Hapless Bills Fan

Yes, the Chiefs were another startling omission. (Assume you mean Hardman)

Seems like a good place to put this ....there has been "radio silence" about UDFA from the Bills. Brandon Beane explained why on OBL today https://buffalonews.com/sports/bills/bills-await-roster-clarification-from-nfl-before-announcing-class-of-rookie-undrafted-free-agents/article_fa545756-add1-11eb-8410-6fc328f6be7c.html

I actually wanted the Bills to find and sign players named "Howe" and "Dewey" to sign, so we could have Dewey Basham and Howe

Surely we should esteem your opinion and elevate it in our regard over the judgement of Beane and his team of professional talent evaluators who drafted him in Rd 6. I keed, I keed. It's actually a safe prediction because only about 1 in 5 (or less) 6th round picks stick in the NFL, but if there's one position more than another where I think the Bills FO judgement is sound, that position would be DB.

@BringBackFergy : you're an utta bahstahd

All props to Josh Allen, but the Bills weren't #3 in passing yards because he threw the ball to himself! He had some damned fine receivers. Buffalo Fanatics has it right: you have to be a legit idiot to make a list of 8 teams and leave the Bills off. I Can't Even.

Meaning no offense but is that known for sure?

Yes, his father passed away from congestive heart failure age 39, when Stefon was 14. He said he wanted to be closer to his two younger brothers. When you hear various stuff that's come up in his personal life it's pretty clear that he considers becoming a father-figure to his younger siblings to have had a big influence on him. He's a complex person. A deeper personality than some of the typical "Diva" WR dudes. I don't know but his bio on Wiki says he had scholarship offers from Florida, USC, Cal, Ohio State, and Auburn among others.

Every time I read the Subject: of this thread I think of Rogers as a pig with laryngitis and GB packers cap

This. Lays down the message that he's good enough to win with, until he isn't.

I have no opinion on this guy, but don't we kind of have a gap at backup safety since Dean Marlowe moved on in FA?

If you look at games from 2019, I think there was a lot less of Feliciano getting dumped on his butt or beaten. So it's just possible that being able to train in the off-season vs. recovering from surgery, and being able to be at full strength vs recovering from a torn pec, makes a difference You know, at some point when a guy doesn't succeed at one position, you gotta stop seeing where maybe he'd work out better and just move the ***** on. Don't get me wrong, I hope Ford works out at guard. But he's had his shot at RT and he's gonna get his shot at Guard and do we really want to stake The Franchise on passing him off to Center?

Oh well hey now. That was Then, this is Now. Guys are allowed to improve. I understand being a Bates skeptic, but I don't see how you can critique the drive where he played center against NE. He did well. IMHO the major reason Feliciano moved over to C was that as soon as Morse went out, Feliciano went from "snap count" to "whole game" and center was easier on him, Bates did that well. In 2019, he was a raw rookie seeing the field on offense for the first time at LT (2nd time ever he took significant snaps) with a pretty ineffective QB behind him. How about this year vs. Seattle or Miami? Did you notice? vs Seattle, the announcers were all "oh, the Bills are playing with 3 backup OLmen" at one point, as we were perambulating the football down the field, so they actually didn't. That's a good thing.

Good response. I'm not an OL guru but it's an area I pay a lot of attention to. While I have your attention tell me what you know about Jamil Douglas? I don't know if Lamp was high on the Bills board, but given they fired Whaley and all the scouts right after the draft, I'm not sure how much difference it makes? I think he has talent and in fact he's part of the case I made for why Beane has done more with the OL than people think, in a different thread. I'll be capitol-letters LAMP and link it: Feliciano certainly whiffed and blew blocks in the run game last season, no argument there. Whiffed and blew blocks in the passing game too. What neither of us know is how much the Bills personnel assessment is of the role injuries played. Same with Ford, although with him, when Beane says "he's played more games injured than healthy" as sort of an explanation for his disappointing performance, one thing I hear is "so can he stay healthy?" I feel both Feliciano and Ford have the "benefit of the doubt" but I also feel that Beane is planning to have a healthy amount of competition at the guard position and the message has been thrown down 'get 'er done or sit down'

That's where I got to on the Ravens. Also concerned about their situation on OL esp at Center. They arguably lost or almost lost some games on C-QB exchange last season. They let Skura move on in FA. Not clear Mekari is ready to replace him full time and who else they got? Haven't heard any buzz about Ben Cleveland being a possible C. I'd feel better about them if they'd managed to draft Creed Humphry who, BTW, we could have benefited by drafting IMHO (but if Basham Boogies at QB pressure, Come Home Beane, All is Forgiven). The one thing I'll say is that if any team can develop Oweh to contribute this season, that team would be the Ravens. Ngakoue was a 50-70% of the snaps guy for them last year and contributed 3 sacks, 3 QB hits, and 2 TFL during the season. IMHO their big loss is Judon. That said they've had a top-10 defense since 2015 and almost every year since 2008 before that. And they've shown they're not afraid to make aggressive trades during the season if their D isn't getting 'er done. But, it ultimately does come down to Lamar and whether the Ravens can get more from the passing game.

Kudos for the effort - Thanks! IMHO preseason NFL power rankings are right up there with immediately-after-the-draft grades But folks do enjoy them, and it is gratifying to see the Bills mentioned!! Been a while! To give Stefanski due credit, he has apparently done a lot to turn that culture around and without doing the wholesale "throw the guys off the bus, bring in new guys" technique McDermott and Beane employed

I don't want to argue "more athletic and stronger" at this point (don't bet the rent money Lamp against Boettger though) but keep in mind that after playing 16 games at LG, the Chargers let him walk and he wound up signing a contract for vet minimum with very little guaranteed, one month into FA. Ask yourself why is that, if he's more athletic and stronger than any of the guys he's competing with on a decidedly average interior OL and such a great pass blocker? That's your opinion, but whether it's Bobby Johnson's opinion or Brandon Beane's opinion is TBD. I don't think they agree with you - though the reason they brought him in is that every season is a new year and they're hedging their bets in case their expectations for Ford and Feliciano are not fulfilled. BTW what's Lamp's history playing elsewhere than LG? I agree with you that the Bills will not let $$ stop them from making playing or roster decisions based on skill. So it's inconsequential to the discussion of who is the best during the season, but it probably reflects the team's current perception of value going into the season, wouldn't you agree? Agree that is my hope. I have to say that his run blocking last year was not good, but perhaps he was fighting through hampering injuries. In which case his injury history is a concern. Disagree. When used in the run game according to his skill set, Morse is an excellent run blocker. I love me some Mongo, but No on both points. I thought he showed better in 2019 than this past season, so perhaps injuries hampered him, but he's not a better center than Morse and some of his blocking (both pass and run) last season was best described as "porous". Some of his shotgun snaps left me saying "it's a good thing our QB is 6'5" with long arms" People don't realize that Feliciano staying an extra game at C once Morse returned may have had as much to do with Feliciano as with Morse once Ford went out for the season (he's said that C was easier for him to play than G with the injury)

Perhaps I missed something, but doesn't Rodgers have a no-trade clause? I have a vision of Beane's contract negotiations with Allen and his representatives: Allen: "Want a no trade clause in the contract. Feel strongly." Beane: "I can appreciate that, but from the team side, look at the problem created when guys like Watson and Rodgers become loudly and publicly dissatisfied, but that no trade clause hamstrings the team from moving on" Allen: "OK, you can put a second clause in there if I ever become a whiny little b--- trashing the team in public, the no-trade clause is off"

I'm pretty much aligned with the notion the Browns probably gained ground. I just go here: People like to treat the NFL like a transitive property, A>B and B>C so A>C. It doesn't work that way. I've been looking at the Ravens off-season and wondering just how much they lost. On the one hand, they lost a couple good players off their offensive line, Fluker, Skura, and Orlando Brown by trade. On the other hand, they signed Villanueva from Pitt and G Zeitler from the Giants and drafted a guard in the 3rd. On the third hand, is that enough? They had OL problems last season and their run-centric offense is critically dependent upon that. Center is IMO their big Q. They had ?? behind Marquise Brown and they theoretically improved their WR significantly with Watkins and their 1st round pick Bateman The big losses appear to be Matt Judon to NE and Ngakoue to LV. On the other hand, Harbaugh is IMO a very sound defensive coach and they've had a strong defense for a very long time in part because they are good at developing depth, so one has to think they have a plan beyond drafting Oweh.

Yeah, I was PM'ing about vaccines with a chap and the question came up, how will the NFLPA feel about this? On the one hand, if two backup or practice squad players have roughly equal skill or potential but one player contributes to the team easing covid-19 restrictions while another player does not, the former guy is clearly more valuable to the team. On the other hand, it arguably skirts pretty close to the team requiring vaccines as a condition of employment, which the NFL and NFLPA agreed would not occur. On the gripping hand, if the NFL says over a certain % vaccinated restrictions on in-person meetings, weight facility use, and other stuff can be eased, that's a pretty clear competitive advantage. I'm sure all 32 GMs feel the same way as Beane expressed, but I agree, it might have been wiser to side step. Beane is a straight shooter though.

If you go to spotrac and look at the contracts of players whose 5th year options were exercised but who signed new extensions, you will see that their cap hit is uniformly less than their 5th year option. Tre White would be an example on the Bills. It's not a misconception. When a player signs an extension, the terms of the extension will dictate when it takes place. For example, Poyer signed an extension when he was under contract for a year, and the extension superceded the contract and got him paid more money immediately. Same thing when Shady McCoy was traded to us.

The Chroisen One! The swimming contest between Kyle Williams and Marshawn Lynch was just classic.

Do we have any clue what happened to him in My Yami? Piss in Chan's Wheaties or something?

Just a point here, that there's a lot of space between "Browns will stay in the basement forever" and saying that they are now ahead of the Bills in the AFC. They may be, they may not be - they made a lot more offseason moves because they had more ground to gain IMO.