Dr. K

He calls an empty backfield play for the Bills when they are on the Pats two yard line, 4th and goal? That was idiotic.

This is my view, too. The true test of Whaley as a GM would have come if he had been able to choose his own coach.

Yes

There have been many many worse losses by the Bills than the Peterman debut. How about the 6-3 loss to Cleveland in the snow? The 30-13 loss to the Cowboys in the Super Bowl after leading 13-6 at the half. The previous year's 52-17 loss to the Cowboys in the Bowl. The Loss to the Cowboys on Monday Night football. The collapse against the Patriots where we were ahead 21-0 and lost 49-21. The other loss to the pats when were were up by 11 with four minutes to go. In person I saw them lose to the Colts in 1971 43-0. Then a few weeks later they lost to the Colts again, 24-0 (the team was 1-13 that year). The Saints loss this season was more disgusting than the Chargers loss. You are very young, grasshopper.

Thank god somebody understands what Whaley was doing. Overall, he was an excellent talent evaluator, and got the players to fit the schemes the coaches insisted on running. The reflexive Whaley hate here is moronic.

This is the way I feel about Tyrod. He has skills, but he is immensely frustrating to watch. the team may not win as much at first without him, but I am convinced they will not make it near a championship game with him at QB.

Four first downs in the second half. Many opportunities to put them away and they cannot move the ball. Dennison's play calling was terrible, and Tyrod is the definition of a limited QB. But they won.

I see the "rebuilding for the future" but I object to the "wisely." I call them hubristic not because of the Peterman/Tyrod melodrama, but because they have drained this roster of young talent in order to get "their guys" and insist on an offensive scheme ill suited to the players on the team.

I completely agree and felt so at the time. The mess the Bills are in at this time is the direct result of that terrible decision.

My feeling precisely. It's like my house burned down, but it burned down the week before already and the week before that and last year and ten years before that. It's burned down so many times that I am relatively unaffected by its burning down again. I didn't have much stuff that I care about left in that house, maybe a couple of nicknacks I regret losing but most of it got lost years ago. I fully expect the house to burn down again and again in the near future and more and more I feel like I'm living somewhere else.

hu·bris ˈ(h)yo͞obrəs/ noun excessive pride or self-confidence. synonyms: arrogance, conceit, haughtiness, hauteur, pride, self-importance, egotism, pomposity, superciliousness, superiority; informalbig-headedness, cockiness "the hubris among economists was shaken" (in Greek tragedy) excessive pride toward or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis. Thanks to them what we have here is essentially an expansion team that has been in the league for 57 years, with a lot of older, declining players and a dearth of young talent.

I've been watching and reading national commentary on the QB switch and the criticism of the Bills is pretty much universal. And it's also pretty much universal that the comments are based on very little knowledge of the Bills and the strengths and weaknesses of Tyrod's game. They are all talking as if it's a foregone conclusion that the Bills will make the playoffs if they keep Tyrod at QB. The level of reasoning is as shallow as a kiddie pool. At this point, even though I think McDermott and Dennison and Beane have made a lot of bad decisions and questionable moves, I want Peterman to play well and the Bills to win if only to shut these people up. That would be so gratifying.

Gosh, thanks for letting us know. Why hasn't anybody figured this out before? This is like the National Lampoon's recipe for Rat Pie: Find a rat. Kill it. Make a pie.

This is the most logical analysis of the move that I have seen. It makes sense. It's a calculated risk, but the team was not going anywhere despite the 5-4 record; waiting until they were 5-7 would not have been a better option.

I agree with you. I've been railing against these moves since the summer. I hate it that they kept the old guys and got rid of the young ones, got rid of the fast guys and replaced them with slow ones. Every time Mike Tolbert touches the ball my heart sinks. My wife thinks I should just pick a different team to follow, if being a Bills fan is going to drive me nuts. She doesn't understand what it is to follow a team since 1964. So I just have to put up with another regime insisting making things harder than they needed to be (in my opinion, of course) and hope they prove me wrong. This is the same way I felt when they hired Rex and forced Schwartz out as DC and installed Rex's idiotic defense, breaking what didn't need fixing and putting the team back another two years. That wasn't necessary either. So here we go again. I just hope these guys are better than Rex and crew.

I basically agree with your take on this and have generally hated the way they have stripped the team of young talent in order to get "their" guys and run "their" system. Tyrod in last year's offense with abetter defense this year would clearly have taken them to the playoffs. But unfortunately, we're in the McDermott/Beane era now, and I figure I either have to give up on the team for a while (I was close to being at that point) or hope they can get enough of their own talent on the field to win some games. Under those circumstances I think playing Peterman over Tyrod (who is not suited to the kind of offense Dennison is insisting on running) is a good move, and it's given me at least temporary hope that it will bear fruit.

How the devil should I know?

I can see the argument that if Denison were willing to change his offensive philosophy then Tyrod (and the o-line and the runners) would look better--last year the offense scored 25 points per game. So in that sense benching Tyrod is not entirely his fault. I am on record as not liking Denison's inflexibility on this. It's one reason the o-line has looked much worse than last year. But given that Denison is committed to a particular offensive system, it makes sense to see if Peterman can run it more successfully. Sucks for Tyrod, but that's the reality of the situation.

THIS

I think this is a completely reasonable move. The question is how far this commitment goes. Taylor might have played better against the Chargers, and he still might be back in if Peterman plays terrible, but I had no confidence after what we saw last week that TT was going to provide any spark in the passing offense.

I feel like it's over, too. I don't see anything in this team that promotes optimism for this season.

According to your stats Watkins got at least 6.5 targets per game while in Buffalo. In LA he's getting 3.78. He can't catch balls that are not thrown to him.

THIS Defending Tolbert as the backup halfback does not put your argument in the strongest light.

This practice of blaming the Bills' continued ineptitude on Russ Brandon is idiotic. Brandon does not hire the coaches. He does not assemble the roster. He does not set the schemes or prepare the game plan or do the game day coaching. Sure, fire Russ Brandon. It will make absolutely no difference except to marketing.

Cut him so he can be picked up by Schwartz and the Eagles and go to the Pro Bowl.