There's also the question of if Phillips, Williams, Jauron, Gailey, Marrone, or Ryan drafted Allen, does Allen become the Allen we know and love today. I'm really guessing not. Development and situation has as much to do with whether a QB succeeds in the NFL in today's game than the QB himself. But we'll never truly know.
people like to pretend mcdermott is just some bum off the street. reality is that he’s top 3 in win % as HC and he started off his first couple of seasons with a truly bad roster.
imo the biggest factor has always been the team’s health. No tre for 13 seconds. half of our starting D out in the back half of last season. same this year in the early going.
why invent problems????? it’s pretty obvious what’s been happening this year. 1. bad offensive scheme/no rhythm to the playcalling. 2. injuries on D affecting our field position and ball control.
it’s as simple as that. no need for the all of the media circus narratives that completely avoid the facts of the matter…. it just gets exhausting
Here's what I think the issues with the Bills are, based on a dated understanding of how a team works (but I still spent a year inside of an NFL franchise).
1.) Offense was built the same way the 1990s Bills offense was: we have better people, we will do a small number of things but do them at such a high level that you can't stop us. This tracks as true for me since the Bills rely on Allen and Diggs to make very high difficulty plays routinely. Orlovsky mentioned this aspect as well.
Fix: diversify the offense and become more of a scheme offense. Eric Bienemy would be a fantastic coordinator for the group in Buffalo. If Washington cleans house, that's who I'd go to. 2nd choice is Josh McDaniel, who isn't a head coach but he's among the best OCs in the game.
2.) McDermott's role on the team is the head coach, not the DC. He's getting results, sure, but he's sacrificing the overall management of the team. That showed up against Denver.
Fix: Find a legit DC to run the defense the way McDermott wants. Ron Rivera would be a great choice, if McDermott can get him to come over. He had success as a head coach in Carolina, but coming off possibly getting released in Washington, he might get passed over for coordinator type hires. He'd get to work with McDermott, who used to be his DC. Eric Washington was his DC, and Holcomb used to work for Rivera as well.
Rivera played and coached a 46 defense, coached a rush linebacker 3-4 defense, and coached a zone 4-3 defense. He knows how to mix in defensive concepts. Imagine the Bills mixing in a 3-4 concept now and again (really a 2-4 or a 3-3) with Miller and Floyd as rush linebackers.
3.) Bills are up against the cap and don't have a lot of room to reset the team.
Fix: Re-structure the core of the team (Allen, Diggs, Knox, Milano, Oliver) and some non-core players (McGovern). Release Hines. Just those moves alone gets the team to around $5M in available cap space.
Think through what to do with White and Miller. Re-structing White saves another $5M. Releasing him saves more but puts a lot of dead cap onto 2024 ($10M) but gets the Bills another $1M in cap space.
Re-structing Miller gets the Bills to $23M in cap space for 2024. He can't be released in 2024 without eating $32M in cap space.
Assume they re-structure White and leave Miller's contract alone. Bills have $10M in cap space. Beane will need to do some work to fill in the roster. He's what it is pre-draft:
WR: Shakir, Shorter
TE: Knox
LT: Dawkins
LG: McGovern
C: Morse
RG: Torrence, Anderson
RT: Brown, Van Demark
TE: Kincaid, Davidson
WR: Diggs, Harty
QB: Allen
RB: Cook, Gilliam
LE: Rousseau
DT: Oliver
NT:
RE: Miller, Johnathan
LB: Milano, Williams
LB: Bernard, Spector
NB: Johnson, Neal
CB: Douglas, Elam
CB: White, Benford
S: Poyer, Hamlin
S:
That's 33 of 50 non-ST positions filled going into the season. Add in 10 draftees and probably some undrafted rookies. Not ideal but doable. Beane won't be able to make big adds, and it's probably a reset year regardless of what he does.
But, with a good OC getting the most out of Allen, Kincaid emerging, and good DC allowing McDermott to be the head coach, and a slew of expiring contracts in 2025, it could be a reset year where they do very well.
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