Bowles definitely coached to win to survive. Were him and McCags on the same page? I'm not so sure about that. Bowles not reporting to McCags was/is an issue. Petty got a chance to play once McCown went down and he was terrible. To this day, I don't know how Hack never got a chance to start one game. Even if he was terrible, so was Petty. It was curious handling to say the least. Was the coach and GM on the same page?
Fast forward to today: at least by trading up McCags guaranteed himself a top 3 QB in the draft. Was it a half measure again? Could he have traded higher to 1 or 2? None of us can be sure, so we can't judge it. IF Buffalo trades up to #2, then McCags will be criticized for not trading up higher. We'll see.
Getting a top QB is the first step. Can we develop him? Do we have the right environment for a rookie QB to succeed? Again, I'm not sure about that. We have almost no talent on offense, a suspect o-line, a new offensive coordinator, a head coach that I'm not sure knows much about offense (or much else imo). We need to start adding pieces to the offense.