2003Contenders

I don't think we need to worry about the Bills drafting him -- remember, the front office does not draft prospects who played at Texas.😛

While Amos may not be an exciting pick, I think he is a great fit for McD's defense (reminds me in some ways of Tre). He's a guy we draft, don't get much hype about it -- and then just sit back and watch him play at a quality level for the next several years.

How much of that $ is dead cap?

He was Bruce's understudy his first couple of years in the league. In 2000, the season after Bruce/Andre/Thurman were unceremoniously released, Wiley moved into the starting position and played pretty well in a contract year. When John Butler headed to San Diego the following off-season he snagged Wiley as a free agent. Even when he was backing Bruce up, he was a favorite of reporters' for quotes as he was very engaging and articulate -- which stands to reason, coming from Columbia, I guess.

First and foremost, Beane has done a remarkable job of retaining key players, and even re-signing many of them to long-term extensions. That alone, gets the front office a passing grade IMHO. Compare to last year where, due the salary cap restrictions, the team lost some key players. This year the only noteworthy players who have left are Hollins and Martin -- and neither of them were a great loss. As much as we will miss Hollins the character, I think Palmer is an improvement at WR. Bosa and Forrest are low risk/high reward rolls of the dice. Dane Jackson is familiar with the system and will probably enter the season as the starter at CB opposite Benford. Getting anything at all for Elam, I think was also commendable. I would still like for Beane to bring in another corner -- and there are a couple of familiar faces still out there in Gilmore and Douglas. If not for the PDE issues with Hoecht and (especially) Ogunjobi, I would say the off-season has been Excellent rather than merely Acceptable. Let's not forget that the draft is coming up too!

The Ogunjobi situation really bothers me as well. I noticed that Beane chose his words very carefully when talking about how the team did not know about his situation at the time that the agreement was made vs. at the time of the signing. I will say that there is some precedent with Ogunjobi and his camp in regards to proper disclosure of information prior to working out a contract: After his career year with the Bengals, Ogunjobi agreed to terms with the Bears but failed to disclose a foot injury, which the Bears uncovered when they did a physical. The Bears were able to get out of the contract thanks to the physical, and Ogunjobi signed with the Steelers instead.

Let's just assume for a moment that Diggs has had something of a epiphany -- that he is willing to be a good soldier, bury the hatchet with Josh and the team, and return to the level of play he exhibited in his prime. Is that good enough to help the team get over the KC hump? Well, even in his best years, Diggs historically had problems against KC. In three playoff games against them (2020, 2021 and 2023), he failed to haul in a single TD pass. His overall numbers in those 3 games were terrible: 12 receptions on 25 targets for 106 yards and 0 TDs. That is over 3 games, NOT a single game. His average for a single game in the playoffs against the Chiefs looks like: 4 receptions on 8.3 targets for 35.3 yards. Not exactly worthy of the drama.

I like CB Trey Amos out of Ole Miss, who would seem to be an ideal fit for what McDermott looks for in a corner. He may even be there in the 2nd round.

Very well said! Suddenly the safety depth chart looks much deeper with Bishop/Rapp/Hamlin all returning and the low-cost acquisition of the Forrest kid. Drafting a safety high is no longer the priority I thought it was going to be -- and Beane could (and should) still invest at least one of the mid-round picks on a young safety with upside. Not really any downside to re-signing Damar. He will probably never be elite, but he is a professional and understands this defense. I like him on the team in 2025, regardless of role: -- Providing quality depth -- Mentoring younger players -- Keeping the seat warm until a better player DOES come along

I'm only half joking when I say (especially in this draft where the top-end talent appears to be weak), they should go ahead and use all of those picks and draft multiple players (defensive backs in particular). Throw enough you-know-what against the wall, and maybe something will stick! After all, the miss on Elam was somewhat salvaged in that same draft by acquiring Benford in the 6th.

The issue for the 49ers, I believe, is that he has a large roster bonus coming up -- and if they designate him as a post-June 1 cut, I believe they are responsible for paying him that bonus (even if he is picked up by another team). Personally, I would prefer a healthy Ayiuk over Metkalf -- and we just saw the large contract (plus trade compensation) the Steelers gave up for Metkalf. Of course, the operative word there is "healthy", and the injury that Ayiuk experienced last season was devastating.

Interesting about Golden. Conventional wisdom has him as WR 4 in the draft (behind McMillan, Burden and Egbuka). Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess. I saw that the Bills reportedly met with him at the combine. I never expected him to last until 30 but thought that he could potentially be the target of a mild trade-up like the team should have done to acquire BTJ last year. If this news is true about him being the first WR off the board, there's probably no chance of such a trade up now.

And let's not forget Billy Joe "I never read my playbook" Tolbert.

And to think, while the Josh Allen "no 1st down" call will forever be remembered, the officials also spotted the ball short of where it should have been SEVERAL times in that game. If the ball is properly placed in all of those situations, maybe the game doesn't come down to a "failed" 4th down attempt.

You're not the only one. We saw last year how much $$$ went to mediocre WR free agents (including Gabe Davis). The FA market isn't great this year, so I expect the few "name" WRs to command over-priced contacts again. I just don't see Beane investing that much money when there are pretty big needs along the DL and secondary. Simply maintaining the status quo at the position (as underwhelming as it was) from 2024 won't even be easy. They just re-signed Shakir to a decent contract, and I expect that they will do whatever they can to retain Mack. Will they try to bring back Cooper at a reasonable deal?

Interesting take about the pre-injury Coleman vs the post-injury Coleman and how he stacked up against Worthy. At the time of the injury, as I referenced earlier Coleman had: 35 targets/22 receptions (62.9%) for 417 yards and 3 TDs, He averaged 11.9 yards per target and 18.95 yards per reception. Meanwhile, Worthy had the following stats at that time: 37 targets/19 receptions (51.35%) for 235 yards and 3 TDs. He averaged 6.35 yards per target and 12.37 yards per reception. So indeed Coleman was noticeably more productive pre-injury (at least in the passing game). On 2 fewer targets, he had 3 more receptions and nearly 200 more yards receiving than Worthy. Granted, Worthy turned it on more in 2nd half of the season (and in the playoffs). But on the full season, despite his hyped 40-time, his average yard per reception (10.8) dwarfed that of Coleman (19.2). I know he was very productive in the playoffs against the Bills and Eagles -- but how much of that was because the Bills fielded a MASH unit in the secondary, and virtually all of Worthy's production came after the Eagles had the game well in hand?

Agreed. Also, he and Josh need to find the time to work one-on-one during the off-season. Improve chemistry on timing routes -- and Coleman needs to learn how to best help his QB when a play breaks down.

I agree that the various stats providers are wildly inconsistent about what is considered a "drop". I like to look at team-wide receiving stats, essentially talking apples-to-apples as the receivers were primarily targeted by the same QB. In that way you can somewhat calibrate the receivers' success rate by comparing the % of targets that they managed to haul in compared to other receivers on the same team. Here is what the Bills looked like last season: Player Targets Rec Rec % Yards TDs Yards/Rec Yards/Target Ray Davis 19 17 89.5% 189 3 11.1 9.9 Ty Johnson 21 18 85.7% 284 3 15.8 13.5 James Cook 38 32 84.2% 258 2 8.1 6.8 Quintin Morris 6 5 83.3% 36 1 7.2 6.0 Khalil Shakir 100 76 76.0% 821 4 10.8 8.2 Dawson Knox 33 22 66.7% 311 1 14.1 9.4 Mack Hollins 48 31 64.6% 378 5 12.2 7.9 Amari Cooper 32 20 62.5% 297 2 14.9 9.3 Dalton Kincaid 75 44 58.7% 448 2 10.2 6.0 Keon Coleman 56 29 51.8% 556 4 19.2 6.4 For the sake of this exercise, I left off Shavers and Davidson, each of whom had one pass thrown their way, which they both caught. Maybe only 4-5 (as cited by various publications) of Coleman's 27 non completions were technically drops, but his 51.8% catch-rate of the targets thrown his way is unacceptable. And before we blame Josh, the scheme, play design(s), etc. it is worth noting that Coleman's success rate was by far the worst on the team. The only other receiver with less than 60% conversion rate was Kincaid, who also had a very disappointing season. Obviously, we can't expect an 80+% rate like the RBs all had, given that many of their targets were much closer to the line of scrimmage than Coleman's (although, Johnson owned a phenomenal 15.8 yards per reception). And it is unfair to compare Coleman to Shakir -- who is known for his high % of caught targets. However, even a modest jump to, say, the 64.6% that Hollins hauled in would have meant a stat line of 36 receptions for 691 yards -- and likely an extra TD or 2. Also, if we factor in that he missed 4 games after the injury, over a full season it would look something like 47 receptions for 902 yards and 7 TDs, reasonable production for a WR2. If we look closer at his pre and post injury stats, we can see that in weeks 1-9 his numbers looked like: 22/35 (62.86%) for 417 yards and 3 TDs, 11.9 Yards per target and 18.95 yards per reception. After the injury: 7/21 (33.3%) for 139 yards and 1 TD, 6.6 yards per target and 19.9 yards per reception. Obviously a small sample size, I know, but clearly there was a major decline in effectiveness after the injury. The good news is that when he DID catch the ball, he was highly productive with almost 20 yards per reception. So all is not dismal. If he can work on improving his focus/concentration, use his size to his advantage and become a more reliable target in the passing game, perhaps he can evolve into the receiver the front office banked on when they drafted him last year.

Some random thoughts: 1. When I see a team make multiple trades to move down (especially in the 1st round), it usually signals to me that they are uncertain about that 1st pick. That is, the Bills can claim all they want to about how much they liked Coleman, but their moving down the way they did (especially with so many other WRs coming off the board in that area of the draft) signals to me that they were not THAT excited about him. 2. I believe that Bishop had McD's name written all over it. For the past few years the team has been rumored to have coveted big safeties. Clearly the front office was very excited about taking Bishop at the end of the 2nd round -- as war room footage showed their refusal to trade down again when given the opportunity to do so for fear of losing out on that selection. 3. I wonder how much the concerns about the team's overall depth (given key looses in free agency as well as the Diggs trade) led Beane to go down the path he did in the draft. I honestly believe that he perhaps underrated the remaining talent we had on the team -- and seemed dead-set on making moves to acquire additional draft picks in hopes of building depth rather than making moves to acquire better talent. He honestly seemed more interested in regaining that 3rd round pick he had given up to acquire Douglas than he was in making a pick in the 1st round. While I am not sure that being able to trade up into the top 10 for any of the 3 high-rated WRs was feasible, I have to believe that the ammunition was there to make a modest move up a few spots to acquire BTJ, who undoubtedly would have made an impact for this team -- especially in the palyoffs. Instead, Beane decided to trade down TWICE in the first round, clearly more obsessed with acquiring additional draft picks than using picks to move up in the draft for better odds at blue chip talent. 4. Recall that the 1st half of the 1st round of the draft were literally all offensive players (Laiatu Latu was the first defensive player taken at #15). Now, it certainly could mean that the 2024 draft was indeed top-heavy on the offensive side of the ball -- but it also likely means that the 2nd half of the round was deep with talent on the defensive side of the ball. When the Bills were on the clock at #28, only 8 defensive players total had been drafted. Maybe the team would have been better off taking their next top-rated defensive player there than moving down 5 spots (with 2 trades) to acquire the 8th WR in the draft. To make matters worse, after the trades note that 4 of the 5 players that were drafted between 28 and 33 were also offensive players, 3 of them receivers. Beane can claim all he wants to that they drafted BPA, but acquiring the 8th WR (even in a draft purportedly deep at WR) when you could have had your choice at Safety or the 2nd CB or the 3rd DT in the draft just seems like a poor allotment of resources. 5. As others have pointed out, it really is too early to know for sure how this draft class will turn out. While the early returns are not great, time will tell.

Which is exactly why I question the credibility of the quote stating that Josh "long" wanted for the Bills to sign him. The team had the choice to do that last season and opted to sign Samuel instead (the Chiefs signed Hollywood a few days AFTER the Bills signed Samuel). I would have to think that Josh's desires fit into the equation when the Bills made that decision last season. Maybe Josh really did like Hollywood, but it would seem that he and the team preferred Samuel. Depending on what happens with Cooper, maybe the Bills acquire Hollywood after all -- and end up with both Samuel and Hollywood.

Yes, Bill Belichick quite often made him look bad back in those days (as did most coaches who faced BB in those days), but Coach Dick Jauron was a better coach for the Bills than many of us remember. I always thought that Dick Jauron was a really good coach for a bad football team. That is, given the poor roster he inherited back in 2006 (with JP Losman at QB!) it was a miracle that the team finished 7-9. The following year with a team that set the record at the time for the most players on IR (and was under-talented to begin with), he still led them to another 7-9 start. Then in 2008, the team got off to a great start -- which landed Jauron a contact extension -- then trip to Arizona happened, and the team never fully recovered. He always struck me as a good person who really cared about his players. He will be missed. RIP.

I would love to find a way to acquire Garrett. Then make some smart acquisitions at S and CB who fit the scheme and do not necessarily break the bank -- McD has shown that he can get a great deal out of guys like this.

Good points. Against both the Ravens and Chiefs I was struck by how easy both of those offenses made it seem with WRs often running wide open, whereas, it seemed like the Bills had to fight tooth-and-nail for every blade of grass.

Here is what I will say... There are entirely too many times where Josh has dropped back to pass and is unable to find anyone open. Replays often show all the receivers bracketed in coverage. I just want someone who can consistently get OPEN!

I agree -- especially with the part about letting McD make the call on who he wants at DB. IIRC Hyde, Poyer and Tre all came aboard in McD's first season back in 2017, and all three made an immediate impact. Hyde and Poyer were prudent FA pickups that did not break the bank, and Tre was a rookie. I would LOVE to see something like that happen again this off-season.