HappyDays

It has nothing to do with Disney or politics or anything like that. It's just the new reality that people don't watch live TV.

I'm surprised by how many people actively hate ESPN and want them to fail. Me, I don't care about them at all one way or the other. There are vastly superior ways to consume sports news these days than turning on a television channel. All TV journalism is going to suffer the same fate eventually. It simply isn't profitable anymore. It's been replaced by a more consumer-friendly product.

Diggs has been acting extremely immature since the 2nd half of the Bengals game. Whatever he is angry about, he hasn't gone about it the right way. But the primary reason for the bad PR around the Bills at minicamp was McDermott's poor handling of the situation. I think he let his emotions of the situation get the best of him and said the wrong thing. He had to contradict himself in front of the media the next day just to bring some kind of closure to the situation.

No, the drama was created by McDermott saying he was "very concerned" about Diggs' absence at day one of minicamp. All of the ensuing speculation and reporting followed from that. And it wasn't until the next day that anybody associated with the Bills threw water on the fire. It was a major PR blunder. Hopefully everything is truly resolved.

I'm baffled by any focus on what Allen needs to do to improve. He is by far the least improvable part of the team at any level. He had arguably the greatest playoff stretch in NFL history in '21/'22 and still got knocked out in the divisional round. We have a top 3 QB, no debate. If that isn't enough to win a Super Bowl, what is? IMO Allen has been good enough to win a Super Bowl since 2019 if he had the right roster around him. Moreso 2020 and beyond but even 2019 I think he was there if he had a loaded roster like the 49ers or Eagles. The problem with this discussion is everyone wants to compare him to Burrow and Mahomes but each of them have had superior coaching and surrounding talent for pretty much their entire careers. It doesn't matter how you rank them from 1-3; the difference between #1 and #3 is almost nothing for just a single position, even the most important position in all of sports. Does Mahomes hobbling on one ankle beat the Bengals with our roster? No way. So instead of worrying about Allen's performance I'm more concerned about the same issues that have plagued us for a couple years now - inconsistent offensive talent, questionable coaching decisions in critical moments, an inability to out-coach other teams in the playoffs. Each of these issues is fixable. Finding a better QB is not.

Diggs gets punished in the playoffs because defenses know if they stop him no one else behind him will pick up the slack. That was a problem for the entire second half of this past season too. Analytics shows that the #2 target is almost just as important as the #1 target in the modern NFL when it comes to reaching and winning the Super Bowl. The reason is because of what I just decribed... defenses are better and smarter in the playoffs so it's harder to funnel the whole offense through one guy. My explanation is that Mike Hughes had one of the worst individual performances I've ever seen from a player in a playoff game. That and Tyrann Mathieu was out of the game for the entire second half. Davis was the beneficiary of these factors, plus of course Allen played out of his mind. But if we want Davis consistently facing #3 and lower quality DBs on the depth chart in playoff games we can't hope for injury. We have to put players above him on OUR depth chart so that he automatically gets more favorable matchups. Like he did in 2020 which for my money is still the best season of his career when you account for target share (best yards per target, best TDs per target, and best catch percentage of his career). I mean this is ancient history. It's meaningless to even bring up. Recent NFL history shows that Davis is not worthy of being the #2 target for a Super Bowl participant. I already put this in another thread, but this is a list of the #2 receiving targets of the most recent 6 Super Bowl participants, the winners and the losers: JuJu Smith-Schuster Devonta Smith OBJ Tee Higgins Chris Godwin (in an almost dead heat with Rob Gronkowski) Tyreek Hill Tyreek Hill Deebo Samuel Julian Edelman Brandin Cooks Zach Ertz Rob Gronkowski As I said the last time I posted this, JuJu is likely the weakest link on that entire list and even he has a 1,400 yard season on his resume. This is the standard of the modern NFL era. Davis doesn't belong on that list. And unless something changes before December we will have to hope that the rest of our team is good enough to break a six-season trend.

No, just that Super Bowl caliber teams need a better #2 receiving target than Gabe Davis. That has been the case for all 12 teams that participated in each of the last 6 Super Bowls, at least. I don't need Chase and Higgins. I think Diggs and Beasley in their prime is likely the minimum standard for what a Super Bowl contender needs, and it's no coincidence that the one time we reached the AFCCG in the Allen era we had that minimum standard met. Davis is below that standard.

Kelce had two 1,000 yard seasons before Mahomes. Tyreek Hill and Marquez Valdes-Scantling had the best yardage seasons of their career with a different QB throwing them the ball. It's a myth that great QBs can turn WRs into somebody they aren't. Of course a great QB will elevate their weapons' production simply because the QB's added production has to show up somewhere, but WRs are who they are regardless of who's throwing them the ball. For example Gabe Davis is a limited WR that only runs one type of route at a high level and has a bizarre catch technique that leads to more drops than average. He will always be that receiver whether Allen is throwing him the ball or Mahomes or Nate Peterman. And if you do a modicum of research you'll see that Allen has elevated all of his targets throughout his career too.

That's more about Mahomes' play in 2021 than his play in 2022. As you know there were periods of several consecutive games in 2021 where Mahomes completely sucked. He was forcing throws downfield, abandoning the pocket early, had more frequent poor/lazy footwork; a lot of his bad habits from Texas Tech reared their ugly head. Temporarily he stopped being the god that he's been every other year of his career. The last 31 minutes of the AFCCG that year was a microcosm of his season. So it's disingenuous to compare his stats from 2021 to 2022. If Mahomes had played as well as he did in 2022 but with Tyreek Hill also added to the mix, no question it would have been an even better season. Losing Hill didn't make Mahomes a better QB. Mahomes himself did that by getting his standard of play back on track. Losing Hill changed the way Reid designed and called the offense. And considering he's one of the greatest offensive minds in NFL history and is used to designing highly productive offenses without elite WR talent this was an easy task. But you're of course avoiding the whole point which is that he still has arguably the greatest pass catching TE of all time as his primary weapon.

What is going on in this thread?

The timing of this feels more like a PR move than anything else. A contract extension for the coach and GM means nothing, Pegula could still fire them tomorrow if he really wanted to. There's been a lot of media pressure on the Bills in recent weeks, mostly the Bills' own doing - their handling of the Stefon Diggs situation was a major PR blunder. Extending McDermott and Beane now feels like a way to let everybody in the building know nothing has changed and there is no added pressure. And that's fine. I don't think McDermott and Beane are really on the hot seat with Pegula. But if the season is a disaster this extension isn't going to be the thing that stops him from making changes.

Well of course I am! You can't paper over the #2 target in a passing offense that hopes to win the Super Bowl. What you're arguing for doesn't actually work in practice. You can't just say "well these four players collectively will be the #2." That's just something fans convince themselves of to pretend the problem doesn't exist. Great depth doesn't cover up for middling top end talent, ever. Great depth with lack of top end talent has locked the Bills into the 2nd tier of the NFL. And I'm not just talking out of my *** here. This isn't a theoretical discussion. We have real evidence from recent seasons. Here are the #2 passing targets on the last five years worth of Super Bowl participants, the winners and the losers: JuJu Smith-Schuster Devonta Smith Chris Godwin (in an almost dead heat with Rob Gronkowski) Tyreek Hill Tyreek Hill Deebo Samuel Julian Edelman Brandin Cooks Zach Ertz Rob Gronkowski No doubt every one of those players in those respective seasons was substantially better than Davis. JuJu is probably the worst of them and he has a 1,400 yard season on his resume. That's the kind of #2 talent it takes to even approach the finish line. Case in point the closest we've gotten in the Allen era is when we had Beasley in his prime as our #2 target. We're seriously lagging behind that standard unless one of the players you mentioned suddenly ascends to that level.

Rapaport is echoing the more credible reports that Diggs was unhappy with his target share in the offense last year. Not with us failing to land Hopkins like that fake sources loser in NYC made up.

To see all of the WRs on that site you have to pay a subscription. I'm not a subscriber so I don't know where other WRs rank. But someone on Twitter posted a snippet from that article where it says that Davis has always been no higher than the 35th percentile in those metrics. So we're talking about a WR near the bottom third of route success rate. I'd be interested to know where contested catch specialists like Tee Higgins and Mike Williams fall in that percentile, but the thing with guys like that is they make catches even when covered so any flaws they have as separators they can make up a good bit of ground with their contested catch ability. Davis has not been a contested catch specialist and in fact has a much higher than average drop rate. So I just don't see anything he offers as the #2. His is a limited skill set that lends itself well to being a #3 target. I don't care where the #2 target plays - outside, slot, RB, TE, I really don't care. I just want a superior talent to Davis taking that high volume of targets. If Kincaid becomes that as a rookie, great. I'm just not counting on it.

What are you talking about man? I just want a better #2 option than Davis. Every recent Super Bowl participant has had a #2 target better than Davis, without fail. Look at the recent participants yourself if you don't believe me. So either we are the first team in recent history to break that trend, or we upgrade Davis. There is no alternative. I'm totally aware that it is possible one of Kincaid, Harty, or Shakir massively exceed expectations and become the #2 target in this offense. Merely expressing that possibility is meaningless though. I don't want a possible "in a best case scenario" upgrade, I want a definite upgrade. And even in the worst case scenario with Hopkins in this offense he is clearly an upgrade on Davis. That's all I want. I'm completely satisfied with the pass catching depth. But we are still lacking a top end piece that every recent Super Bowl participant has had. It appears to be a minimum standard and I worry that us not having it will once again lock us out of a Super Bowl appearance. If we had elite offensive coaching maybe I'd feel better about it. But instead we have a sophomore play caller working with an offense that is handicapped by a limited receiver in the #2 target role.

Diggs needs to take a step back and realize that asking for even higher target share is inviting trouble. It's introducing doubt into Allen's mind. Most neutral observers agree that the Bills offense needs to become less forced, more "take what the defense gives you." Defenses are doubling/bracketing Diggs and daring us to beat them elsewhere. In situations like that Diggs needs to understand that he isn't going to be the focal point.

We don't run him on slants and digs because he isn't competent on those routes... And that chart has nothing to do with accurate throws or offensive scheme or anything like that. It is just Matt Harmon diving into the film and charting each WR's success rate on every route they run whether they are targeted of not. If it was just Matt Harmon saying this we could say it doesn't mean much, but every objective analyst I've listened to has offered the same criticisms. Davis simply doesn't separate at a high level on the sorts of routes you expect the #2 WR to run. In that article he mentions that Davis has never once in his career been above the 35th percentile in route success rate against zone, man, or press coverage (again NOT based on catches or targets or any contextual statistic, just based on charting the film). Think about that... The presumed #2 target in our offense in our Super Bowl window is a below 35th percentile WR. And you wonder why so many of us want a legit #2 added to the mix?

Come on. There are too many knowledgeable fans on here for you to throw out this argument and expect it to land. Adams from his 3rd year on ranged from 62% to 77% catch percentage. Last year he played in a terrible offense led by Derek Carr's career worst performance and he in turn had the worst catch percentage of his career. You're reducing a career's worth of production to a single year... that isn't going to fly. Davis on the other hand has seen his catch percentage drop from 56.5% to 55.6% to 51.6% in each year of his young career. His 4% drop last year was entirely predictable - going from facing #3 and worse DBs to consistently facing #1 and #2 DBs of course brought down his efficiency. A 50ish percent catch guy is what Davis has always been. And he doesn't have a skill set conducive to suddenly jumping into the 60s like any worthy #2 target.

Yeah, the biggest issue by far was that our #2 target had a 51.6% catch rate. That's abysmal. It's basically half his targets that fell incomplete. I mean you're literally just naming players on the roster and that's your whole argument that the team has weapons.

I like the Harty signing. His potential is tantalizing. But it is a high upside/high downside signing. His size combined with his injury history makes it very questionable that he will be a consistent contributor this year. If he happens to stay healthy all year it could be a home run signing. I'm just not counting on it. Plus we have had issues with Allen throwing the ball to smurfs in windy snowy conditions. I expect Harty to be more of a regular season contributor than a playoff contributor even in a best case scenario. The point is Harty does nothing to solve the biggest problem in our passing offense last year, which was Davis getting the #2 target share. And I don't think Beane signed him expecting him to solve that problem. Every time Beane has talked about Hopkins publicly he has seemed almost exasperated. I think he was counting on Hopkins solving our #2 WR problem and is frustrated that they can't get on the same page with the contract. Beane knows it is a weakness but I'm sure he appreciates some fans doing their best to pretend it isn't.

It's even worse - only one AFCCG appearance. I mean that's truly an awful resume for an elite QB. Arguably the greatest QB playoff stretch of all time ended in the divisional round because of a major coaching blunder. It seems obvious to me that if we again fail to reach the AFCCG that should be the nail in the coffin for McDermott. It would be four years with an elite QB and exactly one AFCCG appearance and no Super Bowl appearance. That would be more than enough evidence that he isn't going to get us over the hump.

Speaking from personal experience, no. You may have more withheld from your paycheck for bonuses, but when it's time for tax returns you will get back anything over what should have been withheld. I'm guessing when it comes to NFL payouts it is probably a lot more complicated but either way your final gross income has an exact tax rate that doesn't change regardless of how the income was made. Anyways I don't think it matters. Unless I'm missing something, I'm almost positive NFL players can't stop a team from executing a restructure that is written into their contract. Because the terms of the contract don't change at all, it's just a tool to modify how the team is allocating salary towards their salary cap year over year.

I wouldn't trust a report that starts with a falsehood - Diggs didn't have to ageee to his restructure. It was an option that Beane could do with or without his approval. My understanding is that players like when their contracts are restructured because they get more money right away. Also Carton has a history of making up crap. He was throwing a bogus report out there that Aaron Rodgers was thinking of going to the 49ers before he approved the trade to the Jets, and several other reporters quickly made it known that that report was BS.

This matches up with something my source said today. It sounds like the Bills want to move more towards a structured offense with less freestyling/choice routes. Diggs likes the freestyling though. So he isn't happy with how much input he has in the direction of the offense. One example that was shared to me was a 4th down play against the Bengals in the red zone which fell incomplete. I don't have a video on hand. But it's the play very late in the game where Diggs looked visibly frustrated after the ball fell incomplete to Davis. Apparently on that play the structure of the play said that Diggs should run outside. But the CB was shaded outside so he freestyled and ran inside instead, right over the top of Davis's crossing route. Allen didn't throw him the ball and Diggs was frustrated that Allen didn't follow his freelance on that play. In his mind he's always been able to freelance in situations like that and he doesn't like that Allen followed the structure of the play instead of Diggs' freelancing. Hopefully I explained that well enough. Whatever the messaging from the team is, it appears that the issue really is as simple as Diggs wants the ball more and wants his voice heard more in terms of the design/structure of the offense. Personally I take this all as bad news. Even if the issue is resolved for now it's the kind of thing that can easily blow up again if Diggs still isn't happy with his role midway through the season and we've suffered a couple disappointing losses. If our offense comes out hot and we are winning I think everything will be fine, but at the first sign of adversity I worry about how Diggs will handle it.