I guess Tyler Dunne was spot on...McD is too controlling and paranoid to work with...

[JoPoy88]

7 minutes ago, HomeskillitMoorman said:

 

I think that is a standards thing though, the logic of "I'd rather have a Divisional Round appearance type of team than to take a risk to reach the next level, because we could be worse". And that's fine, but the standards part still rings true. But if you're happy with that, I think you do have the right coach leading this team for you. 

It’s a standard level learned through past experience though, not just plucked out of the sky. That’s not to say there isn’t a possible coach out there that could have succeeded where McDermott didn’t the last 3-4 years, but I don’t know  who that may be for certain and neither do you.

[LABILLBACKER]

2 hours ago, HomeskillitMoorman said:

Unfortunately I think the standards with the owner and half the fanbase are so low, that I’m not even sure another massive postseason disappointment gets McD Cannes. 
 

Terry and a lot of fans feel that simply a Divisional Round exit with an elite QB is a huge accomplishment. It’s happened 3 years in a row and they want more of it. 
 

I think if it was somewhere else, this could be a good analysis of the situation by Brady. Here, I’m not so sure. I guess if the offense is solid he probably feels he could still get hired away. 

Yup, nothing screams fulfillment like a divisional loss every year.  The pinnacle....

[HomeskillitMoorman]

11 minutes ago, JoPoy88 said:

It’s a standard level learned through past experience though, not just plucked out of the sky. That’s not to say there isn’t a possible coach out there that could have succeeded where McDermott didn’t the last 3-4 years, but I don’t know  who that may be for certain and neither do you.

 

Absolutely I don't, I agree with that. 

 

The difference is I think it's worth risking being an early exit playoff team for the chance to possibly take the next step, even if that risk entails the possibility of losing being a 1 win in January team. 

[DabillsDaBillsDaBills]

Maybe we should ask Frazier and Dorsey what it was like to work for McD

[Slack_in_MA]

1 hour ago, FilthyBeast said:

 

This is what people don't get and I alluded to in another thread. When you have the right head coach and star player combination (in this case QB in the NFL) there's basically no margin for error when competing with said teams on the biggest of stages.

 

And quite frankly what the Chiefs have done during this latest championship run is wait for the other guy to make a mistake and piss all over themselves which is exactly what happened to many formidable teams that played Brady and the Patriots all those years.

 

The bills likely have the right QB but they don't have the right head coach...but if winning division titles and bowing out in the playoffs early is your thing than by all means continue to celebrate it and that's exactly what Dunne pointed out in his latest piece as well.

 

Why would he name them? That's how journalism works and he's not going to blatantly give up his sources, especially any current players, coaches, etc that are still employed by the bills organization.

 

I guess myself I understand the nuances of what Dunne's doing so I can appreciate a lot more and it hits differently than a lot of these other national media hacks who quiet frankly know very little about the Bills other than what they see on TV and read from local media.

It’s confirmation bias for you. It’s OK. Own it.

[Warcodered]

It is interesting how Dunne just seemed to vanish when the team had got going on their run, but as soon as things end in tragic fashion whoosh here he is "Allow me to piss on the ashes." I have no idea why some on here give a ***** what he says.

 

Also interesting to me is these last two divisional losses to the Chiefs, man did it suck, but at the same time in both of them looking at those seasons it really felt if something went if bit different they really had a shot to do it that/this year. 13 seconds game is obvious defense don't choke away the FG and OT TD, this year we don't have all those injuries against the Steelers.

 

Despite feeling like we've had a shot multiple times there's this impulse to just flip the table get someone different it'll be new and different and it'll fix things, and that's just mystifying to me. McDermott has seemingly led the team and put them in a position to have a shot year after year, and yeah he's got to get past the Chiefs. Well news flash that's the story for everyone in the AFC and how about someone tell me who the ***** is actually doing it, because as far as I can see nobody is really doing it, and our team plays them harder than anyone.

[Arkady Renko]

If and when the Bills win the Super Bowl, we won’t be happy for as long as you think.  We’ll just adjust to the new status quo and complain we’re not winning enough.   

[stuvian]

Every good coach is a paranoid dictator and control freak. Nice guys finish last but stay married. Winning coaches always have kids that hate them and are multiple times divorced.

[Coach Tuesday]

I have yet to see one of these sarcasm threads stick the landing.

[The Jokeman]

1 minute ago, stuvian said:

Every good coach is a paranoid dictator and control freak. Nice guys finish last but stay married. Winning coaches always have kids that hate them and are multiple times divorced.

Unless you hire your kids as assistant coaches 😆

[Doc Brown]

4 hours ago, NoSaint said:

my point was he gets hired elsewhere in 12 months as a HC if he doesn’t pull a Dorsey and mess up an easy opportunity here

If he messes up Ben Johnson might be the new play caller here.

[Ridgewaycynic2013]

7 hours ago, The Jokeman said:

Unless you hire your kids as assistant coaches 😆

I thought everybody does that.  Little Belichick, Little DWI Reid, etc.

[Mr. WEO]

11 hours ago, NoSaint said:

daboll closed the every offensive coordinator with an ounce of success gets big opportunities pipeline? 
 

there’s literally not a single oc in place from 2022. Either you grow or you get canned real fast currently 

 

he closed the Josh Allen producing HC's pipeline.  Teams know it's all Josh---and he's not coming with the new HC.

[Matt_In_NH]

13 hours ago, McBean said:

I’m just so happy we can look forward to Sean on the sidelines clapping next year to just get bounced in round 1 or 2. That’s if we even make it. Now we have big game Burrow coming back along with Harbaugh and Rodgers.

 

so COOL!

Thanks Nancy!

[Logic]

15 hours ago, Pokebball said:

Good post. Regarding your last paragraph, I don't know how any can't look at the Mash unit that was out there playing defense to end our season, and conclude anything other than is why we lost. 

While I agree with the notion that the defensive injuries were likely the most prominent and identifiable reason for the loss to the Chiefs, it doesn't change the fact that it was a loss.

Even with those injuries, the Bills had the ball at the end with a chance to score a go-ahead touchdown with very little time left on the clock. They didn't get the job done. Now, obviously you can say "well, it was Josh that opted to throw to Shakir in the end zone rather than bleed more clock, and it was Dawkins that allowed Chris Jones to affect Allen's pass, and surely McDermott isn't to blame for the plays that the PLAYERS themselves didn't make to win", and you'd be kind of right. But one could then point out that it should have been a critical coaching point by McDermott to instill in Josh that he needed to bleed more clock, that going for a touchdown right out of the two minute warning was maybe NOT the best strategic choice, and that in that instance, the matter of WHEN they scored was maybe the most important element of that moment in the game. 

It's like the 13 seconds game. One could point to the execution by the defensive players or the kicker at the end and say "that's on the players", but one could just as easily say "it's the job of the head coach to know the key factors of importance in that moment and to impart those factors to the players in a way that they understand".

What I'm trying to say is this: You can pretty much always blame players on the field, because they're the ones who are or aren't making the plays. But in the big moments of big games, a great head coach will make sure that he has explained the most necessary and pertinent strategic components clearly to the players. McDermott doesn't seem to have done that in the 13 seconds game, and it seems possible that he didn't explain them in the most recent Chiefs loss, either. All of this takes us back to Dunne's primary thesis: That Sean McDermott -- while a good head coach overall -- will always get too tense in big moments, freeze up, and demonstrate an inability to seize those moments, win those games, and get his team over the hump.

Put more simply: McDermott has yet to disprove the primary thesis of Dunne's piece.

Edited January 31 by Logic

[PromoTheRobot]

16 hours ago, HomeskillitMoorman said:

Unfortunately I think the standards with the owner and half the fanbase are so low, that I’m not even sure another massive postseason disappointment gets McD Cannes. 
 

Terry and a lot of fans feel that simply a Divisional Round exit with an elite QB is a huge accomplishment. It’s happened 3 years in a row and they want more of it. 
 

I think if it was somewhere else, this could be a good analysis of the situation by Brady. Here, I’m not so sure. I guess if the offense is solid he probably feels he could still get hired away. 

 

My bar is so low I'm satisfied with playoff wins after a 17 year drought. Shame on me. 

[PromoTheRobot]

16 hours ago, Logic said:

As someone who found a lot of what was in the Dunne piece to be illuminating and probably truthful...

Two things that have happened since have been kind of damning to that report:

The first was the Wink Martindale/Brian Daboll fallout. Whereas it looked like the rather public breakup of McDermott and Daboll was more on McDermott, seeing Daboll be unable to make it work with a second consecutive defensive mind makes one wonder. 

The second was the fact that, as the OP mentioned, two coveted young coordinators chose to stick around in Buffalo rather than go elsewhere, even though both garnered significant interest. Babich, in particular, was surprising, choosing to stick around under a defensive-minded head coach who may still continue to call plays rather than potentially spread his wings under an offensive minded guy.

Lastly, the way the team rallied around McDermott after the piece came out also sort of poked a bit of a hole in the "no one likes playing for this control freak" narrative. 

The more that time has gone on and the more that's happened, the less accurate Dunne's piece has looked. 

With all of that said, the Bills still lost in heartbreaking fashion in the Divisional round to the Kansas City Chiefs, and the major thesis of Dunne's piece was that McDermott tenses up in big moments and that the Bills need to move on from him to ever reach the Super Bowl, so.....he hasn't entirely been proven wrong thus far.

 

Did McDermott tighten up or did injuries finally catch up to us? I think it's the latter. AJ Klein covering Travis Kelce isn't ideal but what else was left? And we were still in position to close that game out....on offense.

 

As for the Dunne article, you know the saying "my side, your side and the truth?" I'm sure there was some truth to it but perspective plays a role. People who don't have all the facts interpret events their way. I'm sure I could find 10 people who thought Mother Theresa was a B word. 😁

[Logic]

1 minute ago, PromoTheRobot said:

 

Did McDermott tighten up or did injuries finally catch up to us? I think it's the latter. AJ Klein covering Travis Kelce isn't ideal but what else was left? And we were still in position to close that game out....on offense.

 

Like I said, I definitely agree that the defensive injuries played a huge part and were possibly/probably the biggest factor in the loss.

With that said, nothing the Bills defense has done over the past several seasons of playoff games makes me confident that the defense would've been gangbusters even if Bernard (and, heck, Matt Milano) were in the lineup.

Yes, things would PROBABLY have been better, but based on previous matchups against the Chiefs in the playoffs (or the Bengals, or whomever), why should I be particularly confident that things DEFINITELY would have been better, ya know?

My main gripe with McDermott at this point is that his defense is perennially top 5 in the regular season, but drops to below average in the playoffs against the elite opponents. If you're gonna roll with a defensive head coach, that's fine, but his defenses better damn well show up in the biggest games, and they all too often don't under McDermott. Even in past seasons when our defense WAS relatively healthy, they have gotten shredded by the Mahomes and Burrows of the world come playoff time. That has to stop.

[HomeskillitMoorman]

13 minutes ago, PromoTheRobot said:

 

My bar is so low I'm satisfied with playoff wins after a 17 year drought. Shame on me. 

No shame required. I think it’s a positive that you can admit it. 

[Bruffalo]

I don't think Dunne is lying about what he's reported, but it's clear that it's a personal vendetta.