HappyDays

Tampa Bay at #19 would be the target if they want Egbuka badly enough. By the trade value chart one of our 2nd rounders would get us up that far. I'm not sure Beane would do it though, he's been unwilling to part with his 2nd rounders. Maybe missing out on BTJ last year because of that unwillingness will make him more bold.

Yes I really agree with this. We have a good amount of cap space to utilize for the first time in a while and a lot of draft picks. The core of the roster and both primary coordinators are back. The division is still at least one year away from being remotely competitive, and as noted the overall schedule and conference look weaker than 2024. This is partly why I'm laying off calling for McDermott or Beane to be fired - all of the moves that they made last offseason were really about positioning the team for this offseason, so they've earned the right to try and finish the job in maybe their most favorable season yet. Year one of Allen's second window went better than anybody expected and now they're in prime position to close the deal if they spend their substantial resources appropriately and learn from their past mistakes. They made one splash move in 2020 and another in 2022... 2025 seems like the right year for the next splash move to take advantage of favorable resources and a favorable conference.

I think we pushed him back on the field way too soon. I remember seeing Banged Up Bills post something about how players on average clear concussion protocol faster for playoff games. Nothing suspicious about that of course. So yes I'm sure the second concussion was a direct result of the first one which makes me sick to think about. But as far as I can remember those are the only two concussions he's suffered in his career. In recent NFL history Tua is the only player I can think of who has had his career really disrupted by a tendency to get concussions. It's just not something I worry about with Benford. Maybe I'm wrong and we'll get burned if we extend him early. But he's a very good player, he's a scheme fit, he fills a premium position, and I don't think he'll blow up the market. I'd take the risk.

Maybe I missed something but I've never seen Higgins be a problem or a ball hog. He's played second fiddle to Ja'Marr Chase for his entire career. At this point he's going to go to the highest bidder as he should. But I'm also using Higgins as a generic stand-in for any top tier WR. That's where our offensive resources need to be spent.

No he was on the inactive list quite a bit. After first coming off IR they gave him like 2 games but he was terrible so the rest of the year he was mostly inactive including against KC if I'm remembering correctly. But I won't jump to conclusions about this draft class yet. The 2022 draft class that looks so good now looked terrible after year one. Elam lost his job to a 6th rounder in Benford who looked decent but nothing special back then, Cook was stuck as RB2, Bernard barely saw the field and when he did he looked terrible, Shakir couldn't carve out a role. 2023 is not looking good, admittedly it was known to be a poor class but still. A 1st and a 4th used on Kincaid looks like very poor value right now, Torrence has been decent but iffy, Williams has been decent but iffy, none of the later round picks did anything. Beane's recent draft legacy will depend on how last year's draft picks develop. It is just alarming how he's drafted exactly ZERO difference makers except for the very first pick he ever made. Spencer Brown is as close as he's gotten to finding an elite player with an original draft pick. Way too many singles or strike outs.

You'd think they'd have gotten lucky at this point if nothing else. Even the Raiders in all their years of poor drafting stumbled on Maxx Crosby in the 4th round. I worry that Beane/McDermott play it too safe in the draft. They don't take chances on players that don't match the exact culture and scheme fit they're looking for. So by narrowing their own board they aren't giving themselves enough chances at finding elite talent.

Benford - I guess this is an unpopular opinion now but I'd extend him this offseason. Part of it is I don't think Spotrac's valuation is right - people put too much stock in their number, the actual AAV often turns out to be wildly different. No one across the NFL media sphere has recognized Benford and no fanbase is clamoring for their organization to sign him. That stuff matters when franchises have to sell moves to their fans, and I just can't see someone offering him $22M AAV. He's primarily a zone corner in a CB-friendly scheme and he's had an injury history. All of the concerns we have about extending him will lower his market value. I don't personally worry about the concussions. 4 years ago everyone was sure Morse was one concussion away from retiring but he's still playing. Concussions are random. If anything it just gives us leverage at the negotiating table. It's become clear to me that McDermott's scheme although CB-friendly also works much better when you have good CBs on the field. We made it work with the likes of Dane Jackson and Levi Wallace, but it was its most dominant version when Tre White was in his prime. Benford isn't quite at that level but he's still a plus player. I'd much rather just have that spot locked up and look to the draft to try and find a true shutdown CB, versus completely starting over at CB in 2026. Shakir - Let him play out his deal, than tag and trade him in 2026 if you know you can get a 3rd or more. I really appreciate what Shakir brings to the offense but slot WRs with YAC ability can be found on any day of the draft. He isn't going to become an outside/downfield WR and that's where we need to make our biggest investments. Bernard - Let him play out the year and see. If he stays relatively healthy and plays well I'd be comfortable giving him like $7M AAV in 2026. If he has a repeat of 2024 give him 1 year $4M or something like that. A player with his size and injury history isn't going to blow up the FA market no matter how he performs this year. Cook - I've laid out my thoughts in the other thread. I'd look for a trade partner now, ideally a 3rd but I'd take a 4th if it's the best offer. That's $5.2M in immediate cap savings which is fairly significant and you can use the pick to draft another RB.

He was on the field on 2nd down of the last series. He got blown up in pass protection which caused Allen to have to get rid of the ball early and the LB was able to tip the pass as a result, otherwise Samuel was going to be open for at least a 1st down gain and maybe more on a whip route. It's more complicated than just how good Cook is, unfortunately. As recently as one month ago I was saying I'd be okay extending Cook because I recognize his talent and his value to the team. The problem is we currently have gaping holes in the WR room, on the DL, and in the secondary. Extending Cook directly impacts our ability to add to those more important areas. That $12M per season or whatever Cook ends up getting is the difference between signing like Darius Slayton vs signing Tee Higgins. I absolutely take Higgins plus any random RB over Cook and Slayton. For me it's not even close. Because as great as Cook was last year, on the final drive of the season he was no help at all and in fact was a detriment. Allen throwing the ball downfield, or a defense that can force more than two punts (ideally both), is going to be our best path to a championship. All of our resources need be spent on developing that path. I'm frustrated that Beane neglected to build the passing offense while Cook was on a rookie deal. Having an elite passing offense plus his rushing ability could have produced a 40 PPG offense. But it's too late for that now and we have to choose one or the other.

Unfortunately our defense's performance against Baltimore doesn't count because they were missing Zay Flowers.

I did point to concrete things. But you ignored them.

He didn't complain when his hand picked OC got fired. Allen strikes me as a "take things as they come" sort of player. I don't expect him to ever meet Pegula to ask for McDermott to be fired, or to complain if McDermott is ultimately fired.

In his year end presser Beane talked about being disappointed in Kincaid's functional strength and in Coleman not recovering from injury well. I would bet that's why they made this move. If for no reason than to send a message to the players - "if you don't put in the work, it costs people their jobs."

It's not the scheme. It's the coaching details. Our contain rush fundamentals are poor. Our CB depth in man coverage is poor. Our zone spacing is poor. Our blitz packages are predictable and have poorly planned coverage schemes behind them. I mean come on man. KC had basically 4 uncontested drives in a row to start the game. Yeah the talent could be better. But we're not an expansion team. That kind of horrific defensive breakdown doesn't happen unless the coaching is poor. And something similar has happened every year. The talent keeps changing but the result is always the same. You have to be willfully blind not to see it. And that's why the argument always boils down to "well it could be worse" because there is no other argument you could make. It's a loser's argument. I'm not worried about the coaching getting worse, I'm worried about it never getting better because that means we're stuck in purgatory.

My top two options in order were Vrabel and Ben Johnson. But they're both taken now. Ask me again next year. I'd probably favor someone in the Vrabel mold if one is available because I'd rather not have a rookie head coach getting accustomed to the job. But if the season ends with our playoff opponent punting no more than twice and making it look easy against our defense, I really won't care who we hire. I'm just so sick of it at this point.

The Steelers with Allen would be competing for the division title every year. The Bills if they were in the AFCN would have been the wildcard a couple times by now. It's just not a comparable situation at all. I'm laying off McDermott this offseason but this has to be the year. We've given him and Beane all of Allen's 20s and they haven't even gotten us to one Super Bowl. For the life of me I can't understand how any Bills fan wouldn't want to give someone else a try. If there was improvement I'd say ok let him stick around no matter what, but every single year the playoff loss looks exactly the same with our defense giving up well above average production. If that happens again for the 6th time in a row why should we expect it to change?

Come on man, Cook has worked his ass off. A lot of players didn't show up in the AFCCG. He was one of a few that did and made an incredible individual play to steal a TD. He's earned the right to play hardball and make as much as he can. Teams don't show blind loyalty to their players and players shouldn't be expected to show blind loyalty to their teams. That's especially true for RBs who know they might have one good shot at a contract that sets them up for life.

Yeah I've come around to this idea. I respect what James Cook is doing, really I do, but a team paying a QB can't be dealing with a RB hold out. The position just isn't worth the headache. Get like a 3rd/4th for him if possible and go all in on adding downfield passing weapons to make up for it. Then draft his replacement in the middle rounds. This is exactly what KC would do.

Yeah I'm sure a lot of head coaches out there could replicate what he's done. In theory yes we could do worse, that's a valid consideration, but at this point it's Super Bowl or bust. We're already not getting to or winning the Super Bowl. So "worse" is kind of meaningless. We'll see what happens. At this point the most likely outcome is we win our division and then lose in the playoffs to a team that punts no more than twice and whose offense looks better than they have all season. McDermott has a chance to rewrite that story. But if that outcome happens again I hope everyone will be on the same page as Allen enters his 30s. The clock is ticking and "it could be worse!" isn't exactly a convincing argument.

I'll agree the regular season results could turn out worse, but the playoff result really could not. I keep repeating myself on this - we have never made KC punt more than twice in our playoff matchup. This last game they spent the 1st half moving the ball at will on 4 consecutive drives, and the only reason they didn't score a TD on one of those was Mahomes randomly dropping the ball. It is impossible to do any worse than that. The way that Mahomes looks against just about every other playoff defense is starkly different from how he looks against us year after year.

Exactly. Everyone is so focused on personnel. Of course Philly's defensive personnel is better than ours. But that doesn't fully explain the gap between 0 points given up in the 1st half vs 21 points given up in the 1st half (really should have been 24 or 28 if Mahomes doesn't randomly drop the ball). I don't believe any team's talent gap is THAT stark. The coaching was a big problem too. And not just the scheme - Philly ran as vanilla a scheme as you'll ever see. It's more about the details being passed on to the players and how they're being coached to execute their responsibilities, how they're being used to accentutate their strengths. That's where we've really fallen short.

Thanks. It's good to know someone like you that does this for a living is seeing the same things I'm seeing. Everyone in the Bills media sphere and fanbase is banging the table for Myles Garrett. But Rousseau is supposed to be the best contain EDGE in the game and he was no help at all in that department in the AFCCG. IMO before we can worry about personnel we need our coaches to do their job and make sure the current players are executing their responsibilities.

So to me that's coaching. I don't believe Von was ignoring what he was coached on and was just recklessly freelancing, and if he was then it's still on coaching for letting him go back on the field. In the regular season matchup we made it a point to contain rush Mahomes and as a result had a great defensive performance, but for whatever reason we abandoned it in the 1st half of the AFCCG. In the 2nd half we again made it a point to contain rush and we immediately forced two punts. Simple coaching tweaks lead to big swings in the result.

Him and Andy Reid both had their worst games of the season at the worst possible time. Bad concepts, bad play calling, compounded by an antsy QB making simple mistakes. So that's my point, we don't need to be the Eagles. We're a couple players and some coaching tweaks away from being able to execute their defensive game plan. The goal isn't to hold KC to 6 points, it's to hold them to like 24. The common fan opinion coming out of this game is that we need to spend all our resources on trying to build a dominant DL. I don't think that's right. We need to just make Mahomes a little uncomfortable by forcing him to hold the ball and stay in the pocket, and we need to have a downfield passing offense that can quickly build a lead.

Kurt Warner broke down all of the Chiefs passing plays from the 1st half and I found his analysis pretty eye opening: His analysis has nothing to do with Philly's defensive scheme or the supposed dominance of their DL (which if you watch the video was not quite as stark as it appeared at least in the 1st half). His take is that Philly's defense should have been easy to scheme against, but Reid/Nagy's concepts were poorly designed, so that combined with Mahomes just being off created a disastrous performance. When you watch it, it's uncanny how Philly's defense is almost exactly the same on every play. They didn't do anything crazy, just played with discipline and fundamentals. My take watching it back is that there are a couple of instant wins by the DL, but mostly what's making Mahomes antsy and uncomfortable is their contain rush. In the 1st half there is really only one instance - the INT Mahomes threw from his own endzone - where an immediate pass rush win had a major effect on the outcome of the play. But because Mahomes can't escape the pocket and FEELS pressure as a result, he starts making bad decisions and bad throws. And because his WRs aren't immediately open, it gives the pass rush time to get home. One play in particular sticks out to me near the end (at 44:44 in the video). Mahomes has time to stay in the pocket and launch a bomb to Worthy down the left sideline who gets a full step on his man 1v1. But he feels pressure before it actually gets there and runs out of the pocket to the right which kills the play. So I don't come away from this tape thinking we need to radically upgrade our entire defensive roster or go all in on finding an elite pass rusher to overcome the Chiefs. You beat them by not letting their WRs win in 2 seconds or less and by keeping Mahomes in the pocket. It really is that simple. You can't expect to totally shut them down like Philly did unless Reid and Mahomes happen to have a bad day, but you certainly won't give up 30+ points if you play them like that. And on the other side of the ball you have to build an insurmountable lead while KC's offense is figuring things out. Philly did that by getting a big WR matched up against McDuffie and throwing the ball downfield. I think we're one legit secondary player and one legit defensive lineman away from being able to execute the same game plan that Philly did. Not to the same degree of success, but enough to keep them well below the season-high production they're usually getting against us.