HappyDays

I've stayed out of these these threads because PFF just isn't for me, but really Sauce Gardner #1 last year?? Christian Gonzalez outside of the top 10? I respect what PFF tries to do but there is something obviously broken about their grading methodology. Like when they had Tyrel Dodson as the #1 LB in the entire league in 2023. Their process produces too many of these bizarre outcomes for me to take it seriously.

Looks like he got the message:

I never thought it was impossible for us to cut Diggs like some fans argued, but I at least understood that viewpoint. What I didn't understand was the fans who acted like there was nothing wrong with Diggs. A lot of people buried their heads in the sand. The constant whiny tweets, the offseason podcasts where he openly criticized the team, the reports of him falling out with Allen, him going AWOL from mandatory minicamp. Even after all that there were a lot of fans saying it was just "Diggs being Diggs" and that the media was creating a controversy out of nothing. Now with each passing story since we traded him we find out he was even more toxic than the media made him out to be. When people tell you who they are, believe them, even if they happen to play for your favorite team.

If nothing else it's notable that he's with the starting defense, and getting them into position at that. That tells you the coaching staff is impressed with how prepared he came into OTAs. This regime is not the type to hand out jobs based on draft position. If anything I would have expected Hamlin to have the job early by default and force Bishop to steal it from him. Instead Bishop has the job on day one of OTAs. That's promising. Bishop's physical traits have never been in question. If his mental game has caught up that's a huge boon to the secondary.

On Bishop:

Next update is Keon Coleman had a great practice and looked like the best receiver out there.

Second update is that Elijah Moore made a lot of plays today and caught a TD from Josh Allen. Parrino also said Tre White did not have a good day, giving up that TD to Moore and another to Samuel. You can read between the lines on these reports to see what the depth chart looks like early. From this we can conclude that Moore is in with the 1st team offense and White is in with the 1st team defense, and least some of the time.

I subscribe to texts from Matt Parrino, he sends out updates throughout OTAs and training camp. It's worth the $5 per month. His first update today is that early defensive standouts in team drills were TJ Sanders and Landson Jackson. So that's a promising start. Sanders in particular I am really excited about. The more I watch of him the more I think his skill set will really translate to the NFL.

Hopefully a good sign:

Ugh sucks about Bosa. Hopefully it's just precautionary. I don't need to see too much of him on the field before January.

What a gut punch. My thoughts are with his family and the Colts fanbase.

Because a coach like McDermott convinces himself that it is a distraction. But he's wrong.

The upside is that following the Bills is a source of entertainment, and this adds more entertainment to my life. There is no meaningful distraction. Cameras will film the practice which already happens at most training camps anyways and occasionally a player will be whisked away for a quick interview.

Awesome news. I am all for more Bills content during the slow time of the year.

I don't know how you can say that when his own teammate Knox had a higher ADOT than him... And I don't have concrete statistics on this, but my perception was that in the back half of the season Kincaid's ADOT went down while Knox's went up, indicating that the team felt Knox was more effective on those throws and Kincaid's role needed to be simplified. I just don't think he has the nuances of NFL route running. It's one thing to have good footwork and hip flexion which to my eyes Kincaid has, but route running also requires an innate understanding of coverage spacing and leverage. That's where he has fallen way behind and it explains his low catch percentage IMO.

Watch the videos I posted above. He isn't getting bracketed on those routes... Come on man. He drifts on routes, he runs past zone windows or stops running before the window, he doesn't make any difficult catches. He looks like someone that is completely overwhelmed by the speed of the NFL. My take is that after two years it's unlikely he's going to suddenly adjust to pro speed. Some players just don't have the instincts and the processing ability. I really hope I'm wrong though. FWIW I was a huge fan of his coming out, he was my draft crush that year and I was psyched when he fell to us. I believe in that year's draft thread I posted "Allen just got his Travis Kelce." But I have to abandon his college profile and be honest about what I'm seeing on the NFL tape. He has a lot to put together for him to even come close to being worth his draft slot.

I mean that's a hyper-specific stat with a very low sample size across the NFL. Like what am I supposed to take away from that? It doesn't eliminate the year he had which was indeed bad. Below 60% catch rate, low ADOT, 34.5 YPG, 6 yards per target. All that with the NFL MVP throwing him the ball and no elite pass catchers taking targets away. There's no dressing up those numbers. It was bad. The narrative du jour amongst Bills fans is "high uncatchable target rate." Okay... What does that mean? Why are the passes uncatchable? Why is Kincaid the only target Allen has had with that problem? I think there's a lot of blind hope masquerading as analysis.

He wasn't seen as a raw prospect though. Not at all. His skill set was supposed to translate pretty quickly to the NFL... It just hasn't been as advertised. His biggest strengths coming out were supposed to be natural movement skills, hands, and cerebral route spacing. Of those only the movement skills have translated. TE has traditionally been a tough position to translate to the NFL because they have to learn pass blocking and pass catching. Not so with Kincaid. He has been treated more like a slot WR and those players either adapt to the pros early or they never do. See: Skyy Moore, Elijah Moore, Ladd McConkey. You figure out pretty early on if slot WRs have what it takes. Shakir didn't have it his first year but in year two he had obviously figured it out. Kincaid in year two went backwards... He has to take a HUGE step this year to be worth his draft pick.

I don't expect him to transform his body and become Gronk. But that's also not what we drafted him to be. We drafted him to be like Kelce, a cerebral player with movement skills who acts as an extension of his QB and can quickly diagnose how to make himself an available target. That's what his scouting report projected him to be. I worry that that skill is something you either naturally have or you don't, and that he falls firmly in the "don't" category, but I'm trying to stay hopeful that he can develop it with another full offseason studying the same system.

Honestly the more I see of Kincaid last year the worse I feel about his ability to put it all together. Feels like he just has so much to work on. Strength through contact, route running precision, route spacing, difficult catches... The only thing he really has going for him right now is his natural movement skills. All of the other nuances that come with NFL pass catching just aren't there right now.