HappyDays

No. It wasn't good enough, as evidenced by the fact that we lost... We needed to win a shootout. Literally score a TD on every drive, that's what we need our offense to do. If we had championship caliber defensive coaching it would have been good enough. But we don't have that. I'll admit it feels silly arguing from this perspective. It's insane on the face of it to say we need our offense to score a TD every time we hold the ball in order to beat a championship contender in the playoffs. But I mean, that's clearly obviously true right? That's pretty much what we would have needed to do to win each of our last three playoff losses. That's why I keep saying I don't care if the offense is ranked 5th and leads us to 11 regular season wins. That means nothing to me. We need probably the very best offense in football so that when we inevitably get in a shootout in the playoffs, we have a chance to win it. Maybe we could even steamroll our way to a #1 seed and that would set up a much more favorable path. All I know is trying to build a dominant offensive juggernaut is the one thing that we haven't even tried to do since 2020. I'm ready for a different strategy because what we've been doing isn't working.

Our offense is good enough to win a lot of games in the regular season, no disagreement from me there.

I just disagree that the offense was fine. Like I said earlier it was an offense to get out of a game against a superior opponent, it wasn't a sustainable offense that lasts for a 17+ game season. I worry we are going to have to make that our primary form of offense this year and it will put a lot of hard miles on Allen. I'm not convinced Brady is an offensive genius that can get the most out of a middling group of weapons. But you know what we had this exact discussion last year and I'm already sick of it this year. I'll let it play out. My one big reason for optimism is Kincaid. He was my draft crush last year before the Bills took him and I love his potential in year two. If he steps up to be effectively our #1 WR this year like Kelce with the Chiefs I'll probably be satisfied with the group overall.

We didn't have a WR1 in the playoffs last year and it was a severe handicap in our season ending loss.

You know I've seen this point made a lot recently and I don't get it. The thing that makes streaming better than cable is non-stop 24/7 access to any content that the streaming service holds. It was never about having one or two platforms where you could watch anything and everything that ever existed. It's about convenience and commercial free access. Cable had this too in the form of on-demand channels but it was very expensive and limited to just one channel at a time - HBO, Showtime, etc. Feel free to be frustrated by the large number of different streaming services that are out there, but it is far and away a better system than putting up with Direct TV's BS back in the day. Remember when Bills games were blacked out because we didn't sell enough tickets? And now we complain about having to spend $10 (or just signing up for a free trial) if we want to watch games on Christmas.

You don't seem to keep up with the regular conversations held on this board. Hopkins was the discussion of the offseason last year. @BADOLBILZ firmly wanted us to sign him. Earlier in the thread you said people aren't naming specific WRs they wanted us to draft. You're just way out of the loop. Which is obviously fine, but it's weird to have strong opinions on this stuff when you're not really paying attention to the discussion.

This is our best hope at a #1 pass catcher this year: His development is going to determine how good the group as a whole looks.

If this is legit he has us playing Jets on the road on MNF in week 6, and at home in week 17. Also has the Jets closing the season against Miami which would likely mean we close the season against the Pats.

The defense is underperforming which means the offense needs to overperform. Nothing contradictory about that statement at all.

You are aware that Klein didn't force his way onto the field, right? He was on the field in place of another player. A player that came into the game in the 4th quarter and made a couple of stops on his own. Wish we could have seen what that looked like from the start. Again, oh well. This isn't hindsight analysis by the way. I said before the game Dorian Williams should get the start and only be pulled if he looked completely lost. McDermott turtled up and chose the safe comfortable option instead because that's what he does. That's what he'll continue to do. I've made my peace with that and adjusted my personal philosophy on how the team should be built to account for that handicap. Similarly Dane Jackson played like garbage in the divisional round. Douglas was limping around out there. What happened to our 1st round CB that made a game changing INT one week before? McDermott isn't comfortable with him so he rides the bench while the safe known products get do-si-do'd. You want to talk about injuries? In the 2022/2023 playoffs the Chiefs lost Mahomes for an entire quarter of play in the wildcard round and then he played on a high ankle sprain the rest of the playoffs. Their #1 WR played injured and their #3 WR missed the divisional round. They suffered all of this en route to a Super Bowl win. Do you think our LB injuries were more impactful than that? Like I've said, our coaching isn't on par with the competition. We aren't able to overcome some of the things that our main rival can overcome. We will need the offensive talent to clearly outmatch the competition to have a real shot. If we have to win a shootout to get over the playoff hump, so be it. Maybe McDermott will find a way to screw it up anyways, he's done it once before, but it's pretty clearly our best chance.

Yes Chris Jones singled against Dion Dawkins made a great play. I still don't understand how that happened. No one on the coaching staff thought to double their best player on a designed shot play? Just some baffling brain farts in the final critical moments of a game, which has unfortunately become a calling card of this regime.

Yeah the degree of difficulty is supposed to go up for QBs in the playoffs. The Chiefs dominated the Ravens defense in the 1st half of the AFCCG, but the Ravens came out of halftime and completely shut them down. Against us we came out of halftime desperately needing just one stop and instead the Chiefs casually strolled down the field and into the endzone. It was a backbreaking drive that I thought took the wind out of our sails. We traded TDs one more time but at that point threading the needle perfectly seemed almost impossible, and only a stupid play from a stupid player in Mecole Hardman kept us in it. So no @NewEra I don't buy this idea that the Bills defense has been hopelessly derailed by injuries over five years of playoffs in the Allen/McDermott era. That kind of streak is a trend, not an unlucky fluke. I'm not going to re-litigate the entire divisional round but suffice it to say I did not agree with several personnel decisions McDermott made in that game. In fact our defense made a couple stops AFTER he changed personnel to what it should have been from the start. Oh well. I wish I had faith that McDermott would turn it around but it's hard to bet against five years of data. I have faith Josh Allen can overcome that handicap but he needs an elite set of weapons to bridge the gap IMO. So that colors my perspective in this discussion. I'd be fine with this group of skill players if McDermott had proven to be a defensive mastermind in the playoffs, truly I mean that.

Sure but that's obviously not going to happen. This is where people lose me with the comparison to the Chiefs last year. Our defense is not going to hold down the Ravens and then the 49ers in the playoffs while our offense sputters. The history under this staff is what it is. Our defense underperforms every single year in the playoffs. I'm betting on that trend continuing. With that in mind, the only way we are going to win a championship is to go all out creating an offensive juggernaut capable of steamrolling teams. As I've been saying we need a lot of best case scenarios to come to fruition for that caliber of offensive output. Maybe we're not as far apart in this conversation as you think. I don't expect our offense to suck. I know it will automatically be in the top 5 to top 10 range because of our QB. I just don't think that's good enough under current management.

I know it will be a successful offense just because we have Allen. Extremely likely to be top 10, likely top 5ish even no matter what. But I want top 2. That's what this team needs to win a championship. I'm not convinced we have added enough talent to have a top 2 offense. If you disagree that's fine. Everybody seems to agree we need several players to step up big time for us to hit that standard.

Gonna go out on a limb and say adding a RB2 isn't going to fix all of the problems our offense had in that game.

I think he called the only gameplan he could with our undermanned offensive roster. A ball control offense that had to thread the needle repeatedly and force Allen to use his legs more than is sustainable over a 17+ game season, just to sort of keep us in the game. That isn't an offense to strive for, it's an offense that can get you out of a game.

For that exercise I just went with targets, but I am sure if you changed it to catches or yards the result would be the same.

Samuel isn't going to break out in his 8th season. I do expect him to be a great addition to the team though as an explosive complementary piece. Shakir is a slot, I'm still firm in that opinion until proven otherwise. Maybe he develops into Cooper Kupp but I don't see it. Kincaid I agree has a decent chance of really breaking out this year. But that's my point. We have to hope for a breakout. All of the players I listed were already known to be top tier pass catching talents entering those Super Bowl seasons. Maybe Aiyuk wasn't quite at that proven level yet, but he was in a mix with Samuel, Kittle, and McCaffrey so offensive weapons were not remotely a concern for the 49ers. My whole thing this offseason was I wanted two young WRs with physical traits added in the draft. Double the chance that you hit the jackpot, and then even if there's no breakout this year at least we enter 2025 with a lot of young talent that's developed chemistry with Allen and the probability of a breakout in 2025 goes way up. That would have made 2024 a fun transition year even if the team as a whole took a step back. Instead we're kind of just treading water, at best.

It's even worse because last year we had this identical discussion about the #2 pass catcher. This year we're talking about the #1 pass catcher. Yet it is the same exact arguments going back and forth even though the debate was already decided last season. It's pretty wild.

#1 target of the last 10 Super Bowl participants: Travis Kelce Brandon Aiyuk Travis Kelce AJ Brown Cooper Kupp Ja'Marr Chase Mike Evans Travis Kelce Travis Kelce George Kittle By the way those teams also all had a #2 passing target that was better than anyone on the Bills roster right now. Several of them had a better #3 passing target. That's the caliber of talent we're talking about. Meanwhile on this board we're wondering if Khalil Shakir can be the #1. It's honestly a complete joke. I never expected us to find a #1 caliber pass target right away after trading Diggs. I expected a step back. It is just frustrating that Beane didn't even really try. We added one WR in the draft and then signed a couple low-probability scratch offs in Claypool and Hamler, and the rest has been complementary or depth additions. We have to hope Kincaid is ready to be a #1 pass target. That's probably our best hope. The next best hope is maybe... Claypool? I don't know. It's just not a good situation and we're likely to enter next offseason with the same questions that we entered this offseason with.

The problem is that WR5 is a more important role when you don't have a WR1. Hollins as a depth WR on the Dolphins would be fine. Just like Sherfield on the Dolphins was able to produce some. But you put them on a team without that elite WR1 and their deficiencies become legit problems on the roster, as we saw last year.

The MVS signing makes me think a trade before the season is not in the cards, unfortunately. At the trade deadline I think is a real possibility though, when we would only take on approximately half of the player's cap hit this year. If Beane saves all of Tre's $10.2M that will be a sign that he is keeping in-season trade options open. This is our locked in WR room: Coleman - X MVS - Field stretcher Shakir - Slot Samuel - Gadget/weapon/Z Hollins - Depth/special teams The 6th spot will be one of the rejects we've added or one of our late round/UDFA rookies from last year. We need several best case scenarios to come to fruition for this to work. Coleman has to be ready to hit the ground running and be our primary outside WR. Shakir needs to prove he can take on a much larger target share. Samuel needs to stay healthy. The 6th WR needs to be better than Trent Sherfield. If all of that happens plus Kincaid takes a step plus Brady proves he is a top 10 OC, we have the capability of being a top 3 offense again. Assuming at least one of those outcomes fails, maybe we get Hopkins at the trade deadline.

Here's the thing - If the Bills offense got shut out in the 1st half against the 49ers, and then Allen started the 2nd half by throwing a terrible interception that gave the 49ers the ball at the 50, the game is over by the end of the 3rd quarter. We can't try to copy the Chiefs. We have to build the best possible team that this coaching staff and defensive roster can win with. That team needs to have a better WR corps than what the Chiefs had last year.

Hopefully Joe Brady is as good as the team thinks. The OC hiring process was a sham. I don't necessarily mean that critically, it just was. They are putting a lot of faith in Brady being somewhat of an offensive genius and getting the most out of a group of complementary players that's missing a true difference maker. Or maybe they're placing their faith in Kincaid to take a big step and become capable of a #1 target share. That's not a completely unlikely scenario. One way or another someone on offense, coach or player, will have to be magnitudes better than they were last year for this offense to be championship caliber.

OBJ is worried about sitting behind established WR starters so he chose the Dolphins?