appoo

DJ Reader, one of the best 1T 's in the NFL. Want to unleash the entirety of this defense and backers, get him and you'll see this D take the next level. For the drought Bills, 4th year Stehpon Gilmore

Think you're right about the DLine in 21, cutting Addison nets you 6M, cutting Butler (who's actually been playing a lot better) nets you 6.8M. Cutting Jefferson saves you 5M but 'd strongly consider keeping him, due to his versatility. He's a good pass rusher, and can also play a big DE for run D. Jerry Hughes, I think is a candidate for restructure + extend. He looks like he still has a few years in the tank, even at 32. The Bills have an out year after 220, and can save 7.5M by cutting him....but I'd rather them restructure and extend him to 2024. Give him a nice 5M signing bonus and a 2M salary on top of that and it keeps his cap hit under 4M, and you get to keep a pretty productive DE. At 32, I'm not sure he'd get a better deal than that in the open market.

Allen is getting to the point where he’s good enough to paper over holes on the offensive side. I wouldn’t invest in plus players at 4/5 players on the OLine. Allen is good enough where they might not need anything but an average running game to win football games. Feliciano, to me, is a luxury player. He’s an average pass pro but plus Run blocker. I wouldn’t resign him, but rather let Ford and Ryan Bates - both of whom played tackle at college so came into the league as pass protection lineman - have a shot at unseating Winters and Boetger at those guard spots and maybe signing a vet minimum, while also investing a mid round pick . So I’m the Bills, put money at LT/RT/C, but underpay at guard and RB. Defensively, that’s tough. You can get away with average DEs if you have elite athletes at linebacker, or with Klein, a quality blitzer. Hughes is going to be a huge question mark. There’s almost no way Addison comes back with his 10M cap hit, that’s gonna be Epenesa. Because of that I think Milano is integral to the success of the defense - if you’re going or underinvest at DE, then your backers need to make up for it with pressure and coverage

1 year deals makes the problems worse because of higher cap hits. Personally, I think you see longer deals with high signing bonuses. for example you can resign both Milano and Williams. say about 40M total for Milano, and another 40M for Williams. For Milano, you give him a 6 year contract, and a $25M signing bonus, that’s. 4.16M cap hit for the bonus, and if you pay yearly salary evenly it’s 2.5M a year. If 50% of yearly salary is gtd money, then you start with a dead cap number of 32M, going down about 5M a year. That’s a decent amount of risk to the organization, but a $6M cap hit is a bit of a steal for Williams, he’s 28, so I imagine that’s closer to a 4 year contract and that’s going to be a lot more expensive in terms of cap hit, no matter how much you concert to a signing bonus. But possible I guess. Teams are going to have to risk long term deals. Short term deals are just too cap heavy

It was interesting to not that the Bills did hit on a single one of Allen’s deep balls last night. Allen is having to play at an elite level because teams don’t have to respect the Bills deep game right now. This offense badly misses Smoke, and with him the Bills probably put that game away in the first half. This isn’t to say you keep him at the expense of a good looking RT, but rather just be careful, if you’re the bills, about cashing in on the cap savings from cutting Brown

Don't believe the Bills can pay him market value. Over 6 years he got paid 12M, so he's not going to give the Bills a discount ,he'll have earned his first big contract. You're looking at 4 years, 8M+ a year + 9M bonus ~14M

So am I, doesn't make me fit to defend them though.

One thought about Levi Wallace is that the Steelers WR provide a hugely different challenge than the Niners WRs. You can't get much quicker than Deebo Samuel and Brandon Aiyuk. They're basically super charged smurfs. JuJu, Claypool and Diontae Johnson are all bigger and stronger WRs, but they're also not nearly as quick. That's probably better for Levi who seems to do better with physical WRs. There's also going to be some interesting choice being made in coverage. This current offense for the Steelers is no longer the power vertical offense you're used to seeing from Mike Tomlin, it's almost an Air Raid offense where the ball comes out absurdly quick and everything is horizontal. There's a few ways you can handle that. You can zone & tackle them, and basically trade yardage for FGs. That's a good strategy if you're confident in your own offense turning possessions into TDs, because you won't see as much of the ball. Or you can get into their faces and try to disrupt short routes, and hope your pressure gets to them. Something you might try if you're not certain of your offense, and you want to maximize the number of possessions in the game. The other factor is that the Steelers are getting a lot of schtick from the media for not running the football. James Connor has been activated from reserve, and I'm wondering if Mike Tomlin wants to go back to his roots, and tries to pound and go vertical off the run game? That's something I'm probably more comfortable with, as I think the Niners are a better running team than the Steelers.

He's wide open running in his own 3rd of the field. You expect a middle schooler to catch that.

First of all, you can't ask people who don't exist (Pitt fans who goto games) Second, I never claimed rationality!

First you need to convince Josh that Davis wasn't open enough to not make that throw. And considering his arm talent, not sure that's an argument you're gonna win.

"throw to Lee Smith" likely wasn't a large part of the playbook, so it's easy to forgive Josh for not looking his way, when options #1, & #2 and the check down are on the left. My guess us that Smith was nothing more than having someone around to throw the ball away without getting intentional grounding. That's a coverage bust, but not neccesarily something you expect Josh to pick up

It's basically the Medium Place (My apologies if you don't watch the Good Place. Also - everyone go watch the Good Place)

Haha updated that part. 41

you could argue he's been the best kicker in the league for about 7-8 weeks now

If you ever want to get into an annoying football debate, suggest to a Steeler fan that Troy Palamalu was not only NOT the greatest player to ever live, he's not even as goood as Ed Reed

(Note I had created this topic before last year's Steeler game, and was intending to bump it for this week's game, but it was archived so I'm just gonna recreate it) ------ I'm 41 years old. I've been a Bills fans for as long as I can remember, having immigrated to Buffalo when I was 2 years old. My first memories are of the bickering bills. Jim Kelly playing the Jets as a youngin. Ronnie Harmon dropping that TD in Cleveland, the Bills stadium playing Hootie and the Blowfish after making the Dolphins cry...basically I'm a lifer. And I love/hate it, probably like many of you. This is going to be my first post/thread. Why? A little bit more about my background. As I said above, I immigrated to Buffalo when I was just 2, and my family lived in upstate NY until I was about in 4th or 5th grade, and then we moved to PA. In fact the first Bills SB happened when we moved to good ol Scranton, Pennsylvania (note, not coincidentally the first time I ever cried because of a sporting event also happened in 4th or 5th grade). This, then, is where the story of my hatred of the Pittsburgh Steelers begins. Back in those days, you couldn't watch your team unless they were on national TV, or you lived locally to them. Yet I remember watching the Bills every Sunday with the rest of my family, and it was because my Dad purchased a satellite dish for the sole purpose of getting the Binghamton CBS. Why? Because apparently all of PA is a suburb of Pittsburgh. So actually this wasn't bad in the present, I only retroactively added to my hate for the Steelers wen I realized my Dad had to spend money and go out of his way or for us to be forced to watch the freakin Steelers or paid programming on Sunday afternoons. That hatred only TRULY began when I got to Penn State. Boy. Tell that group you're from PA who's not a fan of the Steelers and they look at you like you're an alien. Then tell them you're a Bills fan, they'll turn into the most arrogant aholes you'll meet, acting like they invented football. To this day I tell people that Pittsburgh would be a wonderful city if you just got rid of all Steeler fans. Easily the most entitled fanbase I've come across in my entire life. Worst of all, this is where I encountered the awfulness that is the NFL Blackout/locality rules. If your local team wasn't sold out, or it wasn't in the 1pm/4pm time slot, you were watching paid programming. This was when I realized how lucky I was growing up with a satellite dish. This was awful. Now my Sunday football choices was the Eagles, those ugly ass Yellow and Black uniforms, or paid programming? Yea, FU Pittsburgh. (sidenote, I'm kinda/sorta a 2nd hand eagles fan) What's worse, even when the Bills showed the rare signs of life, who was there to stomp on it? Yep, you guessed it. The Villains of PA. There was the Willis McGahee led Bills, running through the AFC, trying to work their way back into the playoffs - only to be turned back by the 2nd string Pittsburgh steelers in the final game of the season. Fitzmagic! Win 3 straight games, start getting some momentum going. Along come the Steelers. We got this. We get to OT. Fitz throws an absolute BEAUTY of a bomb in the back corner of the end zone, that thing must have gone 50 yards and dropped on an absolute dime of a target area. It hits Stevie Johnson right in the hands, I'm screaming my head off, the announcers are yelling in celebration, it's happening! We beat the Steelers.....but no. Even when they DON'T involve the Bills! They're easy to hate. Do we all remember Super Bowl XL? I lived in Seattle between 2011 - 2017, and let me tell you, they will always remember that one. You know what city has a different narrative than the rest of America? You guess it. Ask someone from Pittsburgh about the horrible officiating from SB XL and they'll cite some random missed hold on the Hawks; remind them of phantom touchdowns for the Steelers, phantom OPI that took away a TD, a steeler Offside that caused a hold that negated a TD...and you get blank stares as if none of that ever happened. Because in their minds it was Jerome Bettis Week, and the bus DESERVED to win a title in his hometown, and of course there was no bad officiating, yinze are just jealous. I'm a Bills/Knicks/Mets/Syracuse/Penn State fan. Despair and failure runs thick. The only championship I've "experienced" as an adult was the Melo led Orange in 2003. And of course along the way I've developed some sporting hates. The Yankees, Ohio State - but NOTHING will ever match my personal dislike of the Pittsburgh effing Steelers and that arrogant, smug as crap fanbase. So yea, to HELL with the Pittsburgh Steelers, and lets effing go Buffalo. Pound these guys to nothing.

A game that wasn’t in doubt after the bills got the lead. that was also about as possibly well as Mullens could have played.

AKA "FU Kurt Warner"

They'll borrow from future caps. A cut of any kind would be draconian, and would lead to a lot of vets with a few good years left, out in the cold. I mean just guys CURRENTLY on rosters with agreed upon contracts won't survive because suddenly teams that planned it out rather carefully, can't afford to keep him on the roster. There's also going to be huge dead cap issues. It's too bonkers to ever think they'll cut or even keep it as is

Diggs is most valuable to this offense as someone who gets open in the intermediate whenever he wants to. He can be used as a deep threat but doing that takes away his biggest strength, which is his route running. that route running is what got the Bills that last TD against Arizona, and if he’s playing a more downfield threat role, that’s probably Beasley running that route. Basically, Diggs is a Swiss Army knife, and he’s got a pretty good long knife in his set, But it’s not a machete, and when you try to use it as a machete you lose all those other tools he brings it’s also not something you can really scheme around. There’s no reason to account for a deep threat that’s not Stefon Diggs, it’s really that simple. You can drift over a safety or linebacker towards Diggs, and Allen is left with Beasley, an underwhelming TE, or Gabe Davis We know the TE ain’t it, but I think Davis needs to be given a shot to show what he can do deep

Think it’s time to invest in a true X. Chris Olave might be around in the late 20s, and so might Rashod Bateman. Shame that both Davonte Smith and Jaylen Waddle won’t there Diggs is perhaps the best Z in the NFL. Problem is that without John Brown there’s no reliable X who can pose as a perimeter threat who’s gonna draw a safety. There’s a few ways you can do that. You can do it with size and contested catch ability (Hopkins and Allen Robinson and Mike Evans), or you can do it with pure speed (John Brown, Tyreke Hill). Without Smoke, it’s down to Gabe Davis, and as of yet he’s not earned the respect of NFL safeties. If the Bills are worried about Brown’s speed for the rest of the season, then it might be time to start targeting Davis deep a lot more, in the hopes of him making plays and drawing more safety attention in the game plan.

Shanahan will run at you and he’ll pick you apart with shifty players getting into space, within 15 yards, and he the TE involved. Be an interesting balance between the Sam and Nickel. My gut says they’ll play majority Sam as you stop the run against the Niners you stop their primary weapon

I wouldn’t really consider that “blowing it” either. Bills were up 2 TDs without about half the game to go. And it’s not the Bills were dominant either, to get to that point. Mean reversion meant that it was always likely that the Cards were going to come back and score a bunch of points. Just too much talent. Thing is, the Bills don’t play in a vacuum. Yea we want to see defenders making good plays, but at the same time you got NFL athletes lining up across from you, and they’re doing their damndest to make life hell for the Bills. You’re not watching collapses so much as you’re seeing the opposition asserting itself. That’s football, especially in the league, designed for parity of talent.

24 - 6 to 27 - 17 isn’t remotely blowing a blowing a big lead