Utah John

As for Mahomes, he's great no doubt but look at the personnel around him. When the Bills could have picked him, they were still trying to decide whether Tyrod was the answer, so it made sense to trade back, get White, and another first this past spring. Picking Mahomes last year while Taylor was still here, and not having the cap space to upgrade the rest of the roster, would have been a disaster. For one thing, we don't make the playoffs last year without White. Second, Mahomes was OK sitting and watching a great but aging QB, and waiting his turn while learning the game. Mahomes sitting behind a mediocre QB still trying to become better would not have gone down well.

Maybe it was thrown by Peterman, aiming at Coleman. Naturally it went straight toward a guy on the other team.

He is just as good a player as he was last year, but tweedle dee and tweedle dum replacing Wood and Incognito are just not opening holes. He's a guy who needs a hole -- he doesn't create them himself. He has just as good quickness and acceleration as before on the rare occasions when he has an opening. Keep him. He's a leader.

Whatever the rule is, it should be clarified. I've been seeing a lot more plays this year when the pile is stopped but a couple of O line road graders push the whole mess forward. In some cases runners who were stopped at the 2 or 3 yard line end up scoring. It can't be fun to be in the middle of that, with both teams pushing from opposite sides.

Let's just hope the rest of his game continues to develop. He's doing OK this year, no question about it, but there's a lot of improvement needed as he goes forward. He could turn into something really special.

It's really true that a lot of Bills fans wanted the team to draft Flutie #1 overall. Absolutely true.

I taped the game but it ran really long, so I didn't tape the last 2 minutes. Looking at the play by play on line, it looks like I missed the most exciting part.

It's now up to the Jags to figure out if he's worth that much going forward. He was effectively getting $99M for having one monster season. Just not worth the money here. Not the biggest bust in Bills history but he's on the short list.

Probably not, not with KC and NE in the mix, but the Steelers are playing very well lately, so you never know.

I guess this would be West Aurora. Maybe someday he'll make it back to East Aurora. BTW Aurora University is in Aurora Illinois, 40 miles from Chicago. I had the impression it was in Nebraska, but the NE reference was due to the fact Beebe went to school there.

All this steak business aside, I have wondered how things would have turned out if the Bills had used their pick to draft Mahomes. They would have put him into our offense, with very few legitimate receivers, and a clueless offensive coordinator. This year he would have been playing behind a terrible O line. Would he have been as good as he's been in KC? Would he have been any good at all?

After cutting two players over the past few days, the Bills had open roster spots they could have used to bring Humber back. They didn't do so. Possibly he'd already made an arrangement with NE (call Mueller and see if he can find evidence of collusion here), or possibly he was pissed and didn't want to return, or just maybe the Bills concluded he wasn't as good as the younger talent they have and wasn't going to be getting any better.

That's reasonable but a lot of rookie QBs do benefit from watching instead of trying to survive. What about the other question -- do Peterman and Anderson get cut, or just Peterman?

So when Allen is healthy, (1) does he play or watch, and (2) do we go with just Allen and Barkley for the rest of the year?

Success in the NFL can be self-sustaining. Players want to win rings so up to a point they will sacrifice money to be on a great team. Players who know they're not on winning teams focus on money. The exception that provides the rule is New England, where Brady could have raped the Patriots but chose only to make a fortune and not a king's ransom. This let the Pats put more quality players around him, and he gets to be regarded as the GOAT. (The actual GOAT is either Montana or Peyton.) The Bills had this going a generation ago. Their great front office brought in real talent and a deep coaching staff had them working together. The Bills had fun, and other teams' players wanted to play with them. Then Ralph, God bless him, lost it. Fired Polian, fired Butler, brought in obscenely terrible front office people, let his Detroit-based beancounter determine whether the Bills could sign particular players, ruined the scouting staff, paid lazy guys tens of millions and let good players walk away. Now they're fighting to get back on the winner side of the hill, and it's a lot easier getting to the loser side as they're finding out. The draft is supposed to tend teams toward parity but that hardly ever works. When it does work, it's great.

E.J. Gaines is on IR due to a concussion. But he'll be back and will be a lot better than Phillip Gaines. I was never clear why we let E.J. go. We got him and a second for Sammy and a sixth. We had E.J. for a year and he did quite well. I think Beane thought Vontae Davis would be an upgrade, but that didn't work out well. It's quite possible that with E.J. the team would have a better record, but then again maybe it's tank time and losing out would be the best thing for the future.

There's no way to evaluate Peterman as a player unless he gets a normal level of talent around him. He doesn't need to have the KC offense, just an average O line and a couple of decent WRs who can both get separation and hold on to the ball. Even in last year's Chargers game, he started out OK, then DiMarco let a nice pass from Peterman bounce off his hands for a pick-six. And then the rout was on. He's probably adequate for a backup role, to an established, durable veteran on a normal-talent-level offense. He's probably in the wrong spot here. But would Jim Kelly do well with this offense? Drew Brees? Peyton Manning? Marcia Brady? The only reason Josh Allen looks better is that he's more athletic and able to run better, just like Tyrod Taylor last year (except Taylor also had Incognito and Wood in front of him).

Let me guess....you're a Raiders fan who moved to Rochester and you think stealing Lamonica wasn't enough.

If Gronk didn't get suspended for the rest of the year for launching himself at White's neck last year, you know a (a) Patriot who (b) plays offense will never be held accountable.

Keep them both. They knew the season was hopeless when both Incognito and Wood left. So they're building a strong defense. The D will lose a couple of old guys in the next year (Kyle, LoRax most likely) but the rest of the is young and aggressive. With the salary cap issues this year their hands were tied as far as getting good replacements on the O line. I think they did screw up the QB and WR situation. Still they deserve at least next year and probably the year after that.

As if there was any doubt already. They already chose to play newbie Anderson instead of Peterman. So this season is toast, as we all figured it would be based on the schedule and the departures of Incognito and Wood. The main thing to accomplish is to see how Allen develops, and even that is on hold for the time being.

Thank God Beane didn't trade away our first rounder in 2019. Chad? Jim would be better.

Name me ANY offensive coordinator who could make this offense threaten anyone. Shady is still very good but is not a guy who can open holes on his own. He really misses Wood and Incognito. The Bills have no other offensive threats. None. No WRs fast enough to stretch the field. No TEs other teams even bother to cover. A patchwork O line. And QBs who are downgrades from a rookie who's lucky to break 100 passing yards in a game.

I said before the season, and I'll say it again. It doesn't matter who plays QB if they don't fix the O line. With the exception of Peterman, who's a walking disaster. In his case it doesn't matter how good the O line is. Face it, the O line we see is the O line we're gonna have all year, unless someone gets hurt and then it will get worse. The WRs we see are the WRs we're gonna have all year, with the exception of Kelvin Benjamin who will be cut, traded (good luck with that) or IR'd for some imaginary injury. The good and also improving defense will all be back next year, except probably for Kyle Williams who at some point will hang them up. WRs are fairly easy to find and plug into the system. Interior O line players have a lot to learn but it does happen a lot that rookies come in and perform. I'm optimistic about next year. This year, let Allen play and learn as much as he can. People were suggesting trading Shady for a variety of reasons, and all we'd likely get for a 30 year old RB would be a 4th. That's what Fitz would cost. Would anyone seriously propose trading Shady for Fitz? Come on.

This season was over when Wood and Incognito both left, and the steps Beane took to replace them were too little to take seriously.