Great and pretty brutal assessment of Bills’ talent by Chris Simms

[Nephilim17]

Great video that succinctly defines the problem: lack of star players/difference-makers on both sides of the ball.

Of note: Florio suggests championship teams have a strong advantage with an offensive-minded head coach; Simms (who I think is smarter) says he hopes they don't fire McDermott. I'm leaning towards Florio's take on this given where the NFL is right now (and going to stay).

[Beck Water]

1 minute ago, Don Otreply said:

And our bad schemes helped us lose, 

All success Dorsey has had are directly the result of Josh winging it to make something happen, Dorsey is imo over rated, and yes, I was one on that wagon, I was wrong, he is two years or more away from possibly knowing his job. 

 

So an interesting point that Florio made about having an offensive head coach, was the "brain trust" aspect of having (his example) Doug Pederson, Frank Reich, and John DeFilippo on the Superbowl Eagles to have all the offensive creativity of all those offensive minds.

 

The thing is, the Bills tried to create something like that.  It wasn't just Dorsey.  They had Joe Brady, passing game coordinator for Championship LSU team and former OC for the Panthers; they had Mike Shula, former OC for the Panthers when they were winning, two division round appearances and a superbowl appearance.  They had Aaron Kromer for OL and run game.  They had a lot of experience and (presumably) creativity on the offensive coaching staff.  (and then they had John Butler given the title of "Passing Game Coordinator").

 

So then the question becomes, is it the RIGHT offensive creativity?  Shula ultimately lost a Superbowl, and crafted an offense that arguably burnt Cam Newton out.  I thought it suffered from the same problem as the Bills offense currently is - neglecting talent on the offensive side of the ball.  Brady was not "all that" in Carolina as OC, though I thought he was kind of a fall guy.

 

Point being, it's not enough to have a number of experienced offensive minds in the room crafting the offense.  They have to be the RIGHT offensive minds.

[GunnerBill]

Just now, Beck Water said:

 

So an interesting point that Florio made about having an offensive head coach, was the "brain trust" aspect of having (his example) Doug Pederson, Frank Reich, and John DeFilippo on the Superbowl Eagles to have all the offensive creativity of all those offensive minds.

 

The thing is, the Bills tried to create something like that.  It wasn't just Dorsey.  They had Joe Brady, passing game coordinator for Championship LSU team and former OC for the Panthers; they had Mike Shula, former OC for the Panthers when they were winning, two division round appearances and a superbowl appearance.  They had Aaron Kromer for OL and run game.  They had a lot of experience and (presumably) creativity on the offensive coaching staff.  (and then they had John Butler given the title of "Passing Game Coordinator").

 

So then the question becomes, is it the RIGHT offensive creativity?  Shula ultimately lost a Superbowl, and crafted an offense that arguably burnt Cam Newton out.  I thought it suffered from the same problem as the Bills offense currently is - neglecting talent on the offensive side of the ball.  Brady was not "all that" in Carolina as OC, though I thought he was kind of a fall guy.

 

Point being, it's not enough to have a number of experienced offensive minds in the room crafting the offense.  They have to be the RIGHT offensive minds.

 

The other commonality between these Bills and those Panthers is they generally undervalued receiver in the draft and tried to get by with a lot of average guys. That has to change. 

[78thealltimegreat]

Diggs has suction cups for hands but isn’t a run after the catch kinda guy. Nobody on the Bills scares any defense that if Josh dumps the ball off to them they will do anything after the catch.
 

They need a receiver with speed and hands badly. They also need a receiver where Josh can throw up a ball to go get a contested catch. I’m fine with Diggs and Shakur and maybe Beasley for his last year but they have to seriously upgrade at least two receiver spots.  

[LittleSammy]

33 minutes ago, Billsfan1972 said:

Sounds like a Allen fan and not far off.  Regardless this team is/was on the cusp, however were completely outcoached and embarrassed yesterday.  Coaches got off easy in this video.  

This team has been on the cusp the last four years and has been outcoached each time. That tells us where the main problem lies. The big question becomes when are the Pegulas no longer satisfied with simply being on the cusp each year?

[Negan]

1 minute ago, LittleSammy said:

This team has been on the cusp the last four years and has been outcoached each time. That tells us where the main problem lies. The big question becomes when are the Pegulas no longer satisfied with simply being on the cusp each year?

Hopefully last night or this morning and they clean house later today I hope!

[Beck Water]

2 minutes ago, GunnerBill said:

 

The other commonality between these Bills and those Panthers is they generally undervalued receiver in the draft and tried to get by with a lot of average guys. That has to change. 

 

Yes, as I said in the post you quoted - I thought that Carolina team neglected talent on the offensive side of the ball. 

Though to be fair, they drafted Kelvin Benjamin in the 1st round in 2014, and he had a 1000 yd rookie season that looked as though he might be the real deal.  But the rest of their receivers behind Greg Olsen and Benjamin were just scrubs.

[colin]

1 minute ago, GunnerBill said:

 

The other commonality between these Bills and those Panthers is they generally undervalued receiver in the draft and tried to get by with a lot of average guys. That has to change. 

 

 

aside from a lack of elite guys (to your point) there is a fundamental issue on the team, what we do as a front office and what we do as a coaching staff do not align.  letting wyat walk but signing saffold, the quinten spain debacle and that williams RT we paid and the flipped to RG, trying to sing that RB from washington who blew us off, and then drafting cook high and then trading for hines, the rotating and sitting of DBs and DL, like exactly what is the goal here?

 

do we want to run screens, do we not?  do we want to run the ball?  brining in phillips and lawson and bease and brown is the biggest alarm bell to me.  like, did we not have anyone better, are street free agents really better than who we brought in?  or is it just that they knew the scheme?

 

if we had any idea of what we really wanted to do this off season and put some work towards that as a team, we'd have been better.  instead, we rely on allen and diggs and a few others to make magic happen and just shotgun plays and players.

[HappyDays]

I will say the defense does have a built in injury excuse. Von Miller and DaQuan Jones and Micah Hyde all being out is too much, you could argue those are three most important defenders. I still was not happy with some of the defensive play calls yesterday but it's hard to overcome that much loss of top end talent.

 

The offense on the other hand has no excuses. We were down one starter from the beginning of the year, Jamison Crowder. The talent evaluation on that side of the ball has simply been a failure. Zero foundational offensive players drafted since Josh Allen. Knox is arguably the best pick they've made on offense which is really just not good enough. They have a ton of work to do on that side of the ball if they hope to compete for a championship next year. Personally I am all in on trading for DeAndre Hopkins and spending any remaining resources on the OL.

[Niagara Dude]

31 minutes ago, Coach Tuesday said:

 

They really need to overhaul the entire scouting/pro personnel department because they're not cutting it.  The ONLY value free agent Beane has signed is Jones.  The entire 2022 draft class was a nonfactor during the 2022 season.  Their scouting and player acquisition strategy have been C-level and with Allen graduating to a high cap hit, that's a recipe for disaster if it's not fixed.

Beane needs to start drafting player with either great size or elite speed.  Enough with these undersized slow moving high motor player, this team needs more speed and more size at line positions.  Can anyone explain our 3rd rounder this season while Chiefs uses a 7th rounder on a RB who runs a 4.3 forty and is now their starting RB.  Focus on speed and size and enough with these good character players,  who cares if they cannot play.

[dave mcbride]

2 minutes ago, GunnerBill said:

 

The other commonality between these Bills and those Panthers is they generally undervalued receiver in the draft and tried to get by with a lot of average guys. That has to change. 

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.

[colin]

27 minutes ago, SCBills said:

 

But how do we fix that?

 

We draft late and have next to no cap space.

 

The only way to address this, is to take a machete to the team.  I don't necessarily think that's the worst decision.

 

Where can we free up money?

 

Let all sizeable money FA's walk.  Cut Hines.  Trade Oliver.  

 

If there is a big fish out there in FA, we should shuffle the deck and free up that money to sacrifice good players (plural) to add another elite piece. 

 

step one, either mcd should be fired or at least frazier.  after that, they skeleton crew the D (which won't make too much go wrong, given lawson and phillips and jackson and that 4th string safety were playing our playoff game) and just do enough to get the O into a cohesive unit.  step two is the wane them selves off of tre white, hyde, poyer, edmunds, dawkins, guys who we pay a ton too but don't help us win games (or at least won't anymore).

[D. L. Hot-Flamethrower]

I feel more strident than ever that this narrative can't be made about Josh Allen just needing to be better (he can ok!).

 

The organization needs to be held accountable. The moves made have left the team without enough talent to win to the level expected. They look fraudulent to me and many others. They've been riding the coattails of getting the QB right. JA17 is way down the list of where the focus should be.

 

Don't fall for the narrative, the real problem is this organization has made repeated blunders in staffing talent.

[dgrochester55]

I am an Orioles fan for baseball and the direction that these Bills are going remind me a lot of the Orioles between 2012 and 2018.    Both did a great job changing the culture of a long time losing team and added a core group of players that quickly turned them into a playoff caliber team.     For the Orioles, the downfall was not having a good farm team or signing the right people to address weaknesses.   When the good players lost a step or moved on, they were not properly replaced and the bottom fell out fast.  I am worried about the Bills going in the same direction.

 

When you look at the last three years, most of the players drafted or signed are not getting it done.    Defensive line is where this stands out most.   You cant spend a ton of money and high round draft capital on a defensive line and only end up with a deep rotation of average players.   Nobody properly filled the voids of Brown and Beasley at WR so we signed the actual Brown and Beasley back despite them being past their primes.   The line outside of Dawkins and Morse is a revolving door despite constantly adding veterans and drafting one or two per year. 

 

If Buffalo is going to stay on the top tier of the AFC and not regress, it starts with signing and drafting better players and finding out what changed in our talent evaluation to make it worse.

 

 

 

 

Edited January 23, 2023 by dgrochester55

[SCBills]

Just now, colin said:

 

step one, either mcd should be fired or at least frazier.  after that, they skeleton crew the D (which won't make too much go wrong, given lawson and phillips and jackson and that 4th string safety were playing our playoff game) and just do enough to get the O into a cohesive unit.  step two is the wane them selves off of tre white, hyde, poyer, edmunds, dawkins, guys who we pay a ton too but don't help us win games (or at least won't anymore).

 

Spot on!  This is the perfect assessment. 

 

Those guys are the guys we can thank for hopefully helping build this team TO the team that wins the Super Bowl.

 

...but they aren't the guys that seem capable of actually doing it. 

 

It's time to get rid of the coaching staff and gut the defense to build the offense. 

 

They won't do it, I fear... but we need to at least re-imagine this defense with new coaching on that side of the ball and a new philosophy.  Bend dont break needs to be gone... replaced with an aggressive defense that makes and gives up big plays to mask the talent deficiencies we will have there. 

[Billsfan1972]

Wait, but I was told all year that the Bills had one of the best Defences in the NFL and were ranked 4th DVOA and at the top all year long.  Now we know there were injuries and that accepted, but now after one game we are finally seeing how bad the D is? 

 

Everyone saying anything earlier this year was shouted down. 

 

Now it is about talent and coaching again getting a pass.

 

Again I repeat 2 drives January 2, nothing learnt and then the first two drives yesterday and the same result. 

 

Cincy punted once the first half yesterday and once on 4th & 1 from midfield. 

 

Colossal coaching failure.   

[EasternOHBillsFan]

1 hour ago, dave mcbride said:

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

 

He HATES the Bills.... why give this clown more time?

[blitzboy54]

There is absolutely nothing said in that video I disagree with. Simms is 100% spot on. 

 

[somnus00]

1 hour ago, Beck Water said:

 

Respectfully, I believe you to be conflating "difference maker" with "putting up stats".

 

Putting pressure on the QB is Chris Jones job.  It is not Daquan Jones job.  His job was what Star Lotulelie was supposed to do, and with few exceptions never did - soak up OL and free the 3T to generate pressure up the middle.  And he was doing it.  Settle told us we were gonna love him, but he isn't in the same league.

 

That's more than a "complementary piece" to my definition.  Someone like that is actually foundational and fundamental to being able to get pressure in McD's defense.

Agree. I think Jones might be our defensive MVP. He makes Milano, Oliver, Edmunds, Groot, and Von play better.

[EasternOHBillsFan]

8 minutes ago, dgrochester55 said:

I am an Orioles fan for baseball and the direction that these Bills are going remind me a lot of the Orioles between 2012 and 2018.    Both did a great job changing the culture of a long time losing team and added a core group of players that quickly turned them into a playoff caliber team.     For the Orioles, the downfall was not having a good farm team or signing the right people to address weaknesses.   When the good players lost a step or moved on, they were not properly replaced and the bottom fell out fast.  I am worried about the Bills going in the same direction.

 

When you look at the last three years, most of the players drafted or signed are not getting it done.    Defensive line is where this stands out most.   You cant spend a ton of money and high round draft capital on a defensive line and only end up with a deep rotation of average players.   Nobody properly filled the voids of Brown and Beasley at WR so we signed the actual Brown and Beasley back despite them being past their primes.   The line outside of Dawkins and Morse is a revolving door despite constantly adding veterans and drafting one or two per year. 

 

If Buffalo is going to stay on the top tier of the AFC and not regress, it starts with signing and drafting better players and finding out what changed in our talent evaluation to make it worse.

 

 

NAILED IT with the DL assessment...and I feel like the offensive line is built the exact same way.