I contend that this team's problem isn't coaching, it's talent.

[ganesh]

5 hours ago, GunnerBill said:

Oliver. 

 

But otherwise I agree with your assessment of the major issue. Coaching isn't perfect. But we have lots of good players and not enough real top end talent. 

We have..they have not performed..That is on players and coaches...

Diggs, Knox, Oliver, Rosseau and even Dawkins haven't gone on being blue chip players.

[White Linen]

1 hour ago, Toyo321 said:

Beane has not brought in a infusion of young talent, we are arguably one of the oldest teams in the league "26th or 27th" going into training camp 2024.  Our Safeties are as slow as hell, our corners are middle of the road at best.  Our entire wide receivers corps going into next year needs a complete overhaul. We lack any speed everywhere on special teams on a consistent basis, and our special teams have been torched the last couple of years giving up big plays at the worst time possible because we lack speed there too.  

 

Our D-Line is good but it is not elite. It fails over and over to dictate the game when needed the most.  McD and Beane's fault there.  Then there is the playoffs, in the playoffs the Offense and Defense always disappears and when it matters the most they can't make the elite game winning plays to win in the playoffs.  It happened again at home this year against KC.  Zero explosive plays on O and no Game changing plays by the D.

 

Beane has put us in CAP purgatory for 2024 and the cuts and player turnover is coming, you can bet on it.

 

 

 

To the bolded, yes he has, that's ridiculous.

 

We should be up against the cap and Beane maneuvers within it just fine.  

[QLBillsFan]

Hard to blame McClappy this year with the D in the playoffs. Regular season Denver and a few others but not sure many teams could have remained this competitive. Would have liked to have seen a 4 down mentality on the last drive. Previous years I would agree. 

[TrentEdwardsCheckDownOn4th]

I completely agree. I've been saying this for a while. Even LAPorta looks better than Kincaid and we traded up! Kair Elam,  knox, von miller the list goes on and on. We are in cap hell and have tons of holes. Josh allen masks so many of beanes mistakes. He can't hang his hat on one pick forever...

[Buffalo03]

5 hours ago, Pine Barrens Mafia said:

If you had to ask me to choose whether to fire beane or McDermott, I choose beane. Why? While he's overall built a competitive roster, he's utterly failed at drafting gane-changing players. 

 

You know my position on some of his picks, but ask yourself honestly: would you rather have a Metcalf or an Oliver? Basham or Humphrey? AJE or Uche? I could go on, but beane seems to prefer a whole roster of average over high ceiling guys (oddly, with the exception of the QB).

 

Also, this team lacks speed all over the field on both offense and defense, and I'd argue that the lack of speed on defense is the most notable reason why this team has failed in the postseason.

 

Lastly, beane's cap management and free agent acquisitions have been suboptimal, and the cap issues are going to do us in this coming season, I get the feeling. So, if you're asking me who's holding the bag of failure, it's Brandon Beane.

Wrong

[GimmeSomeProcess]

I agree with this but luckily the last two years have infused so much needed studs. Cool, Bernard, Benford, Shakir all made jumps this year and should

make that next big one next year. Kincaid and Torrence we good this year and will be great next. Williams should also be much improved to help depth. They’ve gotten better and more athletic with those classes. 

 

[ganesh]

5 minutes ago, GimmeSomeProcess said:

I agree with this but luckily the last two years have infused so much needed studs. Cool, Bernard, Benford, Shakir all made jumps this year and should

make that next big one next year. Kincaid and Torrence we good this year and will be great next. Williams should also be much improved to help depth. They’ve gotten better and more athletic with those classes. 

 

Agreed. We need one more draft to build some starters and backup depth.  Right now our only blue chip players are Allen and Milano and Oliver border line (though he disappeared in the playoff game). 

[mjd1001]

Coaching isn't perfect but its good enough. Personally I wish McDermott would employ more of a m2m defense rather than so much zone..but he is who he is.

QB is great, one of the top 5 in the league and on his best day might be the best. You are going to have 'good Josh' days and 'bad Josh' days but on the good days he's basically unstoppable.

OL is slightly improved from last year, but that just makes them just average-to-above average.

WR's are an issue.  For me I truly think Diggs is closer to 'done' than to 'good'.

Defense is fine. It would be great to have an Elite pass rusher next year, and I want both safeties to be younger/faster, but WHEN HEALTY they are good enough to win with a Healthy Josh Allen heading the offense.

 

All teams deal with injuries.  I truly think this team just had too many key ones on the Defense to get by with. They have the talent, they had 'good enough' coaching. They just did't have enough depth.

Edited January 29 by mjd1001

[BillsPride12]

I think it's probably a combination of both.  Beane and McDermott have built a very good football program, one that has us winning divisions and getting out of the wildcard every year but the problem is they haven't built a true Championship contender.  The optimists say stuff like "well If this, that, and this didn't happen we would be right there" but the problem is these variables happen every year with us.  Seeing the Chiefs reach the Super Bowl yet again after going through their own version of that this year during the regular season should be a real eye opener.  I think the analogy of the Phillip Rivers Chargers teams is spot on for this current Bills era.  

[Meatloaf63]

5 hours ago, julian said:

They need get a WR in the 1st round, if they Believe there’s only 3 or 4 difference makers in this deep WR draft then they need to trade up, trade up twice like they did to move into the top 10 for Josh if they feel it’s necessary.

 

 This offense needs a young blue chip wideout on a rookie contract in a massive way.

i’d reach into next years picks if need be, there’s no money to go the free agent route have to get better some how.

49 minutes ago, TrentEdwardsCheckDownOn4th said:

I completely agree. I've been saying this for a while. Even LAPorta gets used better than Kincaid and we traded up! Kair Elam,  knox, von miller the list goes on and on. We are in cap hell and have tons of holes. Josh allen masks so many of beanes mistakes. He can't hang his hat on one pick forever...

Fixed it for you…

[balln]

5 hours ago, Eastport bills said:

You have minimal credibility after the average rotational comment. You know average doesn’t get 10 sacks as a tackle and top 10 in QB pressures. 35 individual tackles. Our defense was clueless as a unit giving up 27 points on 47 total offensive snaps. You want to blame Oliver for KC having receivers wide open all night or runs that looked like no one wanted to tackle anybody. There was AJ Klein at MLB and and the rookie Willams also defending the run. The Defensive coach also made no adjustments. “ His short arms / can’t get off blocks “ and his rushes are undisciplined “. These are the comments of someone who knows short arms when he sees them on TV and is an acknowledged authority on disciplined rushing. Forgetting about the other tackles and edge rushers getting stoned by O-lines, in your expert judgment it’s because of Oliver. Red hots like you shouldn’t be allowed to post.

Seems like you just have an issue with me. I’m talking ball. Oliver is an average to above average rotational player 

[Solomon Grundy]

6 hours ago, JGMcD2 said:

Agreed, but we also have not been picking in spots to grab top end talent. That’s part of it. 

Could've had Breece Hall instead of Elam. Humphrey over Basham. 

[stuvian]

I'm not convinced we have a problem when we lose to the returning SB champion by 3

[Jrb1979]

8 minutes ago, stuvian said:

I'm not convinced we have a problem when we lose to the returning SB champion by 3

Maybe. Next year is most likely going to be vastly different team. A lot of free agents and not a lot of cap space for major upgrades. 

[hondo in seattle]

7 hours ago, Pine Barrens Mafia said:

If you had to ask me to choose whether to fire beane or McDermott, I choose beane. Why? While he's overall built a competitive roster, he's utterly failed at drafting gane-changing players. 

 

You know my position on some of his picks, but ask yourself honestly: would you rather have a Metcalf or an Oliver? Basham or Humphrey? AJE or Uche? I could go on, but beane seems to prefer a whole roster of average over high ceiling guys (oddly, with the exception of the QB).

 

Also, this team lacks speed all over the field on both offense and defense, and I'd argue that the lack of speed on defense is the most notable reason why this team has failed in the postseason.

 

Lastly, beane's cap management and free agent acquisitions have been suboptimal, and the cap issues are going to do us in this coming season, I get the feeling. So, if you're asking me who's holding the bag of failure, it's Brandon Beane.

 

I agree with much of this.

 

I'm thankful for Beane.  Our roster had been pretty dang mediocre for nearly two decades.  Beane drafted a star QB and acquired some other good players.  Our depth is better than it's been in forever.  We owe a lot to Beane.    

 

But this is not a Super Bowl roster.  We don't have the best 22 starters in the league.   By and large, I think McD has done an imperfect but commendable job with the roster - and injuries - that he had.  There's never been a season when I looked at the SB champs and said, "Damn, we're better than them.  If only we had a better coach."   Instead, I think things like: If only we had their offensive line... or receivers... or pass rushers... or cornerbacks... or running game... or general health.  

 

 

[90sBills]

1 hour ago, stuvian said:

I'm not convinced we have a problem when we lose to the returning SB champion by 3

Many were predicting an easy win over KC before that game. At the moment many are saying Bills would’ve beat the remaining teams had they got by KC. So from that pov there’s a ‘problem’. A serious one at that. 

9 minutes ago, hondo in seattle said:

But this is not a Super Bowl roster.  We don't have the best 22 starters in the league. 

No teams have the best 22 starters in the league. lol. 

[Utah John]

Beane built a very strong roster with a sprinkling of top end talent, a few years ago.  He had very firm rules about not blowing the cap budget with overpriced FAs.  Then McD choked in the 13 second game and the excuse was we needed a closer to shut down Mahomes.  So Beane shatters his own rule by spending huge dollars on Von Miller.  Who did great for half a season, and since then has contributed nothing except taking a spot on the game roster.  

 

Keeping a talented roster together is like one of those old magicians who had plates spinning on sticks, and he had to move around keeping them all spinning or they'd fall and break.  The more big contracts, the fewer plates keep spinning.  The only way to keep the plates spinning is to draft well consistently, bringing in cheap young guys to replace 4-5 year vets who move on to their big contract opportunities.  

 

A few years ago the WR room was amazing, with Diggs, Davis, Smoke, Sanders, and Beasley.  Then several players got old and left and Beane signed a big contract with Diggs when he was at the top of his value curve, and now we're paying for a declining Diggs, a no-show Miller, and Allen, who's doing his best with what's left. 

 

The drafting has been below standard, except for this past year when we got several excellent players.  All the defensive linemen picked and only Oliver out of all the draftees is far above average.  Epenesa, Basham, Rousseau -- Rousseau looks like he might be a decent player, and Epenesa is good against the run but we still don't have the pass rush we need.  It's not just that those guys aren't producing, it's that they were wasted picks that aren't players filling other positions on rookie contracts.  

 

A couple of bad mistakes on FAs and several poor choices on high draft picks are the same as turnovers in a game.  You can still win but the odds go against you.  And when a coach chokes in a 13 second game and gets the GM to bail him out, everything unravels from there.

 

So you ask, where's the talent?  Sitting in Miller's bank account, and Diggs's bling.  It's very fitting that the two of them did that commercial where they're walking in gold leather outfits and hats.  

[gonzo1105]

55 minutes ago, 90sBills said:

Many were predicting an easy win over KC before that game. At the moment many are saying Bills would’ve beat the remaining teams had they got by KC. So from that pov there’s a ‘problem’. A serious one at that. 

No teams have the best 22 starters in the league. lol. 

I think the point is that you can’t argue the Bills have the # 1 player at a position in anything other than Allen. 
 

The Chiefs can argue Mahomes, Kelce, Joe Thuney, Creed Humphrey, Chris Jones, Trent McDuffie(slot CB), and maybe Harrison Butker. 

[Thurman#1]

11 hours ago, Pine Barrens Mafia said:

If you had to ask me to choose whether to fire beane or McDermott, I choose beane. Why? While he's overall built a competitive roster, he's utterly failed at drafting gane-changing players. 

 

You know my position on some of his picks, but ask yourself honestly: would you rather have a Metcalf or an Oliver? Basham or Humphrey? AJE or Uche? I could go on, but beane seems to prefer a whole roster of average over high ceiling guys (oddly, with the exception of the QB).

 

Also, this team lacks speed all over the field on both offense and defense, and I'd argue that the lack of speed on defense is the most notable reason why this team has failed in the postseason.

 

Lastly, beane's cap management and free agent acquisitions have been suboptimal, and the cap issues are going to do us in this coming season, I get the feeling. So, if you're asking me who's holding the bag of failure, it's Brandon Beane.

 

 

It probably is talent.

 

But Beane's been extremely good.

 

A big part of that talent deficit is that though Josh is really really damn good, Mahomes is the best in the league and has a huge impact on big games.

 

"Suboptimal"? Yeah, probably, and everyone else too. Very good, though? Yup.

Edited January 29 by Thurman#1

[Thurman#1]

3 hours ago, Solomon Grundy said:

Could've had Breece Hall instead of Elam. Humphrey over Basham. 

 

 

Yes, but thing is you can make arguments like this on more than 99% of all draft picks. Until anyone figures out how to tell the future perfectly, it will always be so.

 

The question is whether your GM has drafted well. Nobody has drafted perfectly or even at all close.

 

Beane absolutely has drafted well.