Sammy Watkins' Rib

The bolded would be why. And where does it put the team in 2024, 2025 etc? It's definitely a swing for the fences move. Could bring the Bills a championship or put us in a terrible position for the next couple of years to follow.

We are talking about a 24 year old player vs a 31 year old player. A player that is cheap and cost zero draft picks vs. a player that will count $10+ million against the cap and a day one or two draft pick or two. On a team that has many holes to fill. Is it wise to invest in D-Hop? I don't believe we are in "win it now mode". As long as Allen is our QB our window will be cracked. Let's build a roster with the long term health of the team in mind. It's a legitimate question to consider. The question is not who has the better HOF credentials.

That is not the only question that needs to be asked. I honestly like OP's post. They point out some things that need to be considered in the equation. Pretty crazy that D-Hop's catch percentage averaged around 55% for his first five years in the league and then averaged around 68% for his next six seasons. A lot of that has to do with the ypr coming down as D-Hop aged. Less deep targets and more short route targets. Could see the same change for Gabe. Gabe's ypr over his first three seasons has been extraordinarily high so a lower-than-average catch percentage makes sense. D-Hop will be 31 at the start of this season! Davis will be 24. Seven years younger. That's a massive difference. We have seen the best of D-Hop. We likely have not seen the best of Gabe. D-Hop would also cost us picks and salary that could be spent elsewhere. This team has a ton of holes all over the roster on both sides of the ball. Davis currently costs us nothing.

Good to know. Wasn't their last post sometime in the second half of the Bengals game? I think many of us fell off a cliff mentally after that game regarding this team, including myself.

A better analogy is to compare 2018-2022 as the first book in a series. It was an epic read but had a terrible last chapter where the hero’s found themselves defeated by the villains. So what does the second book hold?

Plan B is Lamar which would quite possibly set their franchise back even more.

It will be a short second chapter as I suspect it will end when the Bills fire McDermott at the end of the 2023 or 2024 season.

I'm not even assuming a win. I just want to get back to the Super Bowl. Not sure why you are questing the way I ask the question as it seems you agree with my assessment of McDermott in that there is a good (50/50) chance he is not the head coach in 2024 if the Bills continue their trend of going backwards.

McDermott is very much in the mold of Tomlin and John Harbaugh as a head coach. All three are great coaches with high regular season winning percentages. Question is, will McDermott still be here when Allen and the Bills finally make it to the Super Bowl? Personally, I don't think the odds are all that great he will still be the coach when that time comes.

There are a lot of voids around here to fill with Yolo MIA.

I was thinking more along the lines of defensive pressure being relieved with Crowder taking more of the defense's attention. The mental pressure is different aspect.

I agree. Flip side of that is that our OL has had holes every single one of those 6 years listed but we've yet to spend a single first round pick at the position and have only spent one day two pick at the position over those six years I believe. Yikes!

I think where the terminology gets confusing is that some say Gabe is a #3 as in, he should be seeing the third most targets from the receiver position. I think third in targets from the receiver position is a good spot for Gabe on this team. One he could flourish in. That doesn't mean he is the slot receiver though. He stays the outside receiver. The targets go in order to Diggs, slot (assume Shakir takes this role) and then Davis. In addition, in an ideal scenario, Knox would be 2nd or 3rd overall in targets on the team pushing Davis to 4th. So, there you have it. Davis is still our "#2 receiver" as in second starting outside receiver but #3 or #4 by target volume. The Bills need to change the playbook as much as the personnel.

I'm not super high on Fields but seeing Hurts breakout in his third year gives me some hope for him. I can see why they stuck with him. The dude is tough too. The talent around him is nowhere near as good as what the Eagles built in support of Hurts though. But the two QB's style of play does feel similar.

He'd also shown a lot of promise in the course of the two years prior to that 4 TD game against the Chiefs. I don't think the Bills beat the Colt's in WC game without Davis heroics before the half to get us a TD. We also maybe don't know how much we really ended up missing Crowder to help open things up and take some of the pressure off.

PR move. They would like worst then they already do if they kicked the guy to curb after what they did to him. This way they force themselves to keep him for two more years regardless of injury or how he plays.

sounds familiar. say what?

Every pick outside the first round is a crap shoot in every draft. Now I could buy the thinking that the top half of round 1 talent is weak or the round 1 talent is weak. But rounds 2-7 who knows who pans out and doesn't. And that is pretty much every draft, every year. That's where your scouting department, strength training staff and coaching staff earn their money.

Not sure about without a doubt. If he's top 10, he's in the back end like you say. At the end of the day the numbers are what they are. Blame the coaches, blame the QB, blame the player, the numbers are not there. Typically, TD's are not as sustainable year to year as receptions and yardage. But credit to Knox as he did finish the season tied for 5th in the category which isn't too shabby after coming off a season where he tied for 1st. 2022 17th in receptions 17th in targets 14th in yards Tied 5th/6th TD's If we argue he is not getting enough targets based on being 17th among TE's, the same argument can probably be made for a few of the other Tight Ends who are ranked 11-16th in targets. Receptions and yardage totals would be higher if they were top 10 in targets. Luckily for Knox, Davis was on the team this year, or he would have been the offenses biggest underperformer based on pre-season expectations. Personally, I think it is a combination of coaching, QB and player himself holding Knox back from reaching the top 10 targets, receptions, and yardage mark. Right now, Knox is simply a very replaceable piece in this offense. That needs to change when the Bills are now under cap limitations.

Those are not exactly ringing endorsements of success. You’d like at least one of your mid round picks over a 5 year period to breakout into a top 5 player at their position or top 10 at the least. Would not say either of those three are top 5 or top 10. The one that actually may be top 5 was Wyatt Teller who Beane let get away. Tarron Johnson, 4th round 2018 draft, has a case for top 5 if we are talking slot corner as their own position. Another issue is a lack of valuable draft picks under the Beane era. In five drafts, 9 picks in founds 1-2 and 14 picks in rounds 3-5 when the league average would be 10 and 15 respectively over a five year span. In essence the Bills are short two draft picks early- mid round draft picks. How would the roster look if instead of being short two draft picks in the first five rounds, the Bills were +2 draft picks over league average? That would be 4 more rounds 1-5 picks than they have.

Fromm in the 5th round looks bad to me. But I guess that was before Allen’s breakout 2020 season. I’m retrospect would like to have that one back not just because Fromm sucks but because Allen panned out. Don’t think Beane wastes a 5th on a QB if he knows without a doubt Allen is the dude.

Rodgers for Sauce straight up. Hope the Packers hold out for a player. Jets have a lot of good young players. Just one of Sauce Gardner or Garrett Wilson straight up would be better than the gamble of multiple draft picks. one in the hand is better than two in the bush.

I don’t know. It’s different now. In my 30+ years of fan hood of this team I’ve never had these “yeah, but” emotions with the team before. It’s different now for sure after last season. I loved beating the Chiefs in the regular season these last two years but there is no way a win next season will have the same juice behind it. Two straight years beating the Chiefs in the regular season and two straight years holding the one seed at Halloween only to end the season behind the Chiefs in the final regular season standings. I still think the Bills are a great matchup against the Chiefs too. It’s why they have won 2 out of the last 3. But the Bills seem to screw it up in other areas over the 17 game season.

i get your point. But the Bills have totally broken me after this season. I’ve turned a 180 from a glass is half full to glass is half empty mind set with this team. All the fun is gone and I’m honestly questioning how it is going to comeback in the regular season.

Correction. Bills football starts in January. Everything else is meaningless as they showed this year. who’s going to get excited if they beat the Chiefs in the regular season for the third straight year or have the one seed at the start of November?