JESSEFEFFER

I was thinking the same. Maybe he should shop for a new team to follow. One with a fully developed QB whose teams never win much. Stafford, Ryan, Rivers types who are good enough to get their coaches fired every couple of years.

There are some parallels between their 2nd year progressions. Following a close playoff loss, heading into the all important 3rd year and needing to demonstrate a higher level of QB play. I might argue that Josh having a Trubisky like 3rd year would be the worst possible outcome for the 2020 season. The Bills franchise in a return to QB purgatory puts everything else at risk. The one big difference is that Josh has shown that he can do more to help his team win while he is putting his overall game together.

As a general observation, the quality of the defenses they face in 2020 is about the same based on last year's DVOA rankings. There is a 1 for 1 swap in similar team defenses. SF for Bal, LAR for Phi, Sea for Dal, LAC for Cle, Ari for Was, Oak for Cin, Pit, Ten and Den remain. It was the D that had the easier time with last year's schedule and will face a tougher one this year. They faced a handful of QBs soon to be replaced. I think the offense needs to score 400+ points to get 10+ wins and they are primed to do just that. All this is to say that the schedule for 2020 does not seem so daunting to me and they should be the AFCE team best equipped to handle it.

Well they are paying for those picks in the sense that they are overstocked on FA signings and whatever bonuses were paid to sign them make a cap hit, although minimal by NFL standards, when they are traded. Teams with little cap space should be very reluctant to play the game that way.

I am asking you to elaborate on this lest I get the wrong idea. I read controversial, often to the point of poor outcomes as opposed to say, inspirational or influential. Sometimes those latter types can be polarizing too because they ruffle the feathers of those who do not care about their jobs as much. Using the fruit of the tree analogy, I would say Franklin must be or have been a decent dad. Polarize is to force a something or someone to go in only one direction, or to cause people to divide into two very distinct groups.

I love the enthusiasm of veteran players that know what it is to win but are leaving a less than ideal situation in their more recent past. I think they bring a good message to the younger players. If you appreciate what you have you will do what you can to protect it. Part of the culture thing.

I can see why Beane was so anxious that he was willing to proactively trade up to prevent some other team from doing so. Gipson is more of a gadget RB/WR that doesn't run between the tackles and is more WR we were told. He is pretty tall to be a between the tackles runner. The other two taken, Dillon and Vaughn, are lesser talents at this time. Moss has shown much more as an all-around player. If we had the typical war room video of the draft, I bet we would have seen lots of smiles, high fives and back slaps after pick #85 was made. Lucky indeed.

I had laughed at the video before. It's a ++++ with the play by play.

It really is (lucky? a head scratcher? puzzling?) how the Bills got him as RB#9 in the draft. I did not pay much attention to him prior to the draft because he was not a top 5 guy anywhere I looked and I wanted a top guy but he was worthy of more scrutiny. Most had him at 6. He is my kind of runner. I liked Robb Riddick in his day and James Conner coming out of Pitt. Very physical, underappreciated runners that challenge a defense in every way except with elite speed which tends not to matter very often. I think he can do more than Devin which is great if true and having the two of them should give OC Daboll more versatility with the running back position than he has ever had before. Rotor and Motor. With all the extra time on our hands, I recommend watching some of his college games. Just watch how he grinds play after play. Very few times is he stuffed. He had a 1 yard TD run (UCLA?) where he beat three tacklers in succession. He has a great spin move ala Texas Twister Kenny Davis that is a very effective ankle breaker. There are a number of PAC-12 DBs that should be happy to see him move on to the NFL.

I did not read all the posts in this thread but a search of "big nickel" came up empty. Not one post with this answer. But, we are to believe that the Bills had it assessed as enough of a priority to be willing to move up from #54 to get Dugger, a 24 year old, DII safety with a recent injury history? It makes no sense to me.

If we are to assume that the " big nickel" position was such a priority to them that they would be willing to trade up from 54 in an attempt to fill it with an athlete who is much older at 24, played a much different position and at the much inferior DII level, why wouldn't they, after havng missed out on said player, have identified other candidates for that supposedly prioritized position and taken one somewhere later in the draft? And why wasn't Santiago packed?

YouTube has plenty of his games. Not just highlights but all his plays. He adds consistent production down by down. Very few run stuffs. Keep in mind he was RB9 of the draft. I think we will like him. On this video he talks about how reads the defense post snap. Very interesting.

I can't see the ball in the video clip but the official is seen giving the tipped ball signal. The Steeler DL is celebrating with a teammate. Expecting on target throws when the ball is tipped or the QB"s arm is is hit is beyond silly. Using that as some kind of proof of anything is sloppy work. But, alas, that's how many think.

Football mythology, I agree. In all the times Josh has run, and we have easy access to review all of them, how many have ended with a bad or awkward hit? I'd say less than 5. Now how many bad hits has he suffered in the pocket? Many more including the only one that has caused him to miss time. That's my answer. I have more concerns about a lower body injury from the huge, fast moving bodies associated with a collapsing pocket.

Jehuu played HS ball at Clymer which is in Chautauqua county and about 70 miles from New Era. They won NYSPHSAA Class D championships with him and at 230+ you can imagine him trucking players at the smallest classification of NYS high school football. I think he averaged over 10 ypc. He played his college ball at Michigan State and he did well there, especially as a short yardage specialist. His one carry for the Bills got a first down, I think. His back story is way more interesting than his NFL career. He and his family were refugees of a civil war in Liberia which claimed the life of his father. He coached at Southwestern HS near Jamestown where he had some nice teams but last year he resigned to work for NFL Xenith.

No reason why both can't be true. No one actually spends that much to trade for a player that is not "a position of need." But I could believe that AJ and Zack were both positions of need, as most fans knew, and BPA at the same time. The Bills were very fortunate. Epenesa falling to them and getting Zack as RB#9 of the draft would have been improbable singular events going in.

Titans game: Bills win by 7. Two missed kicks were 50+ and one was blocked. The Bills ate the last 4 minutes of the game on a 50 yard drive. Titans needed the ball back and the Bills took it to their red zone, ran the last 9 plays of the game and were content to end it there. The Bills outgained the Jets by 150 yards. It took some flukey turnovers to keep it close. I think the Bills deseved/earned these wins.

I think being 24 is a big deal especially for a team that took 19 year old Edmunds. Then there's the competition. A 24 year old man playing against the 19 to 21 year olds at the DII level doesn't project well to the NFL. Then there's the " he doesnt do on tape what he will be asked to do in the NFL." It's the triple whammy of cause for doubt.

Jehuu Caulcrick. Boom! Time to go home now.

Interesting. I did not get "raw." I thought refined which is pretty much the opposite. Maybe raw in the run game but with refined pass rush skills? Anyways, the best analogy I can think of is Greg Maddux (holy crap he's 54 now--man I'm getting old.) His 355 career wins and 3300+ strikeouts came without having a power arm. But he had outstanding control, pitched with a plan for every batter he faced and had a variety of great pitches at his disposal. Just not a plus fastball. I sort of thought of AJ that way after watching this video. Lacking an elite fastball he has a repertoire of pass rush moves, especially with his hands, to execute a plan. He is raw as in he has much to learn and develop, possibly with his eyes as you say, but it seems like he has some refined skills as well that help him create impact plays. I was dreading the Chris Kelsay analogy I'd been hearing. Great, all we need is the next whipping boy of Bills Fandom for whenever Trent Murphy leaves. This video made me think he could be much more.

Erik Turner's work is generally great but this is even a notch above. It breaks down how he wins. I like him as a Bill even more. I searched Cover1 and didn't see it posted elsewhere. Cover1: How AJ Epenesa Generates Pass Rush

This trade that did not happen is just as interesting, imo. He was fairly certain that the teams immediately ahead of him were out of the RB market but with 8 RBs off the board already he was probably really anxious about somebody jumping ahead of the Bills (a draft day disaster in his mind?) to get Moss and wanted to prevent that from happening. Enough so as to give up a later round pick to avoid the disaster . I'd love to know where they had him in their rankings. They wanted a downhill, physical back and Moss was not only the best left but maybe the last that they had any interest in during the top half of the draft. Kind of weird that he was the 9th taken. I think DCOrange nailed it. Moss in the 3rd was what the Bills were hoping for and it almost didn't happen as three others went in the round ahead of him and Beane was probably edging toward the freaking out stage.

I don't think his guess is a good one. He was picked too far away from where the Bills had their pick to fit the story, #109 vs. #128. He was just very sure that the Bills were really interested in him.

Hah! Easy. Colonel Mustard in the conservatory with a lead pipe!

Talking about QB decision making and OC playcalling, I see it this way. Both just got "smarter" because of Diggs. Go from the 2018 situation where few players win on their routes to 2020 where they are winning at all levels. There are fewer bad places to go with the ball and plays that fail.