sven233

12 penalties......in a half. There have been a couple I haven't agreed with, but the majority are deserved. It's preseason, but this team doesn't look prepared to play. And no....this isn't about scheme or anything like that. I'm not going to overreact or complain about play calls. There is no game planning. This is about players looking lazy and playing unfocused and undisciplined. All things that you control yourself. That reflects poor coaching.

Looks like the key skill player starters are done. Josh and his weapons looked just fine when the OTs weren't getting blown by or taking penalties. The guards looked good on my initial watch, but both tackles were awful. As we all knew, we do not have a legitimate option at MLB. That is going to be a problem all year. If Jackson is the best we have at CB2, that is going to be an issue as well. And, as much as I hate to say it, Poyer might be in for a steep decline this season. Looked real slow out there. I don't think this team has a lot of holes, but the ones we do have are craters.

Our O-Line depth is absolutely terrible. None of these guys are NFL players.

I live 45 minutes from a Wegmans, but my wife and I were actually heading up that way this afternoon. Was there at 1:30 and they had been sold out for a while. Really tired of scalpers buying all of them up just to resell them. It's a charity item and it's just gross to see so many people trying to make money on them. Pictures all over Facebook with idiots having like 10+ sets stacked up to resell. Just trying to get 1 set.

By all accounts, the QB and the weapons have been awesome. From everything we get to hear, Allen, Diggs, Davis, Kincaid, Knox, Harty, Cook, and Sherfield have looked really good and have made great plays all camp. It sounds like Dorsey has modified and diversified the offense just like we wanted him to do. But there's a big problem. None of this means anything if the offensive line can't block anyone. I haven't been out there myself, but I watch and read everything coming out of camp. To me, it's a becoming a bit worrisome that the only guy I haven't heard about getting absolutely abused on the offensive line is Torrence. While I am not really too worried about Morse, and McGovern to a lesser extent, Brown getting worked on a daily basis is a problem. Dawkins sounds like he's having a rough go of it at times as well and that is a big problem when both your starting tackles are struggling. You can have all the weapons in the world, but if you can't keep Allen clean with 5 guys, that has a chance to ruin everything you want to do on offense. While I think Dawkins will be able to get it together good enough, and I think the coaches will come around and realize that Torrence is one of their best 5, I don't know what they are going to do at RT. Brown, while having all the athletic ability in the world, just seems lost and should be nowhere near starting for this team. The thing is, we all saw this as a huge potential problem but yet Beane and the coaching staff did nothing to bring in real competition for him. They put all of their eggs in the Brown basket and they look like they're breaking. They need to fix this. It only takes one weak link on the offensive line to blow up the whole thing. All of a sudden you need to leave a back or TE in to chip or block. I don't know what they are going to do about it. Probably nothing. While they preach day after day that playing time is earned and not given, this doesn't seem to be the case with Brown. For whatever reason, they are infatuated with him and just don't seem to think he's a problem like we all do. Guess we all just have to hope the light bulb comes on at some point real soon.

So fun to watch this offense early in the season when Allen was taking the short stuff underneath when it was there. He was literally unstoppable early in the season when teams were just trying to cover everything deep and Allen had those quick hitters underneath whenever he wanted them. Allen was on a 6000 yard total pace until the injury and the offense just seemed to fall off a cliff in the 2nd half of that Packers game. I know he said the injury prevented him from making certain shorter throws, but it is really noticeable when you go back and watch the games early when he basically did anything and everything he wanted to do. Hoping he gets back to that this season. Don't get me wrong, I still want Allen to sling the rock down the field most of the time, but taking the easy stuff and forcing teams to respect it and come up a bit opens up the deeper stuff and just make it easier on himself to hit the intermediate and deep stuff more often.

No QB is perfect. They all have stuff that they can do better. But with Allen, he is so different than everyone else and the last thing you want to do is change who he is as a QB. To me, he is already the most physically gifted QB in the league.....maybe ever to play the position. So, getting him to be the best QB in the league is most certainly possible. You could make the argument that he is already there in many areas, but there are a few things he can do to make it a legit discussion throughout the entire league. Honestly, they are not major sweeping changes either. First, maybe the most important thing for Allen to improve isn't even on him and that is getting better protection up front. Too many times our line gets beat and Allen has immediate pressure to evade after taking the snap. Awfully hard to read a defense properly when you are trying to create space to just throw the ball. So yeah.....he will be much better if he has a real pocket to throw from consistently. Second, and I have said this in multiple topics but I think this is the biggest thing he can do to take that next step towards becoming indefensible, but Allen needs to learn to take the "free cheese" on a more regular basis. I for one don't mind the philosophy of trying to push the ball down the field more often than not. You have a freak at QB that can just do things that others can't and you can take advantage of that. But, where I get frustrated at times is when he tries really forcing the ball into double or triple coverage 30 yards down the field. Sure, he gets away with it sometimes, but many times he doesn't and it results in incompletions or turnovers. But, that doesn't have to happen. There are many times on these plays where guys are wide open 5-7 yards away that would just be easy completions and keep the chains moving and Allen still pushes the ball down the field. Teams know this and that is why they run their coverages deep and dare him to take the underneath stuff and he doesn't do it regularly. I don't need him to do it all the time. I want him to push the ball down the field. But he would make that much easier on himself, and help the team in general, if he would take that "free cheese" on a more regular basis. Force teams to honor that stuff and kill them with it and it will make teams play coverage underneath and open up the downfield passing game even more. If you can, go back and watch the Rams game, Titans game, and Steelers games from last year. Allen was taking those dump offs on a regular basis and he was unstoppable in those games. He'd take that short stuff and just kill them underneath and then he'd throw the big daggers over the top. It was beautiful to watch and this slowly started to fade away as the season went along. We always say that something happened between the first half of the year and the second. Sure, some of it was the injury, but the biggest thing that changed was that he started pushing the ball deeper and deeper and neglected the short stuff that was wide open. I know he said the injury made the short throws more difficult, but not taking more of that short stuff on a consistent basis like he was early in the season, made the deeper stuff a lot harder to hit later in the year. He still hit a lot of it, which was impressive, but he needs to take what the defense is giving him underneath more and he will almost be impossible to stop. That was proven early in the season last year. Finally, turnovers. He needs to cut them down by at least a third. With the type of QB he is, he is going to turn the ball over sometimes. I get that, understand that, and even accept that as part of the trade-off for him being who he is as a player. Now, some of those can be eliminated by the things I mentioned above. Don't let guys just get in his face immediately after the snap. A lot of the fumbles happened because the line didn't even give him a chance. And then, by Allen making better decisions, and taking the "free cheese" underneath, that will help him cut down on the picks. He will always turn the ball over more than some QBs but that is because of the style he plays. And that is OK. But there are things he, and the team around him, can do to cut down on them. This was a long answer to a question that many fans think is impossible anyways because Mahomes exists. But there is not a doubt in my mind that Allen can be on that same level, or even better in some areas, with just a few fixes. In fact, I truly believe that Allen with the style of QB he is, could be the first QB in history to get to 6,000 total yards in a season. He was on pace to do it before he got hurt and I think it is definitely something he could do with a little bit of injury luck and some of the things I mentioned above.

There is not a doubt in my mind that the talent on this team is better overall than it was a year ago. That said, do I feel better about the team right now as I did heading into the season as I did last year? I don't know. The fact is, while I feel the talent is better overall, the coaching on this team is still a concern to me. They consistently have been out-coached in big games every year. Until I see evidence that this has changed, I am not sure how I can feel better. Getting rid of Frazier on the surface seems like an upgrade. But make no mistake about it....McDermott has been a big part of this defense since the day he got here. So, how much of a change will we see on that side of the ball? Guess we'll have to wait and see. As for Dorsey, he didn't have a creative bone in his body last season. Will that change this year? Who knows. So do I feel better overall? I am not so sure until this coaching staff shows me something positive.

I have listened to everything just like everyone else has. It sounds to me like it could be a bunch of things, but to me, listening to Allen was the most informative. This is what I heard while reading between the lines: 1. There is not a personal problem between Allen and Diggs. 2. Diggs is not a big fan of Dorsey and our offense. 3. Diggs believes he should be getting the ball more, especially in critical situations. Too many times, and you can see it on film, in clutch situations, the ball was not going to Diggs. Instead, it was going to Dirty, and Davis and on more than a few occasions, those plays were not being made. Diggs fully believes he should be getting those opportunities. 4, Allen repeatedly said they had to find more ways to get him the ball and some of that was on him and inferred scheme could be used more to create opportunities. You could tell the offense was a lot more traditional and "by the book" last season. The days of Daboll scheming guys wide open were long gone. There was more, and then it was being said that it was not football related, so who knows. Bur regardless of how it is classified, I firmly believe this has more to do with the coaching staff.....McDermott, Dorsey, and his new WR coach. I do think Hall leaving is part of this.

So you are saying that pass rush and pass rushers are overrated, but you want to spend a ton of money on an offensive line to protect Allen from........pass rushers?

After everything that happened with 13 seconds, they still didn't learn anything. Played soft and couldn't get 9 seconds off the clock and gave up the tying FG. Just crap defense.

Saffold was just plain garbage. The rest of our line wasn't much better. Our WRs couldn't catch. Allen isn't perfect, but man does he mask a lot of those issues. This team will be better this season if our line just gives Allen a little more time and our WRs don't drop easy balls.

So, with the entirety of the contract (including this year), his value comes in as the 16th highest DT in the league. With 32 teams in the NFL, he's getting upper/midtier money for a #1 DT. While he's not a top 10 DT or anything like that, he is a solid player and does have games every year that he seems to just take over. That said, there are other games you don't know that he's playing in. Like so many guys on our team, it is about him finding consistency. He has to find a way to have those dominant games on a more regular basis. But the fact is, he was going to be a FA at the end of the season and this is what happens in the NFL when contracts come up......lesser guys make more money than it seems they should and then they get passed by from other contracts and other players. The cap is skyrocketing and agents know this. The money is going to get bigger and bigger at every position and even guys that you don't think should get paid will GET PAID. It was Oliver's turn and good for him and his family. Hopefully he balls out and becomes the player we hope he will because if he does, the contract won't look nearly that bad. But yes, that's the gamble that Beane took here. Just have to hope it pays off.

I have only watched a couple of games on him to this point. Now that he's a Bill, I'll watch more. But from what I've seen to this point in my evaluation is that him not going until the 5th round was not a product of dropping balls, not being fast enough, or not being tough enough, etc. His issue is in his hips and the fact that he seems to be wound real tight which is not uncommon for guys that look like him. The things he struggles with the most are working in short areas and not being able to get out of his breaks quick enough. With his height, coupled with the fact that he is a bit stiffer in the hips, makes it so he can't (at least to this point) snap off his routes and he has a tendency to round them off. So, what separation he does create at the top of his routes gets eaten up by CBs sometimes because they have that extra half second or so to recover when he comes out of his breaks because he needs an extra step or 2 that the elite ones don't need to take. This shows up in his 3 cone and short shuttle results from his workout as well. Now, can this be fixed? Sure....to some extent. You can't change his height, but you can can work on flexibility and, in turn, help improve route running at the same time. Getting him in the building and having NFL trainers that are paid to work with players on this kind of stuff specifically can help maybe loosen him up a bit. Couple that with NFL coaches that will be coaching him up on every little detail of every route should help as well. Many times in college, while there are coaches there to help, they don't focus on every single detail and these physical freak athletes can just get by with their God-given ability. In the NFL, every detail matters and they will drill him on it relentlessly. By all accounts, the kid is an extremely hard worker. I mean, let's face it, you don't get to look like that if your not a hard worker and extremely motivated and disciplined. The staff will push him for sure and work to correct these issues. Make no mistake about it, though....this isn't the easiest thing to fix for a lot of reasons. But, it can be done. DK had similar issues when coming out. It was one of the reasons he dropped. But he was much faster than Shorter and therefore he didn't drop as far. But his route running in the NFL has improved over time. It's not perfect and he still gets by on physical talent, but he's much better than where he was coming out. There's reason for optimism. But it isn't going to be easy for him. We'll see what happens. Can't wait to get more into more tape this week.

I haven't watched too many games on him yet, but from what I saw in the couple I did watch, and from gathering other opinions as well, it seems as though there were a lot of plays left on the field for this guy because of bad QB play or a breakdown in other areas at times. Will have to watch more, but those are some impressions I have already taken away. Can't wait to do a little more work on him.

Again.....only Edmunds different in the LB corps. Same d line coming back with the younger guys having another year of experience and a couple of them playing in contract years which should lead to them providing their max effort. I don't see any difference from what we have had on the field the last couple years except for Edmunds.

Outside of losing Edmunds, I'm not sure how you think the defense will be any worse than last year. In fact, with Tre coming back at 100% (hopefully), Elam taking the next step after closing the year strong, Hyde coming back, Poyer no longer being held together by duct tape, and Von getting back early in the season, it sounds to me like the defense shouldn't see much of a drop off in talent. If they can figure out MLB, they could even be better with guys coming back healthy. Throw in the fact with Frazier gone that we should hopefully see less soft coverage and more of an aggressive style of defense, I don't think the defense will be a disaster at all. The fact is, defense doesn't matter as much in this league as it used to. Look at the Super Bowl. The Eagles set records for sacks and had one of the statistically best defenses in the league last year and they got boat raced in the Super Bowl and never even touched Mahomes. Offenses are getting too good and if you want to win big in this league, you have to outscore people. No matter how good your defense is, in the big games, you will have to probably put up 30-35 points to have a chance at winning no matter how good your defense is. It's just super hard to play defense against the best teams in the league. Yes, you can win a lot of games in this league with a good defense because there aren't a ton of explosive offenses yet, but the league is heading that way and you can see it. But just because you can stop average offenses, doesn't mean much when you go up against the elite ones.

Dan Fetes @danfetes · 9m “I could play tomorrow I’ve been working so hard.” - Justin Shorter

Jonah Bronstein @lebronstein · 5m #Bills 5th-round draft pick Justin Shorter was the No. 1-rated WR in the 2018 recruiting class, ahead of Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jaylen Waddle & Ja’Marr Chase There's obviously talent there but he hasn't lived up to expectations for whatever reason. Up to the Bills to pull it out of him.

Jonah Bronstein @lebronstein · 5m #Bills 5th-round draft pick Justin Shorter was the No. 1-rated WR in the 2018 recruiting class, ahead of Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jaylen Waddle & Ja’Marr Chase There's obviously talent there but he hasn't lived up to expectations for whatever reason. Up to the Bills to pull it out of him.

This seems like the Terrel Bernard all over again. Basically the same player. Not sure about this one.

He hasn't allowed a sack in his entire college career...... Obviously it hasn't been that easy to just "run or stunt around him". He's going to get beat in the pros. Even the best lineman do. But don't pretend he's just getting beat like a drum regularly.

Cody Ford had slow and terrible feet. Should have never been drafted. This guy is miles better on tape.

The front office was obviously just as annoyed as we were watching defenders fly by Saffold and Bates in 2-3 steps and making them look like turnstiles consistently last season. They are finally investing in the O-Line with young and hungry players instead of aging discounted vets that are passed their prime. A little worried about his size limiting his movement, but our strength and conditioning staff should be able to help him there. Excited to have a huge mauler on the line again, though.

Protect Allen at all costs......