HappyDays

Including Milano. Great news.

Your argument is that they have added offensive players to the roster? That is damning with faint praise. This is the bare minimum that was needed to field even a starting caliber offense. Again it has been shown, in this thread even, that the Bills have invested as little draft capital in the WR position as any other team. That is an undeniable fact. You can be more optimistic about the group than others but you can't pretend the Bills have made an attempt to prioritize the position relative to the rest of the league.

Joe Marino's take for anyone who cares: He spends most of the episode talking about Josh Allen. For a large portion in the middle he specifically discusses the Bills' success with Allen compared to the Chiefs' success with Mahomes. I'm admittedly biased because he echoes everything I've ever said on this topic, but it's amazing how just straightforward and obvious some of his points are when you hear them out loud. Like you can't reasonably disagree with anything he says.

The complaint is not about any one specific factor. The complaint is that since 2021 the team has not made surrounding Josh Allen with as much offensive talent as possible the singular priority and focus of the organization. Quite the opposite in fact. It has been shown that they have invested in the position less than 30 teams. Even if you want to count Kincaid as a WR we still would rank much lower than just about every other franchise. They have not made a serious attempt to lead the franchise to glory by taking the easiest path which is giving their most important asset the most support possible. This is pretty much undeniable no matter how you want to look at it.

There is one position you conspicuously didn't mention here. Hint: it's mentioned in the subject title of the thread.

So just to be clear - you recognize that the team (and yourself) made a mistake assuming the best case scenario for each of their WRs, and assuming a perfectly linear uptick from their targets to their yards. Yet you are now extremely confident that players like Shakir and Samuel are in fact going to do that same thing you were wrong about before? Sounds like you already understand exactly why most of us are concerned. You're just deciding to believe in the best case scenario. Which is fine, clearly that is part of your definition of "being a fan" (as you've openly admitted). I just don't understand why you're pretending like your opinion is in any way convincing or supported by evidence to people that are trying to evaluate the room objectively. If you want to just say "I'm choosing to be optimistic and wait to see what happens before being concerned," by all means feel free to do that. It just makes for a poor discussion.

Thanks. We were talking about Daquan Jones and AJ Epenesa.

Good, now we're getting somewhere. Now you're understanding that it isn't a matter of affordability, it's a matter of choice. To answer your question - yes, unequivocally. I'm still waiting for a single defensive lineman to make a difference in a post-wildcard playoff game. Hopkins I know for a fact would be a difference maker. The Chiefs made a mistake not signing him, this was obvious by the midpoint of their season. We have an owner more willing to spend money than the Hunts so it is a bigger black mark on our FO than it is on theirs.

We have $10M in cap space right now. Daquan Jones + Epenesa + MVS is another $9M right there. Plenty of other moves that could be made too. Don't say it wasn't affordable. The Bills intentionally chose to prioritize other positions over Hopkins. That's the simple reality. They tried signing Arik Armstead to the same money Jacksonville gave him. The pattern is obvious and nobody is going to take you seriously if you don't even acknowledge it.

I don't blame Dawkins at all. Chris Jones lined up 1v1 in the 4Q against 95% of offensive linemen is an immediate advantage to the defense. I just have no clue how that 1v1 matchup was allowed to happen. I think all other 31 coaching staffs wouldn't let their opponent's best pass rusher end up 1v1 on the most critical play of the game. Ours did. So here we are having to pretend that turning down TDs is somehow an arguable decision.

Right so your response to that was extremely predictable and shows that you didn't ask that question in good faith. For the record, yes we obviously could have afforded Hopkins, at the expense of other players of course. But we chose to prioritize other positions instead. Which is the whole point of this conversation. We have repeatedly prioritized other positions over WR and it has repeatedly cost us. Imagine if Hopkins was in Sherfield's spot against the Chiefs. Think that might have made a difference? Ah but for you that example doesn't count. Because of reasons.

DeAndre Hopkins

You're right. He got a record breaking contract because of his target share. No other reason. If Shakir was in that offense he'd be a $100 million man right now. Contracts in the NFL mean basically nothing and it's all luck of the draw.

I predict that no WR on the Bills will get over 100 targets (Kincaid I predict will get right around 100 targets). ARSB has gotten 119, 146, and 164 targets in each year of his career. Respectfully you using him as a comparison was just plain dumb. Shakir and Samuel are not as good as him, I'm sorry they just aren't. There is no magic solution wherein we just funnel one of them 150 targets and watch them collect 1,500 yards like ARSB had last year. Players EARN that kind of target share by consistently getting open and/or showing they can consistently win contested catches. I expect our passing attempts overall to be lower than usual this year. I'll predict 515 attempts which is about 4 less attempts per game than recent years. I'm with @BADOLBILZ that we will probably have a more ball control offense that runs the ball more and intentionally prolongs drives. I expect we will have to play this style of offense for the same reason we did against the Chiefs in the divisional round - it's what our caliber of pass catchers will necessitate. Your whole argument is just bad statistics. You're assuming an equal number of pass attempts. You're assuming everyone's yards per target will scale up perfectly with increased targets. Overall you're assuming every single best case scenario, and when called out on this your response is that we're bad fans because we're not blindly optimistic. This response by the way tells on itself - you're admitting you don't actually believe any of the things you're saying, it's apparently just part of "being a fan" for you.

Every discussion of Shakir's targets and yards reminds me of this:

What's the number one predictor of targets in your view? Because he literally told the Commanders he didn't want the job.

I'll revise that to top 4. Reid Shanahan McVay Johnson That's probably the order I'd have them. Agreed that Johnson needs to prove more which puts him behind the other 3 but his first two seasons in Detroit have been amazing. He actually got more out of Jared Goff than even Sean McVay did.

What possesses you to think that? They have an elite OL, the best slot WR in the NFL, and a top 3 offensive coach. If you love the Lions offense I have one idea that could get us there, but that discussion will have to wait until next offseason.

Last year's Chiefs offense is probably the best point of reference we have. Mahomes finished 7th in passing YPG but just 19th in passing YPA. Considering that offense still featured Travis Kelce and of course Andy Reid calling plays I don't think we can reasonably predict better from the Bills passing offense this year. A reasonable average prediction would probably be something like 9th and 21st respectively. Of course there is a path to better. In previous discussions I have laid out these 4 best case scenarios: 1) Joe Brady turns out to be a top 5 offensive coach. 2) Kincaid develops into a top 5 pass catching TE. 3) Coleman hits the ground running and is immediately a starting caliber X WR. 4) Claypool turns back into the player he was in his first two seasons. I think there is a path for each of these scenarios to come to fruition but none of them are likely. How our passing offense performs will depend on which if any of these scenarios come to fruition.

Yes, with HoF talent on the field with him. That's my point. To overcome abysmal defensive performances we need way more offensive talent. It is so frustrating that as soon as the Chiefs lost their edge in offensive talent, they immediately got an elite defense to make up for it. Wouldn't that be nice.

My take has been that the offense needs better talent to perform better, and the defense needs better coaching. I understand not everyone agrees with that. But since the coaching isn't going to change I think over investing in the offense is the only way we'll ever get a championship. Mahomes has had 1-2 HoF talents on the field with him, and 1 HoF talent on the sidelines, throughout his entire career. I'm not so unfair that I expect us to give that caliber of help to Allen. But yeah if we're already just giving up the idea that the defense can perform at even an average level in the playoffs, we'll need the offensive talent so Allen can make up for it. If the idea is that Allen has to prop up both a poor defense and a lack of high end talent on offense all the way to a Super Bowl win, that's patently ridiculous and you know it.

Sure the offense was not good enough in that game. I can concede that point. It doesn't change the conversation at all. Based on how the defense performed it wouldn't have mattered either way. Ditto for the Bengals game. There is not a single playoff game in the Josh Allen era where you can say the defense did their job but the offense didn't, but there are several where you can say the opposite. But also your whole argument here is proving my point... The offense has not been good enough to make up for bad defensive performances. We need a major influx of talent on that side of the ball so that we can regularly put up 30+ points in the playoffs.

Okay fine. We can also add on missed FGs to make the defense look worse and the offense look better. No matter how you want to lay it out, the offense very clearly has been well above average and the defense has been well below average in the playoffs. It's really not debatable. But my whole point is that well above average isn't good enough. We need the offense to be totally dominant in the playoffs to the point that it doesn't even matter what the defense does, and even that caliber of offense might not be enough to get us past the divisional round as we learned in the 2022 playoffs. Like we basically need a perfect offense just to give us a coin flip chance of making it to the Super Bowl. Not really a realistic expectation but I wish we would at least try to build the offense to that level.

Personally I would throw out the Ravens game entirely, for both sides of the ball. That was not a real game of football. FWIW removing that game would put our offensive PPG at 28.0, and our defensive PPG at 27.2. Also FWIW in two of the three other games you listed (Chiefs and Texans) our offense scored more points than the Chiefs did when they won the AFCCG this year. If that's what we're considering as bad playoff games for the offense, that kind of proves the point we're making. The Bengals game is the only one where I would say the offense was outright bad and gave the team no chance to win. So yes it is a crazy take to try and paint the offensive and defensive performances in the playoffs as remotely equivalent in any way. The offense is regularly putting up more points than their opponent typically allows, while the defense is regularly giving up more points than their opponent typically scores.

My favorite stat from this game is that Allen's passer rating decreased slightly after he threw the 1 yard TD pass to Tommy Doyle. It went from 158.3 to 157.6 because the lower YPA mattered more to the passer rating formula than the extra TD pass.