brianthomas

truly is a long offseason lol

i get the sentiment but you dont need to tank to get a talented wr. As evidenced by the wr's available in the past 2 drafts we could've taken where we drafted. Christian Watson or George Pickens last year. Elijah Moore, Rondale Moore, Amon-Ra St Brown the year prior. Sure its not Jamarr Chase but not many are. But it takes proper player evaluation & drafting these guys too. Saying its due to us being too good just seems like a misdirection or an excuse, for any position group, because there are & have been talented players out there available for us to choose. You just have to pick the 'right' ones i guess.

I know here in Buffalo for decades i've heard of the need for a new & larger convention center & the economic boon to the city we'd get if larger conventions could be held here. I'm no engineer or developmental planner but integrating the 2 concepts together could've been a wonderful opportunity. Isn't that what they did with the AT&T Stadium in Dallas? They use it to bring in big events during the off-season which in-turn brings in millions in revenue each year? Not just to the stadium itself, but to all the local hotels & businesses now booked due to the influx of visitors? What a great idea or concept! Wish we would've thought of it. Its just 1 example of the contrast between smart forward thinking planning & whatever we had.

Not useless but narrow in its focus or in its vision. Banks are collapsing, taxpayer dollars are a valuable commodity. It'd be nice to try to maximize that investment & benefit to the community at large & not just to a franchise. Sure we as fans can say we benefit because the team is here, maybe a handful of bars along the way do too. But financially we're the customers buying their BILLS product. So we're using tax payer dollars just for the right to be customers. I think its fair that some people have an opinion on where their money goes & i think many would just have preferred we set the bar a little higher with our plan if we were going to spend this much. For the cost & after decades of debating alternate stadium locations & their potential impacts to our region, in the end we went with a smaller version of the same thing right next to the old one. Maybe some people just dont understand or care but it just seems like a failure of imagination & a colossal missed opportunity for an area lacking much of either. It just makes sense you dont spend close to $2 billion on a building you only use 10 times a year... in an area thats not known for its great economy. I mean that makes sense right? I think for many thats what it comes down to.

smart move. He's a very valuable depth piece to our defense. We call on him a lot & he holds his own. Being curious i looked up his snap counts, 82% last year? Number is more than I would've thought

the dream is over i guess

hey at least they're making a concerted effort to attempt to address the issue. For instance Orlando Brown & Cody Ford > Connor McGovern. With the oline being so important, you'd like to add at least 1 'good' starter to the line every year. I set the bar pretty low since even 1 has been a hard target for us to reach.

Yeah, these are just guys their former teams decided weren't worth holding on to. To us they're new faces & names, but they're just replacing players of ours we're moving on from too. At this point theres really no reason to be excited at all, other than that a few names & faces have changed. Just like previous offseasons, we all get excited at the new toys... then we see how they play. We just gotta hope these guys replacing the old guys are an upgrade i guess? Because not much has changed. GO BILLS

i'm taken back by his name change. Is he Deonte Harris or Deonte Harty? And what are the implications of a player who cant even decide on what last name to use? What hope do we have on the field when he's deciding on which way to run? Not a good look lol i joke around but after seeing Beane attempt to address the slot position MULTIPLE times last year... i hope he's finally found "the one" this time. I do think a taller wr would be a better match for Josh but lets see how it looks on the field before its an issue. GO BILLS

For the BILLS i dont think it matters much who the RB is but Jamaal could work. I get the appeal of the bigger names but prioritizing the o-line would be where i'd spend if i were gm. Teams like the Chiefs or Eagles or heck, any team with a good offensive line, all seem to be able to plug & play rb's & have success. A King Henry would be great but could we even block for him? The game is won & lost in the trenches & it all starts there, so thats where i would too. And not just depth guys but seriously attempt to build the best o-line in football. Which also has an added benefit of protecting your highest paid player on the team, Josh Allen. Who when given the time can carve a defense up. You couldn't do it in 1 offseason but with a plan in place to build the line piece by piece... over a few years you figure you should be on your way, no?

Idk, we knew what we had didn't we? Thats why we paid them back then & thought of them as the best safety tandem in the league right? The 2 of them worked together like hand in glove & you didnt have to worry about much when they were out there together on the field. Surely a dropoff was to be expected when you lose 1 or both of them? But them being gone last season is part of the reasoning to move on. Availability is the best ability & Hyde was out the whole year injured & Poyer missed another 4 weeks. Their availability as they age will not improve... it likely should only get worse. Spending top dollar on 2 safeties past 30 isn't my ideal way to allocate limited resources. All that being said i'd like 1 more year to run it back if Poyer would take it, since on the surface we're so close to the SB & have many other positions to focus on. Otherwise i say move on

was hoping your thread was about Matakevich & you didn't disappoint! Thank you

Its an interesting conundrum in that on 1 hand our team has gone from nope to hope under his time with us & his Defense has consistently been ranked near the top. So you gotta give the guy credit regardless of anything else imho. However if you had to pick 1 teams defense to play in a big game or get that big stop, you wouldn't pick ours, at least I wouldnt. So you want changes but not too many. But you make a compelling point in that its been 6 years & the issues we're facing today are almost existential & similar to what a new coach would be walking into with so many question marks everywhere. We're talking about revamping our entire dline... again, new MLB, new safeties, moving cbs to safety, new coordinator. All things you wouldn't really expect in year 6 of a superbowl run. Dont even get me started on the offense lol. But it has to be seen as an indictment of past decisions gone wrong. Much has been said about the draft picks on both sides of the ball & the lack of production gained from those guys. Those misses place more of an emphasis & burden on Allen. For not just what he has to do out there, but like as you said: how lucky we are that he turned into the Josh named Allen & not Rosen, because then we'd be more like the Jets these past few years instead of the BILLS, & we'd all be singing a different tune. Going forward i hope Beane brings in an outside DC vs letting Sean handle both duties. I want Sean's complete focus on being a HC. As he's still a young one & thats where his focus should be. Some outside perspective cant hurt either, some fresh eyes & ideas, as whatever we've done in the past hasn't been the answer. Doing the same thing & expecting different results is crazy. But of course i expect Sean to handle them or we hire from within to replace Leslie. GO BILLS

Yeah, if they had asked the police for each city: "what is the average BAC of those you arrested at the games", at least there'd be a scientific approach to this calculation as opposed to random correspondents. Also on twitter today was how our wr's led the league in dropped passes. I mention it because its one of the reasons why we drink so much. Outsiders think its because we love to party (which we do), but you try living thru 17 seasons of no playoffs & go to the games... alcohol was all we had sometimes lol.

decades of studies about potential new stadiums & in the end we spent billions on a smaller stadium next to the old one. How can we not be excited about that? You say roof, can point to other stadiums that have it, they'll tell you why YOU can't have it & of course everyone in Buffalo should just be happy about it, as its better than nothing. Yes the mindset of mediocrity! The exterior looks better than i envisioned but the interior looks ghastly to me. Almost like a sardine tin that someone tore the roof off of. But I suppose I shouldn't care too much. With the increased ticket prices i likely wont be able to afford to take my family to the games anyways

BILLS made their choice of extending Hyde vs Poyer. Now Poyer walks because i can't see us paying top dollar to 2 safeties over 30. If he goes to Miami then so be it. But can you imagine if Miami picks up Bobby Wagner too? What a boost that defense could have.

Would be an interesting idea to have dorm style housing provided as an option for new players, rookies. Could help them in the transition of getting acquainted to the area & team. Idk how many would take it up as an option, but could be a good way to foster team cohesion & envelope rookies in the playbook & training. Idk if any team has attempted something like this in the past. I know when players get traded they often have housing issues & will get put up in hotels or condos. Having a home base could eliminate that issue. And it'd be cool to have say 7 BILLS picked to live in a loft and have their lives taped, to find out what happens when people stop being polite… and start getting real. (Sorry couldnt resist)

We definitely need to bring in more weapons for Josh but no on Keenan Allen. He commands too high a cap number for what we can expect from an oft-injured 30 year old wr, and in relation to our other team needs. I also dont like paying out big contracts to players over 30. We have a few players in that situation & I'd rather we get someone younger personally. Especially at positions where speed is important & youth is available elsewhere. A team that commits big money to older players ends up being handcuffed by those contracts. We're seeing it already with our present cap situation. Jakobi Meyers could work, DJ Chark or even Marquise Goodwin can be had cheap & both have speed. If people are set on Keenan, i'd offer Marvin Jones Jr for a fraction of the cost. Not the potential upside of Keenan but relatively comparable wrs & production. Keenan might work out on Madden but i dont know how we can address all our needs while acquiring him.

And for all the love for Andy Reid, he's still only won 1 title & that was with Mahomes in 2019. Guess he sucks!

that would be a nice welcome development for sure, that all of us would love to see & have been hoping for all year. No better time than this Sunday. Dorsey can help try to make this happen as well of course by designing some early plays that help get Josh into a rhythm & not having to play behind on down & distance. Something that i havent seen as much of this 2nd half of the season that i'd like

A poll mightve been a good option! But i'm not as confident as i'd like to be. Yes we've been winning games but i haven't seen Championship level football, have you guys? We saw it for the 1st quarter vs Miami, then well we saw the rest of that game lol. I just don't see a confident team right now. Nor do i see a team thats progressing or improving as the games increase in importance. I see an offense struggling for balance & consistency. I see a QB whose reverted back to his old rookie self a little too much. And i see self-inflicted mistakes across the board that will be the end of us one of these days. You gotta BILLIEVE but its gonna take them playing as close to a mistake free game as possible for them to win. A feat we haven't managed in idk how long.

the screen game has been an issue for this offense since day 1 of Josh being the QB. At 1st it seemed like an arm issue, where Josh had difficulty with the trajectory & speed of the screen passes themselves, where they'd routinely get blown up or the blocking would be messed up. As time has gone on there has been an improvement, like last season there was a conscious effort to integrate more screens into our gameplan. This year they're non-existent. You have problems with pass blocking? Run some screens. You want some easy YAC yards? Run some screens. Its been a pet peeve of mine for the past few years. Suppose it ties in with what plagues the offense sometimes as well, where we dont take enough of the easy underneath stuff.

well unless you checked everyones ID's at the gate week in week out, it'd be a challenge knowing where all 60k+ people came from. I know at least 10 people from Tonawanda who go to the games including myself, i wonder if you know us or just didnt see us those days? Ive lived in kenmore the past 8 years. Think we had 1 storm in all that time that gave us a few feet, my relatives in OP & Hamburg?... it can be a few times a year. And we could get into the future forecast predicting the lakes staying warmer later into the season as being the norm to expect for the future, where the potential for stronger lake effect storms would be on the rise in the years/decades to come. But on average our snowfall amounts are a foot or 2 less per year total in comparison. If you're familiar with how lake effect works, you're aware of why the snow belt is where it is & that is where our new stadium will be built. We had decades to study all the impacts of stadium locations to this region & in the end we chose to build a smaller one next to the old one. And i think it is a legitimate issue spending tax payer money building a stadium not suited for our team or our region. Like only we could be okay with that with our expectations so low, just happy anything is being done at all, everything else be darned. Thats pretty much the sense i get from everyone who supports it. Yeah we're not completely thrilled with it but at least its something & the team will stay here... just be happy!

it all seems so simple when u put it like that But yeah agree with everything youve said. I'll add that defenses can cheat towards defending Allen & the pass if they know thats what we're gonna do 70% of the time. And our percentage of passing plays has actually increased from last season & we're running the ball even less. If you were an OC analyzing last years performance & shortcomings, would you say we needed to pass even more as your big lesson learned from last year? We even have the benefit of hindsight, being able to learn from our previous season's shortcomings.... to only just repeat the same mistakes of the past? Its maddening haha. But we're even worse than the past bcuz Knox has all but disappeared & we dont have our slot wr worked out yet & on the outside Davis is here for a game & invisible for 2 after. And forget even questioning the wisdom of giving Knox that big contract extension... as if there was a pressing need to throw money at him before another team swept him up from us. We're just not maximizing our potential with the current assets we have. We're not getting the most out of our personnel & that is a bit concerning from a coaching perspective. Winning does make everything better however. If we had won last game out we'd be less critical but all we have to work from & evaluate are the things we see. All that said we lost two 1 score games to teams with winning records, sky isnt falling yet but its getting cloudy... GO BILLS

yeah we just don't have the technology to build a roof able to withstand snow.... sorry... "partial" roof. In 2022... just can't do it yet. 🤣 But after decades of time where we have asked the question: 'what if we could build another stadium'... we finally have our opportunity to take all that we have learned & build a new stadium & what do we come up with? We build an even smaller stadium right next to the old one. That pretty much sums up the bar to pass around here lol. An opportunity to do something big or beneficial for this community & region & we line up at the trough like pigs hungry to eat up the bs they feed us because we're what, just happy the team is staying? Some will defend these designs to the death. Others like myself feel from the very start strategically speaking we already have failed. In size, scale, location, in its ability to generate revenue & pay back its costs outside of a handful of games each year? To being designed with the local weather in mind. One could literally go on & on with this failure of imagination & planning & process. This whole thing is a big crock of bs imho, something only we would **** up to this degree.