Who does Terry Pegula turn to for counsel when it comes to evaluating Beane & McDermott?

[PBF81]

3 hours ago, GunnerBill said:

Except when Josh was struggling as a rookie in 2018 and the Bills O sucked, the Bills still had the #2 overall defense.

 

This comes down to your view being "screw the data, I don't like McDermott, I blame him for 13 seconds (which is fair that was ultimately on him) and I can't get over it."

 

No your point makes no sense. It CAN be both. Josh Allen would have made all those drought teams better. But even without Josh, McDermott would have made them all better too. Now QBs matter more than Head Coaches. No dispute about that, so the win differential would have been greater had you just swapped out QBs than if you had just swapped out HCs. But whichever you had swapped out they'd have been better.

 

Things will clear up the next season or two.  Time will tell.  

 

Right now however, there's no way that these teams have been doing the most that they possibly can with the talent that they've had.  The division tightens up now and our formerly freebie East isn't so freebie anymore, which will make a huge difference.  I'll change my viewpoint if we don't regress significantly this fall.  

 

 

[PBF81]

4 hours ago, GunnerBill said:

This comes down to your view being "screw the data, I don't like McDermott, I blame him for 13 seconds (which is fair that was ultimately on him) and I can't get over it."

 

It's going to be very interesting when the consensus eventually becomes that he simply can't get it done and isn't that great a coach.  

 

Stalling at the wild-card or divisional level due to coaching issues when you have Allen isn't going to cut it until Allen can't play anymore or leaves.  

 

 

Edited May 19, 2023 by PBF81

[GunnerBill]

3 minutes ago, PBF81 said:

 

Things will clear up the next season or two.  Time will tell.  

 

Right now however, there's no way that these teams have been doing the most that they possibly can with the talent that they've had.  The division tightens up now and our formerly freebie East isn't so freebie anymore, which will make a huge difference.  I'll change my viewpoint if we don't regress significantly this fall.  

 

 

 

We have lost playoff games to teams with more top end talent than us. Now eventually you gotta beat one of those teams when it counts, I get it. And in 2021 I do think they underachieved on their regular season schedule which meant we were in KC not in Buffalo. But they haven't been losing to clearly less talented teams in the playoffs. If they had that would be a different story.

[PBF81]

4 hours ago, GunnerBill said:

 

Err... okay... well I am not sure what the metric is but I'll play along

 

Dion - 7

Morse - 6

McGovern - 5

Brown - 4

Torrence - N/A

 

OK, now top-3 WRs, what, Diggs, Davis, what .... Harty?  You pick the three and rate those.  

 

 

[GunnerBill]

1 minute ago, PBF81 said:

 

It's going to be very interesting when the consensus eventually becomes that he simply can't get it done and isn't that great a coach.  

 

Stalling at the wild-card or divisional level due to coaching issues when you have Allen isn't going to cut it until Allen can't play anymore or leaves.  

 

 

Nobody is saying McDermott is a great coach. He has to get it done to be a great coach. He is a very good football coach though. If the Bills let him go he would have offers that same hiring season to go straight back in if that is what he wanted to do. 

 

Maybe McDermott is Marty Schottenheimer mark II. But Marty was a very good football coach too. And the Bills haven't stalled at the wild card round while Josh has been an elite level QB. They last lost in the wildcard in 2019 and Josh was NOT at the elite level at that stage. 

 

And guess what... Mahomes and Burrow are elite too.

Just now, PBF81 said:

 

OK, now top-3 WRs, what, Diggs, Davis, what .... Harty?  You pick the three and rate those.  

 

 

 

Diggs - 9

Davis - 6

Harty - 5

 

So where are we going with this?

[PBF81]

12 minutes ago, GunnerBill said:

 

We have lost playoff games to teams with more top end talent than us. Now eventually you gotta beat one of those teams when it counts, I get it. And in 2021 I do think they underachieved on their regular season schedule which meant we were in KC not in Buffalo. But they haven't been losing to clearly less talented teams in the playoffs. If they had that would be a different story.

 

We've had the #1 and #2 defense the past two seasons, and comparable talent offensively.   

 

We've lost because of coaching, not talent, you know that, so why are you implying differently.  "13 Seconds" was coaching.  If not for that, we'd have been in the SB.  That's on no one but coaching.  

 

The way that our defense played in this past season's playoffs is entirely on coaching, not talent, otherwise I'm open to explanations as to why our guys were lined up way way off the ball on short yardage situations, and why our #2 ranked defense allowed more PPG than any team that played in two or more playoff games by a long shot, and otherwise comparably to teams ranked in the bottom half of the league defensively.   That too is coaching, not talent.  

 

 

[PBF81]

35 minutes ago, GunnerBill said:

 

Nobody is saying McDermott is a great coach. He has to get it done to be a great coach. He is a very good football coach though. If the Bills let him go he would have offers that same hiring season to go straight back in if that is what he wanted to do. 

 

Maybe McDermott is Marty Schottenheimer mark II. But Marty was a very good football coach too. And the Bills haven't stalled at the wild card round while Josh has been an elite level QB. They last lost in the wildcard in 2019 and Josh was NOT at the elite level at that stage. 

 

And guess what... Mahomes and Burrow are elite too.

 

Diggs - 9

Davis - 6

Harty - 5

 

So where are we going with this?

 

A number of people here think that McD is a great coach.  Apparently you've missed their posts.  

 

I don't go by hires and the like, many many people have been hired over the years that haven't been competent.  Look at some of the coaches we've hired, look at Ryan and the fanfare that accompanied him.  Players too.  That's not something to go by.  We got duped in that Bledsoe trade too.  

 

My point has never been that McD is a horrible coach per se, it's two things, first that he's not the coach that's going to bring this team to a Super Bowl, by a long shot.  Time will tell, but IMO that starts to play out in the next couple of years.  To me that's obvious, to others not.  But also that he's not all that much better than some of the other coaches we've had.  IMO Williams was a better coach than McD.  I'd put McD in the Jauron category however.  Defensive minded, doesn't really demonstrate any ingenuity or creativity on the offensive side of the ball whatsoever.  

 

But, and look, you've dismissed the "13 Seconds" thing, but that's a pretty egregious coaching error, say what you will about it in defense. It cannot be ignored, the fact that a coach would allow that to occur.  Same for the defensive alignments in the playoffs last season.  If that continues, playoff wins will be few.  

 

You say that "I just don't like McD," which isn't true, but then leapfrog and explain away monumental errors of judgment that quite frankly no good coach does so regularly in the most important games.  

 

We can argue to the nines here, but time will tell.  It would hardly be the first time that we thought we had a winner but didn't.  I don't think that too many coaches in the league would be having this team under .500 the past few years, and IMO five or six may have won a SB with a good dozen or so doing about the same with the talent here.  

 

Unfortunately, we can beat it to death right now, but we'll never know.  

 

 

35 minutes ago, GunnerBill said:

Diggs - 9

Davis - 6

Harty - 5

 

So where are we going with this?

 

BTW, I probably should have used last season's lineup.  We'll stick with this tho.  You'll see.  I don't want the reason to affect your ratings.  

 

TEs, RBs, ... what, Knox, Kincaid, Cook, Harris?   Top 2 each.  

 

Oh, and BTW, I probably should have said, or we agreed, that 4-6 is the average range, 1-2 terrible, 9-10 premier/impact.  If you want to change any based on that, feel free.  I think that those are fairly obvious tho.  

 

 

Edited May 19, 2023 by PBF81

[PBF81]

46 minutes ago, GunnerBill said:

 

Nobody is saying McDermott is a great coach.  ... 

 

BTW, quick curiosity question.  

 

We often hear people here and elsewhere say that the highly paid coaches and GMs know a lot better than we do.  While for some things that may be true, for others, many controversial things, it isn't despite opinions to the contrary.  

 

So my question to you is this;  Where on the "football knowledgeability scale" would you rank our "13 Seconds" debacle?    A few options are, that everyone knows that you don't give Mahomes/Kelce/Hill 25 yards of open space to work when they only need that for a reasonable FG try; every good coach would have done the same or similar;  only the most astute fans can even grasp that it was not a good decision given the tempo of the game;  most football minded fans know that it was a bad decision;  etc.   Put another way, how "football smart" does one have to be in order to have known, before hand, that doing what McD did was not a good idea?  

 

What say ye?  

 

Have a great weekend if we don't talk 'til Monday!!   

 

 

[ProcessTruster]

Barrring some injury-related roster disasters, pretty sure we are looking at a Tomlin - like  run for McBeanes.   55-21 start is way better than Tomlin's (who hasn't delivered crap in over 10 years) career record and they are just getting started.   Trust the Process.  Go Bills.  

[716to540]

The Magic 8-Ball???

[Mike in Horseheads]

1 hour ago, 716to540 said:

The Magic 8-Ball???

Ouija Board

Edited May 20, 2023 by Mike in Horseheads

[GunnerBill]

7 hours ago, PBF81 said:

 

We've had the #1 and #2 defense the past two seasons, and comparable talent offensively.   

 

We've lost because of coaching, not talent, you know that, so why are you implying differently.  "13 Seconds" was coaching.  If not for that, we'd have been in the SB.  That's on no one but coaching.  

 

The way that our defense played in this past season's playoffs is entirely on coaching, not talent, otherwise I'm open to explanations as to why our guys were lined up way way off the ball on short yardage situations, and why our #2 ranked defense allowed more PPG than any team that played in two or more playoff games by a long shot, and otherwise comparably to teams ranked in the bottom half of the league defensively.   That too is coaching, not talent.  

 

 

13 seconds was coaching. I have never implied differently. The Bengals game was on the players much more than on the coaches. They just laid an egg and played their worst game of the entire season. You could have had Bill Belichick and Bill Walsh calljng plays it wouldn't have mattered. The players were awful. They have to own that. 

 

The much discussed short yardage call was a cover 0 no safety help with the corners off. It didn't work, it was probably the wrong playcall. But people have obsessed over it. What about every other down in that game? The Bills played with zero energy. Josh looked like a zombie. They sucked.

6 hours ago, PBF81 said:

 

BTW, quick curiosity question.  

 

We often hear people here and elsewhere say that the highly paid coaches and GMs know a lot better than we do.  While for some things that may be true, for others, many controversial things, it isn't despite opinions to the contrary.  

 

So my question to you is this;  Where on the "football knowledgeability scale" would you rank our "13 Seconds" debacle?    A few options are, that everyone knows that you don't give Mahomes/Kelce/Hill 25 yards of open space to work when they only need that for a reasonable FG try; every good coach would have done the same or similar;  only the most astute fans can even grasp that it was not a good decision given the tempo of the game;  most football minded fans know that it was a bad decision;  etc.   Put another way, how "football smart" does one have to be in order to have known, before hand, that doing what McD did was not a good idea?  

 

What say ye?  

 

Have a great weekend if we don't talk 'til Monday!!   

 

 

I have never defended, dismissed, or overlooked 13 seconds. It was a complete choke... fron the decision not to squib on... and whatever the reasons for that they all come back to the Head Coach.

 

Where we differ is you take 13 second and extrapolate McDermott's entire reign from that moment. I look at the body of work. Thinking Greggo is a better coach than him or that he is in the Jauron camp is, I am afraid, insanity.

[Lfod]

I need some one to turn to now for counseling now.

[Ga boy]

17 hours ago, GunnerBill said:

 

If course that team would have been better with Allen. Who is disputing that? The point is it would have been worse with any head coach we have had in my fandom other than McDermott. I can't comment on Wade. Before my time. I saw the end of Greggo, Mularkey, Jauron, Chan, Marrone and Rex. None of them would have got that 2017 roster to the playoffs. I am very confident in saying that. The rosters Marrone and Mularkey got to 9 wins with were both better than the 2017 roster. 

 

Your point, so far as I understand it, is you can't give Sean McDermott any credit for being a better coach than all the other guys we have had because he has Josh Allen. My counter is if course Josh Allen makes any Head Coach better. That is the law of the NFL. Almost every top HC you can name had a top QB. And the biggest single difference between the teams of the last 4 years 2019-2022 and the teams of the drought era is they have Josh Allen. But McDermott is also demonstrably through his 2017 performance (and frankly through gettting to 13-3 last year with everything they endured and a hurt Josh) a better Head Coach than all those that I named above. And given the same rosters I think he would outperform all of them.

Agree, but comparing to our drought years head coaches is not a high bar.  However, many of them would’ve looked better with JA17.  While coach is known for a few blunders, his leadership last year, especially with the Hamlin situation, won me over.  He’s a moral leader.  All things considered, there’s not a better NFL coach.

[GunnerBill]

2 minutes ago, Ga boy said:

Agree, but comparing to our drought years head coaches is not a high bar.  However, many of them would’ve looked better with JA17.  While coach is known for a few blunders, his leadership last year, especially with the Hamlin situation, won me over.  He’s a moral leader.  All things considered, there’s not a better NFL coach.

 

I agree it isn't a high bar which is why I think saying McDermott wouldn't have done better than Greggo and Jauron is madness. 

 

[Buffalosouth]

Two 

Bills

Drive

[Chaos]

McDermott has had a very average level of success since Josh Allen has blossomed into one of the leagues best QBs.  As a self styled hands off the offense guy, McDermott is not likely a primary reason Allen has become this top QB.   In my opinion, there is not a single NFL head coach, who given Allen and the rest of the Bills roster, would be expected to have lesser playoff results than McDermott has had.   He is just very average in the primary measure of success most head coaches are held too.  At this point he is just as likely to be Marvin Lewis or Jeff Fisher level of success, as he is to even rise to the level of Mike Tomlin success.   I don't have a magic pocket full of championship head coaches.  But attempts to sugar coat McDermott's playoff failures fall flat with me. 

I don't know what Pegula is looking for in a head coach.  If he is looking for a decent guy who doesn't embarrass him with personal problems or bad behavior in the press and who can put a competitive team on the field every season, he has his guy.    If he is looking for a guy who achieve optimal results for the brief window of time the Bills have a truly great QB, he may or may not have his guy. I don't think he needs advise to know what his goals are, and if they are being achieved or not.  My guess is that if McDermott finishes his career at the Jeff Fisher level, Mr. Pegula will be happy enough. 

Edited May 20, 2023 by Chaos

[Ga boy]

48 minutes ago, Chaos said:

McDermott has had a very average level of success since Josh Allen has blossomed into one of the leagues best QBs.  As a self styled hands off the offense guy, McDermott is not likely a primary reason Allen has become this top QB.   In my opinion, there is not a single NFL head coach, who given Allen and the rest of the Bills roster, would be expected to have lesser playoff results than McDermott has had.   He is just very average in the primary measure of success most head coaches are held too.  At this point he is just as likely to be Marvin Lewis or Jeff Fisher level of success, as he is to even rise to the level of Mike Tomlin success.   I don't have a magic pocket full of championship head coaches.  But attempts to sugar coat McDermott's playoff failures fall flat with me. 

I don't know what Pegula is looking for in a head coach.  If he is looking for a decent guy who doesn't embarrass him with personal problems or bad behavior in the press and who can put a competitive team on the field every season, he has his guy.    If he is looking for a guy who achieve optimal results for the brief window of time the Bills have a truly great QB, he may or may not have his guy. I don't think he needs advise to know what his goals are, and if they are being achieved or not.  My guess is that if McDermott finishes his career at the Jeff Fisher level, Mr. Pegula will be happy enough. 

Agree usually with most of your takes  Other than Reid and the GOAT (I couldn’t stomach either), who do you think would do better?

[Rebel101]

On 5/18/2023 at 12:14 AM, Nephilim17 said:

When the team is doing well and/or exceeding general expectations, as it has done the past few years, minus, probably, last season, this question is kind of moot.

 

But if and when the team is not meeting expectations or things get complicated, is there anyone in Pegula's circle of friends or trusted business associates (at arm's length from Bills operations) who he can turn to for advice and counsel on questions related to extensions, evaluations, or possible firings?

 

I'm not trying to be negative; I hope McBean lead us to multiple championships... but if things don't go as well as we hope — and with an elite QB things should mean serious contention for a Super Bowl — is Terry on his own or who advises him? 

Pegula seems, obviously, like a sharp businessman, but he doesn't strike me as a football expert. Maybe I'm wrong but I expect him to turn to someone if and when he needs to make tough decisions.

Seems as if they’ve been asking McBeane about their place in the organization, let’s see after this year what happens. 

[Chaos]

7 minutes ago, Ga boy said:

Agree usually with most of your takes  Other than Reid and the GOAT (I couldn’t stomach either), who do you think would do better?

If I just get to pick, I would say Kyle Shanahan.   Depends on how you frame the question.  Seems Like Zac Thomas and Nick Siriano are off to pretty good starts.  I did not even know who either of those guys were 3 years ago.  

If losing in the divisional round of the playoffs is considered success, the risk of changing coaches is quite low.  As I mentioned in my other post, as long as Josh Allen is healthy, my preseason expectations for the Bills would be a minimum of reaching the divisional round of playoffs, with any head coach currently in the NFL.  People who think somehow changing coaches risk going back to the level of futility of the EJ Manuel / Tyrod Taylor / Ryan Fitzpatrick/Kyle Orton days are just silly. 

Edited May 20, 2023 by Chaos