Buffalo Bills Make the playoffs first time almost 20 years

I'm a Raiders fan (well, also Niners. Also Patriots. And Packers. I even like watching Russell Wilson, Drew Brees, and hey, Deshaun Watson was amazing till he got hurt!). Call me an Equal Opportunity NFL fan, LOL.

Anyway, many recriminations and finger pointing over a Raiders team that over-achieved in 2016 but flopped dismally in 2017. Jack Del Rio has been fired despite owner Mark Davis now owing him $20M on the contract extension signed just back in Jan 2017. What really teed off Raiders fans was the anemic offense: Derek Carr was a two-time Pro Bowler in 2015/2016, but suddenly resembled Nick Foles or Brian Hoyer at their worst in 2017.

Jon Gruden is heavily rumored to be coming back as coach. All Del Rio's staff has been advised they are free to look elsewhere for jobs. One of the SBNation Raiders fans posted this, and it relates to the better offensive performance in 2017 of the Buffalo Bills:

" WR coaching

Dropped balls. Failure to get open. Head scratching routes. Our WR coach? Rob Moore. Fired from Buffalo. Sammy Watkins had some to say contrasting the Bills' new WR coach, Sanjay Lal, to Moore:

"Now, we're understanding how to run routes off any press, off any leverage, to where you won't be covered. We were kind of limited last year with certain things. It was, 'you can't do this, you can't do that'. All Moore wanted to do was just tie-in what he knew and what he did in his career and just do that."

"The way Lal coaches now is the way that I know. Everybody knows it that way. Everybody's like, 'man, I wish we had this last year.' Or 'man, I wish we could do that'". "

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I often debate football with a young friend of mine, a true blue (red and gold?) Niners fan. She's more player-centric and I'm more coach-centric. I firmly believe coaching is almost essential to making it in the NFL, even more so now that colleges have dropped the NFL-style offenses. Based on that analysis above, I'm not the only one who feels that way!

Good luck in the playoffs vs Jaguars! They were pretty flat in their last two games, it'll be interesting to see if the Blake Bortles that shows up will be the "good QB" or the "bad QB" !
 

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