Some thoughts on why we can't get over the hump

[GoBills808]

adding on

 

I would encourage folks to watch the throwaway to Shakir on the last series. Some of the most amateurish play design I've ever seen...it's ostensibly a fake TE screen complete w Kincaid doing a little hop and reach. Coleman and Shakir don't sell the blocks at all, Shakir in fact gets hung up on his release of the guy he's supposed to be pretending to block. Coleman is running a 9 to hold the safety and Shakir looks like he's supposed to run the seam but mysteriously decides to jog right into coverage. Literally none of the DBs or LBs are even slightly confused.

 

so so bad

[BillsShredder83]

9 hours ago, GoBills808 said:

We ran EZ fade to Coleman vs McDuffie

 

that was an actual play that was called

Genuinely asking. Aside from the hindsight of it not working, why was this such a bad call? Was it 3rd down, cant remember

[Bermuda Triangle]

Simply put:

 

1. Poor drafting/talent evaluation;

2. Lack of speed at the DB and WR positions;

3. Unwillingness to cut bait with underperforming picks and bad position coaches ('sup, Smiley?);

4. Lack of attention to detail.

[ProcessTruster]

to answer the OP, basicially:

 

KC is loaded, starting with HOF QB, OC/HC and DC.  They are the 2000-2015 Pats reincarnated.  Really.  

 

The Bills, tho are NOT the 2005-2015 Bills reincarnated, and thats what makes this much more interesting.   Not sure there's anyone out there to rival Reid/Spags, so that's a problem, but based on results today's Bills are close.  

 

Go Bills.  

[tigerthelion]

13 hours ago, FireChans said:

Yep.

 

Why does anyone think any Bills player or coach is going to listen to McD’s messaging next year prepping for the Chiefs in the AFCCG or divisional round and truly believe, in their heart of hearts, that they can win? 
 

The Pats won games against the Bills for years before they ever played a down. The Chiefs do the same. they all know how it’s gonna go. 
 

in the next 8 years, what is more likely? The Bills are 0-8 against the Chiefs in the playoffs or the Bills are 4-4 against the Chiefs in the playoffs. We all know the answer.

Hope you are wrong, but can't really disagree much with that.  The Chiefs know they will win, while the Bills are hoping they might be able to escape with a win.  Even with Allen, who is just about the only reason these games are close, you can see that he still has that doubt.   The players will be wound even tighter if they meet again in next year's playoffs.  Mcdermott may pass out on the sidelines from being so nerved up. 

[nuklz2594]

josh is basically jim kelly. lbs in a qb body. leader of men. 

we have one of THE smallest and ssssllloooowest defenses in entire nfl. need to get stout dts....chris jones clones. we need an intimidator on defense. no nfl team is intimidated by our defense. 

the offense is cookie and josh....period. wrs are average at best. coleman....should have taken ladd.  the tes....nope.

coaches are ok.

old saying...you march into battlle with the army you have. not the army you want

[GoBills808]

38 minutes ago, BillsShredder83 said:

Genuinely asking. Aside from the hindsight of it not working, why was this such a bad call? Was it 3rd down, cant remember

not only is it a route more suited to Cooper's skillset...it's reactionary

 

it's like they saw Worthy getting busy and thought 'hey we have a rookie WR too, let's get him going'

 

and against McDuffie of all people

[GunnerBill]

41 minutes ago, BillsShredder83 said:

Genuinely asking. Aside from the hindsight of it not working, why was this such a bad call? Was it 3rd down, cant remember

 

It's a bad call because Coleman is useless at fades because he gives up leverage so easily. But your call sheet shrinks massively when you are down to "only things Keon Coleman can execute" because slants by the goalline are pretty high risk too. 

[Chicken Boo]

Like it or not, Patrick Mahomes is already a top 5 QB all-time in his young career.  

 

The Bills are facing one of the greatest teams in league history that is currently on one of the greatest runs in league history.  

 

Think about how monumental that is.

 

We are Steve Young's 49ers or Peyton's Colts trying to get over the hump.  

[GoBills808]

Just now, Chicken Boo said:

Like it or not, Patrick Mahomes is already a top 5 QB all-time in his young career.  

 

The Bills are facing one of the greatest teams in league history that is currently on one of the greatest runs in league history.  

 

Think about how monumental that is.

 

We are Steve Young's 49ers or Peyton's Colts trying to get over the hump.  

like it or not we made Mahomes and the Chiefs

 

its outright hilarious to me people talking like there's nothing we could have done to prevent it.

[Trust The Process]

Can't get over the hump when McD's defense allows 34 PPG to the Chiefs in 4 games

[Big Turk]

I mean who really has? They will likely win 3 straight Super Bowls and 4 of the last 5.

[Chicken Boo]

7 minutes ago, GoBills808 said:

like it or not we made Mahomes and the Chiefs

 

its outright hilarious to me people talking like there's nothing we could have done to prevent it.

 

Penicillin was discovered by accident.   Viagra, ozempic, etc all had unintended consequences.  It seems to be the natural order of the world.

 

The Bills could have prevented the trade, you mean?  

Edited Tuesday at 05:16 PM by Chicken Boo

[GoBills808]

1 minute ago, Chicken Boo said:

 

Penicillin was discoveredby accident.   Viagra, ozempic, etc all had unintended consequences.  It seems to be the natural order of the world.

 

The Bills could have prevented the trade, you mean?  

we could have not traded Mahomes to KC

we could have beaten them the first AFCCG when they won a SB

we could have beaten them last yr's divisional when they won a SB

we could have not traded them Worthy who beat us this yr's AFCCG when they are about to win a SB

 

we made the Chiefs. this is our fault

[tigerthelion]

11 hours ago, HappyDays said:

 

See I don't think coming up with a few new creative plays is mastermind stuff. That's standard fare for winning a championship. But every year we just go out there and run our plays. What was our surprise play, a telegraphed fake screen on the final drive? It's laughable.

No creativity whatsoever.   Nothing fooled KC.  Look how hard Cook had to fight at the goal line.  Nothing easy.   They seemed to know what play we were running way more than a defense really should.   Trying to out-physical the more physical team.  

[Stuartjohn]

17 hours ago, Mikie2times said:

This is a bit of my own therapy.....

 

Regardless of how you break down the game, for two straight years, we’ve had the ball down by three with our number-one-rated offense, our Superman quarterback, and a chance to tie or win the game. In both years, we failed to do so. It’s difficult to place a lot of blame on a guy who’s literally one of the only reasons we even made it to this point. But the question that we have been asking, and that we all want to know, is: why can’t we get past a certain point in the playoffs? To me, the type of quarterback Josh Allen is is at least part of that story—certainly not all of it—and clearly we wouldn’t even be here in the first place without him. Josh is the most talented quarterback in the NFL. He is the most valuable quarterback in the NFL, but he’s more of a sandlot-style player. His greatest strengths aren’t reading defenses, making pre-snap reads, delivering the hot ball quickly, or running a systematic offense. He’s not like Brady, Montana, or Burrow. And when you’re in moments where you have one drive and it needs to be executed perfectly, his style of quarterback play, in my view, is not optimal. In both years he very well could have overcome it as both of these drives we had a wide receiver or tight end drop a critical ball that could’ve changed the outcome of the game. So we this isn’t on Josh so don’t twist my position that way. Not the optimal style of play for those moments from my view. That is all, we lost as a team.

 

Speaking on which……

 

We’ve missed on several first-round draft choices for multiple years—Elam, Kincaid—and while I wouldn’t say Coleman's is a straight-up miss, when the opportunity was there to potentially draft Worthy or trade up for Thomas, we chose to go with the most risky option: a player that many people were staying away from because of separation issues. We SHOULD be asking questions about our draft strategy. We’ve done a good job in the mid-to-late rounds finding starting-level talent, but we’ve failed to find elite players, elite difference-makers. Further the roster construction at times has been a bit of a head scratcher. We made a great selection in Shakir. He’s shown to be a great YAC guy and a valuable slot receiver. Then we draft Kincaid, who is not a full-time, run-blocking, pass-catching tight end—he’s a receiving tight end. And guess what? You’re not going to be splitting him out wide very often. He’s almost always going to occupy one of your slot roles. Then what do we do in the offseason? We sign Curtis Samuel, who’s another slot-type guy. If that wasn’t enough, if you review Coleman’s tape and some of his advanced stats from MSU and Florida State, you'd see he performed best out of the big slot role, which negated some of his issues, like trouble getting off the ball and separation issues. There was no cohesion in these decisions. There were no complementary wide receivers. It almost felt like when Dorsey called plays, he was calling each one individually, as if the play before had no impact on the next. It felt like we just decided to take players we thought were good and figured we’d make it work later.

 

On the defensive side, I’ve been one of the most vocal critics of McDermott, but I’m tired of it. He’s our coach, and it seems likely he’s not going anywhere for a very long time, right or wrong. I’m tired of 80% of my posts crapping on him. We made some stops in yesterday’s game, and we adjusted pretty effectively in the second half. I trust him as a coach who can stabilize a team, even though I don’t like his system. Crap on him or not, at the end of the day, Kansas City has had incredible success against his system—more so than any other team they’ve faced in the playoffs. Those are facts. Kansas City performs exceptionally well against our defense, especially in the playoffs.

 

We’ve been at this for eight years, and we just don’t have the horses on defense. We lost both of our starting safeties and replaced them with virtually nobody. We have no depth at corner. We had Milano, who we knew wasn’t going to be ready for most of the season, and Bernard, who was a good mid-round pick. We don’t have any players who are top 8 at their positions, outside of Taron Johnson. Maybe Benford, but we just don’t have the horses. So regardless of whether you want to call McDermott’s scheme trash, and it certainly looks that way against Kansas City, he won’t be able to execute it with this talent level.

 

Then there’s the play-calling on offense. We’ve become so dependent on the tush push that we didn’t develop any other short-yardage plays. The only other short-yardage play we had was basically a speed option with Josh and Cook, which worked for a touchdown, one of the most amazing runs I’ve seen from a Bills player in years. But that’s about it. Look at how Kansas City schemed their bootlegs and short-yardage plays against us. When you’re dealing with a heavily compacted defense, if the end is not disciplined (and ours wasn’t), it’s game over. We had no short-yardage plays outside of the one we saw. When you’re going to scheme plays offensively to essentially put yourself in short-yardage situations, you should have a full arsenal of 1- to 2-yard plays at your disposal. But we just said, "Well, screw it, because we’re good at this." Some could argue that Philadelphia is similar, but I’ve never seen Jalen Hurts get stuffed on his own 1-yard line, fumble the ball, and nearly cost his team the game. The second Josh got stuffed on the first sneak for the 2-point conversion, that should’ve been a wake-up call. The push from Kansas City, in addition to Josh’s tentativeness, showed it was a mistake to keep running that play. I don’t care if he got the first down or not—time has told us that you cannot leave it in the hands of the refs.

 

We have a long season ahead and a lot of thinking to do. It sucks, and I don’t know what the answer is. We have some good players, but part of the issue when you re-sign a player whose good but not great is that they occupy that role for a significant time, and you don’t get the chance to get another great player in that spot because you think you’re good enough. It really feels like this team needs a reset, and I don’t know if that’s McDermott or not. As I said, I’m not going to continue talking about him after this post. It’s too much negativity. But this team is starting to feel like it needs the plug pulled. Not because it hasn't been very successful or McD sucks or bla bla, but more because it needs a violent shake-up to go further than it has. If that costs us a year to rebuild, I don’t care. This regime and these players have failed to get it done. Eventually, we need to figure out how to stop that from happening. You can’t just keep saying, "Well, Kansas City is the best, and we lost to the best, so that’s how it is." No. We were inches away from beating the best multiple times. A little better scheme, a little better execution, and a little better roster would’ve made the difference. It was that close, but we failed again. Perhaps we just keep running it back, I just don't know how that is the answer. But when I say blow it up it's not out of hate for these guys. I just don't know what the path forward can be.

 

Love you all and I wish we didn’t have to go thru this.

Great article-McDermott is not in Coach Reeds level  nir in Spags level in defense--the way we started against KC was Outrageous-they were playing scared not prepared imo! Until we change the Head Coach Buffalo will never win a Super Bowl!

[Chicken Boo]

4 minutes ago, GoBills808 said:

we could have not traded Mahomes to KC

we could have beaten them the first AFCCG when they won a SB

we could have beaten them last yr's divisional when they won a SB

we could have not traded them Worthy who beat us this yr's AFCCG when they are about to win a SB

 

we made the Chiefs. this is our fault

 

Thems the breaks.  The Bills can still get there with 1 or 2 key moves in the off-season.  

 

All hope isn't lost.  

[Alphadawg7]

There are only 3 words as to why we can't get over the hump:  Reid.  Mahomes.  Refs.

 

Reid - At this point, Reid has cemented his place in discussions about who is the GOAT as an offensive mind and HC.  Not saying he is for sure the GOAT at either, but he 100% has a seat at the table.  And you can add Reid and Spags have a seat at the table to discuss the GOAT HC and Coordinator pairings of all time.

 

Mahomes - I mean if his career ended today, he would already be a lock for top 3 QB's all time and a seat at the GOAT debate table as well.  

 

Refs - Look, I am not diminishing the greatness of the Chiefs by refs, but the reality is they have benefited many times for favorable calls and non-calls.  All teams get these, its not unique to the Chiefs.  But the problem is when a team is as good as the Chiefs, even a single bad call or non-call that goes in favor of the Chiefs can be the difference in the game because they simply do NOT make mistakes in crunch time in game winning moments.  So when these happen against the Chiefs, they are substantially more impactful than most and those moments stand out and are much more remembered to feel like it happens all the time.

 

And make no mistake about it...the Bills are not in the Super Bowl this year because the Refs stole 2 first downs from us within 2 plays that swung the game.  Kincaid had the first down by a half yard clear as day.  Then coaching plays a role where McD doesn't challenge when we should have and instead rushes to catch them off guard on a tush push which had worked so well all season, but the bastardized version they were running on Sunday was not.  Big coaching mishap there because it led to the 4th down where Josh got the first, and first ref gave it to him before another ref took it away and then somehow didn't over turn it in review when it was clear as day he got there.  Instead of going up potentially 2 scores on that drive, KC goes down and goes up 7.  That took us from the drivers seat to now chasing the Chiefs at the end of the game, about as bad of a position anyone can be in late against the Chiefs  And while we still had a chance, the odds were stacked much higher against us then if we had gone up 2 scores in the 4th putting the pressure on us to be perfect the rest of the game or go home.

[colin]

Mikey, I'm a little sad you are leaving the MCD haters club.  You have been on a well argued tear and we value your contributions here at the fire MCD side of the aisle.

 

So, in the spirit of positive energy in this thread:

 

We are close.  A great point above is that we made the Chiefs.  We lost to them narrowly for them advance.  Three one score losses means while we are losers to them, they aren't pulling away from us or anything.

 

Talent.  I think it's been made pretty clear that the blue print for winning in the NFL is a star model.  You get the most game impacting talent, particularly at high value positions, as you can.  It's way better to have a few super stars and fill in the gaps than have what we have sort of fallen into.  The good news it's not that big of a shift to get us there.

 

Allen is imo the goat.  He does more with less and succeeds more consistently at a higher degree of difficulty than any player I've ever seen.

 

Dawkins and Brown are both top 5 tackles at their positions.  Trench warfare is big and we have great players there.

 

Cook is a top 5 back, and might just be number 3 behind Barclay and Henry.  He's young and has very few miles and hasn't been banged up.

 

During the playoffs I'd say Oliver was our best player on D.  He turned it on and got huge pressures and disrupted plays better than I've ever seen him.  Groot and AJ had a couple good games but were not good vs kc, Jones did his job but nothing super.  Milano was our second best player on d IMO.  He might have another season or two of tread left on the tires if he can stay healthy (sadly, he never has).

 

If we can add one more actual weapon on O, say a Higgins or something on the outside who can stress the d vertically, we'll have an o that talent wise can match up with anyone at anytime.

 

On d, I think we've seen the same story too many times.  Statistically the worst playoff d over and over, but an impact player might be just enough to get them to not be trucked constantly, give our o another possession or short field and we might have the 9 point lead we need to beat KC.

 

 

This wouldn't be a Colin post without a negative! 

 

Coaching.  Presuming we don't blow out MCD, we almost have to improve on the special teams coach.  Even if we make the above doable upgrades (I say fill in the rest of the holes w draft picks and people we already have) we need our coaching to have the ability to get our players ready and have some extra play calls designed to counter the counters.

 

Clearly I'd like to blow out the entire front office and bring in Bill the cheater, but I don't think that happens so I guess I'll just have to hope that our front office can find a stroke of luck or just smarten up.

 

Just like how the pats won all those chips w late kicks and grind out wins, the path to beat KC requires us to avoid killing ourselves with stupidity.  

[Buffalo03]

You all realize that even the Chiefs don't have the perfect roster, right? You don't to get the championship game by not being talented enough. They are just better in big games 

Edited Tuesday at 09:23 PM by Buffalo03