BillsVet

His decisions around not building an offense are what should be questioned. That side of the ball was a straight-up mess in 2018 and this past season managed to be bottom quartile of the league in many categories. 24th in total yards. 26th in total passing yards. 23rd in points. At this point in the NFL, having a very good defense is the equivalent of handing out participation trophies. They're nice to look at, but don't represent anything substantive. How many times does Mahomes have to carve up a top defense for people to see offense is what sets winners apart from pretenders? Thing is, McD was at the Sabres game and I guess his offensive strategy affected the hockey team. They managed to score 3 goals an eked out a win against the NHL's worst team.

Doesn't matter what the defense does if the offense can't keep a drive going and score points, which is what in 3 straight seasons they haven't become good at. Which means the defense is on the field more than they should be. I guess people have forgotten the wild card loss when they gave up that 16 points lead in less than 1.5 quarters. NFL teams are defined in the playoffs by how well they score points. Not their defensive prowess against a lightweight schedule during the regular season. Look dude, disagree with me. Don't really care. But grow up? Is this high school? I wonder how that went over the the "culture" of their locker room. Highest paid defender suddenly getting good after media criticism. Makes you wonder why it took that for him to elevate his play.

The first big UFA signing for McD. In his world, run stuffing DTs at that kind of money are required. But trust the process, right? It should make everyone question how forward thinking the HC is when he's investing 25M guaranteed under the original contract terms to a DT that had regressed each season since his rookie year. The snap count has fallen to 46-47% from his last 2 Carolina years of 66% and 59%. Not many modern NFL teams invest so much into the DT position like Buffalo has the past 3 off-seasons.

So many events or decisions that are already mentioned. One for me is Buffalo's 2016 off-season which included: Whaley saying Buffalo's first 3 picks (all defense) were off the bus starters. Within weeks of the draft seeing Shaq Lawson injured in a non-contact drill and misses a large part of the season. This after teams removed him from their board for having a shoulder injury. Whaley saying that football is "a violent game that I personally don't think humans are supposed to play." The Bills media policy briefly specified that reporters could not talk about results from practice because EJM was all over the field with throws. I believe this was quickly revised

Everyone has free will to believe as they wish. I respect that in every person who chooses to not follow, nor will I try to change anyone's opinion here. Abuse happened, the ramifications still reverberate and there's a history going back years. St. Joseph Calasanz was incensed at this kind of child abuse in the early to mid-1600s. I simply choose to see the Catholic Church as the best vehicle to a world without abuse and predators. I just hope people can find peace here, which is why we say at the Mass, "Look not on our sins but on the faith of your Church, and graciously grant her peace and unity in accordance with your will, who live and reign forever and ever."

Very sorry for you Limeaid. I'm glad she received Communion and Anointing of the Sick before she passed.

Sure...I just don't understand the tremendous angst that's present almost every day with the team's roster. I'd rather live my life. I've seen multiple HS classmates who passed away in recent weeks. People being diagnosed with cancer. Life's too short to worry so much.

People are worried about who the backup QB will be? Really?

I get tired of people missing the point, so I'll re-phrase and be more pithy: No one's talking about Ed Oliver but you. Ed Oliver isn't an All-Pro. Ed Oliver has no leverage with his current contract. I'm referencing the one player on this team who made the All-Pro team and is approaching the window for the team to extend his contract. That player was selected 1st Team All-Pro in 2019 and is the only elite player on the roster. He will want big money. Players who want to get paid have limited leverage in these situations. It's an "if" at this point, but we have not seen how OBD under McD works with elite players. To date, they've allowed some to leave, but have just one (White) that they'll presumably want to retain. To @BADOLBILZ point, we've seen McD eschew these elite types and replace them with less than elite. Earlier you referenced Buffalo being competitive. If that's the standard of excellence with you, but 25-25 after 3 seasons isn't amazing. It's average and McD's losing a playoff game up 16-0 with 21 minutes left doesn't give me a lot of trust in his process of jettisoning better players for "his" guys.

Never said that. But during contract negotiations a player's only leverage is holding out if they don't get the offer they want. Anyone who understands human nature can see that money matters and if a player of Tre's record doesn't get that offer, I don't care how much of a culture McD has built. We haven't seen this front office hand out a big contract to a homegrown player, let alone a 1st Team All-Pro. Another poster putting words in my mouth. These guys are hungry, but once established after an initial contract they want the big one. See above. Buffalo had the 3rd easiest strength of schedule in 2019. Competitive? Sure. Competitive against solid competition? Not so much. McD is 3-17 combined in his tenure against teams that advanced to the playoffs or in playoff games. You wanna run with the big dogs you gotta be better than that.

Ed Oliver has zero leverage as a guy entering the second year of a four year contract. He's also not elite - yet. Tre White is the first McD selected player who will be up for a contract extension. I'm just interested in seeing how this franchise approaches those situations.

Let's look at players who are coming up on contract extensions. White will be the first and is set to make big dollars. If there's any kind of issue in those negotiations I'm very interested to see how McD handles it, because he leads this organization. We don't know right now. And BTW, Edmunds and Oliver are too young and/or not accomplished enough to be considered "elite" at their positions.

You gotta wonder with McD and his personality whether he's open to elite talent players who might challenge him. Going back to the future and grabbing guys from Carolina is nice when you've started the rebuild process and there's a player's council. Now that they're into the 4th off-season of rebuilding, I'd agree they need guys who can play, not quasi-player coach types. More importantly, they need more talent on offense and I'm not keen on someone who'll come in on a 1 year deal at this point who could take snaps away from developing types like Knox and Sweeney.

May God have mercy on the souls of those who wish bad upon others. That's a self-inflicted burden that I wouldn't want to take with me to the next life and try attempting to defend.

Goodell was talking this past week how the SB would earn the league 1B. I found this article from 1 year ago about the NFL's goals: https://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/ct-spt-nfl-revenue-super-bowl-20190128-story.html It's pretty audacious to go from 15B in revenue to 25B in the span of 8 years. These television contracts are just expected to go up each time they're renegotiated, but at some point Icarus is going to fly too close to the sun.

This game proved to me that being a strong defense is not a viable strategy for lasting in the post-season. Eventually you go up against a great offense and the result is what you have tonight. Helped that teams like SF out-smart themselves and play not to lose or simply retreat into their shell and stop being aggressive.

At one time, professional sports franchise commissioners were the intermediary between the players and owners. Over the years their selection by the owners has largely made them, as you note, the owner's representative. The CBA demands that the league, i.e. the commish and owners, drive efforts to increase revenue. And that means stadiums get built as quickly as possible. Doing that now requires public financing, which is a rip-off of taxpayers.

I love how Goodell talks about how the State and Local Governments have to spend taxpayer dollars to prop up a franchise in his corporation. Especially when cost benefit analyses have demonstrated time and again that building new stadiums does little if anything for the local and state economy. The sad thing about Goodell is that, like his predecessors he'll be in the HOF. He's a weak man who masquerades around as the leader of a sports league that could have grown without him.

Off-seasons 1 and 2 of McBeane were largely spent re-tooling the defense to fit the HC's needs. Year's 3 and hopefully 4 will both be offensive driven. Beane said they had cap limitations in year 2. But it didn't preclude them from adding Star, Murphy, and moving up to take Edmunds. That's a hefty investment on D and it led to an offensive unit that was scoring about 10 points per past mid-season. I think McD figured he could "win now" in 2017 by being strong defensively. And to a certain degree it worked. They went 9-7 to advance as a wild card. I contend the effort in years 1 and 2 going defense first cost them down the road when it was time to invest in a QB. Now, we're still talking about offensive weapons for that QB (cue the fans who said it couldn't be done in 2 years). Yet, SF and other teams were able to build up both sides of the ball in a similar time.

Everyone who tries to be Belichick inevitably fails. O'Brien went all in on those trades at the beginning of the season and it had better pay off. Then again, if he can convince the owner all is well, he's got it made.

I think there's a huge misconception on this board when some fans talk about major personnel misfires. Professional organizations that make mistakes handle it different than fans who just want to move and can't criticize the team. The idea is to learn from mistakes. It's resolving to make sure that it doesn't happen again. I hope Buffalo doesn't have to draft a QB anytime soon, but it should be abundantly clear that when HC's pass on taking a QB it comes back to haunt them. McD is a detailed planner, but I would hope by now he recognizes that his planning needs to be flexible. Heck, we talked in the Army about how the operation order went out the window when the first bullets started flying. I see a guy who sticks to his plan come hell or high water and will not adapt. That showed on draft night 2017. I remember McD talking about winning both now (2017) and later. Well, winning in 2017 was nice, but how much did that affect their ability to win later. Sure, drafting a Mahomes or Watson may not have provided the impact that taking a good CB did for the 2017 season. But there isn't one intelligent football fan out there who would take Tre, a late 1st, and a 3rd over a franchise QB. Any Bills fan who says they would are lying or can't separate their fan-hood from reality.

Which planet are you dude? Many drafts ultimately don't feature 1 franchise QB. 2017 had at least 2 and McD passed on both of them. Ironic, because he's known as an extremely hard worker, yet in the four months he was on the job leading up to draft day evidently they didn't do enough homework on either. This, despite having TT on a 1 year deal. At some point, even hardcore Bills fans gotta admit that not taking 1 of those 2 combined with using a starting OT and two 2nd round picks and the pick to move up for their franchise QB wasn't good resource allocation. All because the HC wimped out when he needed to be bold...and that's something McD is doing far too much in personnel and on game day. McD told the team after the Cleveland game that they needed to play fearless. Perhaps McD needs to look in the mirror and do the same.

Yes, this class is very deep at WR. Still, this franchise is entering year 4 of the McBeane rebuild. There is an expectation whether fans have it or not that they will progress beyond making the playoffs. To that point, I would expect them to look for players who can help now. It wouldn't surprise me to see them continue their habit of trading up and doing so for someone who can produce immediately. They don't have time to let a player develop. The time is now.

Only if he floats. Then again, what also floats? Small rocks? Churches? I think a duck also does...and Beane is no duck. Couldn't resist the Holy Grail reference. Beane clearly isn't a witch. RIP Terry Jones of Sir Bedevere fame.

I could go along with Kiper's prognostication...if Russ Brandon was still heading the show circa 2008. The decision to take Hardy (RIP) was total need. It speaks to the penchant for (credit to @BADOLBILZ) using their 2nd round picks across multiple regimes on needs. I know it's popular to project Buffalo taking a WR in RD1, but I still can see them focusing on a DE and then moving around the board for a WR. It's waaaay too early, but I could see that scenario playing out.