Rampant Buffalo

You could say the same about any vet player who signs with the Cleveland Browns.

Based on that description, he's exactly the archetype we're looking for!

Two potential reasons to throw out the Pats game. 1) You could argue the Pats didn't have a good defense. Except that argument would be wrong, because their defense was ranked #2 in the NFL. 2) Josh Allen received good performances from his OL, his WRs, and his OC. If someone wants to throw out the Pats game out for that reason, fine. But if someone is doing that, that person also needs to throw out any postseason game where Mahomes, Burrow, or Lamar Jackson received good performances from their OL, WRs, and OCs. There is, however, a playoff game which I believe should be dropped from the stats: the Bills' most recent playoff loss to the Chiefs. In that game, Bills WRs had 160 yards of drops. That's going to mess with a QB's stats, hard core. Like, really pulverize the QB's stats, through no fault of his own. Is there someone reading this thread who believes that 160 yards of drops is a perfectly normal, everyday occurrence? Fine! Let that person step forward, and show me the playoff games where Mahomes, Burrow, or Lamar Jackson had something similar happen to them! Bottom line: Allen's receivers played badly enough in that game, as to make it impossible to meaningfully evaluate Allen's performance.

Any time your QB is averaging well over 300 yards per game, with 5.5 TDs for every INT, it's completely, 100% unreasonable to expect your defense to keep you in the game. Those five playoff losses were 100% on the offense. The McDermott/Frazier defense did just fine, and didn't let the team down in any, any way.

So . . . you're saying this situation doesn't have you on the EDGE of your seat? 😮

The Bills are ahead of the curve! Not only do we not have a No. 1 receiver, we also don't have a No. 2 or No. 3 receiver either! 👍

One of the things I have a ton of respect for is good character. You've displayed good character with this post. 👍

He was before my time, but I'm going with Johnny Unitas. Before Brady, the conversation for best QB ever usually came down to Joe Montana vs. Unitas. Unitas was tough as nails. I mean really, really tough. He played in a pass-oriented offense, many years before pass-oriented offenses were a thing. That allowed him to put up far more passing yards per year than did other QBs of his era, such as Bart Starr. You have to like his longevity. He played 18 seasons, despite the absolutely brutal pounding QBs took back then. For his career, he averaged 7.8 yards per pass attempt. That compares favorably to Tom Brady (7.4), Drew Brees (7.6), and Joe Montana (7.5). Unitas played in an era where the rules were less favorable to passing. Sadly, his body had been partially destroyed by football. Some of his joints no longer worked the way they were supposed to, most notably in his hand, arm, and legs. Looking at his stats, you notice that during the last third of his career, there was a notable decline. One wonders if injuries which never fully healed may have contributed to the decline.

A bad person? I personally judge people by their actions. You take the good someone did, and pile it up in one pile. You take the bad, and pile it up in another pile. Compare the piles, and that tells you a lot about whether the person was good or bad. I'm half Polish. I don't like Polish jokes, because they contribute to negative and untrue stereotypes about Poles. But, I think that someone can still be a good person even if they tell Polish jokes. Was Jon Gruden a good person towards African Americans? Answering that question would require someone to sit down with a lot of the African American players he had coached. Get their impressions on how they had been treated. But, doing that would require actual work, as well as intellectual integrity. Moral outrage is much easier. It's very easy for the media to point to his emails, and conclude that the time has come to reject Gruden as a human being. All without knowing a single thing about how he'd treated the African American players he'd coached.

I threw that post in to lighten the mood. Wasn't trying to start a serious discussion about the merits or demerits of McDermott's coaching.

I too hope McDermott gets fired, and replaced with someone who provides competent coaching in the playoffs.

This was never about the emails. The Washington football team had been investigated. Gruden was an avowed enemy of Roger Goodell. Dan Snyder figured that if he served Gruden's head up on a silver platter, Goodell would owe him a favor. Had things gone according to plan, Snyder's bad behavior would have been swept under the rug, and Goodell would have one less critic in an important position. Snyder's plan backfired. The fact that Gruden's emails were released, while everything else was kept hush hush, increased the scrutiny on his team. The whole situation smelled bad, especially considering those emails had nothing to do with anything the NFL was originally supposed to investigate. So why release something irrelevant to the investigation, while keeping the investigation's results completely quiet? In the end, this situation proved a win for Goodell. He got something (removal of Gruden) in exchange for nothing. Nothing was done to protect Snyder, and it appears as though the NFL may not face any financial penalty for its treatment of Gruden.

The text you quoted is not mine, even though my name appeared as the person being quoted. It's as though text attributed to me had been written by a ghost writer. 😮 Anyway, and to your point: I'm not saying the defense needs to be the Steel Curtain of the '70s or the '85 Bears for this team to win championships. But, I am saying that the defense needs to do something, in postseason games against the Chiefs and Bengals. McDermott's best is two stops against the Chiefs in the postseason. Other defenses are getting six or even seven stops in postseason games against the Chiefs. If your defense is only getting two stops, that alone is nearly sufficient to determine the outcome of the game, almost without regard to the offense.

Excellent post. One thing I'll add is this. There are two Lamar Jacksons. Lamar the passer, and Lamar the runner. Lamar the passer is nothing special. Lamar the runner is elite. To their credit, McDermott and Frazier came up with a very good defensive game plan for Lamar Jackson. Make him be a quarterback. Don't allow Lamar the runner to bail out Lamar the passer. But, when a QB is a gifted passer, and when he's facing the Bills in a postseason game, he's going to cut through the MCDermott/Frazier defense like a hot knife through butter. Zero exceptions to that rule, at least thus far.

Yeah, I'm sure Hamlin would be thrilled to be traded to Cincinnati. I mean, it's not like he has any bad, Bengals-related memories or anything.

It's worth remembering here that the Bills had a different kind of offense in 2017. Greg Roman's empire had fallen a year or two earlier, but the Bills were still using Roman's system. (The same system seen more recently in Baltimore, with Lamar Jackson.) Tyrod Taylor ran a 4.4 in the 40. Fast, but not the insanely fast 4.2 that Lamar Jackson ran. But even at 4.4, Taylor had the speed for Roman's offensive system to be implemented as intended. The goal of Roman's system is to use the running speed of the QB to loosen things up for the RB to run the ball. Also, the QB's running speed loosens up the passing game, making completions easier. The Bills were pretty good on the left side of their OL in 2017, with Dion Dawkins at LT, Richie Incognito at LG, and Eric Wood at C. With Shady McCoy at RB, that was a team that could run the ball. Lamar Jackson has been more successful in the regular season than in the playoffs. The same proved true with Tyrod Taylor. With Taylor under center, the Bills offense was held to just 3 points in the playoff game against the Jacksonville Jaguars. There was merit to that 2017 offense. Yet Beane did a very good thing, in deciding to move on from Tyrod Taylor and that offensive system after that year had ended. I'd much rather have Josh Allen for postseason games than Lamar Jackson, let alone a poor man's Lamar in the form of Tyrod Taylor.

Yeah I hear you. I don't know that Gibbs was quite at the level of the other three. But if not, he was definitely knocking on that door. Call it the top 3.5 head coaches since 1980.

I have mixed feelings about your post. Leadership matters a lot. That said . . . if you were to ask me to name the greatest head coaches between 1980 - today, the first names which would come to mind would be Bill Walsh, Bill Belichick, and Andy Reid. Were those three head coaches the three greatest leaders of men between 1980 and today? I don't know that they were. But, all three were brilliant at X's and O's. Think of some of our postseason losses. In the Bills/Giants Super Bowl, we had the more talented team. A good leader, in the form of Marv Levy. But Bill Belichick and the Giants did a better job with X's and O's, resulting in a Giants win. Andy Reid has also done a much better job with X's and O's than Sean McDermott, resulting in multiple postseason defeats for the Bills.

I liked the first one better. Announcer 1: "It's been three years since Josh Allen dropped back to pass. He's been incredibly patient in the pocket thus far." Announcer 2: "No one is open just yet. But at the rate things are going, two years from now Keon Coleman should be open."

I will helpfully remind you that Keon Coleman was drafted by the Bills, not the Chiefs. Therefore, it will be Josh Allen, not Pat Mahomes, taking the five years throws.

If I'm an owner or GM looking to hire a head coach, one of the main things I'm looking for is someone who's a very good coordinator. Ideally a brilliant coordinator. I would classify Sean McDermott as a very good defensive coordinator . . . most of the time. The rest of the time he's a completely terrible, bonehaded coordinator . . . which is the same thing as saying that he employs a soft zone/prevent defense. There's a reason why Andy Reid hired McDermott in the first place. Just as there's a reason Reid fired him. McDermott has had many, many years to learn to avoid the boneheaded stuff. When we've needed him the most, when we've faced postseason games against our toughest opponents, he's drunk deep from the well of boneheadedness. A soft zone/prevent defense, making life easy peasy for Mahomes and Burrow. Right now, the Bills have an asset: Josh Allen's good years. That asset is of limited duration: there will come a day when Allen hangs up his cleats. What is the best use for that asset? Should we continue to expend it on the hope that McDermott will someday learn not to be boneheaded when we need him the most? Or, should the Bills look for a very talented, innovative coordinator to take McDermott's place? There's risk either way. With McDermott, there's the risk that he'll continue to get his usual two defensive stops in postseason games against the Chiefs or Bengals. A first time head coach is associated with risk as well.

Thanks for the heads up! 👍 I hadn't been aware of that.

None of us is perfect. One way we can make each other better is to call each other out when necessary. I called you out, because I believed you capable of making better contributions to this thread than the ones you'd made. If I'd thought you were already doing your best I wouldn't have said anything. If someone calls me out, I ask, can I use this to learn about my flaws and get better? If you take the same approach with my posts, maybe you find something valuable in them, and maybe you don't.

Allen's receivers had 160 yards of drops in this most recent playoff loss. Show me a postseason game where Mahomes' receivers came anywhere close to doing that. This past season, Mahomes had a Hall of Fame offensive mind drawing up plays (Andy Reid), a Hall of Fame TE, an outstanding interior OL, a good #1 WR in the form of Rashee Rice. Rice was still learning early in the season, but was a good player late season and in the postseason. In other words, he was the polar opposite of Diggs. If I'm an NFL QB, I'd ten times rather have Mahomes' situation than Allen's. Obviously. And if we're talking injury, I'd point to the fact that Allen was playing hurt this past season with a shoulder injury. There was one time in Allen's career when his supporting cast was somewhat comparable to Mahomes'. Not completely, but somewhat. Allen responded by putting up the best QB rating in NFL postseason history. There's more to Allen than just "flashy bombs" or a "stronger arm."

Before talking about Mahomes or Allen, it's necessary to talk about Alex Smith. Smith was the 49ers QB for a number of years. He was considered reasonably good, but nothing special. The kind of guy a team wouldn't mind having as a bridge QB, but not a long-term answer. Now that Alex Smith is retired, his career average is 6.9 yards per attempt. That puts him above Trent Edwards (6.5) or JP Losman (6.6), but below a guy like Tom Brady (7.4). In his last year with the 49ers, Alex Smith was benched in favor of Colin Kaepernick. The next year, he found his way to the Kansas City Chiefs. In his last year with the Chiefs (with Mahomes sitting on the bench), Alex Smith averaged 8.0 yards per pass attempt, with a QB rating of 104.7, and over 4,000 passing yards. That's better than Tom Brady (7.4), Aaron Rodgers (7.7) or Drew Brees (7.6). Did Alex Smith suddenly start playing at a higher level than those other three QBs? No, he didn't. He was a fairly average QB. But Andy Reid's offensive system, and the Chiefs' supporting cast, allowed this Joe Average QB to put up offensive numbers that would make a Hall of Fame QB envious. Next season, Pat Mahomes became the beneficiary of Andy Reid's offensive system, and the Chiefs' supporting cast. Those things boosted his numbers, just as they had boosted Alex Smith's numbers. Has Josh Allen received a similar boost in numbers from his own supporting cast? In this most recent playoff loss to the Chiefs, Bills receivers had 160 yards of drops. That's not the kind of boost which makes people say, "Oh wow! I can't believe Allen got a boost that big! I'm so astonished my jaw is about to fall off!" Any comparison between Allen's stats and Mahomes' is going to be apples to oranges. The Chiefs' supporting cast, and their offensive system, really has been that much better than the Bills'.