HappyDays

Sorry these stats don't matter because Skylar Thompson.

Your obsession with that game is absolutely hilarious 😂

Bills 29 Ravens 25 All offseason I've been thinking Baltimore would win this game. As recently as last week that would have been my honest prediction. They have the better roster, nowhere you can really poke holes or find a vulnerability. Their offense is the definition of pick your poison. On defense they have a crazy good secondary and unpredictable pass rush packages that gave our OL fits in the first matchup last year. On a pure player vs player analysis it doesn't feel like this is a game our roster should win without the Ravens making several unforced errors. What's changed my mind over the past couple days is my growing sense that no one really knows what this Bills team is going to look like. Especially the defense. We made additions like Ryan Nielsen and Michael Hoecht, coaches and players that don't fit our usual tendencies. There's been complete radio silence out of OBD - training camp was boring, preseason was boring, Hard Knocks was boring. They have been very intentional about keeping the defense under wraps and I've come to believe that it is genuinely going to be different from what we've seen before. So while Baltimore isn't going to be totally unprepared, they're also not going to be able to glean as much from last year's film study as they might expect, and I think that plus the crowd noise in primetime for the home opener is going to create a huge advantage for our defense in the 1st half at least. Also... I fully expect Josh Allen to be at his very best for this game. Something that's kind of gone under the radar because he just won MVP - reports from training camp are that he's throwing the ball better than ever. Even at this stage of his career he's still tweaking his mechanics and perfecting his consistency. It seems crazy to expect him to unlock another level above what he did last year, but I really think he has it in him. This is his 2nd full year in Brady's offense. He has his personal life well in order and yes I believe that stuff matters. He's spent the whole offseason developing chemistry with Keon Coleman who also has been turning heads at training camp. I expect our run offense to be just as good as last year, maybe even better with the addition of Hawes. We ran the ball well against the Ravens in the playoff matchup - our RBs averaged 4.88 YPA. If we can keep close to that efficiency and not have our passing offense fall into a major slump like it did in the playoff matchup, we aren't going to blow the doors off them but we'll put up our points and force Baltimore to play catch up which is exactly the kind of game they are built to avoid. This one is going to have the feel of a playoff game. I still kind of wish we got Baltimore later in the season after Derrick Henry wore down and we got our suspended players plus Maxwell Hairston back. But if it's going to be early in the season, week 1 in primetime was the best case scenario. The crowd noise, primetime Josh Allen, new defensive wrinkles that haven't been put on film yet. I think it all adds up to a win that despite the spread favoring us will still feel like an upset.

Congrats @Billl. You're no longer the biggest homer on this board.

I'd say it's more when Gabe is on the field AND Dorsey is the OC. That trio together fed each other's worst instincts. All of those option routes combined with a bombs away passing offense were just an awful combination. As soon as Brady took over in 2023 Davis stopped being a problem. The reads in Brady's offense are simpler on the QB and on the WRs. On calling low probability passes he is at the complete opposite end of the spectrum compared to Dorsey, for better or worse. Not that I ever again want Davis to become a key feature of this passing offense. But if he ends up as our WR 4 or 5 I don't expect that to wreck Allen's game. He'll be used as Brady used him in 2023 which was as a low target WR who did a lot of blocking and ran a lot of clear out routes.

I think you have to price in the possibility of a Burrow injury. Last season he stayed healthy all year but he's been injury prone throughout his career and they haven't fixed their OL issues. Can they score 35 PPG and brute force their way in? Sure, they almost did it last year. I just can't predict that in a loaded conference.

I'm not confident his knee will be healthy enough by then. That injury is REALLY lingering. We are basically doing him a favor letting him hang out with his friends and use our great training facilities while he recovers. I don't have a problem with that but even if one of our WRs gets injured I wouldn't hold my breath on Davis in action until after the bye week at the earliest.

Oh well, the 4 elite QBs are ranked that closely for a reason. Basically comes down to personal preference. I actually think it's the most hilarious outcome that Barkley comes in #1. Ranked 86th when he was behind the Giants OL before miraculously catapulting to the top of the list. There's not exactly a ton of thought put into these rankings. It's a ranking more of respect than of ability.

Saquon Barkley is going to be the #1 player... Ranked 86th on the 2024 list.

Those are the same kinds of metrics fans pointed to with Elijah Moore and yet his first couple teams let him go after two years each and he ended up as a roster bubble player for us. I don't put much stock in "route win" or "separation" metrics when it comes to evaluating pass catchers. They just seem like the last bastion for people trying to defend a player that hasn't lived up to expectations yet. NFL caliber pass catchers do more than just win their route; they read defensive leverage, adjust their spacing on the fly, and end up right where their QB expects them to be. By the way I don't think Knox excels in these areas but he certainly did it at a higher level than Kincaid last year. Does that mean I'm going to say Knox is a better NFL receiver than Kincaid? No I won't go that far off of one season especially since Knox has a lot more experience. But the efficiency metrics are what they are. Hopefully the light comes on for Kincaid in year three. The movement skills give him a high ceiling but he needs to get the cerebral game down or he'll be some other team's version of Elijah Moore in a year or two.

Knox was a better receiver last year. Catch percentage - Knox 66.7% / Kincaid 58.7% Yards per catch - Knox 14.1 / Kincaid 10.2 Yards per target - Knox 9.4 / Kincaid 6.0 Success rate - Knox 63.6% / Kincaid 53.3% Kincaid had quite a few more targets, 75 vs 33, which shouldn't be discounted, but Knox was by far the more efficient pass catcher. Knox also had a higher ADOT (8.8 vs 7.5) so his targets were a higher degree of difficulty and he still came up with that much better efficiency. Of course Kincaid has the higher upside. He is a better route runner and he has better movement skills. But for whatever reason he and Allen were not on the same page as much Knox and Allen were last year. Maybe they just need to develop better chemistry. But I continue to worry that Kincaid is not a natural NFL player and lacks some of the nuance required for that position. I'd love to be proven wrong. There have been mostly positive reports coming out of training camp. I think it's unlikely he'll ever fully live up to his 1st round draft status but if he can get around 750 yards and close to a 70% catch percentage I'd take that.

AFC: #1 Chiefs #2 Ravens #3 Bills #4 Jaguars #5 Broncos #6 Steelers #7 Chargers NFC: #1 Eagles #2 Lions #3 Bucs #4 Rams #5 Commanders #6 Packers #7 Vikings AFCCG: Ravens defeat Chiefs NFCCG: Eagles defeat Lions SB: Ravens defeat Eagles I think the Ravens kind of have it all this year so I'll bet on Lamar finally flipping the script on his playoff failures.

Took us 5 days to find out. Shows you how airtight the Bills organization is these days.

I feel bad for him personally because this puts his entire NFL career in question. But it doesn't affect us at all. I'm guessing Zion Logue will take his place. He was better in preseason than Carter was. Then when Ogunjobi's suspension ends it will be a decision between him and Logue.

Draft perceptions are funny. Fans universally hated the Coleman pick and loved the Bishop pick. They hated the TJ Sanders pick but loved the Landon Jackson pick. It's still very early for all of those players but the exact opposite perception looks more accurate as of now.

Keon was my guy before that draft. In this year's bold predictions thread I predicted he will lead the team in receiving yards and receiving TDs, with 8+ TDs. I'll stick with that prediction. He worked his ass off this offseason including workouts with Allen before training camp started. Between that and the training camp reports I'm fully bought in that we are going to start seeing that physical upside unlocked. That being said I'm not going to predict superstar production. I'd still bet on under 1,000 yards even as our #1. I expect us to run the ball a ton this year, possibly even more than last year whether fans like it or not. I envision a personnel grouping of Coleman, Palmer, and Hawes punching opponents in the mouth. No one tracks run blocking stats but it will be a big part of his game this year.

Not sure how a multi year contract would work but I'd be surprised if he got more than 1 year from anyone right now. Pats owe him $4.3M so because of offset language in his contract no matter what his new team pays him, Pats are responsible for the difference up to $4.3M. Unless some team offers him $4.5M or more which I don't think is likely, the new team has no incentive to pay more than the vet minimum and Peppers has no incentive to decline it.

Pats fans seem to be upset that he was released. My guess is they asked him to take a paycut and he declined, so with his injury history and presumably a new defensive scheme they are letting him go. But we could have him for the vet minimum because of offset language in his contract so there's no risk to us. And he has the exact type of skillset you use as a chess piece with very specific packages. I don't see any kind of downside here. I doubt any team is offering him a starting job so give him our best pitch for the role he'll play on a Super Bowl contending team.

Oh man I would love to add him, especially since it would be almost free. Cut Codrington and use Peppers as our kick and punt returner. He wouldn't start on our defense but we could definitely design packages to use his skillset. A lot of the player and coaching additions we made on defense this offseason were about adding variety and unpredictability. Peppers fits that philosophy to a tee.

The Packers are in a completely different situation. Since the 2020 draft the only two homegrown players they've given big extensions to are Jordan Love and Zach Tom. And it isn't because they were saving the money for something else, they just flat out haven't drafted well. By comparison over the same time period we've extended Brown, Rousseau, Cook, Benford, Shakir, and Bernard. Say what you want about those players, they are much better than the likes of Eric Stokes, Quay Walker, and Devonte Wyatt. If Green Bay had drafted better they would have extended their young players too, like every team does. Not to mention the QBs of the respective teams. Allen's cap hits the next few years compared to Love's: 2025 - $36.3M vs $29.7M 2026 - $56.4M vs $36.2M 2027 - $53.1M vs $42.5M The Bills are tied to Allen through 2030 no matter what. The Packers can get out of Love's contract in 2028 with a measley $15M dead cap hit so even assuming they rework his contract and extend him that year he will not have Josh Allen-sized cap hits on his contract until 2029 at the very earliest. The argument you're making would also apply to the Ravens and Chiefs. But they're in the same boat we are. When you've drafted well and you're paying a tier 1 QB, you can't just absorb a $47M AAV contract without warning. It was never realistic.

When you're gearing up to re-sign your own you see it coming and plan accordingly. It is much harder if not impossible to work in a $47M AAV contract out of the blue a week before the season starts after you just spent a whole offseason tying up your cap for the next few years. I'm more open to this argument as it pertains to DK Metcalf where we had a legit opportunity to add him while the team building process was still ongoing. That is a potential missed opportunity that could theoretically look really bad depending on how this season ends. But Parsons just wasn't possible IMO. The argument is Rousseau plus Bernard plus Hoecht, or just Parsons, and if that was the trade off I would of course take Parsons. But we weren't presented with that trade off and Beane couldn't just sit on his hands all offseason saving future cap for a hypothetical move that nobody saw coming.

If it was just the draft picks it's a no brainer. But it's that plus $47M AAV on a cap table that is already heavily lopsided in favor of the defense. We make this move and we completely lose the ability to add legit talent to the offense over the next couple seasons. If anything we would have had to make this trade back in like March before we had extended Rousseau, Bernard, and Benford, and paid Bosa/Hoect/Ogunjobi. Then you could have justified it while trading Rousseau and not making some of those those other moves. But we didn't know in March that this trade was possible. With the team as currently constructed it would have been insane to add yet another big investment to the defense.

Man I don't know if any pass rusher is worth $47M AAV. They need Jordan Love to be a lot better than he was last year for this trade to work out. Would have been fun if we had made the move but realistically I didn't think he was affordable. Anyways I was never one that wanted us to pull off a blockbuster trade for Myles Garrett or any other defensive player. I think you need waves of pass rushers constantly rotating and staying fresh throughout the whole game to be successful - that was Philly's formula last year. Hopefully the numerous investments we made on the DL this offseason give us that formula.