HappyDays

Hyde already confirmed he'll be playing on Monday, so the injury report is as good as it could be.

Micah Hyde's wife:

With Jones and Kelce out, the Lions have a real chance to steal a win. But in critical moments in a close game I'm going to bet on the team that has experience in those moments versus the young team still finding its way. Chiefs 30 Lions 25

In a shootout decided by a coin flip? I don't think the center on either side had anything to do with that outcome. Are we saying Morse was responsible for that fumbled snap? I thought the common belief was that Josh simply flubbed it. It's not just my opinion, it's the common belief of everyone that makes decisions in the NFL. When is the last time a center only was drafted in the top 10? Currently only 6 centers have an AAV of over $10 million, and the highest paid center (Jason Kelce) has an AAV of $14.25 million. Just to be clear I recognize that Humphrey was inarguably a much better pick than Basham. But that misstep has had no impact on our team's success. There have been much larger and more glaring blemishes on Beane's record.

It has, but only at guard. Creed Humphrey has exclusively been a center since his college days. So no I don't think him being here over Basham makes any kind of difference. Similarly I think the Chiefs would have been just as good the past couple years with just a decent center but I know that opinion is not shared by everyone. I actually think we would have ended up the #1 seed with JuJu as our WR2 instead of Davis. Having a much more efficient player in that role would have been enough to make a difference in at least one of our losses IMO. The Jets and Dolphins losses in particular featured several negative plays from Davis and those games were decided by just a couple of plays. Flip one of those to a win and we get the #1 seed. The Bengals regular season game wouldn't have even mattered. If we head into the playoffs as the #1 seed that changes everything. So if you want to look at small decisions that had a big impact on the outcome of the season, that one free agency decision was monumentally more important than us failing to draft a great center.

No question that list of Chiefs picks is better (although it's fair to point out that they got two extra early picks by trading Tyreek Hill, which automatically gave them a 50% higher likelihold of finding good players). But I think a better question in this conversation is: do the Bills and Chiefs trade records, playoffs included, over the last two years if those draft classes are swapped? Without hesitation my answer is no. None of those players made a huge difference for the Chiefs - they are all either role players or devalued positions or just pretty good. No stars at premium positions. None of them would have made a difference in any of our games and certainly not our last two playoff losses. So if swapping the draft classes doesn't change our playoff fortunes or theirs, then it is fair to say that the discrepancy between us and the Chiefs is not because of Beane's somewhat lesser drafting in recent years. IMO the discrepancy is mainly because of three major factors, in no particular order of importance: 1) They had 1 elite defensive player in each of their last two playoff runs. We had 0 elite defensive players. 2) They had superior coaching on both sides of the ball in the playoffs compared to us. 3) Beane's free agency signings have not been as effective as other contenders. For a $3.7 million cap hit the Chiefs got JuJu Smith-Schuster - an effective WR2 with a 77.2% catch percentage and 933 yards. For a $1.975 million cap hit we got Jamison Crowder - a complete dud. That one example was far and away more impactful to our season vs. theirs last year than all of that draft value discrepancy combined. The conversation around Beane's drafting is a red herring IMO.

I definitely don't have a great feeling about it. Going off what you said about the urgency, one thing that irks me about this regime is it seems like every offseason we have a competition for at least one full time starting position that lingers into the season. It's been an issue on the OL in particular for years now, halfway through every season they're still tinkering with it. I feel like I don't see other contenders going through that sort of thing year after year. This year RG was unsettled until last month, although that is at least understandable given they had to implement a rookie into the position so I give them a pass on that. But CB2 was also unsettled until very recently. And of course the disaster at MLB where our starter is a 2nd year player who looked awful last year, played ZERO snaps in preseason, and was losing the job until his competition blew his opportunity. Last year we brought in washed up WRs onto the PS, this year we did that with Kirksey. I don't claim to pay attention to every little detail throughout the league but do other contenders really go through this crap? All of this means we're heading into the season with 2-3 full time starters that have very little time on task, and all of them are young players that really needed that time. None of those players are locked into their jobs either, so once again it kind of feels like their audition is going to linger into the season. One thing that gives me confidence against the Jets in particular though is that they're facing the same sort of problems. Their OL is still getting sorted out at almost every position. Rodgers may eventually be the answer for them, but I think we can all agree that the very best case scenario is that he ends up being their version of Bucs/Brady and Rams/Stafford, and those QBs struggled early on in their new tenures. So in my opinion we are getting the Jets in their stadium at the best possible time. Despite some clear advantages that their defense has over our offense, I'd like to think that a little Josh Allen magic is enough to make up the gap and then some. And our defense hopefully can take advantage of the relative inexperience of a new group of players on the Jets offense, enough to slow them down at least while our offense gets their feet under them.

I am starting to feel like this will be close to the final score, but I don't know which team will be the winner. I think it will a close slog for 2.5 quarters and then one team will start to pull ahead and ultimately win by 2 scores. If it's the Jets it will be because our defense wears down over time and our offense never pulls it together. It it's us it will be because Allen puts the team on his back and wills us to tough TD drives late in the game.

I know our schedule and conference is tough, but when is the last time a top 3 QB missed the playoffs outright? I genuinely believe you could place Allen on any team in the NFL and they would be a wildcard team at worst. Plus we've been there done that. It's like the Chiefs/Eagles Super Bowl, on paper the Eagles were the superior team but at the end of the day having the experience of being in those critical moments trumps a lot of other advantages. For right now Allen and the Bills should be an assumed playoff team until proven otherwise.

Take medical opinions borne from short videos with a grain of salt, but it seems promising at least.

Didn't you promise to leave the forum forever if we drafted Josh Allen?

Coming off a neck injury and starting the season with a back injury is not a good omen. It could linger through the season. The good news is that safety is a devalued position and unlike last year we have a capable player in Rapp that can step in without much of an impact on the overall defense. It's a concern, not a death sentence.

I'll go with James Cook. I think this game could be a slog fest. Every extra yard Cook gets that Singletary would never get is going to be the difference.

Didn't Tyreek Hill play in that game? Why would you fail to mention that? Also no way you'll hold the Lions to 10 points, certainly not with Chris Jones out of the lineup. While we're bringing up unrelated final scores from several years ago, the last time your team faced Jared Goff he put up 54 points on you.

Toney is recovered from his injury and will play on Thursday. Not that's he a particularly great WR but his presence alone elevates them above what we fielded in 2018. With Pacheco and that OL they will probably try to run the ball against a porous Lions defense if they're without Kelce.

I saw a tweet that said it went from -6.5 to -5.5 with the Kelce news. So basically Vegas thinks he is worth a point. I still think the Chiefs will move the ball just fine. Against some teams Kelce being out could be the difference between winning and losing, but the Lions project to have an awful defense. I'm more intrigued by how long the injury lingers. Kelce will be 34 in one month. It's only a matter of time before his body starts breaking down. If this becomes a nagging injury that lingers throughout the season that could make a real difference in their win/loss column.

Short quick passing sounds nice in theory. It's hard to execute consistently though when your WR2 can't run those sorts of quick timing routes effectively. Davis took nearly 17% of our passing targets last year... That's a big volume share that has to be redistributed elsewhere if we're suddenly going to become a 2 seconds from snap to throw offense. Also a methodical 15 play drive offense like that needs to avoid as many drops as possible. Last year was not exactly a banner year for us in that department. So again it sounds nice in theory, the personnel we had last year just didn't really mesh with it. I know exactly what the Jets defense is going to do - put Sauce 1v1 on Davis and double Diggs. If the offense can run through Kincaid and Knox from day one then we can do more of what you propose here to counter that. 12 personnel where we run the ball consistently and throw the ball to Cook and our TEs enough that the Jets become sick of it and change their coverage scheme. So I'm hopeful Kincaid's addition and Cook's promotion will give us more answers to the problems you describe in your post. I'm just not willing to simplify the issue to "Allen was unwilling to take short throws." There were larger fundamental problems in our personnel last year, not to mention Allen's UCL injury, that made that sort of offense difficult to run with any kind of consistency.

My favorite Mahomes play was when he threw a 10 yard crosser that became a 60 yard TD. Only someone that spends 16 hours a day watching film could have pulled that one off. In all seriousness I don't know of anyone that agrees with you here, not just among Bills fans. The common belief is that Allen got screwed out of a win by his defense and by a coin flip. But I'm glad we got your opinion on the record.