http://www.footballoutsiders.com/sta...ess-index-2011

well payton's almost certainly better than most at going for it on 4th down but i'm pretty sure he's still nowhere near ideal. also probably somewhat affected by the fact that he has an excellent qb/offense.

also rich kotite secretly the goat

marrone/buffalo also hired mike pettine (worked under rex ryan for years) as the dc. i think that could be their most underrated move of the offseason.

sbnation bills blog (buffalo rumblings) thinks pettine will have the bills in the nickel as their base d.

heres a link to that article, in case anyone is interested..

http://www.buffalorumblings.com/2013...r-mike-pettine

and one on how the bills o has done well against ne's d the last few years..

http://www.buffalorumblings.com/2013...triots-defense

I mean, he is a large part of why the offense is excellent, and a large reason why the team brought in their excellent QB.

Really my comparison is based on their creativity. I feel like Payton will do whatever he thinks will give his team an edge (see the Super Bowl: not only the onside kick but also running a 3-4 when they hadn't all year), whereas Kubiak basically has a team that does their thing at a very good level, but can only do that thing, and if it isn't working or he finds himself in a situation where a unique approach would be more successful, he'd be completely lost.

if you consider base d to be the formation a team lines up in most often then almost every team uses nickel as their base d now.

yes, but the point is that buffalo is missing its top two db's (s byrd, cb gilmore) which leaves leodis mckelvin as the best of the 5 dbs on the field. (along with 2nd year db ron brooks, leonhard who was just signed monday, searcy at s and he sucks in coverage, and aaron williams who just moved to s this year and also sucks in coverage) thats a scary thought with those two guys out. off hand, i cant think of a worse secondary to start this weekend.

as much as they suck in coverage it's still probably better than covering a wr with a lb or dl.

He's the second best coach in the league because he's excellent at developing a passing offense, and he's a little better than average at game management, but he's still going to make at least a dozen clear mistakes a season on 4th down that cost his team significant equity. Clear as in more obviously wrong than any mistake made by any of the top 1000 chess players in competition the entire year.

Agree with this pretty much completely although I don't know that creativity is the problem. I would say on the fly adjusting and adapting Houston's offense to what the opposing defense does are his most glaring issues. He has attempted to run the offense directly into the teeth of opposing defenses, even when it was apparent there were better ways to go about it (think Haynesworth era in Tennessee).

Kubiak does as good of a job as anybody at concocting a Plan A that could succeed but if he is forced to adjust on the fly or - God forbid - try Plan C, he's pretty helpless.

Also, Kubiak seems to believe that once you have the lead in the second half, you should play ultraconservative and not try to put the other team away. Not to mention his end-of-half coaching. I've seen more Saints and Texans than any other teams in the last few years, and Kubiak just seems completely disinterested in getting the maximum points out of any situation.

Please find these mistakes.

Also, I don't think you understand how metaphors work. If we take your rebuttal to my metaphor to its logical conclusion, then you're basically saying no NFL coaches are in the top 1000 of football coaches.

why, oh why, won't some team give Magnus Carlsen a chance to coach their team?

clear bias against Norwegians

In some respects, having success with Alex Gibbs consulting gig and stumbling into Arian Foster have exasperated Kubiak's natural blind spots.

And, yeay, Kubiak doesn't seem interested in the least in trying to run a hurry up anything in the 2nd quarter.

exacerbated is the word you'll want there

i have no idea if the pats plan to stick with the same forumula w/o hern and gronk, but they had two te's on the field for nearly 50% of their snaps last season. (source: mike reiss, espnboston.com) if thats the case come sunday, i'd prefer to see buffalo in more 4-3 / 3-4 looks and defend the te's with lawson/bradham/kiko/mario at times, and be better prepared to stop the run.

buffalo was 26th against the run last season, while the pats were 7th in rushing. pats ran for 364 against buffalo in two games last season. (they also passed for 530 in those 2, but as we know are w/o welker, hern and gronk.)

he almost certainly makes many mistakes by sending out the punting/kicking team too often even if he's better at it than most every other nfl coach.

should be simple to find a bunch of them using the anfls 4th down calculator and since he has an elite offense and poor defense there will probably be plenty more that show up as neutral or slightly -ev.

well defensive packages are generally put on the field in response to the offense (when the offense uses 3 wrs, you put out your nickel package). although since most teams didn't have linebackers that could cover gronk and hernandez i imagine many teams used nickel against them more often than they would against teams with less talented receiving tes.

fwiw niners were one of i believe two teams that other teams used base defense (read: 4-3/3-4) against more than nickel because they ran 2 te sets (or 1 te and 1 hback sets) more than they used 3+ wrs. i can't remember the other but it wasn't the patriots, and they obv ran a ton of 2 te sets too.

I think you'll still see a lot of 2TE from them. As you said, they were 50% last year, and that was with Gronk and Hernandez only playing together a few games - one or the other was hurt most of the season. That may require good ingame health, it's possible they'll only dress two TEs (Hooman and Sudfeld, Mulligan was signed just this week, so I'm not sure if he'll be on the 46). It may not be 50%, but I think it'll still be a significant part of their offense.

Chess is a pure meritocracy open to the entire world where everyone has an equal opportunity, and through sure mental genius, a few people rise to the top. NFL head coaching jobs have huge barriers of entry and are given out in large part due to things like personal connections and interviewing skill, and while they do attract smart people, they're nowhere near the same level of mental acuity. If I tried to compare Einstein to the winner of Real World/Road Rules, it would still be a terrible comparison even if they were both the best in their respective fields.

iggy please post your all-time rankings in the CHALLENGE thread

I haven't been this excited about a Bills team since before that stupid Music City Miracle. I don't think they'll win many games this year, but they'll be exciting and young and with potential.

Marrone impresses me so far...he's confident, non-nonsense, and he's put a good staff together. I like him.

I think things are finally looking up in Buffalo. No more Dick Jauron or Chan Gaily BS.

Going back to 2011 since that's the last season Payton coached:

First game
Trailing 21-7 in the 2nd quarter: 4th and 4 at GB 12 J.Kasay 30 yard field goal is GOOD, Center-J.Drescher, Holder-C.Daniel.
Trailing 28-17 in the 2nd quarter with 0:30 remaining: 4th and 14 at GB 45 T.Morstead punts 45 yards to end zone, Center-J.Drescher, Touchback.

Second game
Tied 0-0 in 1st quarter: 4th and 1 at NO 44 T.Morstead punts 38 yards to CHI 18, Center-J.Drescher. D.Hester to CHI 18 for no gain (I.Abdul-Quddus). FUMBLES (I.Abdul-Quddus), touched at CHI 14, ball out of bounds at CHI 13.
Trailing 7-0 in 1st quarter: 4th and 1 at CHI 14 J.Kasay 31 yard field goal is GOOD, Center-J.Drescher, Holder-C.Daniel.
Leading 10-7 in 2nd quarter: 4th and 3 at CHI 11 J.Kasay 29 yard field goal is GOOD, Center-J.Drescher, Holder-C.Daniel.

Third game
Trailing 16-7 in the 2nd quarter: 4th and 2 at HOU 17 J.Kasay 35 yard field goal is GOOD, Center-J.Drescher, Holder-C.Daniel.

Fourth game
Leading 20-10 with 14:00 left: 4th and 2 at JAC 2 J.Kasay 21 yard field goal is GOOD, Center-J.Drescher, Holder-C.Daniel.

You really want me to keep going? I think it's pretty obvious that 12 was an extremely conservative estimate. 25 would probably be more accurate.

Carolina has been awful in close games with Rivera. The only bright side for Rivera is that Carolina is only rarely not in a position to win. They've only been blown out like 2-3 times I think the last two years despite going 13-19 and probably led in 25+ games out of the 32.

Rivera might actually be a very good coach Tues-Saturday but he's the nut low on Sunday.

If Carolina just makes some incremental improvements they could get over the hump where Rivera's awful game decisions no longer cost them 3-5+ wins/year.

IGGY $howing work. You know you could actually be a good poster if you just made a deal with yourself to never discuss the eagles or any black quarterbacks.

or sorted by per, roland rating, rapm, steele, any/a, vegas etc