hondo in seattle

Beane came here and started jettisoning overpaid and prima donna players. As much as he could, he put the dead cap money into 2018 with the clear intention of making this a rebuilding year. I certainly don't agree with every decision but you can easily see the logic at work. He's collecting draft capital and building up free cap space to make 2019 and 2020 good years. If Beane does a credible job executing his plan, we'll be back in the playoffs in 2020. McD is James Bowie being outnumbered 15-1 at the Battle of the Alamo. He's capable enough and his guys have good esprit d'corps. But they're outgunned and have no realistic chance. The Vikes, for example, are spending nearly 50% more on their roster this year than the Bills are ($183,000,000 vs. 125,000,000). The best leaders and tacticians in the world can't overcome those numbers.

Sorry if this sounds negative but I'm honestly wondering how many people picking the Bills seriously believe the Bills will win? With that in mind, my prediction is that Josh Allen has a breakout game and the Bills win 28-27!

Not only wasn't Sammy particularly productive here but his attitude sucked. Remember the story of Shady giving him an envelope of 'targets' because Sammy kept clamoring for more targets? Sammy wasn't respected by his teammates and even Sammy admitted somewhere that he was more interested in his stat line than the final score. Sammy claims to have grown up since. But while here he just wasn't the kind of guy you wanted around. We didn't end the drought last year so much by talent but by effort. Now Beane is trying to acquire guys who are big on both effort and talent. Personally, I'm choosing to give Beane some time before judging 'the process.'

I don't care much about the media headlines - though I thought the 'Buffalo Baby' story was kind of funny. I'm not even stressed about winning and losing - I know we're not returning to the playoffs this year. I'll watch the games to see how our young players are developing because I'm hoping 2019 will be better.

This is what happens when the 3rd highest paid roster in the NFL plays the 32nd highest. https://overthecap.com/salary-cap-space/

I'm a Bills fan. I root for Josh Allen and anyone else in a Bills uni. But I'm not a NFL fan. I rarely watch games that don't involve the Bills. I don't play fantasy football. There are too many other things that interest me. And I don't even care much what the media says about the Bills. I have my own two eyes and my brethren fans here will point out the stuff I miss. That's good enough for me. Beuerlein is a little more interesting than most because he played Josh Allen's position. So I'm a little encouraged that he generally has a positive opinion about Allen's future. But in the end, he doesn't actually know what the future holds for JA anymore than we do. Beane took a legit stab at a QB and I'm content to let this thing play out.

I’m glad you can read minds. Personally I’m going to take Davis at his word: he quit because he wasn’t physically right.

Last year he ended the drought. This year he’s fielding the lowest paid roster in the NFL. The guy deserves a fighting chance. He doesn’t deserve to be fired and he's not going to be fired.

It's not coincidence that it's younger, less experienced players on the top of this list. Let's hope it's something he can correct.

Combined with a rising Edmunds and Allen, that could be the core of an awesome team!

As Shakespeare once wrote... "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;For he today who sheds shared tears of Bills fandom with meShall be my brother."

I don't remember the exact words but during the broadcast Steve Beurelein said something like, "Beane told me that AJ McCarron wasn't who they thought he was." So I wonder if Beane planned for AJ to both start for a while and mentor Josh - and it didn't work out?

Lots of people think poorly of the Bills. And lots of people kill, maim, rape, and injure other people. I have both more pleasant things and more important things to worry about than Max Kellerman. His opinions mean no more to me than the football opinions of a Burmese fisherman.

Accuracy as "aim" is a genetic thing and probably doesn't improve much (if at all) over time. Accuracy as "completion percentage" can improve a lot. Lots of things go into completion percentage: scheme, WR route running/separation, WR hands, QB ability to read defense and go throw progressions, biomechanics, etc. There are lots of QBs who improved their accuracy/completion percentage over the years. Steve Deberg only completed 45% of his passes in his first season but later developed into a serviceable starter who was never that inaccurate again. Closer to home, Joe Ferguson only completed 44% of his passes his rookie season but never again produced a season that bad. It's debatable whether Allen has bad aim on his errant passes or is just being a rookie.

When we made the playoffs last year, I naively thought this may be the beginning of a playoff streak. Then Wood retired and Incognito did whatever he did. Then I looked at our remaining roster. Then I looked at our dead cap money. Then I looked at how little we're spending on this year's players. And then, finally, I embraced more realistic expectations. If Edmunds and Allen both look like emerging stars by the end of this season, I'll be happy regardless of the win total.

well thanks for the encouragement and intelligent counter argument

Forget stats. Eye test matters. My eyes say our OL sucks in both the passing and running game. Our WRs have trouble gaining separation. And there were times Josh Allen looked like a real NFL QB. Other times he looked panicky and/or threw errant balls. His mistakes/flaws could be correctable rookie stuff, but I'm not sure. And I like my uncertainty. It means I think there's a chance Allen evolves into something good. I have hope - the life blood of fans.

Everyone looking at our personnel moves and/or our cap situation knew this was a rebuilding year. I can't imagine Terry and Kim saw anything different. This season - with $50 million in dead cap - we have the lowest paid roster in the NFL. We're simply not spending enough to field a competitive team. Next year, we'll have $80 million or so in cap space. Who knows the year after that but if Beane manages the cap astutely, we'll again be active players in free agency. If Beane drafts well and spends wisely, 2020 will be a very good year. All indications say that's the plan, like it or not.

Can you imagine Beane telling McD, "We're going to have the lowest paid roster in the NFL this season. I need you to win the Super Bowl anyway!"? Can you imagine succeeding on a project in your own job if you had $25 million (on average) less to spend than your competitors? If Allen and Edmunds advance their skills this year, it's a good season. The best part about this season will be the shedding of dead cap money.

The Bills drafted okay. I don't where to begin with that statement. Whaley was pretty good at identifying FA talent. He was poor at the draft. Cap Hell. I said we're currently in draft hell (partly due to Beane jettisoning some of Whaley's players/contracts). It's simply a fact. We have far more dead money this year ($53 million) than any team in the NFL. We pay less this year ($126 million) than any team in the NFL on current player salaries. Based on payroll, we have the worst roster in the NFL. We simply don't have enough money this year to field a competitive football team. https://overthecap.com/salary-cap-space/ There's no doubt Beane has made mistakes and Cordy may have been one of them. Even good personnel guys make mistakes. Hell, Bill Walsh famously told Marv Levy he needed to draft Trent Edwards. But what we want to know is if Beane's overall team-building strategy will work. And it's obvious both from his interviews and his actions that he's trying to spend cap space wisely by first jettisoning the overpaid players. And he's trying to acquire draft picks because he has faith in his ability to draft well. Whether his efforts succeed in the end remains to be seen. It's still early in the process. But Beane is not a short-term guy. None of his actions so far suggested that he was aiming to make 2018 a good year. He's looking at 2019 and beyond.

John, this is exactly as I see it. Nicely explained. I don't think Beane & McD ever considered Peterman an upgrade over TT. That wasn't the point. Ditching TT gave us picks and salary cap relief. Peterman ended up with the role we expected AJ to fill: a low cost snap-receiver until Allen (or a future acquisition) steps up to be the QB we really want.

I agree and disagree at the same time. I was all in favor of keeping TT until we found someone better. But you can see Beane is obsessive about two things. He wants cap space and he wants draft capital to build this team his way. Trading TT gave him both. And TT was expendable because he's not the QB Beane wants. I seriously doubt if Beane's an idiot. He certainly realized the risk that trading TT would temporarily make us worse at the QB position rather than better. It was a risk he was willing to take to get draft capital and cap space. Before we judge Beane, let's see what he does going forward with his draft picks and the money for free agency he's freeing up.

Let's set the stage: The Bills have the fewest number of homegrown players in the league. In other words, we haven't drafted well in the past. And this year we're in Cap Hell because of bad signings in the past. In fact, we're spending less on current player salaries than any team in the NFL. So we have virtually no talent we've drafted ourselves and we can't afford to pay for FAs. That's what Beane and McD are up against. This season they have a team will little talent. Their plan is to improve the cap situation so they can sign better FAs and draft better than the previous regime. It's going to take time. So in this past free agency, we dumped TT to get his salary off our books and get some draft capital. We also signed AJ - the best vet FA QB would could afford. We still had Peterman. And we drafted Allen - a guy who many scouts and former NFL QBs believe has a lot of upside despite your misgivings. Peterman - surprisingly - outplayed the other guys in preseason and won the QB competition. AJ disappointed in camp, got hurt, and was traded away for more draft capital. Coaches tend to publicly say they have faith in their players because players play better when they have the confidence of their coaches. It's a well known psychological phenomenon called the Pygmalion Effect. You have no idea what McD privately thought of Peterman. Given what we saw of Peterman last year, I seriously doubt that McD ever considered Peterman a franchise QB. I suspect he considered Peterman a placeholder until Allen developed a better ability to read NFL defenses. But when Peterman faced a real NFL defensive scheme playing at regular season speed, he couldn't approximate his preseason success. So Allen's getting the starting nod earlier in the season than maybe expected or ideal. But most Bills fans and observers expected Allen to start at some point this year anyway. I'm not sure how this series of events lead you to conclude McD doesn't know how to develop QBs? Dallas threw Aikman to the wolves his first year. And speaking of Carrs, Oakland threw Derek Carr to the wolves and it didn't ruin him. Putting a rookie behind a bad line on a bad team doesn't necessarily ruin him. It depends on the resiliency of the the QB. I'm not even convinced that David Carr was "ruined" by his rookie year - he just might not have been quite good enough for the NFL. No one can look at this roster or Week 1's result and be happy. But nothing leads me to the conclusion that McD doesn't know how to develop a QB.

Agreed. But what plays would you prioritize? I'd make sure to throw some deep routes and some deep outs - maybe out of max protect. Allen is inexperienced and has shortcomings but he does have a live arm. I'd want the D to respect that arm and defend the entire field - so that Shady might find some space in the run game.

I love the OPs optimism but here's what scares me... We haven't drafted well in the past. As a recent BN article points out, we have the least homegrown talent in the NFL. We're in cap jail. So we haven't been able to sign a lot of good FAs either. Little drafted talent. Little FA talent. It's not a competitive roster.