Mango

Von is a HoF player coming off of a second ACL surgery at 34. His career is likely over. Shill? I don’t know what I am a shill for. This topic is about the team having a players meeting. Von has some value in that setting. His contract sucks, but there is a space for him in this scenario to provide value. I don’t know why you feel the need to be so aggressive and disrespectful. You’re carrying on a conversation that actually isn’t the topic at hand.

Josh had his most rushing attempts with his second best YPC last year. He was plenty athletic last year. Whatever is going on right now is a new problem for everybody. When we say “it’s been worse since Dorsey took over…” you have to toss out a year of him as OC (2022) where it wasn’t worse, and wasn’t less athletic and all 3 years as Josh’s QB coach. It seems like a reach to say that one day Dorsey woke and and said “let’s do a 180 on absolutely everything we’ve been working on for the last 4 years”. It feels like the easy answer here is that our QB who has been inconsistent since we drafted him has been…inconsistent. I don’t love all of Dorsey’s play designs. I also don’t like all his play calls. But this idea that there has been drastic shift in what Josh is and is not allowed to do seems far out there. Allen has had 2 great games. A mediocre game or two, and two clunkers. The offense needs to evolve. That includes Josh.

Josh has done this for a good portion of his career. He’s generally bailed himself out of it with his athleticism and/or by throwing fast balls. Josh is very good. He can be better too. But he isn’t THE problem. There are a lot of things going on right now. But like everything else in the NFL, most things are covered up by better QB play. Mid season it’s maybe the only plausible solution. There isn’t another OC. We can’t go back and re-write contacts, or re-do FA/the draft.

DT, LB, OT, and WR. I am struggling with the depth chart on this one.

Sure. Why not? Let’s pretend Von is on PUP this week. Feel better now? What a very weird thing to be focused on in this conversation.

Sack numbers don’t equal leadership and experience. Von’s contract aside he’s a valuable voice in the locker room. I can’t believe people think total tackles from a HoF coming off of IR should have any impact on whether he talks to guys about staying locked in.

It gets worse. He has two of them.

Bad take. Von is a slam dunk, guaranteed first ballot HOF’er with two Super Bowl rings. If he has any value to this team post ACL injury this is it. Getting lots of sacks and rushing for lots of yards don’t make somebody a leader. No different than at work where being a good salesman doesn’t make you a good manager.

Not to split hairs but Knox’s cap hit this year is likely fair value. $6.4M. He gets heavy starting next year at $14.4M. We’ve pushed a few contracts too far down the road. In 2024 Von $23.8M, Dawkins is $15M, Diggs $28M. Allen $47M, White $16M, , Morse $11M. It’s not a huge deal when guys are part of a long term plan. Allen will get restructured and extended. Taron Johnson has a $12M hit next year, we’ll likely see something similar with him. But it gets tough when guys aren’t part of long term plans or have a severe decline due to age or injury. Dawkins, Von, and Knox are tough in 2024. I have some emotion around White. I feel bad for the guy. But $16M is tough too. Diggs is a weird. I don’t know if I would extend or restructure him right now. I think we are locked into $20m+ until 2028. We could cut or trade him in 2026 but that would still cost us $13M. As of now I don’t want to trade him. But I guess that could change in 3-4 years?

A lot of talk about Josh’s game changing a ton in year 2 under Dorsey. Dorsey deserves some blame here. Mostly around play calling and play design. But one thing I’m slow to come around on is Dorsey being responsible for a change in Allen’s tendencies in year 2 as OC. KD was Josh’s QB coach for 3 years, helping Josh to know when to throw and when to run. Last year Allen ran more in 16 games than any season in his career. And now suddenly in year 5 with Allen, Dorsey has gone “remember everything we talked about the last 4-5 years. Screw it. Only stay behind the line of scrimmage.” It doesn’t add up to me.

Cool, let’s have a reasonable conversation with Josh Allen’s decision making. That seems to be a problem with him this year in both the pass and run game. It’s a problem he’s had throughout his career.

Right, sometimes bad decisions are part of the Josh Allen ride. Chucking it down field when there are better options, run or pass, has always been apart of Josh’s game. Allen ran the ball more in 16 games last year than he did in 17 any other year. Dorsey has been Allen’s coach since the 2019 season. He has coached Josh’s run game for basically his entire career. All of those things combined are going to make me very slow to be convinced that Ken Dorsey woke up one day and was like “you know what Josh, do the exact opposite thing we’ve been talking about since 2019”. People act like Dorsey hasn’t been influencing Allen’s game his entire career as his QB coach, and he’s just some dude who came off the street and entered Josh’s life out of nowhere.

Josh runs on just wing it and sling it. My guess is there’s a lot going on here part is on the OL, but part of it is Josh identifying and setting the protection at the LOS.

Allen vs the Jets this year is just as much Josh Allen playing like himself as him playing the Dolphins. The “real Josh Allen” spectrum is as wider than anybody else’s in the league.

Offense: A lot of execution errors. Cook and Kincaid played well. OL sucked at times. A lot of poorly timed drops, missed assignments, penalties. Otherwise this felt like a quality game plan. Defense: Two problems: 1. Clearly missing Jones, Oliver, and Milano. We didn’t get much of anything from the front 7. 2. Poor game plan. A lot of blitzing. We almost never got home. The secondary played a very soft zone, making it easy for Jones to pick us apart. We never adjusted.

This is good info. Play calling and scheme were good yesterday. I would like to see our passing game core to be Diggs, Kincaid, and Cook going forward. And what I would love to see is a lot of snaps with Murray and Cook on the field together. I think that gives us a lot of mismatches in both the run and pass game. At that point we can use Davis, Shakir, Knox, Harty, and Sherfield as needed. I think Dorsey sees this too, but we’ve had a lot of gaffes in execution this year.

I tend to agree with this. I know I beat this drum all the time, but after 12 years of Sabres futility, the Pegula’s replacing any combination of McBean scare the shirt out of me. I wouldn’t be shocked if McD is retained but we get a DC and new OC. I do think it a proven NFL commodity like Jim Harbaugh becomes available, the Bills make a switch. I don’t think (hope?) the Bills make a change for the sake of change without being pretty buttoned up heading into the process.

I’ve been critical of Allen. I get super frustrated because I think he’s awesome, but good really level himself and his team up from an already high place. I am a bit less critical of guys in our history like Orton or Tyrod because they’re deficient and just need to be replaced. Allen is a great QB. I wouldn’t make this trade in 100 years. EDIT: I also find it super frustrating that we dealt with Brady for 20 years. Then we finally get our guy and then Mahomes exists.

Honest question, just breaking this down and applying it to the rest of the offensive output this year. To your point his coaches say “don’t do that” And for years Allen says “no”. Where else is this popping up? I don’t necessarily think this, I think Josh is coachable. Which is why I find his decisions frustrating at times. But it did create some thoughts.

This is fair. I think I have some frustration around this topic because on one hand as a board we regularly talk about “no team asks their QB to do more and carry such a heavy load”. Then when we do that the entire board goes “Let Allen cook! You can’t tame the stallion” I actually agree with posters like @Big Turk a lot, but today I find myself arguing with the plethora of commenters/topics vicariously through him. Sorry about that dude. Haha

I think there is a narrative that they’ve asked Josh to stop running. I’m don’t think that’s the case. The ask is to stop trucking LB’s. I don’t watch a ton of the Eagles, but Mahomes and Jackson do a better job of protecting themselves. I’m not saying he shouldn’t run. And I doubt the staff is either. Take the green space. But get down, get out, protect the ball. Avoid contact except for the most important moments. This feels so simple with really bad execution.

I strongly disagree with this. At an Your QB has to be able to evolve, protect himself, and protect the ball. This isn’t crazy. Carolina leaned into Cam and he burned hot then flamed out super quickly. He was toast by the time he as 28. If Allen doesn’t figure this out and evolve he’ll do the same. Either that or we have 2,3,4 years of good Allen and he’s done. My guess is McD has a bit of PTSD around this and is trying to get ahead of it. Bring somebody else in to coach the offense that’s fine. But if we want Allen to do this for a long time in Buffalo he has to be better at picking his spots.

I find it difficult to separate my frustrations with Josh’s decisions in the passing game with my frustrations from his decision making in the run game.

Honest question. When they do film review, and they see Allen chuck it to Diggs in double coverage when he has 10 yards of green grass in front of hi, do you think the staff is saying “great job Josh!”? I don’t. I don’t think Josh has a good feel for his run game unless he can run violently. Don’t forget he came into this league as a QB with happy feet who would leave the pocket early without letting the play develop. Josh figuring out when and when not to run has always been a rollercoaster.

He took off 7 times yesterday for 2 yards and change per carry. He wasn’t effective/ Last year Josh had the most rushing attempts of his career more or less matching his 2021 numbers in one less game. He is averaging a yard per carry more than he did in 18, 19, and 20. I feel like people are just yelling at clouds and romanticizing a past that didn’t really exist.