2020 Our Year For Sure

He was in bounds. Should have been a touchback with momentum carrying him into the endzone.

Played his heart out.

I think he'll get more out of the passing game than Roman did.

Kim chooses 2 coaches in a row? I have to say I'd rather they bring in a football person or let Whaley make the hire. This isn't the Pegulas personal Madden game. "It was a little bit of a surprise, I'm going to admit, because he was not a candidate that we had really on the top of our list as, 'Wow, this is the guy we want. Let's go get him,'" Kim said, via The John Murphy Show. "We were just being very open-minded about everybody. But he really came in and really kind of elevated himself to that top position, where we said, 'Hey, listen, we need to have another talk with this guy.' "

Typically that kind of thing is associated with the guards. What do you see?

I'm wondering if Lynn might make changes to the offense to try to fit McCoy's strengths better. Is there anything that can be done, maybe more spread sets?

Yup I'll take it!

Should have done it in March.

I agree, FireRex! I have a good feeling about this game I didn't have about either of the first 2, in Tyrod's first game free of Roman and the Cardinals coming east against their bio clocks. Bills win 27-26 with a TD on the final play of the game following the best no-huddle execution Bills fans have seen in some time. Clay finally has a day. The defense bends but doesn't break. Then we go to NE* and get trounced regardless of who plays QB for them.

Ryan isn't just the defensive coordinator he is the head coach. The Bills problems are systemic. This decision runs a lot deeper than what scheme we're going to run and whether or not Reggie Ragland fits into it.

Plenty of succcessful offensive coaches have combined the power run with good aggressive passing attacks- Sean Payton, Kevin Gilbride, Jay Gruden and Bruce Arians spring immediately to mind. There's no way to know for sure whether Lynn is another Roman, or brings the whole enchilada to the table for consumption until we have some actual data points. Its fun reading all the opinions, that's what we're here for, but it is an opinion, for now.

How do you know? Maybe Lynn believes in easy passes on 1st down.

Yes. We need to clean this up.

I think offensively NE* has a lot of staples they go to, defensively they're more about taking away what the opponent does best. You have to be able to win games different kinds of ways in the NFL. If a Jim Schwartz or another 4-man-rush DC has injuries up front or for whatever reason his front 4 isn't getting it done by themselves, he needs to know how to bring additional rushers and vary his coverages, he can't just keep playing standard wide-9, rushing the same 4 guys every snap when its not working. You have to have the versatility to say 'the hell with what I usually do,' and for a day, coach like you have a different name. The same goes for someone like Roman who wants to run as much as possible and limit passing attempts. On a day where either the run is stymied or the defense falters and you're down multiple scores, you have to have west coast concepts you can turn to that substitute for a running game, and your players need to be prepared for that flexibility. Compared to someone like Sean Payton, Greg Roman is half a coordinator. He's the part of Payton that wants to go power run and play action, grind out wins, but doesn't have the part that goes run n shoot and wins through the air when that becomes necessary. No matter what philosophy a team approaches the game with (outscore the opponent vs. grind it out) there are going to be days where it doesn't go according to script and you need to do the opposite. It sounds simple but it isn't always so easy to find a coordinator who is prepared to scrap what he does, who truly has his guys prepared for anything.

I've always been mad, I know I've been mad, like the most of us are.

The Hughes trade was his finest moment. Other than that, what has he done that's so great? Nothing else wildly stands out from what the rest of the teams do. I've spent time on TSW defending Whaley, he seems alright. I don't see any reason to be broke up about it though if they want to reboot from the Ralph era.

Well Fitz/Gailey/FJ were decent but of course the D was terrible.

The rotation is great if you have the depth and the health (we did). Haynseworth --> Suh/Fairley --> Dareus/KW --> Fletcher Cox (9.5 sacks last year) He follows around the game's best pass rushing DTs and for good reason. He needs the interior rush as part of a top front 4 that consistently harasses without help, and doesn't do well if he doesn't have it. That flexibility and versatility I love in a coordinator (farell Mr. Roman, I wish you well in all your future endeavors) to approach the game in more than one way is missing. I like our last 3 defensive coaches like this 1. Pettine- versatile coach 2. Schwartz- rigid coach who inherited a perfect fit for his scheme 3. Rex- rigid coach who inherited a poor fit for his scheme

I'll stick with my 6-10. Always the optimist.

They're going to write that on Jim Schwartz' tombstone.

Are you sure the results are even going to be mediocre this year? I blame the coaching staff more than I do anyone else, don't get me wrong, but he still is the General Manager of the team. We don't know who lobbied to get McCoy in here on a big contract in a scheme that doesn't suit him, we don't know who wanted to run that power run scheme without aggressively pursuing the monster offensive line that made it work in San Francisco. Again I'm all about blaming Rex and Roman but are we sure as outsiders we can completely give Whaley a pass for these shortcomings? I could easily sit here and debate with people from either side. The Pegulas are privy to information that we aren't and I'm just going to hope whatever they decide to do works out, because either road is perfectly defensible imo.

I think both sides are defensible. You can say Whaley needs to go because he drafted an injured player in the 1st round in Lawson, the foolish Ragland trade, some failures at quarterback, the bad McCoy contract in a scheme that doesn't suit him, and of course the final W/L record. You can say Whaley needs to stay because he built a stacked roster that carried Marrone to 9-7, then Rex' coaching staff was unable to utilize the talent Whaley provided (best player on offense Watkins and best player on defense Dareus both severely miscast along with a host of others). This team has been poorly coached and still has been 'right there' at 9-7 and 8-8 the last two years. I've seen Yolo talk about how there are just a few teams who draft better than the field and a few who draft worse than the field and everybody else hits at about the same rate. I think also the respective talent levels are pretty close around the league with coaching that pulls the most out of that talent, and quarterback play often making the difference. I am not going to be upset either way. He's been able to acquire talented players and has been somewhat held back by coaching, but at the same time, he's been part of a losing effort and I won't begrudge the Pegulas one bit if they want to hit the F5 key on the whole operation. What this team really needs is a good front office structure, a good coaching staff, accountability and a quarterback.

Absolutely. I've said it before but last year Antonio Brown doubled Sammy's targets while Martavis Bryant also had more targets/game than Sammy did. This alone was a fire-able offense. We gave up two 1st rounders for an all-world WR, he lives up to the hype by leading the league in yards per target, and Roman was simply not capable of using him to the fullest because his passing game is disjointed and limited. I don't expect a drastic turnaround here but this talent can do a lot more than we've seen, so its interesting.