BarleyNY

Rain and wind Sunday. High of 50F. Gonna be a lot of running and short passing I think. The running clock will shorten the game so turnovers will be a bit magnified. I expect Allen to get some designed runs. Those will be important. Hold onto the ball, Josh.

That set of stats is from Jake Trotter via Twitter (which I don’t know how to embed here). He also notes that over the last two seasons Mayfield’s completion percentage is 55.6% when targeting OBJ. That’s the worst of any QB-WR tandem in the league over that time.

Lee is a great athlete, but FWIH he did not put football first and was much more interested in doing some very serious partying. I hope he’s got himself together. I’d love to see what a focused and clean Lee could do in the NFL. There’s probably little risk on the Bills side so I’m sure they can part ways if things aren’t good with him. Fingers crossed that they are.

Elite QBs are worth the money they get paid. As noted by others, the problem is overpaying mediocre or below QBs. Teams have to have the guts to part ways with mediocre QBs and that includes ownership. You have to chance giving up on a Tannehill once in awhile so you don’t pay a Wentz. Teams who pay an elite QB also need to have the guts to part ways with other players who are more replaceable (sorry RBs) even if they’re fan favorites. Find your QB and draft well. Rarely, or never, spend big bucks in FA. And for the love of god, never trade big picks for a player that is due or is demanding a new contract unless you’ve negotiated it prior to completing the trade. (Don’t be a Bill O’Brian.)

That’s all fair. And for what it’s worth I’m mostly down on the LBs and IDL. The DEs have been doing their jobs for the most part. I’d like to see them sack the QB more often, but Hughes has played well and I’ve seen solid play overall.

I’m not not worried about the Dolphins.

I agree wholeheartedly. It’s over. The Cheats owned us with Brady. They pretty much owned everybody (except Eli Manning somehow). But it’s over. Time to move on. The goal is a division win and 6-2 against a team we should beat. That’s all it is on Sunday.

I never liked the Star signing. Actually I hated it. I thought they massively overpaid him at the time and he’s done nothing since but support that opinion. Even with the reworked contract he’s still way overpaid IMO. It’s an easy narrative to say the defense is worse because he’s not here, but that doesn’t make it true. Correlation does not equal causality. He hasn’t been good since before he got here, he wouldn’t be much help this season and he won’t be much help next. He’s a serviceable, one dimensional IDL who is average to below average and is paid like he’s a difference maker. It’s been ridiculous.

I agree

I wasn’t exactly thrilled with his performance prior to this season and you have a good point about what he might look like next season. His contract isn’t all that friendly either. $500k cap hit this season, $7.75M cap hit in 2021, $9.35M in 2022 and $8.95M in 2023. Dead cap hit would be really rough too. Link

Bills are spending $51.7M on the DL this season and are set to spend $50.5M next. That’s with Murphy gone (contract expires), Star back and Zimmer restricted but unsigned. That’s some really poor value. Spotrac

It might as well be me out there.

Yeah, after a nail-biter against the Jest how are we looking past any team?

I get that he’s still young. But that doesn’t change the upcoming decision on him. He was drafted 16th overall two and a half seasons ago. His 5th year option decision is due this upcoming offseason and if that’s declined then a decision on him staying a Bill is due by the following one. Right now I can’t imagine that his 5th year option will be picked up but I can see the team sticking with him through his rookie deal to see f the light goes on. But remember that the bar is high for him to remain a Bill. He was drafted 16th overall and the second contracts that players drafted in the mid-first get from their teams are big ones. We are talking top 5 or top 10 at his position big. So we aren’t looking for acceptable play or splash plays interspersed with missed assignments and mistakes. We are looking for consistent and sometimes elite production. If he is going to stay a Bill and earn that top 5 or 10 MLB deal, then we need a top 5 or 10 interior/coverage LB. Fans are right to question his play in general, but when looked at in that light he’s so far away from where he needs to be I just can’t see it happening. We should give him the chance through next season, but we should be looking at contingencies too.

He’s been a beast doing the dirty work. I do love me some Beasley.

Disagree on Williams. I think the OT play has been very good overall. The IOL play has not, to put it mildly. Even Morse has been up and down. But that might be a function of some pretty poor OG play on both sides of him. He’s been a very good C before so I think it’s that. The 3 OGs we’ve put on the field have been average or worse throughout their careers and they have not looked average this season. The RBs are both decent players, but I don’t think either will ever be a great back. They’d both still be productive behind a good OL though. And if one could be a legit threat receiving, that’d be great.

I was considering starting a thread on how good our OTs have been. They’ve been a bright spot that’s largely gone unnoticed. I can’t imagine why we’d want to mess with them. Not that any decent ones are available for trade anyway.

Cashews and it’s not close.

This is fantastic! We can never really know. Sorry for ruining the joke with the following. I saw a show that ran an experiment on dogs and wolves. First they put a piece of raw meat on a stick that was stuck through a cage. They put several of each group into the area. Both were able to paw it out of the cage and eat it. No problem. Then they tacked the stick down so they couldn’t get it out. Both became agitated. The wolves then looked to their pack for help while the dogs looked to the people running the experiment for help. That certainly supports the idea that dogs see people as part of their pack the same as they do other dogs while wolves do not. I guess it would support the Stockholm Syndrome theory as well though.

As much as I’d hate to neutralize his sideline to sideline ability it’s seems like a necessary move soon.

His shoulder isn’t making him leave his gap, take false steps and overrun plays. He’s been horrible this season. Watch some All 22 and focus on him. His biggest issue is that teams keep running counters and cutbacks to his gap and he keeps taking himself out of plays by running with the initial flow.

Yeah. I don’t. And I understand that he is a CB who excels in man coverage and we were moving to a zone, primarily C-3 scheme so we probably didn’t want to pay him to see how he played bail technique. I get it, but I always hate moving on from elite players because they don’t fit a new scheme. It seems to me like great coaches should be able to adapt their scheme to maximize the impact of great players. It was probably just too late to salvage the relationship when McD got here. We were at a point where a franchise tag was our only option and that would’ve likely led to a disgruntled player on and off the field.

3-17 is 15%. (3/20) For me it needs to be beating a true playoff caliber team in reasonable health. For example beating KC without Mahomes wouldn’t count. Then we need to win a playoff game. That’s truly turning the corner IMO.

I think he wanted paid - and to win. I think he was frustrated here because he had to play out his fifth year option with no extension and we weren’t all that competitive as a team. He got both with NE. Until recently that is. Now he’s just getting paid.

He wasn’t traded off of the Bills. We let him leave as a FA.