BillsFanSD

It is worth noting there that the only people I have seen pushing this story or the Terry Pegula story are either (a) fans of this team, (b) members of the Buffalo media, or (c) content creators who produce Bills-related podcasts. That's it. To the degree that the media is digging up dirt about the Bills, it's our media that's doing this. I mean, Michael Irvin taking shots at Diggs or Allen or whatever is to be expected after a terrible loss. That comes with the territory. The people starting food fights in the school cafeteria are our own people.

Are we back in middle school or something? So what if some reporter doesn't like a particular player? Who cares.

Cam Newton was a pretty good pre-draft comp for Allen, but things have changed since then. We have since learned that Allen is 100x the passer that Cam was. I don't see any reason why Allen should start to physically decline any sooner than somebody like Roethlisberger.

It's not 2020 anymore, and my sense is that this playbook no longer works. We'll see I guess. The Buffalo news media still features a lot of the same people who bullied Matt Araiza out of town. This will be a nice test to see how things have changed over the past 12 months.

I am all-in on Allen. I've been saying for years that he is essentially Brett Favre with Steve Young's running ability. He is going to make some amazing plays that we all get excited about, and he is also going to make some bone-headed plays that we all get excited about. Those are two sides of the same coin and you're not going to have the fun-exciting stuff without the irritating-exciting stuff. I for one want to be entertained when I am watching football, and Josh Allen is nothing if not entertaining. We can absolutely win a SB with Josh Allen. Brett Favre has a SB ring. So does Steve Young. So does John Elway. Those are all good comps for Allen. And, of course, if Eli Manning can win two SBs, then any good QB can win at least one if the stars align. It would not surprise me at all if the Bills took a step back this year. That's not because of Allen. It's because we haven't been able to keep up with KC or CIN or even MIA when it comes to adding non-QB talent across the roster. We must do better here, but that doesn't have anything to do with Allen.

This is a very good point too. McDermott is a good coach. But he occasionally does inexplicable things, like punting on 4th and 2 the other night. I know Rodgers was out and so the old-timey defensive coach mindset says "just take the 3 points," but taking the 3 points is wrong. It's wrong period. It doesn't matter whether the opposing QB is Patrick Mahomes or Late Flag From The Internet. It's the first quarter and you get more points on average by going for it in that situation, so go for it. That decision arguably cost us the game despite Allen's abysmal play. McDermott has done a great job of building a winning culture, attracting good players to Buffalo, hiring good staff, etc. He is a very good HC. It just feels like he needs to learn to get the in-game decision-making right, kind of like Andy Reid when he was in Philadelphia.

We have a good FO and good HC. They took a broken, irrelevant franchise and turned it into a contender. They made some mistakes along the way -- who doesn't? -- but clearly they did something right and it wasn't just getting lucky at QB. The problem is that this team has reached a point where the "rebuild" has run its course. Think about some of the key guys we added around the time McBeane arrived or in the season or two after. Many of those guys have already come and gone -- the John Browns and Frank Gores and Cole Beasleys and Quentin Spains of the world. Those players were very helpful in getting the franchise turned around, but they were all short-term hole-pluggers. Those aren't the players I'm talking about. I'm talking about the core players that we have built around, like Morse, Poyer, and Hyde. Those guys are all getting long in the tooth and are in need of replacement. We're going to be talking about Dawkins and Tre like that before too long, and maybe Dawkins is already there. None of those guys have been replaced, and we don't have their future replacement on the roster. We dumped Edmunds -- correctly IMO -- but we don't know if we actually have a replacement for him on our roster or not. We still haven't found a clear CB2. We've known that this is an issue for multiple seasons. We blew a first-round pick on the position. We have better depth at CB than we used to have, but arguably our starters were stronger a few years ago when it was a 100% Tre + JAG. Now it's an injury-depleted Tre and Benford. Maybe that's an upgrade, but I don't think it's obvious. This team is going to need to turn over some of its older players in the very near future, and it needs a talent infusion to replace them. We haven't gotten that talent infusion because our last few draft classes have been average to below-average. Hopefully the 2023 draft class will fare better. But we're going to need to perform better in the draft and FA going forward if we don't want to slip behind other teams. Also, I am deeply skeptical that the HC should also be managing the defense. If McDermott proves me wrong, great. But it is not normal for a team's long-time DC to just randomly take a year off and have the HC take over. That is a sign that something is weird in the building.

For the record, I wouldn't care if he said exactly what was stated in the complaint. That falls into one of those "true things that we're not supposed to say out loud" category, and I just can't bring myself to worry about stuff like that.

Just another wasted 1st/2nd round pick. No biggie.

Honestly it would be good for me to be a little less invested in this team than I was this time last year. That will probably change around 7:00 ET later today, but ideally I would chill a bit until we get past Thanksgiving.

Very happy with it. I had DTV for about 25 years, and this was my first week with YouTube TV. Overall I thought this worked really well. Over the course of my Sunday, I gradually landed on multi-screening my game of choice (which was MIA-SD yesterday pm) along with RZ. That made it easy to loosely follow all the other games while really watching the one I was most interested in. The Miami game ended up being the game of the day, but if it had gotten out of hand I could have easily switched to a more competitive matchup and feel like I had a decent handle on how the game had gone up to that point. I had a handful of short, 1-2 second buffering episodes here and there, but it was no big deal. Thumbs up so far.

I was agreeing with you . . .

If Tua had been drafted in the 2nd or 3rd round, or even just the late 1st, I think people would have a more realistic appreciation of his game. He's a good, solid, well above-average QB with durability issues who can take a team as far as their supporting cast allows. He is not in the same category as Mahomes, Burrow, or Allen. If I were building a team from scratch, I would definitely want Herbert over Tua. But I do think Tua is in the same general tier as players like Lawrence, Fields, Jackson, etc. Those are good players too, who I think would have similar levels of success if they were on this Miami team. The problem is that Tua was heralded as some sort of generational prospect -- "tank for Tua" -- that he obviously isn't. I mean, he's fine. He's a good QB. Miami did not whiff that pick the way Cleveland whiffed on Mayfield or New York whiffed on Darnold. People just need to find a middle ground between "he's elite" and "he sucks." Neither of those statements is true.

Tua is putting up a lot of stats by throwing to wide-open receivers. But that's the thing -- their receivers can consistently get wide open. It doesn't matter that Tua is a B+ QB who needs elite talent around him to be successful if they actually put elite talent around him. Miami is perfectly capable of sweeping us this year if we don't bring our A-game.

I'm going with 11-6 but obviously hoping for better. The division is going to be genuinely challenging, and it's pretty obvious that teams had us figured out after the bye week or so last year. I need to see that we've learned from last season before I get too excited.

The Dolphins and Jets both beat us once each last year. They each got significantly better in the offseason. We did not. That's why people are a little less optimistic about this season than we were about the last couple of seasons. Our road to a division title isn't going to be as easy as it has been recently. Now, the Bills are arguably still the best team in the division. We certainly have the best QB, and that matters tremendously. When I say that the Bills did not get better in the offseason while the Jets and Dolphins did, we already had a SB-caliber roster and there wasn't a lot of scope for us to do anything but tread water. The other two teams had a lot more room for improvement than we did. We haven't slipped -- our rivals have simply improved. I don't think you can look at the Bills and Dolphins and seriously argue that one team is clearly better than the other. Our rosters are different, but both of these teams would ordinarily be favored to win most divisions and make a deep playoff run. The Jets are a notch behind IMO, but they could also be really good if Rodgers performs better than I expect him to. It's going to be a tough division to win, the WC race is going to be murderous in the AFC, and there's no reason to expect any favorable matchups in the playoffs. We have a tougher climb this year than we did last year.

Did Beane sign Hyde and Poyer? I can't tell whether that was him or the folks who were running the ship in the interim period. Either way, those were both under-the-radar signings that should be credited as HRs by anyone's standard. Classic example of the whole being more than the sum of its parts.

Yeah, this is weird. Aside from the one blindingly obvious home run at the most important position in North American sports, I think Gabe Davis, Milano, and Tre all qualify as "home runs" given their performance and draft position. (Davis isn't an elite WR, but he's a high-quality starter that we got in the middle rounds -- that should count IMO but I can see how others might feel differently). (Edit: My bad -- Beane wasn't the person who actually drafted White or Milano. Leaving it because I don't like editing out mistakes, and also I'm happy with the general state of our FO and not that interested in parsing out who gets the credit between the GM, HC, and owner). It's definitely too early to call Rousseau a home run, but he's trending that way and I'll be a little disappointed if we don't see him as a long-term anchor at DE in a year or two. It would be fair to note that a lot of Beane's big wins came in free agency or the trade market -- Poyer and Hyde, Diggs, Morse, and maybe another guy or two. But that all falls under the same general heading of "talent evaluation." He's done well there.

I think people are just commenting on this trade because its a tacit admission by the FO that they blew this pick. The "averages 2 sacks a year" part is exactly why it's relevant.

Basham was a bad pick from the start. Rousseau was supposed to be the project, and Basham was supposed to be the more pro-ready one, and that just completely flipped around from essentially their very first days at camp. I was hoping to be wrong about him, but no dice. Glad we cut bait at least.

Nothing against Tyrel Dodson, but it's kind of infuriating that we couldn't (so far) find anyone better. He's not even a particularly good backup MLB. I get that it's a devalued position and all, but still this is a glaring hole in the starting 11.

That movie was racist as hell on the day it was released. The fact that the white savior lady was actually using him to enrich herself is the most predictable twist of all time.

Different era. Back then, every QB scramble was an opportunity for some LB to lay a free hit on the QB. Things are totally different now. I am 100% confident that if John Elway, Randall Cunningham, or Steve Young were playing today in their primes, they would be running just as much as Allen just as effectively. Allen is a stellar athlete on this dimension, but he's not an all-time athlete. Plenty of guys would have loved to play QB under today's rules. (Same goes for passing stats, of course).

Well, obviously Allen is never going to be a pocket passer like Jim Kelly was. Even if he never runs for another yard from scrimmage, we know that extending plays and escaping the pocket is clearly a huge part of his game, and nobody should want to see that go away. Kelly and Elway are both in the HOF. Both playing styles are totally valid.

I'm sure he'll be fine. This isn't a major injury for a RB, or anybody really. I was excited about Moss coming out of college and I'm sorry he didn't work out for the Bills. Wish him nothing but the best when he's not playing us.