HappyDays

Yeahhhh I had that thought too. But he is by far the most physically gifted WR on the roster, one of the most physically gifted players on the roster actually. Is he going to turn into AJ Brown? Obviously not. Can be he a legit starting outside WR though? I think there is a path for that at least.

I don't want to get my hopes up too much. Wouldn't it be nice though to get lucky if he turns his career around here?

This already happened once, at a bare minimum. You could argue it happened this past January depending on how you define disinterested. This has happened three times. Please don't say missing DaQuan Jones for a game where the opponent had a backup OL doesn't count. Like I said, I don't think you really have a line in the sand... The lines you've drawn have already been crossed. Breaks for us, breaks against us, none of it has mattered. The result has been the same. It's not about the situation, it's about the people in charge. After seven years and a myriad of failures we can safely say that.

So you do give him 10 years? As long as we keep winning in the wildcard round? I think you've tied yourself into a pretzel. I get it. Being 100% optimistic all the time is more fun. I am finding reasons to still be optimistic about the upcoming season like I always do. But I still have my line in the sand. If you're never willing to move your line, I think you've just accepted being satisfied as an also-ran. Which is fine. I personally cannot be satisfied with that. Mostly I just get upset thinking about a Josh Allen career that never ends in a Super Bowl win, or even a Super Bowl appearance, which becomes closer to reality every year that passes.

I mean this is just factually not true. Jimmy Garappalo and Brock Purdy have gotten closer to hoisting the Lombardi than Josh Allen. Yes I will absolutely say I was wrong about McDermott if we win a Super Bowl this year. I'm not going to make pre-excuses. If he wins one he can be the coach for life, you can hold me to that later. We're entering year 8... So next offseason you will be saying it's time to move on? Are you willing to hold yourself to that?

So your argument is that McDermott can get us over the top if we get several breaks going our way and none going against us. I guess, sure. Mike McCarthy managed to win one with that formula. To be honest though the 2022 playoff run was our chance at that... That's what's so depressing about it. We had no major injuries and our offense/QB was bowling a 300. Our kicker wasn't missing and the opponent's kicker was. We parlayed all of that into a divisional round loss... So I take it back, I'm actually not convinced McDermott can win a Super Bowl even under perfect conditions. The biggest gap between KC and Buffalo by far has been the coaching staff. Allen has outplayed Mahomes in every single match they've played since 2021. I don't want to hear about Donovan McNabb... he never approached the level of QB play we've seen from Allen in the playoffs. You know it, I know it, everybody knows it. Even Joe Marino knows it, he just misidentifies the source of the problem.

I agree. Like being lucky enough to have the opposing kicker leave 4 points on the board and the opposing defense lose their starting safety. Or being lucky enough to have the opposing offense lose half their starting OL to injury. Or being lucky enough to have a fumble go out the back of the end zone when the game is otherwise over. One day we might get that lucky.

Allen >>>> Alex Smith is more important than Reid >>>> McDermott, I don't think anyone disagrees with that. It's pretty sad though that McDermott with Allen has basically matched what Reid did with Smith. I mean really, that's the difference in quality we're talking about here. Hopefully Babich is actually the DC, play caller and all, and he happens to be an elite coach. Hopefully Brady happens to be an elite offensive guru. That's my sliver of hope for getting past the Chiefs this year.

Andy Reid at least got to the precipice of the Super Bowl constantly in those years. McDermott has done that once. With six years of Josh Allen. And that one time we got laughed out of the stadium. There's really no excusing that track record, but whatever he's here this year so as usual we'll have to wait and see. But I'd like to think the fanbase as a whole will draw a line in the sand this year. Eventually he just has to get it done. No excuses. Just get it done. In fact just get close. Even a close loss in the AFCCG would represent progress.

Maybe? But he was never on the injury report and he played in the Pro Bowl. Most players late in the season are dealing with some kind of nagging injury so I don't totally buy that as a valid excuse. I've considered that maybe he mentally checked out halfway through the season. If you're not 100% locked in mentally on an NFL field, that's going to show up in your play one way or another. I don't know the cause, all I know is halfway through the year his level of play fell off a cliff and he was outright terrible in the divisional round, really a net negative for the team in that game.

You know that had nothing to do with the OC, right? His decline started when Dorsey was still in charge. For whatever reason his level of play just slowly fell off a cliff...

They had a falling out. Diggs would openly criticize Allen in the locker room to the point that it got uncomfortable for others. At some point Allen got really sick of it and they stopped talking. The sideline drama during the Bengals game didn't come out of nowhere, neither did Allen sitting there stone faced pointedly ignoring him. Tim Graham reported Allen yelled at Diggs in the locker room after the Jets loss last year over some comment Diggs made. It is basically public knowledge at this point that the two were not getting along.

No, there was definitely a big rift there. I can confirm this. @GunnerBill can confirm this. @nbbillsfan can confirm this. Tim Graham has alluded to it. It is a fact that they had a falling out and Allen eventually just stopped putting up with Diggs' BS. If Allen and Diggs were still close, this trade never goes down.

Updates from Matt Parrino:

All this financial advice and not one poster on here has a TikTok showing off their spread of $1 bills. Like I'm gonna trust any of you without video proof.

It isn't very mysterious. I wanted Troy Franklin. Okay, I don't agree with this at all. If your belief is that a backup 3T is more important than a #2 outside WR then that's your belief. Personally I would have preferred Troy Franklin even over Cole Bishop in the 2nd round, even knowing now that he was available an entire round later. But hey as I've said many many times I'm no scout. I was never married to the idea of two specific WRs. I just strategically knew that taking two in this draft was the right decision for the short and long term. I suspect that by mid-season this will be clear to everybody. I know this because we went through the same exact song and dance last year. I think we benefit from taking targets away from MVS and Hollins because that means MVS and Hollins are getting less targets.

Because he has surface level tact.

Diggs said point blank in an interview this year "where there's smoke there's fire" when asked directly about trade rumors. People on here said that meant nothing. So it got to a point where people were abandoning all sense of media literacy and just blatantly sticking their heads in the sand. I don't think there were over the top takes. I think Diggs is an over the top personality. All the drama over his media appearances and social media posts was entirely warranted. Clearly the team agreed. Beane didn't trade him for purely practical reasons. They flat out wanted his character out of the building. There's no reason to try and retroactively say "well, Diggs still wasn't as bad people said." He really was that bad. If you don't believe me, look at the Bills accounting sheet. You'll find 31 million pieces of hard evidence.

What? Why?

I expected this year to be somewhat of a rebuild year, especially after Diggs was traded. I never thought Beane would go all in trying to find a top tier #1 WR. I'm just disappointed he only addressed the position once in the draft. In a rebuild year I figured it made a ton of sense to get two young WRs on the field with Allen and let them develop their chemistry. Not to mention double our chances of hitting the jackpot on one of them. Even if the team took a step back, at least we would enter 2025 with a lot of excitement. Taking just one WR in the draft really just didn't make any sense to me for the short or long term future of the offense. Hopefully Beane is willing to make a trade close to the deadline, I just can't understand why he put himself in that position to begin with.

To be fair though, it turned out those narratives weren't false. He really was a problem child causing issues behind the scenes, and all the crap he did on Twitter and on the media circuit were in fact hints (not exactly subtle ones at that) that those issues were there. A large portion of the fanbase hand waved away all of those signs, and in many cases even mocked those who said there could be a potential separation coming.