HappyDays

Honestly really happy for him. I didn't think a team would give him this kind of money right now. I hope he makes us regret cutting him.

Adam Thielen got 1,000 yards last year, at the age of 33, playing in a hilariously awful passing offense. It really isn't that hard, especially when you have an elite QB throwing you the ball. The Bills just haven't made a serious effort to get a 1,000 yard caliber WR since 2020. By putting together that list of other WRs you're completely missing my point. In our offense with our QB a 1st round WR is most likely to end up being a high impact high value pick. If you draft them to a team led by Sam Howell or Mason Rudolph, probably not. @Kirby Jacksonsaid it best in another thread. If we are going to win a Super Bowl, it will be because of Josh Allen. Not because of our DL rotation. We have to start doing everything we can to maximize Allen's abilities on the field because his career will be gone before we know it. You do that by adding weapons when the opportunity is there. If this 1st round class doesn't represent that kind of opportunity, none of them ever will. FWIW I believe Beane knows this. He can go on McAfee and make a big show about how he's going to wait to take deeper position groups (like WR) later in the draft. His actions tell me otherwise. He called Curtis Samuel a "weapon," not a WR. He hasn't added a legitimate outside WR in FA. He didn't restructure Diggs' contract. They've met with all of the 2nd tier WR prospects. All of this evidence points to him drafting a WR high with the intention of them being our future #1.

My point pertains to this draft. Most drafts won't have this many high quality WR prospects available at the end of the 1st round. I'm not criticizing the Rousseau pick in that particular draft, I'm saying that if we took a Rousseau equivalent while passing on say a Kincaid equivalent we would ultimately be disappointed. And in this draft class specifically there are going to be WRs taken somewhere between 28 and 60 that become high impact starters. I know this almost with complete certainty. I am not nearly as certain that a pass rusher or any other position on defense is going to have a high impact starter taken in that range in the draft.

So to be clear, I'm not guaranteeing that any WR we draft in the 1st round will be a 1,000+ yard WR. There is obviously a chance they will be a complete and utter bust. That is the risk of any pick. My point is that if you assume you end up decently happy with the 1st round pick - not a bust, not a superstar, just a solid overall 1st round pick - if that player is a WR their impact is likely to be higher than any other position. Ideally a WR we take in the 1st round would get 1,500+ yards in a season at some point, but a good baseline for a decent value pick in that spot would be 1,000 yards by their sophomore season. I'll use Kincaid and Rousseau as examples. Kincaid had a solid rookie season. No one would say he set the league on fire. But that solid rookie season translated into franchise records, a clear measurable impact on the offense, and a TD in a playoff game. Rousseau on the other hand has been a solid player since entering the league. I haven't felt that kind of impact from him yet. His playoff highlight was grazing Mahomes' shoulder on a play that ended in a 1st down. To maximize the likelihood that the 1st round pick will have a measurably high impact on the team, it has to be a WR. Playing in an offense with Allen and a decent mix of supporting talent means their floor will be higher than any other position we can take.

Part of being a good GM is understanding your own weaknesses. I hope Beane understands that his board is not infallible. Which is no slight against him - nobody's draft board ends up being even close to right when all is said and done. If you're right even 50% of the time you're one of the best to have ever done it. All the talk about BPA assumes there is some kind of objective BPA. But of course there isn't one. So Beane should make the pick that is most likely to have a high impact ceiling on the team. Any WR he takes that turns out even just a decent 1st round pick will end up being a 1,000+ yard WR. Just like Kincaid ended up breaking franchise records. So drafting what he thinks is the best WR available is hitting the easy button on maximizing the 1st round pick. Drafting, say, Chop Robinson is hitting the hard button. That pick isn't likely to have the impact of a 1,000 yard WR. Do the easy thing. Get the franchise a likely win out of our 1st round pick.

Sure there is some luck involved, but when one defense is doubling the production of another there is almost certainly something else going on.

The only thing I hate about this is the NFL keeps bouncing back and forth between special teams barely mattering at all and special teams suddenly being very important. It's hard to construct a roster when you don't even know what will be important on a year to year basis.

Don't you think coaching plays into turnovers? In six playoff games against division winners we have forced just 4 turnovers since McDermott became the head coach (0.67 per game). Since Spagnuolo became their DC the Chiefs in ten playoff games against division winners have forced 14 in the same time frame (1.4 per game). No way that discrepancy is just because of talent, right? We have had talented defenses. The Chiefs only recently made it a point to invest in the defense and immediately it became the strength of the team, carrying them to a Super Bowl

But that was a team built through its defense. I mean Duke freaking Williams was our #1 pass catching target in that game. We had 3 below average starters on the line in Ford, Feliciano, and Spain. On defense the entire starting roster was on the field. White, Milano, Edmunds, Oliver, Lotulelei, Hyde, Poyer, Johnson. Many of those players in their prime. That was supposed to be the unit that led us to victory, not a still learning Josh Allen and his below average supporting cast. And you say teams can't win playoff games scoring 16 points and getting shut out in the 2nd half. The Chiefs just won the AFCCG scoring 17 points and getting shut out in the 2nd half. Against a better offense than what the Texans fielded in 2019. Their team like our 2019 Bills was built through the defense, with a deficit of talent on the offensive side (although still vastly superior to what we fielded in 2019). Why was Spagnuolo able to make that formula work and McDermott wasn't?

I was one that wanted McDermott gone this offseason but it's time to move on. He's our coach this year love it or hate it. I'll criticize him plenty in September and beyond, I just don't have it in me to care what he says in response to vapid questions at press conferences in March.

I'll have to see what the contract looks like. If they're giving him like $10M per year I'll say they overpaid him, but I doubt he'll get that much at this stage of his career. I see him being the WR version of Jadveon Clowney for the rest of his career, hopping from team to team on mid-tier 1 year deals. So if they're giving him say $8M this year what are they missing out on instead? Wilkins and Hunt were walking no matter what. The 2nd tier FA market was pretty light at their positions of need, while the WR market was flush with talent. So why not build strength on strength, if that's where the market value lies?

This is a positive, not a negative. I never understood this mindset. If OBJ is their 3rd best WR I hesitate to even call that a good problem to have because it isn't a problem. Loading up on offensive talent has been by far the most common way teams have made championship runs in recent years, so I'm never going to criticize a team that already has a lot of offensive talent for adding more talent on top. Not that this move makes me worried about the Dolphins. They have holes all over the defense. And they are still stuck with Tua. At this point I'm just wondering if they're actually going to commit to him long term... Fingers crossed that they do.

I know my opinion of him is in the minority. I just don't think his package of skills comes together to create a true #1 WR in the NFL. As an explosive role player I absolutely think he has a place in the league. But that projection isn't a 1st round caliber talent for me. However if he quickly develops his route tree I will be wrong about him.

I would even consider him a lesser prospect than Metcalf. I loved Metcalf and would have been equally happy with him or Oliver at #9. Metcalf had downfield traits AND alpha traits. That's what separates him from BTJ for me. BTJ seemingly just has an elite release and very good vertical speed. But if he can't win contested catches or highpoint the ball or bully through contact, how useful will such a limited route tree be? Metcalf had the same one-trick pony profile but I felt that his physical abilities complemented that one trick a lot better. BTJ has size but he doesn't really use it, and his hands and YAC ability are average at best.

Diggs is the only WR on the roster that can be a full time outside WR. Whether they are looking for his replacement or not, finding an outside WR is an absolute must early in this draft. Short term need, long term need, positional value, draft class positional strength. All of the ingredients are there. Beane just needs to do the easy thing and capitalize on it.

I don't know much about the player, but I'm glad they are waiting until the end of the second wave of FA to sign depth DL players like this, instead of their previous MO of agreeing to terms with players like Tim Settle on day one of the legal tampering period. This year Beane still made that mistake with a couple players that were on our roster in 2023, but finally stopped himself from making that mistake with other teams' UFAs. Baby steps.

A lot of the talk around Coleman reminds me of the talk around Josh Allen before his draft. It isn't people watching him play and then criticizing him, it's people throwing around opaque stats without context and counting that as scouting (not saying you are doing this). Stats have their place in the discussion but when people say stuff like "he has one of the lowest contested catch rate in the class" that tells me there is something inherently wrong with that stat, not with Coleman. Everybody who watches his tape agrees he is a contested catch monster. As far as separation from his defender that is never going to be his top tier skill, but boxing out defenders and separating at the catch point is arguably just as valuable, and there is more upside to his route running than many people give him credit for IMO.

Ah you are correct, I misremembered. He must have been their #2 center, and they were down to their #3 when we played them.

He was the starting center for the Chargers when we played them last year. I remember thinking how lucky we were to play against their 3rd center in our matchup, and then our interior DL did basically nothing. So maybe our coaches were impressed and figured he was worth a shot as a camp body if nothing else.

Uh, no. The restructure they did opened up cap space both this year and 2025, and specifically was done in a way that increased Allen's salary. https://overthecap.com/inside-josh-allens-restructured-contract-with-the-bills I would guess we end up extending him in the 2026 offseason, or 2027 at the latest. We'll keep kicking his salary cap hits down the road until he retires and then take our medicine for 1-2 seasons.

Way too much analysis about the last drive of the Chiefs game. I know we had a chance at the end but it wasn't truly a close game. Only Hardman's hilariously stupid fumble kept us in it. Just like the 2022 divisional round where we were only in it at the end because Butker missed a FG and an XP earlier. And the only reason we even took advantage of these unlikely opportunities in each game is because Allen himself made several miraculous improbable plays of his own. We honestly haven't come close to beating the Chiefs in the playoffs. It's been a total rout on everything but the scoreboard the last two times. The only difference between those games and the blowout 2021 AFCCG loss is circumstance, not performance. Personally I would rather not rely on several different unlikely events happening in the game and Allen simultaneously creating several miracles. I would rather the coaches and other players just do their jobs better. Mahomes doesn't have to create miracles to beat us. He just has to play a pretty good game. Any analysis outside of that is pissing into the wind IMO. Fun barstool argument but it misses the real point.

He's projected as a late day 3 pick. He apparently was a standout at the Shrine Bowl, maybe @GunnerBill noticed him. He was not invited to the Combine so makes sense we are bringing him in to work him out for ourselves. This may also signal a philosophical change, a willingness to let our depth DTs be late round rookies instead of overpriced free agents. Or it could mean nothing! That's draft season for you.

Most important thing about this signing is that we are now spending roughly $38M on the entire secondary (post-6/1 when Tre's cap hit is reduced), and that will likely be closer to $34M or so when Taron Johnson's extension is officially reported. This represents a welcome and major redistribution of resources from our secondary to more important positions on the roster.

Except he can't be on the field on run downs, so 🤷

Someone posted a video from Cover 1 earlier in the thread showing all his sacks from last year. Honestly none of the sacks look like it was because of his own ability. It was all bad/unaware QBs drifting into him for no apparent reason. So I guess that means he can set his edge which is fine, but as far as working into the pocket and creating a sack I didn't see any of that.