HappyDays

I like Shakir as a complementary piece. Expecting him to grow into the caliber of a Kupp or an ASB is if anything unfair to him IMO. That's how I would describe this WR room. It's top to bottom all complementary pieces. There is no go to guy unless Coleman defies expectations and immediately becomes a #1 caliber WR. My best hope isn't in the WR room. It's in Kincaid. He's the one player on the roster where I see a realistic path to being an elite receiver this year. After him my next best hope is Coleman hitting his stride by week 10 or so. So I'm not saying there is no path. But if that path doesn't develop we are not going to have an elite offense by "spreading the ball around." Every elite offense in recent memory has had a #1 target that everybody knew was the #1. In fact all elite offenses in recent memory also had a #2 target that was clearly the #2. There's no such thing as #1/#2 by committee. I thought that debate was closed last year...

That's really not true at all... Kupp was drafted 69th overall and had 869 yards in his rookie season. ASB was drafted 112th overall and had 912 yards in his rookie season. Shakir was drafted 148th overall and had 161 yards in his rookie season... 611 yards last year... So Kupp and ASB each had more yards in their rookie season than Shakir had in his sophomore season. It's forgotten now but Shakir was on the roster bubble throughout much of training camp last year. He came on quite nicely in the 2nd half of the season but in no way has his career arc been close to the two elite players you named. It isn't nearly as simple as just giving a player more targets and expecting a bunch of more yards. Some players are naturally just better as low target players. Gabe Davis was like that. It remains to be seen how Shakir responds to an increased role.

You know Beane didn't take a RB with KC's 3rd round pick... right? *Disclaimer: I know you are just a troll and you aren't going to spend a single brain cell considering anything I said

Yes he traded back and took one of the high 2nd round caliber WRs in the high 2nd round where they belonged. I'll criticize Beane plenty but that was a flat out wise move, pending how those players' careers turn out of course. Getting one of those WRs and still recouping a 3rd round pick was always the smart play. Maybe wait until we see those WRs play a couple years before we make call outs, yeah? *Gonna start putting a disclaimer in all my responses to you that I know you are just a troll and you aren't going to spend a single brain cell considering anything I said

Yes if the result was different the result would be different. If Butker doesn't leave 4 points on the board in the 2022 divisional game we don't even have a chance to take the lead at the end. If Hardman doesn't fumble the ball through the endzone in this year's divisional game, the game is over right then and we're all talking about nothing but the stupid decision to run Hamlin on the fake punt. We can go around and around on this stuff. The result is the result. Hmm

Kind of. https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10119807-nfl-rumors-odell-beckham-jr-considered-chiefs-bills-before-dolphins-contract Not hard to read between the lines on this - Miami gave him a better offer with better incentives so he chose them over us or the Chiefs. It came down to money like it always does.

You're right, I exaggerated. Better way to say it is the Bills offense needs to be capable of putting up 35 points in the playoffs. I think that's the caliber of offense that would get us over the hump in the playoffs regardless of how our defense performs. Yes that is the Chiefs approach.

Just throwing this out there because we could have had OBJ over MVS if we really wanted to: I would bet MVS's cap hit comes in pretty close to $2M. We intentionally chose him over OBJ as a player, not for financial reasons. We'll see how that decision turns out.

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.