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

[eball]

It's really a shame that so many people can't understand or appreciate all of the luck that is involved for a team to reach the Super Bowl.  KC is on an extraordinary heater right now with Mahomes, just like NE*** was with Brady -- but look at how one or two plays here or there could have changed the story.  Those are two really great teams, with great QBs, who also got extremely lucky at all the right times.

 

That's not coaching.

 

After the Denver loss this season I was ready to move on from McDermott but the changes he made showed me that he does "get it" and is driven to lead the Bills to the Super Bowl.  Every coach has situations he looks back upon and wonders if he made the right call.  Sean has made more right calls than wrong ones, and putting up a JV squad defense against Andy Reid, Patrick Mahomes, and Travis Kelce was a losing proposition to begin with.  Even so, the gameplan McD implemented/oversaw had the Bills in position at the end of the game.  Luck wasn't with us.

 

We will get there.  All you can reasonably ask as a fan is to have a team that is in the conversation every year.  We have that.  If your expectation is Super Bowl or bust simply because we have Josh Allen, I don't know what to tell you other than you're going to spend a lot of your time disappointed.

 

[blitzboy54]

On 1/30/2024 at 5:51 PM, 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.

 

 

I agree with this but it is also possible being outed like that forced McD to change some of his behavior. A lot of the ridiculous game management (that happened as recently as the Philly game) stopped. If this team wins one we may want to put a Dunne statue out front with Ralph. 

[Jukester]

7 hours ago, eball said:

It's really a shame that so many people can't understand or appreciate all of the luck that is involved for a team to reach the Super Bowl.  KC is on an extraordinary heater right now with Mahomes, just like NE*** was with Brady -- but look at how one or two plays here or there could have changed the story.  Those are two really great teams, with great QBs, who also got extremely lucky at all the right times.

 

That's not coaching.

 

After the Denver loss this season I was ready to move on from McDermott but the changes he made showed me that he does "get it" and is driven to lead the Bills to the Super Bowl.  Every coach has situations he looks back upon and wonders if he made the right call.  Sean has made more right calls than wrong ones, and putting up a JV squad defense against Andy Reid, Patrick Mahomes, and Travis Kelce was a losing proposition to begin with.  Even so, the gameplan McD implemented/oversaw had the Bills in position at the end of the game.  Luck wasn't with us.

 

We will get there.  All you can reasonably ask as a fan is to have a team that is in the conversation every year.  We have that.  If your expectation is Super Bowl or bust simply because we have Josh Allen, I don't know what to tell you other than you're going to spend a lot of your time disappointed.

 

Thank you. Agree with pretty much everything you said. The playoff  game against the Chiefs was two great teams going toe to toe, with a couple of plays (and a depleted defense) making the difference. 
I will say there have been some coaching missteps in the past and early this season but it was masterful down the stretch and even in that last game. We probably had no business being where we were with all the injuries but competed til the end. There is for sure an element of coaching that goes into that (as well as player leadership). 

 

The more removed I get from the disappointment of the loss, the more I can appreciate what a successful season it really was. We can only hope we get over the hump and win one but I’m going to enjoy the ride of having a superstar qb and a perennial playoff team as long as it lasts.