Rampant Buffalo

When one makes a mistake, it's generally best to correct it as quickly as possible. Take the bad tasting medicine, and move on. This was a mini-rebuild year because Beane jettisoned a bunch of overpaid, aging players who were no longer worth what they were getting paid. You don't want to put new money into guys like those. That said . . . when you have an elite QB, you want to surround him with good to elite WRs. I'm high on Kincaid, and I like Shakir as a slot. (And only as a slot.) But I don't know what the plan is at outside WR. Going into next year's off-season, I would anticipate that outside WR will be our biggest need.

Me!!!!!!!!!!!!

I would argue their entire analysis of the Dorsey/Brady situation is built on a faulty foundation. That faulty foundation is their contention that scoring increased under Brady. The truth is more nuanced. The Bills had more offensive drives per game under Brady, than they did under Dorsey. That meant that the Bills scored more points per game under Brady, without scoring more points per drive. Why did the Bills get more offensive possessions? My guess is because of the defense. When Dorsey was the coordinator, the Bills used a lot of soft zone/prevent defense. That allowed opposing offenses to go on long, clock-killing drives, thereby reducing the Bills' number of possessions. McDermott improved as a defensive coordinator during Brady's time as OC, thereby shortening opposing teams' possessions. Also I will add this, in support of Brady. Josh Allen was playing hurt. Diggs was not the same guy late season, that he'd been in September and October. Those are facts to bear in mind, when you see Brady pointlessly running James Cook up the middle for a 2 - 3 yard gain. This year, I'm hoping for the Bills to be healthier, and I'm hoping our offensive players are used more creatively than had been the case last year.

Very solid list, and I'm a bit envious of your ability to create a table that's usable in this forum. I'm not as high on the Diggs trade as you. The Bills used a first round pick on Diggs and got four years out of him. But in two of those years, he disappeared later in the season and in the postseason. Also with the big new contract they gave him, he became a large consumer of the salary cap. Those negatives are partially offset by the 2nd round pick they received when they traded him away. I'm a bit more optimistic on Kincaid than you appear to be. Earlier in the year he was under-utilized. There were also times when Kincaid inexplicably lost snaps due to Knox. Those things being said, I was very happy with the job he did of getting open, and very happy with how well he caught the football whenever it came his way. You can't ask for much more than that, from a receiving TE. As a first round draft pick, I regard Edmunds as a major disappointment. But I'm very happy with Bernard.

I watched a video of every pass attempt for Coleman for the 2023 season. Once I'd finished, my gut level reaction was, I'd never want to take a guy like this before the 4th round. Even then, I'd say, "Well, this is a weak draft. I have to use my 4th round pick on someone. May as well be him. I . . . guess?"

Fixed. 👍

I plan to wait until after training camp before I write him off. Does that make you happy?

A lot of good memories in this thread. Which makes me feel bad for Luke Skywalker. One of his best father/son moments was this:

The stats you quoted neither confirm nor disprove my contention. My contention is that we have had two defensive coordinators. The really good one is named Sean McDermott. The terrible one is also named Sean McDermott. We got both of them in the Eagles loss: the really good one in the first half, the terrible one in the second half. The terrible Sean McDermott often puts up terrible defensive stats. Your links show that the Bills defense has almost always been a top ten ranked unit under McDermott. What does that mean? It means that over the course of the season, we've generally gotten the good McDermott more often than we've gotten the terrible one. When we needed good defensive play calling the most, when our backs were against the wall, when we were facing the NFL's best in a playoff elimination game, which McDermott did we get? We got soft zone/prevent defense. We got the terrible McDermott. Seven defensive stops, total, in our last four postseason losses. In this most recent Super Bowl, the 49ers defense generated seven stops also. They still lost. Maybe this improves under Babich. If he gets four defensive stops in a playoff game against the Chiefs, I'll be happy. That's enough to give the team a decent chance to win. That's all I ask. But what I don't want to see is more soft zone/prevent defense, our usual two defensive stops in our next playoff loss, and then mountains more praise heaped on McDermott just after his terrible defensive play calling has cost Josh Allen yet another year of his career.

Four coaches/front office people Doug Whaley. His most successful draft pick was Sammy Watkins. All-in on EJ Manuel. Tom Donahoe. He could have traded up for Ben Roethlisberger. But he decided Houston's asking price was too high. He could have waited a year and drafted Aaron Rodgers. Instead of doing either of those things, he drafted JP Losman. Gregg Williams. Wade Phillips' 3-4 defense had been outstanding. Williams dismantled that, and installed his own blitz-happy scheme. Used bullhorns to wake players up in the morning. In New Orleans, was the centerpiece of the bountygate scandal. Rex Ryan. Build a bully. A blowhard and an embarrassment to the franchise. His defense was doing poorly, so he fired his perfectly good offensive coordinator, Greg Roman. Rex reasoned that he'd be less likely to be fired during the season, if the team lacked a qualified interim coach. Four players OJ Simpson. Obviously. Kelvin Benjamin. Too lazy to catch a football. Donte Whitner. Okay. I realize it's not his fault that Levy/Jauron squandered the 8th overall pick on him. But given that he came to Buffalo overrated and over-hyped, he had a tendency to over-promise and under-deliver. Some of our OL in a Nate Peterman start. At one point, McDermott made the decision to bench Tyrod Taylor and put in Nate Peterman. One or more of our OL took issue with that, and deliberately whiffed on some of their blocks. That's enough to richly earn them a place on this list.

There is a key piece of information in the thread title. Week 5. You expect Diggs to play big that early in the season. If the thread title had said "week 15" or "playoff game," then no, I wouldn't expect much from Diggs.

Before deciding whether McDermott is a good head coach, it's worth at least asking the question: is he a good defensive coordinator? If he is, why did Andy Reid fire him? Look at the Eagles game. In the first half, McDermott did an outstanding job, and held their offense to 3 points. But then in the third quarter, he switched to a soft zone/prevent defense. He simply allowed the Eagles to complete 8 - 12 yard passes, without the defense contesting those. It was as though he was grimly determined to remind Eagles fans why their team had fired him. The Eagles scored every drive once McDermott started doing that, ultimately winning the game. Which Sean McDermott did we get in our playoff losses? In our four most recent playoff losses, his defense has generated a total of seven defensive stops. Seven defensive stops, in four postseason losses to the Chiefs and Bengals. This past Super Bowl, when facing the Chiefs, the 49ers defense generated, you guessed it, 7 defensive stops! Their defense accomplished in one game, what McDermott's defense has in four. A large portion of Josh Allen's career has been expended, without any Super Bowl rings to show for it. The primary reason for that is McDermott's soft zone/prevent defense, which the Chiefs cut through like a hot knife through butter.

Each of us needs to answer the question, How am I going to see the world? The most common answer to that question is to believe what you read in the paper, what you see on the news, etc. Conformism. A person who uses that approach is going to have correct views about some subjects, incorrect views on others. But, and here is a key point, that person's incorrect views will still be socially acceptable. No one is going to be called crazy or a fruitcake for believing something he saw on the news. Let's say a man wakes up one morning and decides, I can do better than this. He goes online, and starts researching alternatives to mainstream ways of seeing things. The problem is, it's cheap and easy to create alternatives to the mainstream way of thinking. As a consequence, there are plenty of alternatives to mainstream thinking out there. The vast majority of these alternatives contain far more falsehood than truth. It would be easy for this man to be misled by some of these alternatives. This type of error is not socially acceptable. A man will absolutely have the verbal equivalent of rotten eggs thrown at him, if he indulges in this type of error. As a hobby, I chose a topic. Over the years, I've done about 10,000 pages of reading about it. I've written a 90 page article about it. My article is supported by numerous quotes from mainstream sources. My conclusion is not mainstream. I avoided both the error of conformism and the error of being seduced by a conspiracy theory. Life is short, and there simply isn't time to perform this level of effort for very many subjects. How much time has Aaron Rodgers taken to research the subjects he talks about? Has he written about them? How much research has he done, and how credible are the sources he's citing? I don't have the answers to these questions. Putting aside the specific example of Aaron Rodgers, I would say it's far more common to encounter someone easily seduced by a half-baked conspiracy theory, than it is to encounter someone who's reached a non-mainstream conclusion through rigorous research.

I'm definitely interested in what Marino has to say about the Bills. Also, I'm interested in what our OC, Brady, has to say. Finally, I'd like to hear the thoughts of recently-released Bills coach Shula.

On Tuesday, the average net worth of someone living in your neighborhood was $100,000. Then on Wednesday, Elon Musk randomly moved in. Now it's Sunday, and the average net worth of someone living in your neighborhood is well over $1 billion. Josh Allen is the Elon Musk of Beane's draft picks. Adding one guy like that is going to make the average look much, much better than it otherwise would have. Let's say I'm the GM of an expansion team. I have two options. 1) I'm gifted a rookie version of Josh Allen. 2) I'm gifted rookie versions of all other Beane draft picks. I know which of those options I'm taking. Dude, it's not even close.

Vontae Davis is getting a lot more flak than I'd anticipated. He held himself to a certain standard. Once he realized his body could no longer perform close to that standard, he retired. He felt he was harming the team by playing, because some other player could have done a better job in his place. Was his abrupt retirement an emotional decision? Yeah, probably. Could he have handled this better than he did? Yeah, he could have. But I don't know that any of this makes him a bad guy, or someone I'd want to hate.

I remember when both he and Troy Vincent were signed to be starting members of our defensive secondary. You'd think that, if one of the two was going to turn out to be a locker room lawyer, it would have been him. But nope. Troy Vincent was the locker room lawyer.

A good way of testing this is by looking at men who have done something exceptional, but do not have exceptional wealth to show for it. One example of that is Hiroo Onoda. Japan surrendered in 1945, ending WWII. But a Japanese soldier by the name of Hiroo Onada distrusted this news, believing it to be enemy propaganda. He kept fighting on. _________________ The [Japanese] government then tracked down Onoda’s commanding officer, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, who had since become a bookseller, and flew him to Lubang. So, on March 9, 1974, at the age of 52, Hiroo Onoda emerged from the jungle, still dressed in his tattered official uniform and with his service rifle and sword still in excellent shape, to accept the order from his commander telling him to lay down his arms. . . . . He returned to Japan, where he was greeted as a hero by a cheering populace. __________________ He got married soon after, to a much younger woman. They started a family in 1975.

Depending on the woman, she's likely to look at the whole picture. Do Belichick's greenbacks play a role? Yeah, I'm guessing they do. But normally a woman is also going to look at a man's merit. Belichick got those greenbacks by being one of the best in the world at his profession. A typical woman is going to have more respect for that, than she would if he'd gotten the exact same amount of money through something non-merit-based. (Such as winning the lottery.)

I, also, want $60 million a year.

Under McDermott, the Bills have had four postseason games against the Chiefs and Bengals. Four postseason games, four defensive collapses. Never more than two defensive stops in any of those four games. Two defensive stops is not enough to give your team a chance to win. Look at the playoff game that Joe Burrow and the Bengals won at the expense of the Chiefs. Burrow's defense generated six defensive stops, including one in overtime. That was barely a good enough defensive performance for the Bengals to get the win. This most recent Super Bowl, the 49ers defense generated seven stops against the Chiefs, while losing in a close game. Who are the culprits for the near-total failure of our defense in our postseason losses? Beane. He's invested a ton of resources in our DL. The DL hasn't played up to that investment. Bad luck. This most recent playoff loss, the defense was devastated by injuries. But, above all, culprit #1 has been the complete failure of defensive coaching. Consistently, the Bills' defensive coaches have called a soft zone/prevent defense. If you want to get defensive stops, you have to let your guys make plays. If you tell your DBs to simply allow the other team to get 8 - 12 yard gains, you're not permitting them to make plays.

"let’s just go with the “he’s a big, strong, white guy associated with the Bills . . . " You either did not read my post earlier on this page, or else are ignoring it and responding to arguments no one here on this thread has made.

As we've just established, Steveson appears to be innocent. Not sure where your comment is coming from.

Yeah, well, you always want to cut a player before his slump, rather than after. That way you don't have to put up with someone's bad play. How were the Bills supposed to predict his slump? I, ah, well, I'll have to get back to you on that.

Before commenting on that article, let's ask a few questions. Scenario 1: a sober woman has consensual sex with a drunk man. Afterwards, the man withdraws consent, and seeks to press charges against the woman for being a rapist. Scenario 2: a drunk woman has consensual sex with a drunk man. Afterwards, they both withdraw consent, and both press charges against each other for rape. Scenario 3. A drunk woman has consensual sex with a drunk man. Afterwards, the woman withdraws consent, and seeks to prosecute the man as a rapist. The author of the article is seeking to destroy Steveson's life. This effort includes public shaming of Steveson, attempting to shame potential employers not to hire him, and the claim that Steveson escaped prosecution for rape on the basis of a "loophole." All this, because of Steveson's involvement in scenario 3. Would the reporter be equally fervent in his wish to destroy the lives of the accused parties in scenarios 1 and 2? If a reporter lacks a moral compass, should we listen to his or her words of moral indignation? What does the reporter's effort to destroy Steveson's life say about his moral compass?