Thurman#1

Fair enough about AJ Brown and the Eagles. Good catch. Thanks for pointing out my mistake, I sincerely appreciate it. But even accounting for that, the Eagles are still not all that different from the Bills since 2017. And no, you absolutely do NOT have to compare the decisions teams made despite already having talent at WR. That evens out over long periods of time. They draft someone high, then they're not as likely to do so for a while. After they haven't, then they will tend to do that. That all evens out over time. Yeah, the Bills waited till they got rid of Diggs. But that came early and unexpected. When they still had him, they well should have felt more comfortable. But again, last year the Bills had Diggs, and they still picked Kincaid. Might they not have picked Keon if they still had Diggs? Yeah, maybe, who knows. The somewhat nutty idea I was replying to was that "They should have been drafting one in almost every draft in days 1 and 2." And no, that's nuts, nobody does that. All of your exceptions there, I believe, are accounted for since 2017. The need goes up and down for everybody.

Except for the Bills, those are all one game samples, except for SF which was two. Not large enough to be at all significant. More, all but one of those games were KC wins. If there's one thing we know about them it's that when they're behind, especially in the playoffs, they come on and tend to score a lot, and when ahead or not worried, they just aren't as sharp. The KC offense did what they had to do, in all those games except the loss to the Bengals The Bills offense when hitting on all cylinders has forced the Chiefs offense to rise to the challenge in a way that those other teams just haven't, again with the exception of the game the Bengals won, and honestly it just looked to me like the Bengals D played really well, but at the same time they benefitted with Mahomes just NOT playing well. YPP is to a very large extent just a factor of how much a team runs. It's also wildly variant depending on how many or few big plays they get; now over a season that'll even out, but over just one or two or three games if one DB falls down on one play, the YPP can jump up an amount that for YPP is a LOT. YPP just doesn't say much when looking such small samples. There's a real question whether it says much of anything, really, beyond whether a team is running more or throwing more. Again, the Bills D hasn't done well against the Chiefs in the playoffs, although last year they really weren't too bad. I'm not arguing they've been good against KC. But the whole "Bills D sucks in the playoffs" thing just isn't true. Except against KC the Bills D has been quite good. And not a lot of defenses HAVE done well against KC in the playoffs ... that's kind of a lot of the reason they've won so many Super Bowls recently.

It's a fact, but at the same time, it is spin, as in spinning like a dreidel. You used THREE, not one but three separate weasel words there attempting to unreasonably narrow consideration so as to gerrymander out times the Bills have done exactly this: 1) Yeah, if you say "WR draft pick" you can pretend that the Bills didn't trade for Diggs using a pick like that. 2) Yeah, if you say, "WR" you can pretend that the Bills didn't use a 1st rounder on Kincaid, who seems like he's going to be a terrific weapon. 3) Yeah, if you say "for Brandon Beane," you can ignore the #2 that this McDermott brain trust used to bring in Zay Jones Since 2017 we've been very much in line with those other teams the guy I was replying to mentioned. And it's absolute nonsense that they "have failed at trying to surround Josh with elite weapons," nonsense. Diggs was an elite weapon. Kincaid may well be one. And pretending that "Dotson" should be considered an "elite weapon," I mean, dude, please. Yeah, every team has not "stopped trying to acquire weapons." Well, yeah. Neither have we. If Dotson is going to be used as your example of bringing in a weapon, then the Bills have done an absolute ton of that over the years. Samuel, Cook, Shakir, Davis and Knox are all weapons if you're using Dotson as an example.

Yeah, this. When you've got Diggs on the team, spending a mid-rounder on Shakir to develop him seems like plenty. Then he's suddenly gone and you wish you'd known because you might have grabbed some earlier guys as well. Hole in his backside? I've got one of those myself. Anyway, yeah, agreed, but I think he could be a really good guy playing a lot inside. Guess I just wasn't watching there close enough.

Hunh, that Dotson trade is a bit perplexing. I thought they still liked him in D.C. They must not, or at least not so much. Hmm.

Sorry, I'd only half-constructed the post. Take another look.

Um, what? No, that's nonsense. You know, but apparently most everyone else is dumb enough to think so? Please. Everyone knows this. 40 time is a much smaller factor in separation than the ability to cut and be explosive. And it ain't only a few who know it.

Yup.

Alpha, no. Separation isn't mostly a 40 thing. It's much more an explosion, athleticism and ability to cut hard and run routes thing. Route-running, college play design, and smaller guys tend to separate better ... there's a ton to it. And a ton of the concern about separation is a Bills-specific thing, because this group has brought in guys the last few years based greatly on separation. We learned to expect them to do so, and to judge guys based on that. The Bills have plainly decided on a change of direction, probably greatly affected by the way the Chiefs in the playoffs just assumed correctly there wouldn't be flags thrown and just grabbed the hell out of our separators. In college Keon got good separation on some routes and not others. He's really good at separating on stop routes for instance.

Again, our defense has been damn good in the playoffs when not playing the Chiefs. And who in this period has been good against the Chiefs offense? Or the Bills offense for that matter? Unfortunately, the Chiefs comparatively healthy D last year finally did a pretty good job against our offense at the same time that our deeply and comprehensively injured D finally did a pretty good job against the Chiefs, but not good enough. Our OL was better than the Chiefs last year, and not by a little. They had tackle issues most of the year. If healthy they could take a major jump up again, but we'll have to see. The whole "quietly got better" at WR thing for us this year? No, you're dead right on that. It's wishful thinking. They could well be a solid group though, particularly when you throw in Kincaid and give the young guys time to develop early in the season, but they're building. It's what happens when changing situations make jettisoning a guy like Diggs your best option. Yeah, the Chiefs will be competing for a threepeat this year. So will we. They have a better shot than us, no question, but we're still in there competing with a legit chance. They did it last year by working hard on their D in a year when their O had problems.

Nah. Not so. You said, "They should have been drafting one in almost every draft in days 1 and 2," and actually nobody does that. The Bills have used a first (Diggs) and traded another 1st back to a very early second (Keon) and a 2nd for Zay Jones in 2017. The Chiefs used a 1st in 2019 for Mecole, a 1st for Worthy this year and a 2nd for Skyy Moore in 2022, and that also goes all the way back to 2017. Pretending those are more than very slightly different is flat-out ridiculous. The Bengals used a 2024 3rd for Jermaine Burton, a 2021 1st for Chase, a 2020 2nd for Higgins and a 2017 1st for John Ross. That's a difference, basically, of one 3rd rounder more, in eight years of drafting. The difference is that they sucked and so had a 5 pick to use on Chase. #5s are more likely to be dominant than the late rounders. The Eagles? A 1st in 2021 (DeVonta) and 2020 (Raegor), a 3rd in 2019 (Arcega-Whiteside). That's it since 2017. Again, extremely comparable to the Bills. 9ers? A 2024 1st in Pearsall, a 2023 3rd (Danny Gray), a 2020 1st in Aiyuk and a 2019 2nd in Deebo and 3rd in Jalen Hurd. And a 2018 2nd in Dante Pettis. That's more than the Bills. The Bills thought they had Diggs again this year. When they didn't, guess what, they targeted an early WR. This is how teams work, they look at what they need, and they hope for needs to meet what's available when they pick, and sometimes that happens and sometimes it doesn't. When you only look at two or three years you're deeply bending what you're looking at, because of a low sample size.

Top 15 pick? Jeez. Possible, but very unlikely IMO. Again, Vegas has us as 6th and 7th favorites depending on the outlets. 9-8 is a bit more likely but still significantly against the odds, says me. And, as I mentioned, Vegas. 20% chance, maybe? 30%? Could happen, especially with many more injuries and especially if Allen is one of them. But that's significantly pessimistic, I think, Ja.

Yup, precisely, Augie.

Yup. It's arguably the historically most common way to win a title, very very good defense, and an elite/near-elite QB making an offensive unit better than the pre-season roster looks like it can. Been said a million times so far, and that's only in this thread, but that right there is the story of the 2023 Super Bowl-winning Kansas City Chiefs. Brady also needs to be very good, I think you're dead right here.

That's interesting. I hadn't really noticed that. Good thoughts.

They are. Pretty sure if SVPG was playing terrific, he'd replace McGovern and it wouldn't take long. Plans aren't things that don't account for possible changes based on situations evolving or results being different than expected.

Polite disagreement. It could go both ways, particularly with those two guys, Shakir and Kincaid. Both are very young and could easily take big leaps this season. It's not a sure thing, but particularly with Kincaid it seems pretty likely. Having Allen will help, quite clearly. But maybe having Kincaid and Shakir will help Allen a lot too.

Please. The effect seems to have been what happens moving from a decent head coach who had a defensive background to a pretty good head coach with an offensive background. And the result is going from 5-11 to 10-6 to 9-8 to 9-8 (lose in the first round) to 11-6 (lose in the first round). Should we go over what happened when the Pats moved from an offensive HC (Carroll) to a defensive head coach?

Yeah. Whereas other teams never have any problems or setbacks. More, what you've got there is a severe pessimist's view of the Bills history. Just as reasonable to say that we've been one of the absolute best teams in football the past four years or so, who if not for the Chiefs would probably have a Lombardi or two over the stretch.

I've gotta say, I see doom and gloom. But I also see plenty of rainbows and moonbeams and an awful lot of what I guess I'd call hopeful realism as well. There's room for some gloom, as well as doom. We aren't quite as good a roster this year as we were last, without Diggs and Morse and yadda yadda. That's the most reasonable take. Plenty of room for optimism too, though. Vegas has us in the top six or seven teams despite that, simply because we show every sign of being a serious contender once again. Well, yeah, this also.

Stretched parameters? That's nonsense. I mean, like pig manure type of nonsense. Utter and complete. In fact, "The parameters used to draw comparisons between the passing game weapons the Bills currently possess and those that the Chiefs took into 2023 are" extremely damn reasonable. Can every team make a similar claim? No. Pretty much every team has a WR room every bit as good as the Chiefs did. Or better. They were a functional group with some rookies and very young guys who had a chance to develop and show out but hadn't done so yet. Most teams, nearly every team, can match that WR room without any stretch whatsoever. Not every team has a Kelce, even an aging one likely to take a significant decline. Not every team does. But we have Kincaid and he shows very likely to be that good. You say, "I mean in 2022 MVS literally had more receiving yards than any of Kincaid, Shakir or Samuel did last season," is obviously spin, and not particularly good spin. It's tne same weak sauce so many have tried. Curtis Samuel has had four years when he was better than that year for MVS or about as good (627, 851, 656 and 613 compared to MVS's 2022 687). Samuel's best year in receiving yards was significantly better than MVS's best, 815 to 690. Yeah, it's true that that year from MVS he was more productive than all three of Kincaid, Shakir or Samuel. That's true. MVS had 687, Shakir had 611 and Samuel's best year is significantly better than MVS's, better by more than MVS's 2022 season you're referring to was better than Kincaid's and Shakir's last season. I can't blame you for the immensely weak arguments you're using here. They're all that's available for people making the dumb argument you're trying to make. That's the problem you have, you're making a dumb argument. It's not your fault there's such little and weak factual evidence to support that dumb argument. What's dumb is looking at that utter lack of genuinely strong arguments and still trying to make the case. As for Kelce, yeah, his 2022 season was damn good, but he'd turned 33 during that season, and was set to turn 34 the next. He absolutely looked like he was due for a regression. His last seven games that season he was significantly less productive. Project his production from the first ten games of '22 into a whole season and you get a fantastic looking season. 855 yards and 11 TDs in ten games which extrapolates into a 17 game season of 1453 yards and 18.7 TDs. Insane. But ... in the last seven games his production, 483 yards and 1 touchdown in seven games (and that one came in game 11, none after that) projects out to 60.8 yards and 0.14 TDs per game and over a full season would have amounted to 1173 yards and 2.4 touchdowns. That's still good, but it's a major regression. And they hadn't cut his snap percentage or anything. He just watched his production take a major drop. Not to mention he'd be a year older the next year. Again, first ten games extrapolated to a 1453 yard, 18.7 TD season, while the last seven games calculates out to 1173 yards and 24 TDs. His decline had already begun, and it would accelerate. Still a good player even at that lower level, but he absolutely looked like they were going to start using him less in 2023 and that his age 34 season was probably going to show even more downside. This was anything but unpredictable. Our pre-season weapons compare very well with the out look for KC's 2023 preseason. Yeah, they had Pat Mahomes. But we have Josh Allen.

What you've got there are guys who are far too expensive for us or guys whose teams will not give them up (Jameson Williams? Really? You're better than this.) Funny, that's what all the other threads suggested too. Believe it or not, people have thought of re-working Josh's contract before. The Bills do not want to do that, because it turns their foreseeable future into more and more and more cap frustration, every season into a new one like this year. Dig in, bear the pain this year and watch the team be in reasonable cap shape going forward. There are guys we can get. But they are likely to be the types you folks don't want. They'll be affordable, available and realistic ... they're not going to set imaginations on fire.

Absolutely not. Not even a question. Yup. Nuts, hunh?

Couldn't or wouldn't or didn't? And no, we really won't know that. We'll have some more info that could help us make better more educated attempts at understanding, but there'll likely still be a ton of unclarity still left. If he does really well this year, it could mean that he was dogging it for us. Or that the new OC didn't use him as well. Or that Allen wasn't throwing to him .... it'll only mean that he does well this year despite not doing so well the year before. This happens plenty in the NFL.

That's certainly within the range of reasonable possibility. Anywhere between probably 450 to 1050 yards are reasonable guesses at this point. Too early to know how they'll use him, how much he'll improve as the season proceeds, how many targets he'll get ... or too much of anything, really. My guess i he doesn't reach Rice's numbers but isn't all that far behind, myself. Hang on to your hat for this shocking prediction as well, I guess he starts somewhat slowly and improves as the season goes along. Nuts, I know, right?