BADOLBILZ

I think it's misleading to say that Buscaglia is saying the WR room is improved. Just that they've evolved. Shavers is playing the Hollins role as a blocker but he's not "the Hollins from 2024". He has had little impact at all in the passing game compared to the big plays and TD's Hollins made. Gabe has been anemic in the passing game. How they use him has definitely evolved and I am not sure that's a good thing because I don't want to see that ham-handed SOB running slants to turnover town. Palmer hasn't even been available. Coleman isn't better. I don't think improving was what he was getting at. The WR's in total had a pathetic 69 yards receiving in a 39 point performance Sunday. Essentially the Bills are attempting to win without needing WR's to do much of anything in the passing game. They are just out there blocking or occupying defenders for the most part. A lot has been made with regard to opposing defense's playing man coverage on the Bills punchless WR corps but one way to "evolve" is to counter tactics. They can intentionally run defenders deep and leave huge swaths of field for Josh to tuck and run. So they are still pretty worthless as playmakers but they can still contribute tactically to a potent offense. If Kincaid stays healthy they might be able to get away with it in a league where there are no great teams. We can hope.

No idea where you came up with this notion but it is very false.

This should fix their starting pitching problem.

When he gets back to jumpin rope you'll know he's close

Yeah if he'd been healthy I think they are probably the #1 seed.

Yeah, like I said you just made the mistake of trying to put Cooks season in context of ypc to add gravity to it. Kinda' like that famous post Alphadawg created where he tried to tell us how we didn't realize how great Khalil Shakir was and threw in a nugget telling us that if you projected his 2023 yards per target figure over 100 targets that Shakir would have had 1360 yards. Of course, he forgot the context of Shakir being the 4th option in the passing game and the impact of teams doubling Diggs. So the next season plays out with Shakir now as a top 2 option in the pass game and no Diggs...... Shakir actually got exactly 100 targets and had like 800 yards. 😂 It just wasn't necessary if you just want to say "that's a lot of yards" as opposed to being like "I'm just sayyyying" that this is the 3rd greatest season by a Bills RB. I get that people want to find joy in the numbers of today but we don't have to compare very different era's to do that. Just look at where Cook is relative to his peers. He's got a good chance to leading the NFL in rushing. That would be a great accomplishment for a guy who wasn't perceived to be in that category as a rugged RB1.

Yeah Gillislee was a great fit in those Roman/Kromer offenses that ran a lot of inside zone and gap. They didn't have an athletic enough OL for outside zone. As evidenced when Dennison came in in 2017 and the run game efficiency fell off a cliff. That style also fed back into the bad habits that got McCoy traded. Habits he broke after his disappointing 2015.

Yeah I just think that in your haste to make a comparison to Bills RB seasons of years past you inadvertently illustrated just how little context your point had. Cook is having an exceptional season but Josh Allen(the franchise's all time rushing TD leader) is one of the greatest force multipliers for RB's in the running game in the history of the NFL. The Bills organizational identity to this point in their history is clearly running the ball. It's the one area where the standard is HIGH. Cook and this offense is the latest iteration. They are averaging .7 yards per carry above league average. Same as the 2015 NFL leading rushing offense(which didn't even HAVE a 1,000 yard rusher). But the 2016 NFL leading rush offense averaged a ridiculous 1.2 yards above average and had McCoy putting up 5.4 and also Gillislee leading the NFL in ypc(5.7) and 3rd/4th down conversion %.

I wouldn't rule out that he's forgotten how to play. He looks lost at times out there. He's had a ton of concussions in his career but he usually(remarkably) cleared protocol and was back out there the next week. It's not just the bad shoulders and aging wheels he has been the antithesis of the heady player he used to be.

Where you took a wrong turn in this comparison is that the league yards per rush was 4.0 in 1975, 4.1 in 1976, 3.8 in 1977 etc.. and fluctuated in those ranges for many years thereafter. Nowadays that number is all the way up to 4.4 yards per carry. WAY easier to run the ball in the NFL today.

Yeah we don't disagree I just think the cumulative performance was bad until a couple of weeks ago. He dug a deep hole with his terrible first couple months. But it is how you finish in the NFL which is why I haven't been willing to throw dirt on this team all season.

1) Bad for 6 and better for 5 is how you have a "bad" 115 passer rating against going into week 13. I think there was a premature rush by some to point out that he wasn't giving up much yardage after the bye........when the team itself was leading the NFL in least passing yardage allowed......largely because they were getting trampled so easily on the ground. He's gotten back to himself and may even be leveling up even in recent weeks. 2) Yeah certainly appeared that he was playing tentatively. 3) Contract slotting is really just a GM/agent tool. Contracts are first and foremost about timing. I think you have to judge a player on their performance relative to their peers and how that relates to the highest aav at the position. It's simpler and also very imperfect but more genuine because you don't have to exclude players with less than 4 years experience and players who are over performing their poorly timed contracts etc. etc. That's why I never use slotting to support or discredit a player but will use PFF.

Yeah both Jets games that year. Belichick figured him out pretty quick. Make him throw from the pocket. Yeah those are the REAL deflating losses. When you realize your team has a fatal flaw. The Fitz home loss to the Jets after their fast start was another one of those games. They forced Fitz out of the dink and dunk and using the middle of the field and he couldn't handle the big boy throws. That season fell apart after opponents saw that tape. And with Flutie the year after teams employed the Belichick D on him and that's why the offense struggled in 1999.

There isn't any reason for anyone to "apologize". Benford was bad thru 11 games. The eyeball test showed his coverage wasn't good, the physicality wasn't there and statistically he had an abysmal 110-115 passer rating when targeted. The argument that he wasn't bad was just that he hadn't given up a lot of yards in recent weeks.......but the Bills haven't given up yards in the air all season. They were #1 in the NFL in that regard but we all know they are not the most dominant coverage unit by any stretch. I suspected Benford rung his bell again very early in the season and was playing tentatively. The Benford criticism is different that the Rousseau criticism because the tape shows Rousseau doing his job well. The tape wasn't kind to Benford (or Bernard). Hopefully Shaq Thompson manages to stay healthy for at least a couple more weeks so Bernard can be healthy when he returns to the lineup. And then maybe he starts making plays again too. I will say though.......one of the more frustrating defensive plays of the game involved Benford and took place after the Bills called that defensive timeout with the Bengals at 3rd and 4. The Bengals split the back out wide and Benford came off of Jamar Chase and took a couple strides out wider to cover the back and Cam Lewis dropped down on Chase. That lead to an easy pitch and catch conversion to Chase. And it wasn't a bang-bang switch.......it was a failure in slo-mo. Benford has to identify what they are doing there and not leave the All Pro for Lewis to cover.

Because they aren't very talented on defense.