HappyDays

It isn't just one game for Gabe. It's the story of his career. When forced into a WR2 role he has trouble separating against CBs and catches 50% of the targets thrown his way. He's Marquez Valdes-Scantling with a better release package. Having a player like that as a full time WR with even more mediocre weapons behind him is a HUGE crutch for the offense, especially one that has Super Bowl aspirations.

One other thing I forgot to mention - in 2020 our #2 pass catcher was Cole Beasley. That year I think we did have a championship caliber WR corps, and no coincidence that playoff run was the furthest we've made it in the Josh Allen era. So I'm not asking for Kincaid to be Devonta Smith or Tee Higgins. 2020 Cole Beasley is all I really need for him to be. Just be a chain mover with a high catch percentage. Beasley had a 76.6% catch percentage that year. That's how you keep an offense moving. I would still like to see how Kincaid fares on seam routes and other intermediate/deep throws when facing physical coverage. It is a legitimate question about his game which will determine his ceiling as a #2 target this year. But IMO the floor is quite high.

I'm not just basing it on this one game. I have felt this way about him since before the Bills drafted him, and my confidence has only grown from there through all the glowing reports from training camp, his performance in preseason, and now his first real NFL action against a nasty defense. I am a little more reserved about the idea than my post may have seemed, and I recognize it may fail, but I think it's worth a shot. I hate the idea of having 3-4 different players all acting as the co-#2 pass catchers. Every Super Bowl participant from the past 6 years or so had a legit #2 pass catcher where everyone knew that was his role. You can look if you don't believe me. So eventually we need someone to take up that mantle. I have totally lost faith in Davis to perform that role at a championship level. Kincaid is the only other player on the roster that I believe to be capable of possibly being that guy. So I'd rather find out ASAP. If he doesn't pass the test I'd be looking at trade options.

I'll also use these threads to track my previous week's choices. I feel very good about these predictions. Cook looked like a huge upgrade on Singletary, Davis was his usual inefficient self, Kincaid showed great potential but wasn't utilized all that much. For this week: Buy buy and buy some more: Dalton Kincaid. The kid is getting his stock bumped up big time. Putting him here makes way too much sense. I believe that on film review from Monday night they will see Kincaid constantly uncovering in zone which is primarily how defenses will play us. They will want to get Allen into rhythm and taking easy completions. Enter Swole Beasley. I'm projecting 7+ catches and 70+ yards. Sell: Terrel Bernard. I hate the thought of Josh Jacobs barreling towards our small MLB. Hopefully our offense gets a big enough lead that this matchup becomes irrelevant. Hold: Christian Benford. He was solid and steady against the Jets. Nothing groundbreaking, just did his 1/11 and showed maximum effort by running down Breece Hall from behind. I expect a similar performance this week.

I am right there with you. I believe Kincaid is ready for that kind of role right now. He had a 100% catch percentage on Monday night and he plays in the area of the field that everyone agrees Josh should pay more attention to. I think just by giving him the featured #2 job, that alone would solve a lot of our inefficiency problems. That being said he's a rookie so it remains to be seen if he's actually ready to take on that kind of responsibility but it's worth a shot.

Most of the focus this week has been on Josh Allen's struggles. Rightfully so. He almost singlehandedly lost us the game. But evaluating other players on offense shouldn't be ignored. The biggest question on offense coming into the season was how Davis would step up in his second season as the presumed #2 WR. Against the Jets he finished with 2 catches on 4 targets (50% catch percentage) and 32 receiving yards. Despite playing on 94.2% of snaps, he finished with equal or less catches than: Damien Harris (13% of snaps) Deonte Harty (21.7% of snaps) James Cook (59.4% of snaps) Dalton Kincaid (80% of snaps) Dawson Knox (84% of snaps) The obvious caveat is that is based on exactly one game. But the presumed #2 WR who was on the field for all but 4 snaps is catching the ball less than guys that are supposed to be role players. And it continues a worrying trend of Davis only catching 50% of the targets that come his way which is bottom of the barrel efficiency. He was also at least partially to blame for Allen's 3rd interception because of a lazy route that gave Jordan Whitehead easy leverage. Davis had the longest catch of the night at 26 yards and it was a big one. But right now the common complaint is that our passing offense was way too inefficient against the Jets and that Allen needs to get the ball out faster. We have a 50% catch WR where every meaningful target is 3+ seconds after the snap, playing almost every down on offense and operating as our presumed #2 receiving target. He can't separate quickly and he's almost useless as a pass catcher within 10 yards of the LOS. Isn't it possible that such a glaring problem is contributing to a good chunk of that inefficiency?

If Josh isn't completely broken, I agree. Beane needed a really solid draft to keep our championship window open and it appears he did. Kincaid and Torrence both look like hits. If Kincaid becomes a superstar like I believe he can be, that is a home run draft class.

What I liked about the pick to begin with is the size of the player. I think Beane has undervalued size in the trenches the past few years. Technique is great and all, but trying to move a 347 pound human being 40 times a game is going to wear anybody down. I think Howie Roseman understands this concept better than anybody in football.

But he can't drop his eyes and look at the pass rush. He can't start every 3rd down play thinking "I'll need to take off." He has to stand in there and trust his OL and trust his instincts to get out if pressure gets there. If pressure gets to him before his reads are open that's on the OL. But he can't be anticipating that to the point that he is bailing out of a bunch of clean pockets. To Gunner's point it might take him time to get used to having a decent OL. It starts with his mindset though. Maybe Dorsey can call some designed roll outs early, get him comfortable and get him used to throwing from a pocket even if it's a moving pocket. I don't know what the exact solution is but it has to change.

It's a podcast... It's not meant to be consumed while staring at your screen. I listen to this and other similar podcasts while commuting and while doing chores. It has basically taken the place of sports radio for me.

Two things need to fundamentally change and they have nothing to do with Dorsey: 1) Allen has to trust his OL. This was by far his biggest problem on Monday night. Bailing empty pockets, anticipating pressure, etc. I believe this more than anything led to most of his mistakes. 2) Allen needs to stop turning the ball over. Full stop. We can't run a functional passing offense when our QB doesn't trust his OL (for no good reason I might add) and heaves downfield throws into bracketed coverage. If anything else needs to change outside of Allen, Kincaid deserves more targets and I wish Brown was just plain better. But none of that will matter if Allen doesn't get his head on straight.

Okay I understand what you're saying. But from my perspective it doesn't look like Sauce took away the corner route, right? He wasn't the reason the play didn't work, it was the fact that Whitehead perfectly read the play with assistance from Davis and jumped into the window. I think Josh read it as Sauce cheating to the flat and took the high throw as a result. You're saying he should have read it as a muddled high/low and defaulted to the low throw. Discussions like this are what make all-22 analysis so fascinating. The truth is none of us know what Josh is being told about this play in his film review.

I don't think this was a deep to shallow read. Allen is just reading the CB. If he cheats to the flat, which he did, the corner route is the read. I'll give credit to Whitehead for figuring out what was happening and making a play on the ball. The concept doesn't work if the safety isn't worried about Davis running a vertical or post. Also the pass was not precise, it was a little behind Davis and in a tight window that makes a difference between incompletion and interception.

Then what are we talking about? I understand your fanbase has a lot of experience with trial by media but don't take it out on us. This is a laughable "news report" that has already faded out out of the public eye.

So my problem with this is that on one hand you have people saying "Allen needs to play within the structure of the offense and trust his pass catchers to make plays," and on the other it's "no, in this particular instance Allen should ignore the structure of the play and trust Kincaid over Davis." And I don't necessarily disagree that there are times where ignoring the structure of the play is good, but finding a perfect balance there is impossible. To me this play is actually fairly simple the more that I watch it. Diggs motions pre-snap and based on how the defense re-aligns Allen correctly reads it as zone. Diggs I'm guessing is his man beater read. The high/low concept between Davis and Kincaid is his zone beater read. So he goes to the zone beater and sees the CB cheating towards the flat, which means his read in that concept is to Davis. Unless I'm totally misreading this play Allen follows the concept exactly as designed. But the post corner route was not run correctly so the safety has an easy read and breaks on the ball. So do we want Allen to trust his playmakers and trust the structure of the play or not? Personally I'm much much more concerned about him bailing clean pockets, lazily heaving the ball downfield into double coverage, and getting so mentally shaken that he carelessly fumbles the ball on our side of the field. We can admit that Allen was by far the biggest problem with the offense and still place blame on some of the players around him.

What evidence are you referring to?

I know you're literally a professional so maybe I'm out of my depth here or misunderstanding you, but isn't a corner/smash route on a high/low concept classically a cover 2 beater? Like fundamentally that is the best way to beat cover 2 outside the numbers? Just to be sure I'm not talking out of my ass I found plenty of articles that indicate the same. Here's one that explains it best: https://www.espn.com/ncf/columns/davie/1437187.html To the section I bolded, Davis totally failed to do that. He did not fake a vertical route which means he did not freeze Whitehead which gave Whitehead easy access to the ball. Allen sees Sauce cheat towards Kincaid so he throws the high concept to Davis. The pass itself was not as far to the sideline as you'd like but to me this was more a failure of Davis to run his route properly. Again I know you do this for a living so let me know if I'm missing something.

I haven't followed this "news" at all. It didn't pass the initial smell test. Reading up on it in detail just now it appears that we're three degrees and three years away from the source. Some NFL media reporter claims Pegula said this to him back in 2020 (why would Pegula say anything this stupid to an NFL media reporter is the first question that comes to my mind). That reporter tells his story to a Zoom full of NFL employees. Jim Trotter was in that Zoom meeting and raised a complaint. So the chain of communication here is: Pegula -> NFL media reporter -> Trotter in a Zoom meeting -> Trotter's attorneys; all over the course of three years. It's laughable to take such an extended game of telephone even remotely seriously. I see exactly a zero percent chance that Pegula said to an NFL media reporter "let the black players go back to Africa" in any possible context. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It's also incredibly irresponsible of Trotter's attorneys to include such inflammatory and baseless accusations in a footnote, but no doubt they knew what they were doing to get attention on the lawsuit. If I'm trying to be charitable to the initial NFL media reporter who quoted Pegula's alleged comment, perhaps Pegula did say something to the effect of "if these players hate their freedoms in America so much they should try living in 3rd world countries" which IMO is an irrational argument but it's a fairly common argument and not inherently racist in the slightest. I can see how such a statement could get twisted over the years to become a villainous caricature of itself, but that's about as much as I'd be willing to even entertain.

I have no idea what to expect for the rest of the season. Monday night was the worst I've seen him since his 2019 stinker against the Patriots. It wasn't just the dumb turnovers, it was that he reverted to a rookie level of bailing the pocket and refusing to throw the ball to his open reads. I'd like to say the Jets just have his number but they didn't do anything crazy, just played sound cover 2 shell defense and watched Josh give away the game. I know he is capable of turning it back around but I am worried about his mental state right now. It's a hard thing to fix in the middle of a season. The good news is you couldn't ask for a better bounce back opponent than the Raiders. All week long McDermott and Dorsey need to drill it into him that we don't need 400 yards and 4 passing TDs to win this one. Stay patient, a punt is a win, trust your guys up front and follow the structure of the offense. So literally just get back to basics with him. And hope this time it sinks in and sticks for a long long time. I foresee a repeat of last year's Cleveland game. That came off the heels of two consecutive losses to the Jets and Vikings where Josh's turnovers lost us those games. If anything he was too tentative against Cleveland to the point that McDermott had to calm Diggs down on the sideline. But ultimately it worked - Josh never hit the highs he did early in the season but he raised his floor quite a bit. Ideally Josh gets into a rhythm against the Raiders, develops trust in his OL, and we all look back and laugh at the abysmal start to an incredible season. Or the worst case scenario is Josh never finds his mojo this year, we fire Dorsey, and bring in a drill seargent OC to get his career back on track. I have no clue where on that spectrum Josh's season will go. Like one of his performances on any given Sunday it's going to be a wild ride.

All I want from the MLB position this year is replacement level play. I saw that from Bernard. Dodson looked completely lost in preseason. Bernard sure looks small but at least he knows what he's doing out there.

Good to hear that Bernard looked decent and Benford looked great. Those positions were both question marks coming into the season. If we just get adequate play at those spots and the pass rush is as improved as if looks, this will still be a top 5 defense, for whatever that's worth in 2023.

I hope after watching the tape from last night, Allen and Dorsey make it a point to feature Kincaid in the offense. This should be the target share: Diggs ~30% Kincaid ~15% And then everyone else can split the rest, I don't care how. Last night Kincaid had an equal target share to each of Davis, Knox, and Harty. That's unacceptable IMO.

Apparently some sportsbooks offered a "free parlay" with Rodgers >0.5 passing yards 😂. A little humor to take out of a truly miserable night for both fanbases.

We are. Davis was awful yesterday. A complete afterthought and at least partially responsible for the 3rd interception. Cook and Harty go down on first contact and neither of them have the initial burst/acceleration I expected based on their reputations. Knox is what he is. Personally I think Kincaid should be the featured #2 pass catcher immediately. He looks ready to take on that kind of volume now. He should have had at least 7 catches yesterday.

In this game, yes. We needed one more FG to pull this one out. In most games that isn't going to work though. We can't make a living throwing 2 yard horizontal passes to the likes of Deonte Harty and James Cook. I don't understand where our intermediate game is. Everything is 5 yards or less, or 20+ yards down the field. Allen is the best intermediate thrower I've ever seen. In games against better offenses we have to find more production in that money area. Like there were two 3rd downs where Allen threw the ball to the open RB in the flat, once to Harris once to Cook. Both got tackled short of the sticks. An offense can't make a living off of throws like that. So while I'm frustrated with Allen's mistakes I'm not going to sit here and say the solution is to reduce his average air yards to 5 yards per pass. That isn't going to work, certainly not with this group of weapons.