Latest / Bills Mafia Carolina TAKEOVER / Offseason Overreactions & 2026 Bills Expectations
Transcript
- Owen Wilson: That's a wrap on today's episode of Bill's Mafia Carolina Takeover. Thanks for tuning in and repping the Mafia with us. Don't forget to subscribe, drop your Mafia mail, and join us next time as we bring the passion, the pride, and the power of the Buffalo Bills straight from the Carolinas. Let's go Buffalo! Bills Mafia, are you ready? From North Carolina to Buffalo, the Mafia is united. This is your home for the passion, the power, and the pride of the Buffalo Bills. Welcome to Bills Mafia Carolina Takeover. Let's go Bills. BillsMafia CTO: Welcome back to Bill's Mafia Carolina Takeover. I'm your host, Owen, and I want to thank everybody that tuned in last year, our first year, all of the emails we've got on Bill's Mafia, and then during the offseason, very much appreciative. I know a lot of you are looking forward to this year's on Bill's Mafia Carolina Takeover. We've got an amazing year this year, totally new platforms we're on. We've got a website, a newsletter. I'll get into all of that. But If you you're probably wondering, well, wait, where's the other guy? Where's Tim the Outsider? well, following a last year's controversial takes ⁓ regarding the Bills, the Outsider has been placed into Bill's Mafia protective custody. That's right. The decision was made after multiple reports of Bills fans attempting to explain to him ⁓ why Josh Allen in fact the dude. Tim is safe. Tim is healthy, everyone. Tim is simply no longer allowed to roam unsupervised on a weekly basis here at Carolina, Bill's Moffat Carolina Takeover. That said, he has been approved for an occasional supervised visit throughout the season. Think of Tim as like a zoo animal. We'll let him out every once in a while. So we wish Tim the best and we look forward to seeing him throughout the season. Now let's get into Bill's Mafia Carolina Takeover of the 2026 season. Let's go. Alright, again, thank you guys so much for tuning in to Bill's Moffat Caroline Takeover last year. It's our first year, and really excited to be back with you guys this year for another, hopefully Championship season, as we all hope, every year. So let's get into this kind of a recap of 2026, ⁓ and then we'll kind of get into some of new platforms that we're on and other ways you can reach out to us. So, what had happened here? First off, I mean, if you've been living under a rock and you just woke up today, you obviously know that Sean McDermott has been fired by the Bills. Right after basically right after the Denver game. Shocked, completely shocked. ⁓ very surprising. Certainly emotional. And I think a lot of fans out there were emotional on this. But if you take a step back after you got through the emotional side of things and took a step back and really realized what was going on, what had happened in those nine seasons, you really had to think about being a change. There had to been a change. We've gotten so far in the realms of the playoffs and just haven't gotten over it. So although I was disappointed in in the fact that McDermott was fired, after I took a little bit to really think about it and realize what was happening. I'm excited. I think it's a great opportunity for the Bills to kind of revamp themselves and move on. Now, there's been a lot of chatter amongst Bills Mafia regarding the Brandon Bean situation and him not being fired. I totally disagree with that. I'm not sure where anyone would ever think that that would be a good decision to fire Brandon Bean at the same time. Cause now you're talking about firing both the head coach and the and the GM and re Reese vamping and starting. everything over. look, the ⁓ the reality the situation is is Sean McDermott's the one out there coaching. Bean is the the the president GM now so he's the one out there scouting and getting the players. So it's really Sean's team and I think the fact that that they did let Sean go now that we're you know into June and ⁓ feels good. It it feels like that they're that there's going to be some change there and and it's going to look really good. Now, I was surprised about certainly who was going to be the next head coach for the Bills. ⁓ and they rode with jo ⁓ Joe Brady. it's a smart decision because ⁓ Joe Brady is obviously the offensive of the Bills. He's been with Allen for a couple years now. So there's no transition needed there. Right? Because the Bills are Josh Allen. That is what the team runs through. So love the decision to keep Joe, love the decision to have Joe become the the head coach of the team now because it allows the Bills offense just to continually grow So I love the fact that the Bills went with Joe Brady here as the offensive coordinator and also as the head coach. And I really think that that's a crucial part here that people may not, or at this point, they may be still can, you know, they may be okay with it. And the reason being is that if you f if you don't have Joe Brady come back, or if you keep him as your offensive coordinator, it's not guaranteed that the head coach is gonna is going the new head coach is going to allow Joe to stay in the realm. So Now you're talking about superhuman future Hall of Famer. I'm calling it future Hall of Famer. Josh Allen has to start all over with an offensive system, offensive coordinator. So the Bills did good there. Now, what what happens with the defensive side of the ball? They get Leonard, Jim Leonard, former Buffalo Bill. Like this pick here, ⁓ did really well in college. I know the Broncos defense has been. was nasty last year. I don't necessarily think that they were like blown away. I know the Bills obviously lost to them, but you know, we can look at the the halftime decision by Josh Allen, you know, to instead of kneeling it and going into half and giving three points, right? And then we also could talk about the catch at the end of the game, which is a catch. But with that being said, Leonard's defense is going to be completely different than Sean McDermott. And I think at this point, The Bills mafia and Bills fans, they need to see that defense be different. That also meant that we were going to lose some fan favorites for sure. And that's and that happened. But I really do think that we're going to see a much different defense, much more aggressive defense. Remember, Leonard comes from the Rex Ryan era. So a lot of that kind of Rex Ryan that we witnessed here in Buffalo, you're going to see that with Leonard as well. This is probably Josh in Josh Allen era, this is definitely the biggest ⁓ shift in organization. ⁓ with firing of of So ⁓ you know, certainly that I feel like with a player of Josh's caliber throughout his career, there's gonna be some seismic shifts for sure. And certainly with McDermott being gone, this is This brings that to the table. One of the nice things I loved about what the Bills did this year is they added a wide receiver. It's been talked about not only with the insider last year and really all of you. The wide receiver position is the key position here for Josh Allen. They added DJ Moore, a veteran wide receiver who's going to give him some veteran capabilities on the outside. It's going to be interested to see what they do with the wide receiver core from there. Obviously, they They drafted Bell there. ⁓ he was hurt in the mini camps. So, you know, with training camp coming up, it's gonna be interesting to see what they do there. Do I think DJ Moore is the X factor that's ⁓ you know, for the Bills to get over the hump? Not necessarily. I think and and we talked about this last year. I think with Josh Allen, it's plug and play. basically you can add any receiver, and Josh Allen is gonna get you the chance to win the game. But I do believe DJ Moore does cause issues for defenses, kind of similar to when Stephon Diggs was there with the Bills. It's going to be a game plan, he's gonna be a game plan wide receiver. So they're going to make sure that they're they're covering him, which is hopefully going to allow Knox, Kincaid. Shakir, all of those guys get better looks because it was a struggle down the road down the stretch. And all of all, and we all know that without the wide receiver, we were hanging on for a few months until we got closer to the end of the season when again back-to-back seasons where we realized we need that wide receiver spot. Now, to focus on Leonard's defense as well, there's going to be a lot of changes in there. It's not going to be your typical 4-3 that we're seeing. It's definitely not going to be prevent defense, bend, don't break, whatever you want to call it that McDermott ⁓ lives and dies by. But so this is going to be a much more aggressive defense. ⁓ this is gonna be a 3 4. ⁓ not your standard 3 4. They don't play the 3 4 like we, you know, older guys know back in the day. But it's gonna be a lot of aggressive, a lot of front, a lot of rushing up front. If you go back and look at tape with Denver, with Leonard there, even in college, it was definitely much more pass rush heavy, which is good. Blitzing, which we haven't seen in McDermott's defense a lot. So we're gonna see a lot of that. Added to that piece is Chubb, eight and a half sacks last year. Look, ⁓ the defensive line for the Bills, ⁓ I feel like we've all we've been trying to find that edge rusher rusher. I think we've been trying to try to find that edge rusher for years now. Greg Rousseau obviously is a top dog there for us. You know, the experiment. with ⁓ the def the other side of the defense hasn't worked well worked well aj epinessa is gone so this leaves chubb the ability to really focus in on you know having greg russo and chubb on both ends and so it's gonna be it's gonna be interesting to see how they go about doing this now mcdermott was a heavy rotation guy ⁓ which ⁓ made sense in some cases but it's it's gonna be interesting to see what Leonard does here Going into the 26th season, is it going to be rotation? Is the defensive ends going to be rotated? Is the defensive tackles going to be rotated? So with Chubb, it's gonna be interesting. It it is still to me experimental to a point, but you're talking about probably a better successful experiment. Von Miller experiment did not go well. Joey Bosa experiment, we probably thought he was gonna be better than Vaughn, didn't go as well. So I do think Chubb, although A veteran guy, been in the league for a little while. I do think he is a bit of an upgrade between between Vaughn and Jo and Joey Bosa. Certainly younger speed, those type of things, which you need in Leonard's defense. So I'm really excited to look at what that what that defensive end looks like. I've got a lot of optimism in 2026 in this upcoming season. I know we're a few weeks here away ⁓ from training camp and a lot of things could change there, but ⁓ the reason why every Bills fan should have lot of optimism ⁓ simply ⁓ because of Josh Patrick Allen. As long as Josh Allen is healthy, he is on the field, we are going to be contenders every single year. Again, I talked about this earlier. Wide receiver, offensive weapons. Even we're lacking that department and we still need to get there. Josh Allen the field will win games alone. And that is why going into the season, the optimism is high. ⁓ Check this out. Drew Breeze. He won the Super Bowl and his ninth season. Took him nine years to get there. Joe Theisman won the Super Bowl, his ninth season. Peyton Manning. Peyton Manning won his first Super Bowl nine seasons. Steve Young took him ten seasons. And John Elway took him fifteen seasons. It took nine seasons for those quarterbacks to get to the Super Bowl and win it. So optimism has to be there if you're a Bills fan with Josh Allen. Well that wraps up first of twenty twenty six. And again, I want to thank everyone who tuned in last year, who wrote in on the mafia mail, who liked, subscribed, and commented. Really do appreciate it. And I am looking forward to a new season. I want to thank Tim the Outsider as well for ⁓ joining us last year. And I look forward to him coming on ⁓ throughout the season this year. I also wanna thank fans from other teams that tuned in when their fan representative was on the show on the other sideline. I happen to be in New England ⁓ area ⁓ this past January and a lot of Pat's fans who ⁓ listened to the show during that time when Jesse from Pat's Nation was on and they came up and they really enjoyed it. So I want to thank them for tuning in and and the Jets as well and and all the other teams, the Atlanta. So I want to thank you guys. The ⁓ everyone has reached out. I really do appreciate that. And I look forward to getting those fans back on the show on the other sidelines as well. We have our social media Facebook page, Bill's Mafia Carolina TakeOver, make sure you go ⁓ and ⁓ check that out. We also are on platforms now: ⁓ Apple, ⁓ Amazon, Spotify, YouTube, and iHeartRadio. That's the one. if you are subscriber to any of those platforms, Make sure you check out our podcast, Bill's Mafia Caroline Takeover. You're going to want to make sure that you subscribe and check this out on a weekly basis. Also, a very cool feature that we just launched here at Bill's Mafia Caroline Takeover. We have our own website. It's Bills MafiaCto.riverside.com. Super cool. You can go to that website and you can actually watch the episodes, but also We've got a weekly newsletter coming out every week. So you want to make sure that you subscribe to that newsletter. All you got to do is go to the website billsmafiacto.riverside.com. Click newsletter. Drop in your email address, and then you will get an email on a weekly basis for our newsletter. Super cool. A lot of cool things happening. Hopefully, we're going to be putting up a a ⁓ Lombardi somewhere over here this year. That would be awesome. But I'm really looking forward to the 2026 season and kicking this off. We got some great stuff, great guests. ⁓ it's gonna be a lot of fun this year. Great platforms to get engaged. And also, if you have any questions for our mafia mail. Make sure you email us at Bills Mafia CTO at gmail dot com. You get those written get those on the air. Yeah, so it's an exciting time. And if you are a fan of another team that you're playing the Bills and I haven't reached out to you yet, and you want to get on here and represent your team on the other sideline, reach out to me as well. BillsMaffiaCto at gmail.com and I will reach out to you and we'll get connected and see if we can work this thing out. And as always, be good, do good, God bless, and go bills.