hondo in seattle

Personally, I'm entirely invested in this season. The fact that Josh is our QB and McD is running our defense already makes us competitive. Josh is an offensive force of nature and McD is the kind of defensive schemer who can make lemonade out of lemons. I'm super curious to see what Brady will do. Daboll failed in his first stints as an OC but learned a lot through those, and other, experiences. He put a lot of points on the scoreboard with the Bills. Brady is young and smart. Maybe this is the year he emerges as a top OC. Maybe not. Whatever happens, I want to see it. I'm super curious about the receiver group. Are they as bad as the pessimists fear or as good as the optimists hope? How will Samuel do with a good QB? Will Shakir continue his growth? Will Keon prove he was worthy of a high draft pick? Will Kincaid breakout as a legitimate star? Will Kincaid-Knox be the new Gronk-Hernandez, minus the shootings? I'm curious about the secondary with Hyde, Poyer, and White all gone. In fact, I remain curious about nearly everything. And while I doubt if a Super Bowl is in the cards, I do expect a good (playoff) season.

Here's my Bills fantasy... Joe Brady has been around a lot of coaches, worked with different systems, and this is the year he puts it all together and emerges as the second coming of Don Coryell and Bill Walsh. Despite the shortcomings of the WR room, Brady is able to scheme guys open all over the field as Josh leads the most potent passing attack in the league on the way to a SB. Not likely... but a guy can dream. The Bills and their fans deserve some unlikely good luck.

His first game as a Bill, Josh was throwing to the likes of Kelvin Benjamin, Zay Jones, Andre Holmes, and Jeremy Kerley. Hopefully, things haven't become that bad. But, I agree, Beane should have done a better job and we're not opening the season with a stellar lineup. I had hoped between Coleman, MVS, and Claypool, one had stepped up and earned the third starting wideout position. In any case, I now have some concerns about Brady. I see three possibilities: 1. Joe does a stellar job and produces a lot of points despite the weaknesses in the receiving corps. 2. Joe does a midling job, doesn't produce a ton of points, but McD excuses and retains him due to the roster shortcomings. 3. Joe does a terrible job, leads an inept offense, and gets fired. #1 is seeming less and less likely with every injury but it's the only option I like.

I'll take a stab at this: (1) It's a passing league. Coaches and analytic geeks have determined that the best way to move the ball down the field in today's game is by passing the ball about 50% more often than you run it. (2) Josh is the best player on the team. By far. The coaches want the ball in his hands. Cook is a good back. But he is not nearly as talented at his position as Josh is at his. And Josh plays the centerpiece position of the modern NFL.

Yikes! While I agree that we shouldn't trade Cook, I find the commentary here is unneccessarily unkind. And I'll add this about Cooks' stats. He's a good back. But he also shares the backfield with Josh Allen. I think defenses see Josh as the alpha and omega of our offense. He's got a cannon arm, tremendous escapability, and is a fearsome running threat. I think they play a lot of two-high to frustrate Josh's and his desire to air it out. And I think they often have a containment plan for Josh and/or a spy. I don't think teams scheme much to stop Cook, and his stats benefit from him being an after-thought.

RBs are an easy position to fill. Heck, if the Bills want an RB, they can just call me. At 65, I may not offer much, but I'm reasonably fit for my age and will learn the playbook. For every position, even RB, there's a bell-curve of talent. If you want to win the SB, it's best to have players at the upper end of the bell curve. RBs may be a dime-a-dozen but good RBs are not. Cook isn't OJ or Thurman but he's better than average. He's also on a cheap rookie contract at 1.6M/year. Why trade away a player who's both cheap & good for a roll of the dice (i.e. the draft)? In two years, Davis will take over as the #1 RB and we'll draft Cook's replacement.

It's good to see (ex) players spending their money entrepreneurially instead of on fast cars, parties, and paternity suits as some do.

This is a fair, rational counterargument. However, I still feel like Beane undervalues the offense in general. Our O has been the Allen and Diggs show. Obviously, Motor, Cook, Davis, Kincaid, and others have made some meaningful contributions. But we've only had two standout players. The rest have been, to a greater or lesser extent jags - the kinds of guys every team has. This year, it looks like it's just the Josh Allen show with a cast of no names. And it might work. But it would work better with with more stars. Call me unrealistically greedy, but I long for days when we had HOFers playing wideout (Reed & Lofton) and more HOFers in the backfied (Thurm & Kelly). While we've recently run a two-star offense, Beane built, arguably, a six-star defense: Miller, Oliver, Milano, White, Hyde, Poyer. Ignoring injuries, it's been unbalanced.

It's popular to criticize McD but looking at our WR Room, for example, I wonder why Beane doesn't get more blame. Here are our top ten paid receivers for 2024: Diggs 31.0 Knox 7.7 Samuel 3.4 Kincaid 3.0 Hollins 2.5 Coleman 1.8 Harty 1.6 MVS 1.3 Shakir 1.1 Hamler 1.1 We're spending $32.6 million for guys who are no longer on the team. In fact, we're spending more on ex-Bills receivers than on current Bills receivers. We're also spending $7.7 million on a guy who's effectively our backup TE. The most we're spending on a starting ball catcher is $3.4 million. That's not good cap management. If Coleman, Shakir, and Samuel end up as our starters, we'll be fielding a wideout group at the bargain-basement price of $6.4 million per year. The Fins, on the other had, are determined to set Tua up for success. Hill is, of course, earning $32M, but even Waddle ($9.1M) earns more than all our starting wideouts combined. According to OTC, 10 teams have allocated over $40M to WR. We've allocated less than $20M. I think Beane did a reasonably good job putting together a receiver group on a budget, but the fact that he was forced to shop at the Dollar Store this offseason is a crisis of his own making. (Though I still hope Brady is able to scheme up some magic with this group - we still have Josh.).

The card said "Pink Zebra Moving" which AI tells me - shockingly - is a moving company. I guess when you're an unemployed punter, you have to earn your grocery money some other way.

I miss Reed & Lofton.

After recent events, I have to confess my optimism has suffered a blow. But I don't think we can look at the WR room without the bigger context. Josh's passer rating and YPG in 2023 were his worst in the past four years while he threw the most picks of his career. Something was off last season. So let's play Clue and look at the usual suspects... Offensive Line. I wish Beane emphasized the OL more and think some sources like PFF overestimate how good the line was last year. Nonetheless, it was clearly better than 2022 so the line wasn't the reason for the drop in performance. Coordinator. I'm going to give Brady a pass because he was thrown into the job midseason without the ability to change the scheme, playbook, or preseason preparation. There's a lot to debate about Dorsey's coordinating. Did he drill execution enough? Use presnap movement enough? Was he too predictable? Did he rely too much on wideouts winning on their own instead of scheming guys open? Quarterback. Maybe Josh's drop in performance was Josh's fault. It's not PC to mention here but, as great as he is, he's not infallible. Kurt Warner, among others, says Josh will do better when he consistently gets the ball out on schedule. And Josh said that his throwing mechanics last season were effected by nagging injuries. Receivers. Maybe Diggs and Davis were part of the problem. Diggs and Davis both only managed 2.8 yards of separation on average last year - below the league average. Davis's catch rate was only 55.6%. We all know that Gabe had long periods of irrelevance and Diggs fell off in the second half of the season. Some folks say Diggs lost a step. What I'm saying is that there a lot of variables that will determine this year's wideout production. I don't think this year's wideout group is as good as last year's but maybe the dropoff isn't as bad as we fear. And maybe we'll enjoy improvements in some of the other variables. Maybe the coordinating will be better this year. Maybe Josh will fix is mechanics and throw better this year. Maybe Joe Brady will convince Josh to get the ball out on schedule, as Kurt recommends. As fans, we can only hope. I also have doubts and worries, too, but I'm not ready yet to say the sky is falling.

Torrance's play is worrisome. I've been a frequent critic of Beane's for not giving Josh an elite bodyguard. This year we're challenged with Morse's departure and now, possibly, regression by Torrance. I am not excited. The wideout play is beginning to worry me, too. I was decidedly so-so (i.e. not negative) with the WR room during the offseason. I reasoned that Samuel and Shakir are legit starters. We just needed either Coleman, MVS, or Claypool to step up and fill the other spot. It seemed likely to me that one would. Then Claypool went out with a toe, MVS with a neck, and Coleman hasn't done much. I'm feeling nervous now.

What a snooze fest. Hard to pay attention. Rousseau and Andreessen looked good though. I viewed Frank Gore Jr as a charity signing but he looked decent.

I think its weird. Worse, we've had stars at all three levels of our defense: Miller on the DL; Milano at LB; Tre, Hyde & Poyer in the secondary. And they've all struggled with injuries.

Thin skin? Hmm. I guess those hundreds of philosophy & religion books I've read and thousands of hours I've spent in meditation were a waste of time! Damn!!! Or maybe you just read the tea leaves wrong. Having led soldiers in combat where a trained and heavily armed enemy was determined to kill us, do you seriously believe your silly anonymous argumentativeness on a fan website gets under my skin? Your sharp wit or a tank battalion - I'm not sure which I fear more. Let me reflect upon this as deeply as it deserves. I may not be able to sleep tonight. If you want to keep lobbing insults in my direction, go ahead. I won't lob them back because that's not what I'm here for. "Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly."

4,000 is just a convenient benchmark, nothing more. But help me out here... I come to OBD to learn, explore ideas, celebrate, and sometimes commiserate with my brothers and sisters in the Bills mafia. You seem to have another agenda. Maybe I'm getting this wrong but it seems you like to 'prove' that you are 'right' and/or your arguments demonstrate more intellectual rigor. When I (or someone else) disagrees, your stubbornness in hammering your point home and dogged efforts to poke holes in the arguments of others is impressive in a way. In any case, I still don't believe the sky fell when Diggs was traded. Our WR situation is far from ideal, but if Brady is a capable OC (and I hope he is though I'm not convinced yet), he'll find ways to make this offense go. Maybe not at SB level which is the goal and dream, but at least at the playoff level. A bunch of smart jurors sitting in the same courtroom seeing the same evidence often come to different conclusions. Sorry if you disagree with me. Ultimately, it doesn't matter because neither of us will impact what actually happens on the field.

I'm not expecting a Lombardi but I'm not expecting a sh*tshow either. I just don't believe the offense is going to collapse because Diggs has gone. I think/hope the 2024 edition of Joe Brady will be somewhat better than the 2023 version of the Dorsey/Brady show. Let's say Diggs' departure makes our receiving corps 5-10% worse. I think a new & improved Brady (with an entire offseason to implement his concepts) gets us that 5-10%. When Josh Allen is your QB, your offense won't be bad unless your OC is incompetent. And McD has a talent for making lemons with lemonade on defense. I don't think our D will be elite, there's not enough talent, but it will be fundamentally sound. And I think that gets us into the playoffs where anything can happen. That's what I think will happen. But my two biggest uncertainties are: (1) Joe Brady and (2) the wideouts. Both could turn out better - or worse - than I expect. We'll see.

For the next several years, I think we find inexpensive vets to be our backups. And then when Josh is in his mid-thirties, maybe, we draft and start grooming a young successor. It depends a lot on Josh - both how well he stays in shape physically, and mentally how long he wants to play.

Fair enough. But he still threw for over 4,000 yards and won a Super Bowl. If that's the kind of decline we are gonna see in Buffalo, I'll take it.

If Josh gets injured? Then no.

Good QBs can't elevate just anybody. And they won't elevate everyone - there aren't enough targets to go around. But Josh has thrown for over 4,000 yards for the past four consecutive years, despite a revolving door of receivers. Mahomes has thrown for over 4,000 yards six consecutive seasons despite his own revolving door of receivers including the loss of Tyreek Hill. In his prime, Brees had 12 consecutive years of 4k with a bunch of different receivers coming and going. If Josh gets 4k again this year, and I think he will, someone has to catch those balls. Between Samuel, Kincaid, and Shakir - at least one of those is going to have a career year and maybe more than one.

Supposedly, Brady made significant tweaks to the offense. Combining that with the fact that Diggs and Davis are gone, it's not unreasonable to believe that Shakir and Kincaid will be used somewhat differently this year, and produce differently. I wouldn't expect their catches, yards, average depth of target, yards per catch, etc., to be the same. Then again, I don't know what to expect. I wasn't at all impressed with Brady's debut last year. But he's made some confident and interesting remarks about the upcoming year while keeping the specifics close to his vest. Allen, too, seems jazzed by the changes but Allen also seems like the kind of guy who'll enthusiastically support anything his coaches say & do. With a new(ish) OC, new playbook, and new receivers, it's hard to project the upcoming year. But Josh is so talented that I think he can make mediocre wideouts look good. I'd be surprised if he didn't surpass 4,000 yards again. I would not be surprised if surpassed 4,500 despite Diggs' departure.

I like McD but don't deny this is a concern. Quarterbacks can flourish under defensive-minded HCs. Brady did fine under Belichick. But usually for this to work, the HC needs to find a good OC. McD is on his 4th OC. That's gotta be hard on Josh. Only 1 of the 4 was successful - though the book on Brady is still open. Then again, even Daboll had his shortcomings. McD's problems with OC, and Beane's various shortcomings at offensive roster building, haven't created the ideal environment for Josh to thrive. McD needs to find his offensive Spags. Hopefully, Brady proves to be The Guy. And maybe next year Beane upgrades the WR and OL rooms.

I'm not sure where the confusion lies. Yes, as a fan and observer, I thought Shakir and Kincaid were the best receivers on the Bills at the end of last season. And if you look at catch % and separation stats, some of these metrics tell the same story. That doesn't mean Brady ran his offense through them and leaned on them last year as much as he will this year. Obviously, production goes up and down over time. No player stays at the same level of productivity perpetually. I expect their production to go up this year. You don't agree. That's okay. You are right about this: if their productivity does not go up, our passing game is in trouble.