dave mcbride

Doesn’t matter. He just signed with the Pats.

Oh well.

Creative former Patriots offensive coach for a very successful offense who also did a two-year stint at Alabama, where his offense was criticized for being ever-so-slightly underwhelming relative to the year before he arrived. Sound familiar? I doubt it will happen because I expect McDermott to give Dorsey a pass. But I am throwing it out there given the noise that the Pats may go after him and because I’ve been pretty underwhelmed by Dorsey despite the #2 ranking. As Joe B says in his Athletic article, the window ain’t gonna be open long and McDermott got rid of Dennison after one season. If I’m O’Brien and were presented with the option, working with Josh Allen would be a far more attractive proposition than working with Mac Jones. (Also, small point: like Daboll, who has an engineering degree from the U of Rochester, O’Brien is presumably a book-smart guy given that he graduated from Brown.) To reiterate, I strongly doubt this happens given McDermott’s history with assistants (excepting Dennison, who was actually terrible) and the excuse making that’s currently going on inside the organization regarding this season’s outcome.

I am not advocating firing McDermott, btw. He is, after all, the only one of 12 who is a defensive coach who got to a championship game in the last 3 years. But the trend seems to be pretty clear to me.

I am bullish on Shakir.

I am certainly not advocating getting criminals; I’m only pointing out that the teams that beat us in the postseason seem to be ok with harboring a few of them if the talent is there. More broadly, there are a LOT of crazy people in the NFL. The Jimmy Johnson Cowboys teams were loaded with them. And let’s face it — you have to be a little crazy to play in the NFL given the extreme violence. We all want guys who are able to turn it off at 4:15 pm on a Sunday, but that’s not realistic for a lot of players. It’s a sport that rewards a violent bent.

True, but to be fair that is a throw Josh makes regularly in that sort of situation (it’s what makes him so elite). Of course, that’s no excuse for Saffold, who dramatically increased the difficulty of the throw through his play.

You need some of it, though, and the fact of the matter is that in the postseason, the Bills have LOST to the teams featuring D’Andre Hopkins, Frank Clark, Tyreek Hill, Chris Jones, and Joe Mixon. All elite teams have guys like Diggs irrespective of position. It’s also worth mentioning that he was open a LOT yesterday despite being bracketed and Josh missed him repeatedly (ie, the first series of the game). Give me him any day of the week over the “emotionally exhausted” millionaires who needed a family day on Saturday.

The Bills have an overabundance of kumbaya vibes on the squad now and I for one want someone with some aggro juice who trash talks and absolutely hates losing. The Bills need MORE players like him. Love it or hate it, that sort of attitude is a winning one in the NFL.

Um, the Eagles spent a huge amount of draft capital on their two main wideouts.

Since the 2020 season, 11 of the 12 teams that made the championship game have had offensive coaches and for just this year and last year, it's been 8 out of 8. The only defensive coach to make it was McDermott, and his team was curb-stomped by Andy Reid. Including this year and going back to 2019, 8 out of 8 SB coaches will have been offensive coaches. I'm not saying that a coach has to be an offensive guy -- Belichick!! -- but there does seem to be a pretty clear trendline.

I have zero problem with Diggs' reaction. He's elite and our coaching staff couldn't figure out a way to get him more involved. I'd be frustrated too. And he had a lot of inaccurate throws directed at him. Simply put, he wants to win. Probably more importantly, I want more guys who aren't "emotionally exhausted" in a divisional round playoff game and who are all about amping up the intensity in the postseason.

Williams had one pretty good season, got paid, and then mailed it in with first class postage.

Hyde missed nearly the entire season and Poyer was a shell of himself by the end.

Great player, but his last year in Carolina was 2013 and he had slowed down a little by then. His best season was 2005, although he was still elite in 2011 (Cam’s rookie year). I think Gunnar is referring to the post-Smith years.

Good stuff.

Um, no he doesn’t. Josh Allen is probably his favorite player in the league.

Good comp. The Panthers tried for years to get by with the likes of Ted Ginn Jr and Devin Funchess. They then drafted a catch radius guy in the first (Benjamin). The DJ Moore first round pick in 2018 was wise, though - he is good. But Cam was nearing the end by that point and the Panthers’ window had closed.

I never said he was. I am just saying that one is more of an elite difference maker than the other irrespective of assignment. I mean, that’s not really debatable, right? Also, I am not advocating drafting d-line over offense at all. I am merely making the point that the team lacks high-end elite talent that can change games beyond Allen and Diggs. I am not talking about position at all. The Bills have a lot of perfectly decent-to-good players, of course.

Chris Jones is borderline unblockable and one of the very best d-linemen in the league regardless of what he’s asked to do. He single-handedly wrecked the bills o-line in the 2021 afc championship game. Daquon jones is a nice piece and a big step up from Star L, but he is not a difference maker. He never has been. He s a very solid starter, but that’s kind of beside the point. The larger point is the lack of elite playmakers who make game-changing plays — and sacks are more often than not big, game-changing plays. That’s why teams including the Bills, prioritize guys who can get sacks. I wanted the Bills to go after Hassan Reddick, but it wasn’t to be. He has been grrat for the Eagles.

Jones is good, but he is a complementary piece and not a difference maker. He is not Chris Jones or anything close, in other words.

He goes to town here, and he ain’t wrong: https://www.nbcsports.com/video/buffalo-bills-josh-allen-tries-do-too-much-vs-cincinnati-bengals?ls=pftvod

https://theathletic.com/4116068/2023/01/23/bills-bengals-result-playoffs/ I thought this passage on Dorsey was interesting: “2. Is a serious Dorsey conversation going to happen? The Bills have depended on Allen to bail them out of situations all season, and for the most part, the Bills have found a way to win with their franchise quarterback. But despite winning 14 of 18 games, a great season in its own right, the offense never appeared to reach its optimal state. There were signs of it through the first two games of the season, but once teams had gotten a bit of the book on this version of the Bills offense, from the third week through the end of the year, the offense felt disjointed every week. They were at times predictable, they lacked the creativity that was a staple of Brian Daboll’s game plans, they always seemed to react a bit late and it didn’t seem like they were ever maximizing their potential. That ultimately falls on first-year offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey, who had to go through numerous growing pains as a first-time play-caller. It wasn’t all bad for Dorsey, because the Bills usually found their way to plus results on offense. The rushing offense improved in the second half of the season, likely due to McDermott’s push to be a more multifaceted offense. After all, Dorsey was the offensive play-caller of a 14-win team. But there are plenty of first-year play-callers around the NFL, working with far less at quarterback and at wide receiver, guiding their teams to impressive offensive results. Dorsey had a top-flight quarterback running his offense, and that quarterback seemingly regressed in turnovers and, at times, reverted back to some early-year tendencies. Daboll did wonders for Allen’s career in helping him to become the player the Bills have today, but some of the unflappable qualities began to fade in 2022. It all boils down to a legitimate line of questioning the Bills must discuss in the offseason. These are precious seasons in Allen’s prime, and they are not guaranteed even two or three years from now. Are the Bills a better offense with Dorsey as their offensive coordinator, or do they have room to grow with a more creative mind? Furthermore, did Dorsey get the most out of Allen with his play-calling? This is not a situation where the Bills are trying to build up to something. If it were, patience would be the correct play. But it isn’t. They are already built. They were ready to win now. And they fell short, with a disjointed offense as a prominent feature. If the answer isn’t a resounding yes to both of those questions, the Bills need to think long and hard about who will guide their offense in the future. They have a creative young play-caller on their coaching staff in Joe Brady who reportedly has drawn attention from the Jets, a division rival, for their offensive coordinator job. Dorsey’s future with the Bills is not an unprecedented conversation; McDermott moved on from offensive coordinator Rick Dennison after only one season in 2017. That decision led the Bills to Daboll, who helped mold Allen into the player he is today. Despite 14 wins and lots of passing yards and points, the Dorsey discussions aren’t, and shouldn’t, be an open-and-shut case.”

If people want to talk about bad defensive performances in the playoffs, how can we neglect mentioning the Colts game? The Colts should have beaten Buffalo. They gained 472 yards and didn’t turn the ball over. It was crazy that the Bills won that game given how easily the Colts marched up and down the field. Accurate, experienced qbs with elite qualities shred zones, and that’s what Mahomes, Rivers, and Burrow have all done. The other thing I’ll bring up is Allen vs. blitzes. He was bad against the blitz this season, and someone as good and experienced as he is should be a LOT better against the blitz. Elite qbs generally shred blitzes. His processing was not great this season. Don’t know what’s up with that, but he has to be given some easier answers vs blitzes and he has to choose those answers immediately. I thought he had a sneakily terrible game yesterday - one of his worst ever. Bad decision after bad decision that resulted him holding the ball too long, opting for futile scrambles, and making low percentage throws.