BillsFanSD

Maybe the Browns will regret moving on from Mayfield, but the bottom line is that if I were the Browns GM, his body of work didn't justify signing him to the kind of long-term contract that he was looking for. I think Mayfield probably has a long-run career in the NFL as a broke man's answer to Ryan Tannehill. If that's his ceiling, it's hard to fault the Browns for moving on even if it's very easy to fault them for moving on to Deshaun Watson specifically. In other words, I think the Browns are likely to regret giving up assets for Watson but unlikely to regret parting ways with Mayfield.

There is not a single GM anywhere in the league who has batted 1.000 on every personnel decision. Obviously Bean would like to have the Ford pick back, and obviously he'd like to have Teller back. Guy took a completely irrelevant franchise and turned it into the best top-to-bottom roster in the NFL and you guys are looking for nits to pick.

I literally just rewatched the week 17 game against the Jets yesterday afternoon. I wish Haack well, but I'm glad we drafted Araiza.

We have way more than one game worth of data on Keenum. He's not a rookie, and there's lots of game film out there.

I think we should make very firm snap decisions about Keenum after watching him play behind a patchwork OL while trying to throw to our backups for a half.

Who is going to trade anything -- literally anything -- for Matt Haack? No offense to the guy or anything, but he's a punter and there are football fans in rural Malaysia who know that we are going to release him.

I've had a fairly high opinion of Crowder -- the guy always seemed to make a play or two against us every time we saw the Jets. Big disappointment so far. I thought he would be a near lock for the starting slot position, and now I'm in the same boat as the OP wondering whether we really need a third slot guy. I mean, I'm sure he probably ends up making the roster, but still.

Andre Smith is nothing special. If it comes down to Smith vs. Spector, give me the draft pick who isn't getting himself suspended.

Why won't the NFL just take my money and let me watch their games on the device that I prefer?

Same. A whole bunch of people bought into a narrative about Allen before the draft, and it turned out they were mistaken. We saw that during his rookie season, of course, especially after he came back from injury. But it took media types a long time to update their views because social media causes people to dig in instead of just saying "Oops -- looks like I got this one wrong." There's nothing wrong with being wrong from time to time. People screw up prospect evaluations over and over again. Our FO does it too. The smart ones are the folks with the bravery to admit they blew it. (I give Arizona a ton of credit for kicking Wrong Josh to the curb rather than double down like other teams *coughMiamicough*).

I don't think Stevenson can really afford to miss "weeks" of camp/practice.

Cover 1 is great. I feel fortunate that we, as a fan base, have a team of content creators who put out good programming year-round. Especially once the season gets rolling, I enjoy the way their shows provide a certain structure to each week. And while the C1 guys are obviously fans, they aren't homers and don't just blow sunshine up everyone's ###. I know NFL teams are paranoid and I certainly don't doubt that McDermott in particular is tightly-wound, but not so sure that the Bills have a big issue with Cover 1. These guys have got be great for building fan engagement. The Bills are a money-making business, after all. C1 gives them a fountain of free, semi-professional marketing.

I'll bet you get so tired when you have to explain.

I don't care about access to actual live broadcasts. I live in the Midwest an have Sunday Ticket for that. Can't wait until this migrates away from DirecTV, but it's fine for the time being. I watch the 1:00/4:00 ET slots every week whether the Bills are on or not, so I feel like I get my money's worth out of it. During the drought, that was pretty much all the NFL I ever consumed. Since 2019 or so I've been watching more podcasts, replays of other games involving rival teams, and stuff like that. I thought about springing for Game Pass last year and never bothered, but I think I might open up my wallet for NFL Premium. I know already watch condensed replays during the season. I'm 100% sure I would watch the Bills' all-22 each week if I had access to it. I occasionally watch random replays on NFLN if I happen to stumble onto one that I don't remember watching at the time, and I'm sure I would do that with this service throughout the year, including the offseason. I know I can probably get this for free, but I'm also interested in having radio audio available. It probably doesn't synch up quite right with live television, does it? When I lived in central Indiana eons ago, stuck watching the Colts all the time whether I wanted to or not, I used to mute the television and listen to the radio call instead. Would love to do that again with random games. So much more personality than the network guys.

Having watched Davis play since his rookie year, I feel really confident in his ability to break out in a big way in 2022. The guy has just flat-out produced every time he's been asked to do so. Combine his previous results with an additional year of development, and I think I'm about as confident about Gabe Davis as I have been about anybody in a long time. This isn't just homerism. I'm not totally sold on Knox yet (hopeful, just not sold), not interested in resigning Motor, mildly pessimistic about Epenesa, etc. I'm just fairly confident that Davis is going to be really, really good this year.

Pretty sure all Bills fans are very familiar with this phenomenon.

Players always say nice things about the team they just signed with. That's normal. What's not normal is seeing a first-ballot HOFer bail on the team that he literally just won a SB with because he wants to play for your franchise specifically. When you see stuff like that happening, it's a clear sign that it's not just words and agent-driven PR spin. We actually have something special brewing here, and it wouldn't be happening without #17.

Honestly, I don't think a week goes by when I don't thank the heavens that we drafted Josh Allen. The 2018 QB class turned out to be nowhere near as good as people thought at the time. The Browns wasted the #1 overall pick and got stuck with Watson when they panicked over it and reached. The Jets blew the #3 overall pick. We know how Rosen-to-the-Cardinals turned out, but that wasn't so bad since he flamed out so fast that they were able to move on quickly. Obviously Lamar worked out really well later in the draft for Baltimore, but even then you're dealing with a QB who has some limitations. I'm just happy we got our guy and people aren't talking about Buffalo the way they talk about the Browns.

I honestly think Allen is already a better QB than Kelly ever was. And I loved Kelly and still do. And paradoxically, I don't even think it matters whether we're talking about 1990s era football or today's game. Allen is a better QB in the 2020s NFL than Kelly would have been for sure. But I also think Allen would have been better than Kelly in 1990s too. It's not as if Allen isn't a big guy who can take a hit or two.

Allen tried to do too much during his first couple of seasons, and he had quite a few silly-looking plays as a result. Things like getting flushed out of the pocket and completely turning his back on the defense, refusing the throw the ball away when the play is obviously busted, and so on. It was reasonable for people to worry a little about whether Allen would ever grow out of that. Now it feels like he's evolved in exactly the guy who we've always wanted at QB since the Kelly era. You can absolutely tell in-game that he hates taking check-downs. But the dumb mistakes are more or less gone. He just relentlessly pushes defenses back on their heels. I just love this guy.

Add me to the list of people who aren't at all surprised by this. People who are in a much better position than me to know have been saying for years that there are good reasons why Bienemy hasn't gotten a HC gig, and it's not just because he doesn't call plays or is the "wrong" race. In particular, I don't think it would be wise to make Bienemy the go-to example of "minority coaches not getting a fair shake." That narrative may have some validity for other ACs, but probably not this one.

I still remember where I was when that game was played. I missed it because I was on the road interviewing for my first job at my current employer. I'm still mad about it, and I only know that game from the highlights and subsequent outrage.

Yeah, I'm definitely thinking about how we should move on from the best coach this team has ever had (sorry, Marv) right in the middle of our super bowl window. Great plan.

Elam, and it is not close. (1) We needed a CB badly, (2) CB is literally the only position on the team where a rookie can step right in and start week 1, (3) The Bills apparently saw Elam as significantly better than their other options considering the trade-up. Seems like a perfect selection. Also, this pick allowed the team to do whatever it wanted the rest of the draft. Overall, I thought we had a pretty good draft. I liked most of our picks, and they all made sense. The Elam pick was not only good, but it was also really sort of necessary, so it goes on a higher level for me.

I don't know if the Bills have the best offense in the league, but nobody has an offense that is clearly better than ours.