HappyDays

You all realize that Netflix Quarterback show is personally curated by Mahomes' and the Chiefs' PR teams, right? You think he signed up so they could show him knocking down beers on the golf course? Reality TV isn't a new concept - let me be the first to tell you it isn't actually reality. Allen had a UCL injury in his throwing arm that would have ended many QBs' seasons and was playing in a game one week later. That doesn't happen without an almost superhuman dedication to fitness and rehab. Just like Mahomes playing on a high ankle sprain. All of the guys playing at that level over the course of a brutal NFL season have an insane commitment to their bodies.

Well he would be terrible in that kind of offense. We have seen that when he is targeted on slants, curls, and digs - the sorts of plays you're talking about - he is below average as a separator. He also struggles to catch the ball in those situations where there's any kind of traffic around him. His usage isn't a function of the offense, it's a function of the player.

I don't think anyone in the AFC is the clear leader, I think there are 9 or 10 teams that have a legitimate chance to come out on top in the conference. KC gets the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise but even they have some big question marks. Who's their #2 receiver? Can Donovan Smith shake off a really bad year? Without Chris Jones for a few games can their defense stop anybody? These are the questions we're asking about the presumed #1 team in the conference and every team below them has an equal number of or more question marks. I'll be surprised if anyone runs away with the #1 seed racking up 14 wins. I think it will be a bloodbath from start to finish. A 12 win team might be the #1 seed and they won't always look pretty getting there. Even more than usual it will come down to who enters the playoffs healthy and playing their best football.

It wasn't just @GunnerBill. Most of this board wanted nothing to do with Allen. And it wasn't just Bills fans, almost every fan of a team projected to draft a QB that year felt the same way about him. In the decade prior, every QB with that profile as a project with a strong arm had failed, including our very own Losman and Manuel. Then Mahomes, Allen, and Herbert all hit the scene in quick succession and changed the conversation.

As usual I nailed it.

Who do you let go instead to get Broeker on the roster though? McGovern, Bates, Edwards, Torrence, and Morse were all locks. That left Anderson and Broeker competing for the last IOL spot on the roster. By all accounts Anderson had a better camp and preseason. This was unfortunately just a numbers decision, and Anderson unlike Broeker appears to be able to play center too.

Kincaid - He will lead all rookies in receiving yards this year (I have a +1400 bet riding on this outcome). By next year he will be a regular 1,000 yard pass catcher. When Kelce retires he will be widely known as the best TE in the NFL. The only thing he may struggle with as a rookie is separating from physical LBs and DBs that get their hands on him off the line. Once he figures that out he will be the most annoying player to deal with like Kelce has been. Torrence - He will struggle a bit as a pass blocker as a rookie but immediately be a people mover in the run game. He will always be a better run blocker than pass blocker. He won't ever be regarded as an All-Pro type player but he will be the answer at guard here or elsewhere for the next 10+ years. Williams - He will have a roster spot somewhere for the next decade because of his tackling abilities but he'll never get a long term contract. I think he will have a career similar to Christian Kirksey. He will be a guy you can live with as a WLB.

Just a sense I get.

Yes the drop off from Edmunds to Kirksey will be felt. That's a different conversation from if re-signing Edmunds was a good choice though. I accept that Kirksey is a downgrade, maybe even a substantial one, but I'd still take him and his contract over Edmunds and his.

Good for Cody. I hope that he plays a key role for Cincinnati this year, specifically on Sunday November 5.

I just looked at the final practice squad for the first time today and I'm shocked to see AJ Klein isn't there. Unless I'm missing it? He was taking 1st team reps for us just two weeks ago, and now just like that he is completely gone. I thought for sure they would keep him on the PS if for nothing else than an emergency option that knows the system.

I hate to say this but my biggest concern right now is McDermott. I think the right coach could take all the adversity that transpired last year, and comments from a lot of pundits this offseason on how we missed our window and have been passed over in the division, and use all of that to fuel a hyper focused and hungry team that never takes its foot off the gas. I'm not convinced McDermott is the one to do that though. There just hasn't been a lot of good energy emanating from the team since they walked off the field for the last time in January. I worry that the malaise from last season is still lingering and McDermott doesn't know how to snuff it out. Would love for him to prove me wrong though.

This gives us a replacement level player at MLB. I'll take it. It is still a position of weakness but at least now it isn't a gaping hole. I'm not sure Dodson and Bernard are even 2nd string caliber players.

You're not comprehending my point at all so I'm going to exit this discussion.

Basham was not a case of reaching for need. Elam, maybe. With Basham they just flat out misevaluated the player. Beane said after that draft they planned on trading back but had Basham higher on their board than where they picked so they stood pat and took him. It was not an intentional strategy to draft two DEs in a row, it's just how their board fell. The board was wrong, the strategy was not. And it shows how unfamiliar you are with roster building strategy to say that "edge rusher" was a specific immediate need for the Bills that year. Edge rusher is a need for EVERY team EVERY year. Keeping that pipeline young is critically important. You would think that since your team has spent 2 of its last 3 1st round picks on an edge rusher you would understand this, but like I said earlier you seemingly don't understand why your own team has been so successful. It has nothing to do with "drafting BPA over need" like you indicate. Needs change quickly in the NFL. If you have a franchise QB and a punter and a kicker and a long snapper you have exactly 4 positions filled. The rest are almost always fluid and needing to be changed out constantly.

No, he actually is THAT bad. It was a bad pick from the jump. A 24 year old with no athletic traits that jumped off the tape. Players like that need to show who they are by the end of their rookie season. When his 2nd season came and went with no improvements, the book was written on his career. He's a DE4 or worse with no upside. That's why we got the proverbial bag of footballs for him. Personally I believed Boogie would make the team because I thought he had shown more than Epenesa in preseason. But I'm guessing in the team's mind, it came down to the fact that even though Epenesa is hopeless at setting the edge which makes his snap count inherently limited, at least there is one thing he does decently well which helped him collect 6.5 sacks last year. When you're talking about DE4, that skill set is probably worth more than Boogie who did nothing at even an average level. So they wisely moved on from him while he still had any sort of value. The pick was bad in 2021. It doesn't become worse now because we traded him away for nothing.

Yeah everyone crying about Beane's 2nd round record should look at Howie Roseman's 1st round record. It's littered with underwhelming players and outright busts. Yet Roseman is perceived (correctly) as the best GM in football. Beane has 3 major issues in my estimation: 1) In two offseasons now he has failed to find a legitimate #2 WR for a Super Bowl offense. 2) He has not adequately addressed OT. 3) He has spent a fortune on depth caliber, or worse, defensive linemen. I'll take back Jon Feliciano at center if each of those three mistakes had been handled differently.

Yes he could have. Did you read my post? What does this even mean? You're saying that drafting Basham instead of Humphrey somehow also led to us drafting Elam? You're all over the place.

This is further proof that you don't pay attention to the Bills. Morse's contract is at the bottom of the list of reasons for why we've failed to get over the hump. Morse has in fact been our most consistent OL since we signed him in 2019. Of course there is always some perfect hindsight hypothetical you could find to replace any medium sized contract with a good player on a rookie contract that the team in question didn't draft... I'm sure your team would much prefer to have Tee Higgins on a rookie deal over MVS's contract, while CEH languishes in 3rd place on the depth chart. But identifying individual draft failures is a pointless exercise. Much worse than Beane's draft record is his free agency record. To use your team as an example, getting JuJu Smith-Schuster with a $3.7 million cap hit compared to us getting Jamsion Crowder for a $2 million cap hit was MUCH MUCH more impactful than the difference between Humphrey and Morse even accounting for Humphrey being quite a bit cheaper. You got a 77% catch percentage reliable 2nd option, we got an IR participant, for the difference of $1.7 million. I'd replace Humphrey AND Morse with our backup center Ryan Bates if it meant I could swap those WRs instead. Beane has given wasteful contracts to the likes of Vernon Butler, Star Lotulelei, and Trent Murphy, while other contenders have gotten value from the likes of Trey Hendrickson, DJ Reader, and Hasson Reddick. If you want to point to a major draft blunder, it was that the last time we had a top 10 pick we took Ed Oliver and then 4 pass rushers drafted after him all ended up being better players (Burns, Wilkins, Lawrence, Simmons). That was our last shot at a top 10 pick possibly ever in the Josh Allen era and we hit a single. All of these errors I've outlined, and more, are far beyond failing to draft a good center when we already had a good center locked up. Humphrey doesn't move the needle for us at all. I have no clue why he has become the rallying cry for Bills fans looking to complain about Beane's record.

PFF isn't inherently trustworthy in the best of circumstances, but like you said his 2022 grade is based on just 8 total snaps which makes that grade meaningless. And every one of those snaps was a run block. He's a better pass blocker. Here are his pass block/run block grades from 2020 and 2021 when he had 1,115 and 412 snaps respectively: 2020: Pass block - 65.6 Run block - 62.2 2021: Pass block - 70.7 Run block - 58.6 Those pass block numbers put him in a mid-backup to low end starter tier by PFF's metrics. I'm satisfied with Van Demark and Ifedi as the LT/RT backups. They're both better than Quessenberry at this stage of his career IMO, the only advantage he had over them is that he takes up one roster spot instead of two.