GunnerBill

He was. Then he took it as coaching to Barcelona and influenced a young catalan midfielder called Pep Guardiola. But it all started with Michels.

Slight correction, Cruyff played in the Dutch teams of the 70s. The great sides of the 70s and 80s were coached by Rinus Michels who was the godfather of modern football. I often think of him as a bit like Don Coryell in the NFL. His influence is still all over the place but he rarely gets talked about as an all time great in the way he should.

The difference between the two is Daboll did things to give his guys an advantage. Dorsey's ethos was just "run the play and execute better than the defense."

Tomlin does not have personnel control in Pittsburgh. It isn't on him.

I hope so.

And we have nobody who has even proven to be that. Curtis Samuel has one year of that type of production in his seven year career (reason to be optimistic it was with this OC). Shakir might still be ascending but hasn't proven to be that yet and MVS is clearly proven to be a #3. If we get low end #2 type production - say 700-750 yards and 4 or 5 TDs - that would be a reasonable outcome given prior production.

Not by me they weren't.

Safety is, and remains, my biggest question mark with this team. If Bishop isn't up to speed early they don't have an NFL calibre starter at the position..

Yea there are reasons to have optimism. In terms of his track recored, as you say, he got career years out of Chose and Samuel and while when we look now at 2020 LSU and go "wow all that talent" the year before he arrived Joe Burrow threw for 16 touchdowns and Justin Jefferson was a middling outside receiver who under Brady dominated college football as a big slot. Now it is possible he just got lucky and benefitted from breakouts at the right time. But it is possible he played a part too. In terms of what he did last year he made the offense look like a modern NFL offense again with motion, route combinations designed to create leverage and mixing up their use of pistol, shotgun and under centre better. Which compared to the mid 00s redux offense Ken Dorsey was selling was encouraging. Now there are reasons to doubt him as well, and those are also legitimate, but I think there are grounds for optimism in terms of what we have at OC. I certainly think Joe Brady's potential ceiling is high. Much more so than I think the ceiling of the WR room is high.

No. I don't and I didn't.

He was responsible for basically everything except the blocking assignments at LSU. The point about his talent is well made and it may well prove that was his high point and it was entirely a product of the talent. That is of course possible. I am not telling you Joe Brady is great but I think there are grounds for optimism with him.

He was bad in Carolina. There is no question about that. There were some mitigating factors.... the abomination of an offensive line he was handed was one, a poor head coach was another. But for an offense with DJ Moore, Robby Anderson, Curtis Samuel and Christian McCaffrey to struggle as much as it did is a poor reflection on him. But he was also the coordinator of the best offense in college football history. And he definitely made some good adjustments when he took over last year. The Bills offense was much cleverer and less predictable under him than under Dorsey. I think it is optimistic to believe he is a genius, but you only have to go back a few years and he was being talked about in those terms. He was the must have hotshot. I'm more optimistic about Brady than I am about the wide receiver room. I think there is more chance that he is really good than there is that we have a stud in that room.

Not true. Andy Reid was never an offensive coordinator. He was an offensive line coach, turned Quarterbacks coach. He got his Head Coach shot without ever having coordinated or called an offense.

4 proven NFL calibre players.... possibly (depends how you treat Hollins but I certainly agree with 3). Zero who are proven even as true #2 receivers. We have three proven #3s.

I can live with a year of them being outside top 10 for a year while they are in a mini reset mode. But the last offseason where anyone would legitimately have made a realistic argument the Bills have "upgraded" the WR room is 2021 when they "upgraded" Brown with Sanders. I think that was at best a marginal gain but you could make the argument. That means we have now gone through three offseasons without any serious attempt to upgrade the wide receiver room. That shouldn't happen when you have Josh, because if you are standing still you are getting worse.

I agree KOC wants to a QB who paints by numbers. That is what that Shanahan style scheme requires. It does not want Quarterbacks freelancing at all. I'd be surprised if he actually wanted to move off Kirk though. I think his ideal plan was to keep Kirk and bring in another QB to sit and learn. I think that was part of Kirk going to Atlanta he thought that would be 2-3 years as the undisputed starter..... only for the Falcons to then draft a QB as well.

If it includes tight ends I think there is an argument the Bills should be bumped up a place or two - especially above the Giants. Nabers is a great prospect but only a prospect until he plays a game and I'd take the Bills at every other spot and I'd take BOTH Kincaid and Knox over Bellinger. Similarly while I think Denver probably are just a slight tick ahead of us at WR both Bills Tight Ends would start there too so once you include that position the Bills are better IMO. The other team who are way too high that I think are overrated are the Commanders. Scary Terry is excellent, but Dotson was overrated coming out and folks are struggling to let go of the draft hype on him and Zach Ertz is their tight end but he is a replacement level player at this stage. I'd take McLaurin but again I might take the Bills at every other spot in that H2H of pass catchers.

They didn't want to lose Kirk. Atlanta just offered more. Still think the rest of the roster is too strong to only win 3 or 4. 6 minimum IMO.

That bottom 5 is the same bottom 5 those of us who talked about this right after the draft had. I don't think it is at all controversial. Most neutral observers would objectively rank those five as the worst 5 receiver groups on paper going into the year.

Okay that isn't how it read to me. I think Worthy will start. The Chiefs will play some 12 and even some 13 but they will play plenty of 11 personnel and Worthy will be one of the three "starting" receivers in that set.

Worthy being a backup is not a fact.

In fairness the NFL HAS changed since Matt Millen was GM of the Lions. Millen was hammered for taking three in consecutive years in the first round AND reaching to do so. Famously in 2005 the top player on Detroit's entire draft board was DeMarcus Ware. When they went on the clock at #10 who was sitting there? Ware. Then they changed their mind in the draft room and thought one more receiver would turn Harrington into a franchise QB. This was all pretty well documented after he left Detroit.

I felt like we were having to play balls out every single week to get over the line. You do that for 17 weeks including running Josh Allen like a battering ram at times the chances you are fully healthy and fresh for the playoffs are reduced. I think the fact our passing game wasn't close to its optimum level was limiting our margin for error. Do I think this receiver group and a passing game similar to what we got down the stretch last year could get us to 11 or 12 wins and the post season? Sure I do. Do I think it is likely to be enough to win a Championship? No. And I get the arguments about drops and miscues but those drops and miscues are part of the evaluation whether we like it or not. If they can clean those up that will help but again one of the ways to limit mistakes is with better players and I don't think the room is upgraded.

I'm not in the market for a mark against our offense or otherwise. I'm interested in whether the talent we have at wide receiver is sufficient to allow the offense to maximise its potential. I'm not persuaded we do. But we have to be more productive as a passing outfit than we were over the stretch run last year to achieve that in 2024.

Look at our passing production in those games. Sure, we can be a run the ball, play good defense (we were actually playing outstanding defense until the injury bug hit again at Miami and in the wildcard round) and run Josh Allen a ton team if we want to and we will win games that way because we are well coached and have a solid roster. But to maximise this team's ceiling you need to take advantage of how special #17 is as a passer and we weren't doing that to its fullest extent down the stretch. I'm not super interested in what could / should they have done differently in the spring. Those debates have been had. Nothing we do or say changes it. Pending a stunning trade from left field we are where we are. The question is whether that is going to be good enough.