Coach Tuesday

Some guy said something grrrrrr!!!!!!

Right but I was responding to someone questioning whether the Bengals’ pro personnel dept out-hustled the Bills’ the last two offseasons. They clearly did. The two teams pursued roughly the same strategy of signing mid-tier FAs at many of the same positions (d line and CB), and most of the Bills’ haul from 2020 is washing out of the league while the Bengals just played the coveted last game of the season. Meanwhile the Bengals’ pro personnel dept doesn’t have Albert Breer writing monthly articles about how stacked they are with future GMs; it’s like two guys staying at Motel 6s with notepads. Have been EXTREMELY underwhelmed by Beane’s free agent evaluations, they borderline suck.

Cowboys were the number one DVOA team heading into the playoffs.

No, it was not a sign of strong roster building when they signed Mario Addison, EJ Gaines, Vernon Butler, Quinton Jefferson, Josh Norman, Taiwan Jones and Quinton Spain, plus Darryl Williams, for their 2020 free agency “haul.” It just was not.

According to PFT that already might be his defense - and I wish him luck with it. If he sticks with it, the “I was just kidding when I tried to bribe you to violate anti-gambling laws” defense is likely to result in jail time for Ross.

Can you name a single high-impact free agent the Bills added during the last two offseasons? Maybe Darryl Williams?

All true - but when the refs are (not) calling the game a specific way for 56 minutes, it's fair for the players to start to think they can play a certain way without ramification... hold was unnecessary but it was a very unfair call at that point in that game given how they'd been letting them play all night.

The first couple scripted drives were good, and then the last seven minutes or so when everyone was squeezing every last ounce of effort out in order to win - but in between it was a snore-fest.

Exactly.

But he makes up for it in sample girth!

It would’ve been a good game for a week 6 Sunday night football or a week 16 flex - but as Super Bowls go it was pretty weak, neither team was very good compared to the teams that were sitting at home - Bucs, Cowboys, Bills, Chiefs, even the Titans and Ravens are probably better than either team that played last night.

The Bengals’ barebones pro personnel dept ran circles around Beane’s arsenal of highly-touted GMs-in-waiting the last two offseasons. They picked up two very good starting corners, a passrusher, and a space eater for bargain prices while OBD mostly sat out of free agency.

Last night’s product was terrible. Anodyne watered-down 90s revival crap, from the commercials to the announcers (Al Michaels sounded like he had died three years ago) - and I actually even liked the halftime show for once. It was so boring that at one point they literally did a history of people named Joe in the Super Bowl. Just a bland, joyless affair and I’m sure tired players played a role in that. Unfortunately the Super Bowl isn’t really for “real football fans”, I’m not the target audience.

Last night was not a good one for the pro-RB crowd - the Rams’ backs did nothing to help win the game, and Mixon wasn’t even on the field during the Bengals’ critical last drive. I don’t see how anyone watching last night’s game would continue to think that the Bills are a Barkley away from a title…

It was a historic QB draft and teams were aggressively trying to trade up and Gettleman sat there with his arms crossed and refused to entertain trade offers because the guy he wanted was a running back. Plus Eli was on his last legs. It was borderline criminal negligence by the worst GM in football in about 40 years. There is zero justification for it - none.

Would a 2nd and a 4th get it done?

There is no way Barkley was a good pick by that franchise at that time, especially given what they passed up to get him (namely, Josh Allen or a boatload of picks). Zero.

I think his legs retired mid-season.

Utter fantasy is right - it’s the fantasy football effect on fandom.

So - you are proposing they trade assets for a one-year $7m rental running back who is coming off a worse year than Singletary, and then let him walk if he performs really well??? Sorry this is Crazy Town.

The issue with Barkley is - say you trade assets for a running back with one year left at $7.2m fully guaranteed (so unlikely a notion I cannot believe it’s still being discussed), your BEST CASE scenario is he has a good enough year to justify that price and THEN you’ve got to pay him serious dollars over multiple years (with Elliott’s deal a potential starting point). There is almost no chance that doesn’t come back to bite you at some point during the second contract. And that’s the best case scenario!

The Bills should be playing on Sunday it's that simple. The Bengals, Chargers, Ravens, Chiefs, Broncos and other AFC teams will all look to improve this offseason and there's no guarantee the Bills will have such a golden opportunity to bring home a Lombardi staring them in the face again soon. You have to take advantage of the changes you're given. With Allen at QB this team can beat any team any week for the next decade (so long as he stays healthy of course), so there's ample reason to stay encouraged and hopeful - but we also shouldn't underestimate what a colossal disgrace of a coaching job we witnessed three weeks ago. "Oh well, we'll do better next time!" is nice to hear and all, but it reflects a lack of appreciation for just how rare this opportunity was. We are at a point right now where we can sit back and say we'll get 'em again next year, and hopefully that's true - but if things don't go that way, years from now we'll be sitting here debating just how big of a debacle "13 Seconds" really was. It might be the biggest coaching disaster in Buffalo sports' history.

😬

The players seem happy about this so I’m willing to be patient.

I’m not super optimistic about their communication issues being fixed with first-time coordinators at OC and ST. Could they work out? Sure.