sullim4

Honestly, he'd be ideal for the Bills right now. He's not a threat to Allen's job, he'd be a good influence on him, he'd be able to hold down the fort for a few games, etc.

Fitz is awesome... I wouldn't want him as a starter but in this situation he is perfect.

You know, I thought Buffalo Bills Battered Fan Syndrome was a thing of the past for me after the playoff berth last year. It's definitely not. I have a feeling of doom over this game. Pats* + Monday Night + Number Retirement Ceremony = looming disaster.

34-0 at the half. The Pats will intentionally miss a PAT just to twist the knife a little bit.

I haven't, but some of the NFL's renovation jobs (Soldier Field and Joe Robbie/Hard Rock for instance), are essentially new stadiums. I could see them doing that if it were a cheaper alternative to a new stadium.

I agree, and they will need to sign a third quarterback. Allen could easily aggravate or get re-injured, and 35 year old Derek Anderson isn't exactly built like a tank, either.

Move them back to San Diego and have private investors build a stadium or completely gut and renovate Qualcomm. Why is this so hard to figure out?

Part of "The Process" is eliminating any players that don't fit the McDermott scheme. I personally don't care for coaching staffs that have this philosophy, I think the best ones (NE*, for instance) tend to fit their schemes to their player's skills. It really restricts the pool of available players that they can sign. It is one of McD's weaknesses, for sure.

I work at Microsoft - although Gates gets a lot of credit as the Founder, Allen was right there with him in the beginning. He is going to leave a big void in the Seattle community. In addition to the Seahawks and Trailblazers, he owned Vulcan (which controls a lot of real estate out here). Also runs a few museums (SciFi, Experience Music Project, Living Computer Museum) and did a ton of philanthropic work in the region. He was one of the good guys.

I will give McDermott credit - I railed against the defense after the first two games and called for his head if this continued over the course of a 16 game season. Now they are playing like they did last year. They are playoff caliber. This is arguably Jerry Hughes at the best that he's been at with the Bills - he made the plays today without the boneheaded personal foul penalties. My reaction to Peterman's performance was so conflicted. On the one hand, I fully expected him to throw a pick six to lose the game. On the other hand, I can't believe it's happened AGAIN. I wish the kid well, but he needs to be let go on Monday. A random UDFA has to be better than this, right? I wasn't worried about Josh Allen until after this game. It's not that I haven't seen improvement, it's that it appears he's regressed. He lacks any sort of pocket presence, his footwork is all over the place, he takes a lot of bad sacks and makes poor throws, his accuracy is wildly inconsistent, etc. I can't pick anything out of his game that seems to have improved. I was 100% behind keeping him in there and letting him learn on the job. But, he has to be learning on the job, and I'm not seeing that - he's not even staying the same, he seems to be getting worse. I think he needs more time in the film room with someone who knows what they are doing, whether that's Daboll, Palmer, Anderson, whomever. He needs to get the fundamentals down and a shot of confidence before they put him back out there. I have wondered for some time if the Bills' whiffs on draft picks was due to poor scouting, or the lack of a competent coaching staff to develop these players. As the years go by, I'm thinking it's more often the later rather than the former. I am worried that Allen's support system is inadequate and that his talent is going to be wasted due to Daboll and company's incompetence.

I think you and I see eye-to-eye on a lot of what's been happening. Daboll is nothing short of a disaster and it worries me because this is now McD's second whiff on installing adequate leadership on the offensive side of the football. I scratched my head when he was hired and I am still doing it 5 games into the season. I don't agree with you on Allen. He looks like he has the talent of an NFL-caliber quarterback unlike Losman, Edwards, EJ, Tyrod, etc. However, he is in desperate need of a quarterbacks coach that can sit with him, break down his mechanics and his reads, and point out what's happening and what needs to be fixed. We should be seeing shots of the sidelines with him talking to the coaching staff and I haven't seen a lot of that yet this season. I think Allen can successfully develop if they get the right staff in there to develop him properly. Otherwise yes, I fear that his talent will be wasted. TL/DR: We need an offensive coaching staff that can use the talent they have to its maximum potential. Daboll and company seem woefully inadequate at this task.

Am I the only one who gets a kick out of seeing the chargers referred to as “San Diego”? They shouldn’t have moved...

I agree, McDermott is a good motivator and I think he's a good defensive coach. His players work their tails off for him. My main criticism of him is that he's a "system" guy that will get rid of perfectly good talent just because they do not fit his scheme. He'd rather have inferior talent that fits his playbook as opposed to modifying "the process" to put players of superior talent in a position to succeed. I also wonder about his ability to oversee the offensive side of the ball... Dennison was a terrible hire and Daboll hasn't exactly been inspiring so far. I wasn't a big Chan Gailey fan but the one thing he did a great job of was identifying the strengths of his players and getting them to exceed expectations. Fitz was a great example of this.

I don't understand the hostility some have for the Pegulas around here. They've made their fair share of poor decisions. Hiring Rex and retaining Russ were big ones. But the team broke the playoff drought under their watch. Money is no longer an issue... "Ralph/Terry is cheap" isn't something you hear anymore. They don't seem to meddle in the day-to-day affairs of the football operation, leaving it to the team they hired. Most importantly, they are committed to keeping the team in Buffalo. Criticism is certainly fair game, but I think they are a significant improvement over Ralph and are better than a good number of other NFL owners.

In all of the major cities, you will find one or two pubs with the European equivalent of Sunday ticket. We just got back from Rome yesterday - the Irish pubs geared towards tourists all advertised it and highlighted a few games. Other games were available, you just needed to talk to the bartender. Same deal in Venice. I would guess it's similar in Paris.

I have only wagered once on a Bills game - last year's Saints game. I bet on the Saints and went out for a nice steak dinner to dull the pain of the Bills losing.

Fitz is an easy guy to root for. While I'm glad they moved on from him in Buffalo, I hold no ill will against him and wish him the best. I'm glad he's doing well in Tampa.

To me, the big issue is with the defense. This is supposedly McDermott's specialty and it's literally a shambles, to the point where a player quits in the middle of a game. The defense was what was going to win us 5 or 6 games this year and avoid a 2-14 type embarrassment... now I wonder if we can even win a single game. I have no issue with Allen in this game. He has no offensive line protection, no running game, and a #1 WR who doesn't seem to want to be on the team. He showed enough for me to get some hope for the future. This is exactly the type of team that Archie Manning was trying to prevent Eli from ending up on when he was drafted by the Chargers back in 2004 - it is devoid of talent and could very well get the kid killed by the end of the season. I said it last week and I'll say it again - McDermott should be fired in January if the defense continues to play like this over the course of the season. Everyone expected the offense to be putrid. The defense was supposed to be at least competent and I've yet to see a shred of competence during 8 quarters of football so far. I'm fine with McDermott staying if the offense loses them 16 games. But if the defense continues to give up points at this rate, he's got to go. It's inexcusable.

This is a great question/thread. I think you can absolutely ruin a rookie quarterback, and I think that goes for any position on the field other than the specialists. Coaching and schemes matter A LOT in the NFL. If your coaches aren't good teachers, or just don't connect with a player, that player is going to look really bad. They will develop bad habits, learn to do things the wrong way, and potentially get to the point where they aren't recoverable. It's the players that don't need coaching that can't be ruined. Vets that know the ropes and rookies that have so much talent and football smarts that they can ignore poor coaching and just do their own thing. In fact, I will go out on a limb and say that the Bills have had such poor drafts for the last 18 years precisely because they have poor coaching staffs that have "ruined" perfectly good rookies. If these same players had been drafted by the Patriots*, or the Packers, would they have been busts?

Hey look, the graphics department gets to use that image they made for week 1 in case McDermott went with Allen!

The way McDermott presented this made it seem like it wasn't his decision...

This is very interesting to me. Chris Brown never gives his real thoughts on anything - this tweet may as well be a press release from the Bills. I 100% agree with the decision to cut him, but someone at OBD must have felt the need to do some damage control to have Brown go out and say this. Giving up a seventh round pick for someone that you're paying to play for a divisional opponent is a pretty bad look for Beane both from the perspective of fans as well as his peers in the league. The question is, who sent Brown out to tweet this? Beane or McDermott? Or someone on the Pegula Sports and Entertainment side? For the sake of the franchise, I hope it's the later... Beane and McDermott have a hell of a lot more important things to worry about than PR damage control at this point.

Yup... and in 1985 as well. Had Adam Oates. The program is unfortunately a shell of what it once was.

I went to RPI. Great school. But not exactly a football powerhouse (or hockey, for that matter...).

This is a very plausible scenario, imo. If this happens, someone has to be held accountable, right? I mean, even if you want to tank the season with the goal of having 90MM+ in cap space and high draft picks, 3 more blowouts like the previous 4 McDermott has led would be NFL record setting levels of incompetence. I think it's the defense that will cause McDermott to sink or swim. No one expected that side of the ball to be so putrid, it was the offense that was supposed to be this bad. Although the media is honing in on who the quarterback is going to be next week, I think the bigger concern is whether the defense can hold their opponent to a respectable score. Hell I would be happy if next week's score is 17-0. Even 24-0 would be an improvement over this week's debacle.