Mailbag Part 1: Sympathy for the #BillsMafia, DolphinsGPT

Are the Bills TOO balanced? What GMs should be blasted into the sun? Is Matt LaFleur underrated? Answers to these questions and more.

This week’s two-part mailbag will be structured like a Genesis live album: the first half will be the easily-accessible poppy singles, the second part (Wednesday or Thursday) will be 14-minute prog-rock opuses about giant hogweeds. So if you asked a hogweed-type question — you know who you are — sit tight and I will get to it in a few days!

Is Matt LaFleur the most underrated coach in the league? He is 67-33 as a head coach. As a young coach he didn’t get crushed by Rodgers’ ego. And his offensive structure, which took away some of Rodgers’ control of playcalling, helped Rodgers have a late-career rebirth with a couple of MVPs. He then handled the transition from franchise legend to a young, completely untested quarterback by going to the playoffs back to back years.

If you still require convincing, he won games last year with Malik Willis, who LaFleur had playing well a month after trading for him. I found this on Packers.com “Willis is just the fourth NFL player to post 200-plus passing yards, a passing TD, no INTs and a 120-plus passer rating along with 70-plus rushing yards, a rushing TD and an average of 12-plus yards per carry. The others are two-time MVP Lamar Jackson (vs. Miami on Sept. 18, 2022), Russell Wilson (at Arizona on Dec. 21, 2014) and Randall Cunningham (vs. New England on Nov. 4, 1990).” That’s a good list to be on. - Scott

First of all, a shoutout to whoever in the Packers media-relation department fiddled with those statistical benchmarks to get Willis on a list with Cunningham/Jackson/Wilson. Twelve yards per carry! It’s a good thing that Willis didn’t get to kneel at the end of the Titans win, or else he would have slipped off this illustrious list!

LaFleur did a great job game-planning for Willis, but obviously those benchmarks were set just below Willis’ 202 passing yards and 73 rushing yards in that game, not because they mean anything.

Anyway. LaFleur has been excellent. But Nick Sirianni is the most underrated coach in the NFL. He just won a Super Bowl, he has the fifth-highest winning percentage in history, and if the Eagles are 4-4 at their bye serious people will claim he is on the hot seat this year.

We will learn a lot about LaFleur in 2025. The feel-good vibes from Count Surlypants’ departure have completely worn off. Even with Jaire Alexander now gone, there’s lots of low-key grumbling in Green Bay. The Packers won’t be graded on a curve if they finish in third place and fail to beat any of their top-tier opponents again. LaFleur doesn’t become a bad coach if the Packers suffer a hiccup, but it will become harder to cherry-pick stats to make him look like a great one.

Mike, if you were head coach of the Jaguars, how would you use Travis Hunter? – Tom Nawrocki

I would start out using Hunter as a cornerback with a screens/reverses package on offense.

If Hunter is a “package” guy on defense, the Jaguars don’t get to dictate when he’s on the field. They may have to wait for the opponent to go with four wide receivers, or for third-and-very-long. They may also have to worry about Hunter being unavailable for a series if the offense is coming off a 12-play drive in the Florida heat.

The Jaguars would also have to worry about opponents manipulating formations and patterns to put him in bad situations. Oh no, Nico Collins just went in motion and now it’s trips right. Hunter must adjust from man coverage on Christian Kirk to taking the first receiver to break inside. Has he practiced that enough? Or was he on offense for too many of those reps? It’s much easier to learn a 15-play offensive package that can expand as the season goes on and can be deployed as the offensive coordinator sees fit.

Unlike a lot of my peers, I think Hunter could become a true two-way player, albeit one who would have to take hockey-style shift breaks now and then. (And again, it’s easier to pull a guy for a few snaps at receiver than at cornerback.) But Hunter played just 13 games last season. The Jaguars need him for 17 games and, hopefully, the playoffs this year. They should take their time expanding his role.

What needs to happen for the Bills so Bills' fans can experience what you and other Philly fans experienced last year? I mean, I fear I may go to my grave with the 51-3 AFC championship game in 1991 being the pinnacle. – Kevin Phelan

My stock answer is that the Bills need an “over-the-top” player who adds value in high-leverage situations: the best-available kick returner, another mercenary edge rusher, some Percy Harvin (or even Taysom Hill) they can deploy on offense just when the Chiefs have accounted for everyone else, or whatever.

But really: the Bills keep signing mercenaries like Von Miller and now Joey Bosa, and they added Amari Cooper at the trade deadline last year in an effort to juice their offense. The Bills are doing just about everything they can. They don’t have any fatal flaws. They need to keep putting themselves in position to reach the Super Bowl, trust themselves and hope for a bit of luck.

I get the impression that the Bills Mafia has soured on Sean McDermott. National fans have certainly grown bored with him. But McDermott deserves a lot of credit. Most rosters would have gone into rats-in-a-sinking-ship mode by now after so many playoff heartbreaks. Every year, McDermott must keep everyone focused and disciplined for another brutal season-long slog where anything short of a championship will be considered an unmitigated failure. That’s tough to do.

Since you brought up the Eagles, though: the Bills could use a Saquon Barkley. James Cook is not a Saquon. Pretending he is and paying him like he is won’t make him one (as the team realizes, even if fans do not). Maybe they can trade for Bijan Robinson! Oh wait, the Falcons disconnected their phones …

Is it only me or are you seeing similarities between Bills draft strategy now and Packers strategy when they had peak Aaron Rodgers from 2013-2022? I mean: no receivers, only defensive players in first round. They also got similar results after the Packers won the Super Bowl: sometimes the championship round but no return to the SB. I got feeling that bills management think Allen can do it all by himself. Am I wrong? – Michal Drgon

There are similarities between the current Bills and late-2010s Packers, but also some key differences. The Bills traded for Stefon Diggs and have been more active in seeking veteran receivers: Amari Cooper at the deadline last year, Joshua Palmer this year. Efforts to find wide receivers which fail still count as efforts!

The Bills also drafted tight end Dalton Kincaid in the first round. The closest thing the Packers did to getting Rodgers a playmaking tight end after Jermichael Finley faded was sign 32-year old Jimmy Graham.

The 2025 draft class was weak; the Bills were wise to not reach for a receiver who was not there at the end of the first round. Their weirdest decision was giftwrapping Xavier Worthy for the Chiefs in 2024. Worthy was exactly the type of situational-use mismatch nightmare the Bills should have been seeking as a team that’s often one explosive dagger play away from the Super Bowl. But some of the sacrifices and compromises the Bills have made, like trading Diggs away or trading down for extra picks in 2024, make sense from a roster-and-culture-maintenance standpoint.

Mike, I just saw, in Bryan Knowles' Dynasty Series, that you said back in 2011 that if you had to pick one quarterback to succeed in any era it would be John Elway. Who would you pick now? – Ken Raining

Probably Josh Allen. I could see him playing tailback, free safety and returning punts and kickoffs in 1920s-style football. I’d want that combination of size, speed, passing ability and physicality. The whole “any era” caveat means I want someone who can play on offense, defense and special teams, could call his own plays, could thrive on muddy fields and so forth.

I might also stick with Elway, though. Elway was a decent punter, and punting was extremely important back in old-timey football.

My theory is that "balanced teams" (as in, teams with no glaring holes) tend to be overrated both by analysts who are grading units and by advanced statistics because, play after play, they have solid contributors involved. But lopsided teams with dramatic strengths are more dangerous in the playoffs because even other strong opponents can't mitigate their strengths. This is why, as a lifelong Chiefs fan, I've never been scared of Buffalo but am always, always terrified of Cincinnati. Am I nuts? – Joran Maroon

As a Chiefs fan, your perceptions may be colored by three playoff wins over the Bills and one 2021 AFC Championship loss to the Bengals!

The unbalanced defense-first 2024 Texans and offensively-supercharged 2023 Dolphins probably didn’t scare you nearly as much when the Chiefs faced them in the playoffs. And if they did, they should not have.

If “balanced” is a euphemism for this team is just sorta-OK at everything and therefore stumbled into the playoffs as a sixth seed, then yes, balance may simply mean mediocrity. But a “lopsided” team is, by definition, a deeply flawed team. Top contenders tend to be very good on both sides of the ball. Like the Bills and Ravens. And the Eagles. And the Chiefs.

Which NFL coach is most likely to delegate all their in-game decision making to an AI, only to have it hallucinate a hand-off to a RB they don’t have, and then deny it afterwards and/or blame the AI? – Ken Kousen

Mike McDaniel. In fact, I am writing some gags for the Defector’s Why Your Team Sucks series about the Dolphins, and I have found myself running out of ways to describe McDaniel as the type of techbro who thinks he is saving time by crafting AI prompts to write the emails he must then carefully fact-check when he could be just, you know, writing emails.

Why haven’t the Dolphins fired Chris Grier into the sun yet? He’s been with the team since 2000 (last time they won a playoff game) and the GM since 2016. In his GM tenure, the team has a record of 75-73, 0-3 in the playoffs with two complete blowouts and one started by the immortal Skylar Thompson, no division titles, a failed rebuild and more dysfunction than your average Real Wives episode. What am I missing here? Does he have blackmail on Stephen Ross? – Mannynator

Again, you folks are trying to get me to burn jokes that I am saving for a separate piece!

Grier should be replaced. But as you have said, he has been running football operations for a decade, and he’s been pretty high in the ranks since the Bill Parcells era in 2008. Replacing Grier would require a floor-to-rafters fumigation of college and pro scouting to dislodge all of the old Parcells loyalists and others who have been lurking for many years. If I were an 85-year old real-estate mogul who runs my football franchise as a vanity project so I can hobnob with celebrities, I would not want to do all that work.

Also, to descend into grimy realpolitik for a moment: if I were a white 85-year old real estate mogul who has spent several years tapdancing away from accusations of racism, I would hesitate before firing my black chief-of-staff.

If Anthony Richardson loses his QB competition to Daniel Jones, will the team finally fire Ballard? Whatever strengths he possesses as a general manager have been overshadowed by his mismanagement of the Colts Quarterback position during his tenure. – Nicholas

Chris Ballard was Jim Irsay’s guy. Carlie Irsay-Gordon was giving off some real can’t-wait-to-clean-house energy, even before her father’s passing. Ballard is on borrowed time unless Richardson turns into Josh Allen’s big brother.

Ballard was always generous with the media. He seems to be a genuinely nice fellow. He’s good at extending the contracts of in-house players. And Carson Wentz was Frank Reich’s idea. But Ballard is entering his eighth year of essentially taking what the NFL’s parity mechanisms offer him and nothing more.

In the last several years we've seen a number of young quarterbacks get a chance to start, fail, and then move on to another team. If you were an offensive coach and needed to pick one of these guys as a reclamation project, who would you choose? For the sake of argument you can include Will Levis in this group, even though he's still somehow on the Titans. – Ken Raining

Since you were willing to give me Levis, please give me Anthony Richardson. I want the Holy Smokes physical traits. Richardson just turned 23. He is younger than Cam Ward (by three days) or Shedeur Sanders. The Colts just dealt with his junior and senior years of college. I’ll happily take my chances with someone who just learned a bunch of hard lessons and is eager for a fresh start.

What does Dan Campbell need to do to win Coach of the Year? I thought he was a shoo-in after this season and cannot figure out the voters' rationalizations for picking O'Connell over him (or a couple other head coaches, to be honest). – Andrew

Campbell must either go 17-0 or go back in time to win it in 2023. Sadly, it’s a narrative-driven award. The O’Connell narrative was: “his starting quarterback got hurt but he won 14 games,” which is rather compelling when you type it out. Campbell won 15 games despite losing his entire defense to injuries, but never mind. If a coach doesn’t win it in his “surprise” year, he has to wait for a comeback year or an extreme-adversity year.

Campbell has a much better chance of winning a Super Bowl than a coaching award, and he wouldn’t want it any other way.

Hi Mike. If you could ask any current NFL figure a question they were compelled to answer honestly what question would you ask and to whom? – Nick Gould

Wonder Woman’s magic lasso and I would extract the truth from a very famous quarterback about a very silly scandal from 10 years ago. But we will not be discussing such matters in the comments.