HappyDays

This is speculation on my part but if the NFL and Rice been unable to reach an agreement and the next step is Sue Robinson arbitrating the case, that indicates to me that the NFL is seeking a particularly long suspension and Rice of course doesn't want to accept it.

That's fine. He scored an unbelievable 4th down TD that kept us in the game to begin with. Our offense was struggling early until we started feeding him the ball. He was a key factor in a game where we scored more points than any other team scored against the Chiefs last year. I'm supposed to ignore all of that because of how the game ended? Am I supposed to pretend that with Ray Davis as the starter our offense would have looked the same? I wish the Bills would invest more in pass catchers that can make that winning play on the final drive, but in lieu of that we still need at least one legit playmaker that can sustain drives and score TDs. Right now that's Cook. He is the only skill player we have that I know can jump start our offense when we need it.

On one hand it's extremely annoying that the NFL is dragging its feet which means he gets to play in KC's tough opening stretch. On the other hand we play them in week 9... Maybe we'll get lucky and he'll be suspended for our matchup.

I think this narrative is just so overblown. Despite being on the field 45% of the snaps he still nearly doubled Ray Davis' rush attempts and quintupled Ty Johnson's. He had almost as many receptions as Davis and Johnson combined. People act like he was just a cog in a rotation. When in fact he was by far our most consistently explosive skill player and made a big difference when he was on the field. Personally I'm glad they're limiting his snaps. Keep his mileage low so he can continue making game changing plays for the next four seasons.

I'll tell you what hasn't changed, a select few fans can't even conceive of a player improving after year one. As if it's never happened in the history of the NFL. I saw some mind boggling takes on here that Elijah Moore, a former draft bust playing for his 3rd team in 5 years, was definitively a better WR than Coleman... Not that I'm surprised. Some people just can't let their draft takes go. There were fans declaring Josh Allen a bust after year one and some still saying it after year two. Coleman has a lot to prove but anyone writing him off after last year is just being ridiculous, especially after the training camp he just had.

Every player on every team is dependent on their teammates. The WRs are dependent on their QB and their fellow skill players. The OL is dependent on their RB to find and maximize the hole. The DL is dependent on their fellow DLs to plug the right gaps and apply complementary pressure. Etc. What I know about Cook is that his skill set in this offensive system with this group of players works really well. That's what matters. I agree he is just a part of a machine, and he is not such a great player that he would fit every machine in the NFL perfectly - such players are rare and are at the top of their position. Cook however is not getting paid like he is that caliber of player. He's getting paid for what he is, which is a really good part of a greater whole. We have seen other RBs in the Josh Allen offense and it's never looked as consistently good as it did with Cook last year. My take is you don't mess with that. We're in the championship window now and shouldn't disrupt the one part of our offense that worked extremely well last year because we wish the cap number was $2 million less. The only question that matters is does our chance of beating KC in the playoffs improve with Cook on the field? The answer to that question is obvious - we don't even have a chance at the end this past AFCCG without his contributions. I'm in favor of paying players that help us get us past KC in the playoffs. Moving forward Beane will have to sacrifice the likes of Austin Johnson and Larry Ogunjobi. I'll get over it.

It had a normal caliber and quantity of top level talent, but the consensus was that the talent bottomed out pretty quickly and had poorer than usual depth. Beane knew this which is why he traded a 2024 5th for a 2025 4th and why he kept trading down on day 3. That was not a class for teams drafting outside of the top 10 to find multiple franchise cornerstones. It was a year where you hoped to come away with a couple good starters.

My post was more about the whole draft class for the entire NFL. It had a reputation as a poor class and seemingly has lived up to that.

2023 kind of lived up to its reputation as a poor draft class, yeah? You wish we would have traded up for Addison or drafted LaPorta over Kincaid, other than that there isn't anything that sticks out with our 1st pick. Looking through the 2nd and 3rd round not a lot of game changers in there. All things considered Torrence was a pretty solid pick as a good starting RG considering the other players drafted in his range. Day 3 was almost a complete bust for the entire NFL, at least based on early returns. Still too early to fully evaluate the class but looks like most teams came away with maybe 1 franchise player, 2 at the very most.

By the way this is why players hold in and use all the other "drama" tactics that people lambasted Cook over... He forced the issue and put pressure on everyone involved to get a deal done, and as a result he walks away with $30M guaranteed a year before his contract expires. As the man himself said it's just business and fans take it way too personally.

I never thought I'd be happy giving a RB a 2nd contract but yeah I really like this deal for us. Cook is the only skill player we have that can score from anywhere on the field. I didn't want to let that ability get away.

Congrats on winning the thread in August.

Spent way too long thinking about this. After one week of preseason I have my hot takes ready. Bills: 1) Keon Coleman will lead the team in receiving yards and receiving TDs, and will crack 8 receiving TDs (Diggs is the only WR to do this in Allen's career). Coleman ended up finishing 2nd in receiving yards and TDs last year, which is crazy considering how poor he looked coming back from injury. I'm buying the reports from camp that Coleman has been Allen's favorite target and the connection has been getting better and better. Palmer upgrades the #2 spot but I think Coleman still takes the crown. 2) Shakir will end up 4th or lower in receiving yards. No disrespect to Shakir but towards the end of last season we saw defenses keying in on those easy button passes to him we were practically cheating with early on. His per game production dropped significantly in the final few games. I suspect the plan is to open up the downfield passing offense this year and Shakir will see his opportunities drop as a result. 3) No single player will match or exceed Rousseau's 8.0 sacks from last year, but the total number of team sacks will exceed last year's 39. I'll predict 45+ which would have ranked top 10 in the NFL last year. I expect a heavy rotation which will mean fresher bodies and will keep opposing OLs on their toes (or better yet their heels). Classic case of the sum will be better than its parts. NFL: 1) Jags 1st in the AFCS. This will be my boldest prediction by far. Every year I predict a worst to 1st team because it happens every year. Except, well, last year it didn't. And I just can't find one this year that I feel even a tad optimistic about. Chicago jumps out as the most likely (they were my pick last year too) but I am just not a believer in Caleb Williams at all so that spoils the idea. So that brings me to the Jags. Trevor Lawrence has not shown flashes of greatness in a couple years, but he is better than last year's performance. I expect Liam Cohen to get him back to at least in the conversation for top 12 QB. They have an elite young WR and maybe added another, and that alone goes a long way. They have an elite pass rusher and a very good CB, maybe two now. Overall they have all the elements of a team than can be a surprise. Part of this prediction is I just don't trust Houston. Everything was going in the wrong direction for them last year. I think their OL is a massive liability and we have seen poor pass protection sink plenty of otherwise strong teams. 2) Jets to finish 2nd in the AFCE. Okay maybe this is my boldest prediction. This offseason reeks of, dare I say it, competence in New Jersey. Aaron Glenn has come into town and closed down the circus. It reminds me somewhat of McDermott's first year in Buffalo, with the added bonus that the Jets also have a couple elite players at premium positions that can win them games. I am not a Justin Fields believer but he could be their Tyrod Taylor. The conference is way too strong now for them to sneak in as a wildcard like we did back then, but I could see them edging out New England and Miami in a division that ends up being surprisingly competitive below #1. 3) Other than the Jags replacing the Texans, all other playoff teams from last year will again make the playoffs. This almost feels like an anti-bold prediction, but it's practically unheard of to have that kind of consistency from one year to the next in a league that proclaims parity. But I feel like the NFL more than ever right now has a very clear upper class, middle class, and lower class. I don't see any of last year's lower class teams breaking through due to either below par coaching or below par talent, or both. Like I said earlier, last year was the first season in forever where no 4th place division team made it to 1st. The NFL landscape is pretty well settled right now and unless a top tier QB suffers a major injury I don't see much changing.

Joe Flacco won comeback player of the year over this. Good work Associated Press.

With 50 voters Mahomes and Burrow were the only unanimous Tier 1 QBs. I was wondering how Allen and Lamar got 3 votes and 4 votes respectively that placed them outside of Tier 1. Then I saw that 6 of the voters were former GMs and it clicked.

Oliver was very good and very disruptive in his limited snaps on Saturday. There have been good reports on him coming out of training camp too. I was the first to criticize him last year for looking unmotivated and playing soft. I'm hoping he came into this offseason with a better mindset and will play a lot better early on.

There's another rep in this clip: Yeah he looks as advertised. If he can just become a functional pass catcher he'll be a perfect TE3.

I'm not going to declare him a bust this early but that was as bad a debut as I've ever seen from a top 100 Bills pick. A player that Beane openly admitted he would have picked at #62 if we had kept that pick. He barely looked like a functional football player and he had a dumb mental mistake that cost his fellow rookie an interception. Admittedly I was never as high on him in the draft as a lot of other fans. I am big on movement skills when evaluating prospects. Stiff straight line athletes are not usually successful in the NFL. Size and strength can go a long way but he needs to develop some kind of pass rush repertoire or he will be out of the league in 2 years. Awful start but plenty of time to improve. I expect him to be a healthy scratch once Hoecht returns from suspension.

This is every pass rush snap from Walker/Sanders: Considering it is pretty much all quick passes which makes it difficult to have an impact, I thought they showed well.

You're over selling this narrative. A lot of those snaps were when players like Casey Rogers and Zion Logue were on the field. The top 4 DTs and top 4 EDGEs are what actually matter. I would bet by the time the season starts that will be Oliver/Jones/Sanders/Walker and Rousseau/Bosa/Epenesa/Hoecht (probably Solomon until Hoecht comes back which will be a notable weak link). Those players as a whole performed very well yesterday. I do remain concerned that the coverage will not be good enough for the pass rush to matter, and that includes the coverage scheme and play calling as much as it does coverage talent, but that's a different conversation. On the whole I feel really good about the talent Beane added to the DL this season. A lot of it will depend on Bosa staying healthy.

Hawes is ahead of him because of his blocking. That will be the TE3's primary job this year. His drop yesterday was brutal but he also had several blocking reps that looked like this: Davidson needed to catch every pass in his vicinity to have even a small of chance of making the roster.

There we were a few clean pass rush wins, the passes on those plays unfortunately just got off too quickly for the wins to matter. Here's 3 quick individual wins from Sanders and Walker: Bosa had a couple early on as well. My concern has been and continues to be coverage. Pass rush wins don't matter if the QB finds an open man within 2 seconds.