HappyDays

I mean it isn't just what my eyes are telling me. That chart I posted says he is winning on pass rushes at a below league average rate despite getting bottom of the league double team rates. If you want to claim the chart is wrong, or that we have the only defensive scheme that asks our 3T to play patty cake in his gap more than we ask him to try and rush the passer, go for it. And for what it's worth I'm not an Ed Oliver hater. My own eyes tell me he has been quite good as a run stopper this season (I don't have a chart for that one). I also thought he was quite good overall last year in both areas and exceeded my expectations. As a pass rusher this season though I have been underwhelmed especially relative to the size of his paycheck.

ARSB just signed a $120M contract, $30M AAV. Shakir is not going to come close to that. ARSB is coming off a 1,500 yard season. If Shakir makes it to 1,000 yards it will be considered a very successful season. I don't mean to be a wet blanket about Shakir. I really do love his skill set and his fit with Josh Allen. I just don't make him out to be anything more than he is. I appreciate that Brady is not making the same mistake we made with Gabe Davis where we took a role player and tried to make him a focal point. Shakir is an excellent role player and we are using him as such. Why can't that be enough?

I don't think they're similar at all. ARSB is a pure route runner and separator. Shakir is best when he's schemed open and delivered the ball with space to run. ARSB is on an island in the top right near some of the very best WRs in football. Shakir is right at the intersection of the two dotted lines indicating league average efficiency.

I think you are actually underselling Joe Brady with this comment. You have the relationship backwards. You say the scheme requires the WRs to block and have good RAC skills, whereas I say Joe Brady has taken the skill sets of his WRs and built the scheme around them. If he had two elite outside WRs the scheme would look totally different. That is a credit to Brady. By leaning on his players strengths he is minimizing their weaknesses. Every person on the offense is being asked to do only what they can do well. That's a tough needle to thread when you have middling talent in the room but Brady is threading it.

Cam Newton's MVP season in 2015, his top WRs were Ted Ginn, Jericho Cotchery, and Devin Funchess. His team went 15-1 and got to the Super Bowl. All of this was accomplished in spite of his WRs, yes? WR is definitely a weakness, but it's not a problem until it becomes one. That's where we're at.

Kind of a shocking mistake. Daboll and Schoen came from a franchise that deliberately took a step back after making the playoffs with a bridge QB. They took all the good will they'd built up with that fanbase and threw it away.

Ed Oliver has been invisible to my eye, and interior pressure on the QB has been a noticeable weakness. Well, I don't have my pitchfork out. Just want to see more from him, that's all. He's getting paid a lot of money. Would you say you've noticed him making an impact outside of one big play against the Dolphins?

I would think Daquan Jones is the one protecting the middle of the field. He's the one taking on all of the double teams and he's still managing to exceed Oliver's pass rush win rate. I know the past couple years Oliver's pass rush win rate has been very high but so far this year it's just not been good. And that stat matches the eye test for me. I'm seeing him get swallowed up most of the time. I see our pass rush win on the edges a lot but very infrequently up the middle unless it's on the rare LB blitz or something like that. Hopefully he steps up his game because it's really the only noticeable weakness on our defense so far.

Yes I've been saying this for years! I've hated those option routes since Daboll. I get the concept behind them - if Josh and his WR read the leverage the same way, the throw is always right. The problem has been when they don't read it the same way it becomes a dangerous throw that's likely to be intercepted. Last year in particular there were a number of these passes intended for Gabe Davis and seemingly they ALWAYS read the play differently. Arguably it lost us the Eagles game and it resulted in several turnovers. I never cared who was at fault, ultimately it was just not a smart play concept and Dorsey stubbornly continuted to call them. The best thing Brady has done since taking over is removing mistake-prone tendencies from our offense. Josh is clearly responding well to the new concepts and as a result he is having the cleanest stretch of play that he's ever had.

Wasn't sure where to put this, but we need more from Ed Oliver: He's getting doubled less than any DT in the league right now but he's winning his pass rush reps at a below average rate. Even Tim Settle has a higher win rate. I know he made a couple big plays against Miami but otherwise he has been kind of invisible to my eye.

If you bet divisional road favorites you deserve what you get.

EPA per target is arguably a more relevant efficiency metric than yards per target (because for example a 9 yard screen pass that turns into a TD is more valuable than a 12 yard gain on 3rd and 15, and only EPA per target would capture this), and Shakir is currently leading the NFL in EPA per target according to this article: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5785494/2024/09/26/nfl-week-4-picks-predictions-betting-jayden-daniels?source=user-shared-article

Maybe, I haven't watched enough of the film specifically to say you're wrong. All I know is he isn't making plays in those situations. He's making plays when he gets a free release and the ball is delivered to him with space to work with. I absolutely love his skill set and think he's a perfect complementary piece. I just don't agree with Matt Harmon that he's the "perfect WR for the modern NFL." The perfect WR is Justin Jefferson who's currently taking 20% of his snaps out of the slot and single handedly giving Sam Darnold's career a shot in the arm. Shakir would be a great piece on any offense but he is never going to be a focal point that you can run the offense though IMO. I will say that Shakir is the perfect slot WR for this current Bills offense. Most of Josh's career he had to make every yard happen on his own. Being able to throw a shallow drag route at the opponent's 25 yard line that ultimately becomes a TD is incredibly valuable and I don't take it for granted.

That wasn't versus Sauce Gardner though. Sauce tried to get involved in the play at the last second because he realized what was about to happen, but Shakir did not outright beat him on that play. And Shakir was in the slot on that play:

I know PFF tracks stuff like this, I don't have access to it but I'd be surprised if it's true that he's getting successful targets against press coverage outside. I mean he only has 14 targets on the year so very small sample size but I don't see him as an inside/outside versatility guy at all. He's an elite efficiency and elite YAC receiver when you get him favorable coverage looks which primarily happens inside. I don't want us to try and make him anything more than that.

Love Shakir. But I don't understand what Matt Harmon is talking about. Shakir has taken 75% of his snaps from the slot this year. That isn't inside/outside versatility.

He's been working back from an MCL sprain. 27% of snaps in W1, only 44% and 46% in W2 and W3 respectively. This past week he parlayed that relatively low snap share into 6 catches on 7 targets for 73 yards and 1 TD. That blows our outside WR production so far out of the water.

4th quarter, 2 minutes to go, we're down by 6, in the AFCCG against the Chiefs. Everyone in the stadium knows we have to pass the ball and their defensive formation is daring us to beat them outside. Does anybody really trust Hollins, Coleman, or MVS in that situation right now? So yes give me a guy that's proven time and time again he makes big plays in those critical moments of close games. Trading for Hopkins is an ideal move to get us over the hump.

@Mikey152 was saying Curtis Samuel will replace Stefon Diggs production in this offense. I remember him extrapolating Samuel's yards per target to mean that he could rack up 1,400 yards in this offense. (Sorry for the call out Mikey, feel free to call me out for the fact that I didn't know if the Bills offense could be a top 10 scoring offense with this receiving group.) Every WR right now is meeting the expectation I had. The sole exception is Samuel who is coming in well below my expectation. The surprise of the season is not that the Bills WRs are performing above their weight class, but that the offense as a whole is efficient as can be despite having such middling WR production. To me the three biggest reasons for that in order are Josh Allen taking his game to another level, the OL being stellar in pass protection, and Joe Brady leaning on his players' strengths and actually gameplanning for his opponents. The WR room is definitely still a weakness overall. But I can't say it's an insurmountable problem until it becomes one on the scoreboard.

Bills 31 Ravens 20 I'm lazy today so I'm gonna copy and paste a post I made in another thread.

This is a person that hasn't watched a single snap of our team. They probably haven't even looked at the box score. Four entire quarters this year, literally 1/3 of our total game time, we have not actively been trying to score points. Gee I wonder why we've been running the ball so frequently? This is like people who throw out that stat that teams who have more rush attempts tend to win more often. They have the correlation backwards. The Bills haven't embraced any particular style of offense. The Dolphins are weak up front so we went with a run heavy game plan. The Jags have a poor pass defense so we passed on 75% of plays in the 1st half when the game wasn't over yet. The only thing Joe Brady has embraced is high percentage plays and gameplanning for the specific opponent. Blows my mind that people like this get paid to write this stuff. You'll find better analysis from any random poster on this board, for free.

I said this earlier in the offseason - any generic football cliche sounds like it's a slight against Diggs. "Unselfish players." "Team leader." "Wins matter more than individual stats." These are generic soundbites that every team spouts off during their mandatory media time. It speaks to Diggs' negative character that all of these clichés sound like criticisms of him. But I agree none of it is intentional.

Like I've said Brady isn't changing the game or innovating. He doesn't have to. He's just layering play calls and putting his players in position to succeed.

I love how every QB axis chart I've seen has Josh Allen living on his own island way out of reach from everyone else. This one is showing that he faces blitzes at an average rate but demolishing defenses when they try them. Looks like he's at roughly 0.8 EPA per play on blitzes. In other words, when defenses choose to blitz him they are adding almost a whole point to our side of the scoreboard.