BillsFanSD

Yep, and I've been beating this drum for a little while now. I don't mind easing rookies into their role, and maybe that makes sense for a team like the Bills, who need to avoid the "rookie wall" so guys are fresh for the playoffs. But McDermott seems genuinely allergic to putting rookies on the field, to the degree that I wonder if he and Beane are really on the same page. If I were Beane, I think I'd be a little ticked at Cook and Shakir just standing around on the sidelines all year. For people who are playing the "it's hard for rookies to crack the lineup when our team is this good" card, let's recall that we had problems at slot all year -- it's not like Shakir had to beat out Cooper Kupp or anything. And it's not like Cook had Thurman Thomas in front of him. For that matter, remember when we would take Singletary off the field in his rookie year so Frank Gore could fall forward for two yards? It's been like this since McDermott arrived. He's philosophically committed to not playing rookies as a matter of principle.

I've always really liked Singletary, but at the same time I never expected the Bills to re-sign him. If we could reliably pluck a Singletary-like player from the 3rd round every 3-4 years, I'd rather go that route. Of course, we've seen that that's easier said than done, but still. I hope he does well in Houston. I'll be pulling for him.

Okay, but . . . offense and ST are part of the game. The Bills gave up 31 points to a team led by Skylar Thompson. It doesn't really matter how many of those points are credited to the offense, the defense, or special teams. That simply shouldn't happen. Period.

It wasn't just the Cincinnati game. The Bills were the best team in the league before their bye. They were not the same team after the bye. Some of it was probably Allen's elbow. Some of it was probably other stuff that we don't really know about -- this team is incredibly opaque to its own fan base and our beat reporters are mostly cheerleaders. But regardless of the "why," the fact is that the Bills were just pretty good during the second half of the season, and lots of us noticed the drop-off at the time it was happening. You're forgetting the way they almost lost to a Skylar-Thompon-led Dolphins team at home in the WC round. That was a red flag. The Bengals loss didn't just come out of nowhere.

Maybe Hardy replaces both McKenzie and Hines. That would be a solid move all by itself.

Reasonable people don't jump to conclusions in the first place.

Not saying Edmunds is this guy, but there's a certain type of player who is okay-but-nothing special for his first several seasons, blows up during his contract year, and signs the richest offer sheet put up by a perennial laughingstock when he hits FA. Those guys don't tend to work out. Now, Edmunds is an unusual case because he was so young when he entered the league. But still.

I liked Edmunds and I would have been happy to have him back, but not at that price. I would have opposed signing him if you told me that he was going to get $18M/year. Go out and get a solid, unremarkable MLB. Or draft one. Then put the savings into the OL. Our first priority needs to be keeping hands off #17.

If we draft this guy and he's the second coming of Emmitt Smith, wonderful. But goodness gracious. Between Robinson, Cook, Moss, and Singletary, that's a massive amount of draft capital sunk into a devalued position.

Do he and Diggs get along? I always thought that Thielen was one of the reasons why 14 was unhappy in Minnesota, but I don't honestly know.

I don't recall talking to you before. Sorry. Oh, you're one of those people. Never mind.

I don't understand either of these responses. What I'm asking is, if we can see that Watson's contract was stupid, then surely any random GM can see that too. So if we wouldn't want to hand Jackson a guaranteed contract, why are we surprised that GMs feel differently? GMs don't "collude" against 200 lb DTs or 5.6/40 WRs. They select against them because they're all doing the same math. Why isn't this just the same thing?

But why is it collusion? Everybody seems to agree that what the Browns did was stupid. If we all agree that the Browns are stupid, why are we surprised that NFL GMs apparently agree too?

TBF, letting Poyer walk is the right business decision. I love the guy and I'll wish him well as long as he lands outside our division. It just doesn't make sense for us to pay him what he's going to be able to get from other teams. I do hate losing Edmunds and it would not surprise me in the least if we end up regretting his departure. People are all bent out of shape over Isaiah Hodgins. This board will melt down if Edmunds becomes an all-pro with some other team. Hopefully we put those assets to very, very good use.

I don't understand the "collusion" argument. Why would teams be colluding against Lamar Jackson? That doesn't make any sense considering some of the contracts that we've seen signed just this week. A much simpler explanation is that the shaky passer who isn't using an agent overestimated his market value.

Good for Geno. So glad we're not in this situation.

Reading Tim Graham's latest article in The Athletic bothered me more than it really should have. It feels like there's a growing conflict between Bills fans and Bills reporters, where beat reporters are barely able to disguise their contempt for fans. The reporters are always the ones who come out of these sorts of conflicts looking small. I mean, I like Frazier. I didn't want him to leave, and I wish him well in whatever comes next. But if some fan was a little more agitated than me about the status of our defense and they wanted a change, fine. I don't see why Tim Graham feels obliged to tell that fan what an idiot he is. That fan probably has a more stable and lucrative career than Tim Graham. If we're going to question one another's wisdom as human beings, let's talk about what drives a college-educated person into a field like sports journalism, and the life decisions that led you to that point. Let's start with second-guessing Tim Graham, and then we'll move on to random fans.

Absolutely, yes. McDermott has exceeded my expectations by far. It's not close. Now, of course, my expectations were very low when we hired him. After Rex, Marrone, Jauron, etc. I just assumed this McDermott guy would be the next in line and we'd be conducting the usual postmortem in 3-4 seasons. Obviously I was totally wrong about that. He took a sad-sack, frankly irrelevant franchise and turned it into a team that is expected to win playoff games. That's a night and day change. We seem to be a destination of choice for free agents, which is also a night and day change. McDermott didn't accomplish all of this on his own, and he would never say so. His staff helps, Beane helps, the Pegulas help, and of course drafting Josh Allen helped just a little smidge. But McDermott is probably the best coach this franchise has ever had. I'm not happy with the way the second half of this season went, and I have some criticisms of how we used our rookies and how this team has been built. But that's constructive criticism directed toward a person who I think is doing a very good job.

Our defense gave up 31 points to someone named Skylar Thompson.

I'm not sure if this is the right move, but I am okay with this.

Pretty much exactly where I am. Football is a weird sport in the sense that a 17-game season followed by a single-elimination tournament creates a ton of variance. Excellent teams get their seasons completely upended by injuries to individual players, weird bounces of the ball, officiating errors, etc. You can't just assume that because your team is the best team on paper, it will automatically be there at the end. Soccer, baseball, and basketball are all far more predictable than football IMO. You can't be firing your HC or GM because of one season of under-performance or one horrific gut-punch. By and large, McBeane have done well. They've gotten us into the playoffs as a matter of course, and it's now the expectation that we win our division. That's very good. Huge step up from where we were. But like you said, it does feel like something is just off with this team. It's not that they're just a player or two away, or something like that that would be easy to fix. They're mentally and physically soft. They're the Dungy-era Colts. Plenty of talent on paper, and none of it matters when they encounter a good opponent with more spine. But maybe I'm wrong. Or maybe I'm right and McBeane are already working to fix this problem. For what they've accomplished so far, they deserve the benefit of the doubt for one more year. If 2023 is like 2022, though, I'll probably be advocating for some new people.

I'm rooting for the guy to make it back to the NFL. He was treated very poorly by the media and the Bills organization. If you actually read the criminal complaint, you would have noticed that victim was very careful not accuse MA of participating in her gang rape. She specifically said, out loud, that she couldn't recall if he actually raped* her or not. But the good folks at Cover 1 and the Buffalo News knew better or something. * Technically this is still a statutory rape situation since nobody disputes that they had consensual sex, but also nobody ever really cared about that angle because nobody actually has a problem with a 21 year-old shagging a 17 year-old. That was all pretend outrage.

He knows that it's not designed for him. That's his point -- the championship game of his favorite sport isn't designed for fans of that sport, and it should be.

I think it's okay for football fans to ask that the super bowl be about football. You might not agree with the specific items that he's raising, but your gatekeeping is not needed.

It feels weird to say this in a football forum, but I've skipped the last several super bowls, starting with PHI-NE. Part of it is the Bills. Now that they're good, and I feel like they belong in the super bowl, it's too painful to watch football after they've been eliminated. My nerves are still too raw and there's still too much "what if?" in the air. I have nothing against the Chiefs, but I don't want to watch them hoist a championship trophy. So when the Bills' season ends, my season ends too. But in the particular case of the super bowl, it's just a bad sporting event, in the same way that the Olympics are bad. There's way too much pre-game and build-up to the game itself. It takes way too long to get through the team introductions, the coin flip, the national anthem, etc. The commercials are stupid and over-produced. The halftime show is stupid, and while I can ignore it, that doesn't change the fact that halftime goes on and on for this game and this game only. The commentary is geared toward people who never watch football, so the announcers are worse than usual. Plus the game starts too late, goes too long, and I have to work the next morning.