not giving games away in the playoffs due to bizarre and never-to-be-explained in-game decisions, and one that understands that it's idiocy to hand our opponents huge chunks of yards in the most critical of situations, and thereby costing us playoff games. Apparently, from what we've read, highly-paid "experts" are needed to understand this.

Agreed. And last year they had a $1.99/mo. for 12 months intro deal. I got it for the SNF games which they carried. We had two I think, so even $24 for the two games is fine. As with you, if you can't find a free feed, you're not looking. LOL

Yup, but IMO it's going to be a more difficult task w/o Singletary, who was a much more versatile RB than Harris is, and frankly, a better rusher too generally speaking. Harris repertoire is pretty limited.

Thanks for the polite response. 🙄 I didn't think it was so "duh". The varying doctor-by-phone services are significantly less than appointments in person are. I'm not surprised, just didn't think it was "duh" obvious.

I haven't looked, but it's quite possible that they made a mistake. I've pointed a couple out over the years, one fairly recently, a simple clerical error, which they corrected quickly. They're really good with that. Here are Allen's playoff #s tho; https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/A/AlleJo02/gamelog/post/ Here are the team's playoff #s; https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/buf/playoffs.htm I wish I had time to sort them out, I've gotta get outta here though. On a quick glance tho, Allen's got 63 carrries for 417 yards and 2 rushing TDs in his 8 PO games. The team has in those same 8 games has 884 total rushing yards if my (very quick) math is on. 417/884 = 47%. I would run the same analysis using only '20 - '22 tho. Allen was a shell of himself in '19.

If I understand that correctly the team averages are playoff games featuring Allen and Mahomes for their respective teams. Here's the thing, let's strip off the QB rushing performance from both teams during the playoffs, and I'm sure to some extent it mirrors the regular season. Subtracting 20% from KC's playoff rushing production we're left with about ... 19.3 carries for 97 yards and 1 TD Subtracting 47% from our playoff rushing production we're left with about ... 12.1 carries for 58.5 yards and .4 TDs What not everyone seems to understand is that our running game has less to do with talent at RB than it does with utilization. (AHEM, ... coaching decisions) IMO we're going to regret letting singletary go. Had we allowed Singletary, who's not even in his prime, to get 50% more carries last season, assuming that his ypc avg had been the same, he'd have finished with 265 carries for 1,228 rushing yards, and 7 or 8 TDs. That would have been good for 6th in carries and 6th in rushing yardage. He also would have finished 8th for RBs in yards-from-scrimmage. Who else finished with that stat line or close? ... Dalvin Cook, who's in his prime, finished with 264 / 1,173 / 8 and everyone seems to want him here. Harris and Murry aren't as good as Singletary, neither is as versatile, and Murray's past-prime. We'll find that out. But at the end of the day, if you don't use them, you're not going to get the production from not using them. One doesn't have to be a football guru to understand that, it's common sense, yet, it's something that our offensive coaching staff and quite possibly McD himself haven't come to grips with. To add a little perspective, if Harris gets the same 177 carries, based upon his 4.4 ypc last season behind a better OL, he'd log 779 rushing yards here. Would that cause everyone to say "yeah, great move by Beane?" It's pretty plain and simple really. Allen's looking at a significantly curtailed career unless it changes soon, and as I see it we're very fortunate that he hasn't sustained a serious injury in that way.

Do they charge the same on the remote calls?

The toughness of the division within itself is a big part of that. The Pats had some of the easiest schedules repeatedly because all three other teams sucked more often than not.