Logic

After Cole's mental lapses against the Texans, I assume Rapp will be back in the lineup. Hamlin will continue to start at free safety and has been better than people generally give him credit for. He's not an upper echelon player, and he's obviously a step down from prime Hyde and Poyer, but...he's been playing NFL starter level ball and is not the liability people think he is. Go ahead and roast me.

100% The one thing I'd say is that the playoffs are many weeks away, and this was always going to be a young team going through growing pains and transformation early in the year. Obviously if things don't improve considerably on offense, playoffs won't even be a consideration anyway.

We'll never know for sure, but I'd be willing to be that one of our two 2025 2nds could have gotten us up high enough to draft BTJ. Then we still could've had Bishop. It seems to me like Beane never seriously considered any kind of move-up this year, because he felt he was entering a reset/rebuild period where he didn't want to give up any significant capital to move up. It's a shame, because Brian Thomas looks to be an AJ Green level player, and his presence seems like it would tangibly elevate our offense. Coleman has shown flashes, and I'm not writing off the idea that he can be a good player for us, but Thomas ALREADY looks like an elite NFL receiver, and I'd bet my bottom dollar that he winds up having a more impactful and impressive NFL career than Keon.

Too early in the week to say definitively which of those mean anything. Unless something new popped up for Cook and Samuel, I'm guessing those are more rest/caution type things. Rapp being cleared is good. If Shakir is out again, it's gonna be tough sledding on offense.

Personally, I believe Beane is ready to send a 2nd rounder IF the Raiders eat Adams' salary for this year. I also believe that the Raiders have no intention of eating his salary this year, primarily because it seems like they don't have to. It feels to me like if the choice is between receiving a 3rd rounder and getting his salary off the books or receiving a 2nd and 5th rounder but having to eat his salary this year, the Raiders will choose the former. Mark Davis has -- to put it in polite terms -- a history of frugality.

Yes. I get that part of it. But based on the report below, Carr could miss several weeks, and the Saints are ALREADY just 2-3 and in a tough division. By the time Carr comes back, the Saints could be out of it. So unless Adams is already thinking about next year or doesn't view winning a championship as a priority, it still seems like a weird move.

The weird part about the Saints supposedly being the favorites is that it was just reported that Derek Carr is likely to miss multiple weeks with an oblique injury. This would be the second time that Adams gets traded to a team to play with Derek Carr and then doesn't actually really get to play with him. Sometimes I find player priorities so confusing. The Jets I kind of understand because they're a game out of first and have the man at QB with whom Adams has had the most success in his career. But the SAINTS? Why would Adams want to catch passes for Jake Haener or Spencer Rattler for four weeks while the Saints struggle to hover around .500? It's just strange.

The genitals of upcoming Raiders foes all rejoice in unison.

Holy straw man, Batman. I have no interest in continuing to argue against things that you just made up out of whole cloth. Have a nice night.

The discussion at hand is about how sometimes the type of defensive strategies that are being employed in the NFL right now dictate that the intelligent and effective thing to do is to dink and dunk, because that's what the defense is giving you. The graphic I posted is meant to show that the bills are not some crazy idiots that are forcing poor big-armed Josh Allen into a shorter passing game -- opposing defenses are often doing that with the way they defend the Bills offense. That even the great Mahomes consistently posts spray charts showing tons of short passing, and that his average depth of throw has been getting shorter year by year. If you want to post random graphics that aren't really relevant to the discussion at hand, though, be my guest.

Well said. It has passed the point at which it made any sense to keep Coleman off the field for 30-40% of the snaps. While he still has lots of room to grow and is by no means perfect, he certainly appears to be more effective as a receiver than Mack Hollins and MVS. There's no reason the primary starting three on offense shouldn't be Coleman, Samuel, and Shakir the vast majority of the time.

Huh? I was replying to your comment griping about "Taking the strongest-armed QB in the league and a QB that can make any throw, and putting him into a short-yardage game-managing passing game".

To Thurman's point, this is the way the league is trending at the moment. Here's the most recent game from the league's best QB, who alongside an all time great offensive mind in Andy Reid currently leads a 5-0 Chiefs team:

I don't see ANYTHING in the bolded quotes that says "I want a low scoring, TOP, grind-it-out offense". He said he wants to be able to win the line of scrimmage, run the football, and embody toughness. Ask the 31 other coaches in the league and they'll all tell you they want to do be able to do the same things. When things are humming with the Bills offense and they're scoring 30+ and boat racing teams, you think McDermott is upset? When Josh Allen throws for four touchdowns and wins offensive player of the week, you think he'd prefer that James Cook had won it instead? Saying you want to win the line of scrimmage and be able to run the football does not equal "I want low scoring, grind-it-out games that prioritize time of possession over scoring".

I agree with that. I think the general thrust of the Tweet I quoted is that the Bills leaned very heavily into re-shaping their personnel and scheme to be able to beat the two-high stuff, and that it may have come at the expense of being as effective as we once were against man coverage. Going from WRs like Diggs, Brown, and Sanders to big-bodied guys like Coleman and Hollins and Shavers says to me that -- right or wrong -- they prioritized blocking in the run game and beating zone coverage over separating against man coverage. The way the original Tweet was stated may have been an exaggeration. Surely they didn't literally say "we're gonna build our team JUST to beat two-high shell", but I do think they put conscious thought and effort into ensuring their offense was built to be able to do so, and that that evolution may have come at the expense of some of the dynamism against man coverage they once possessed.

I think the age old myth that Sean McDermott loves low-scoring, TOP, grind-it-out games needs to die. He likes to have a run game, which as the Chiefs and other good offenses have shown, does feel like a pretty important thing to be able to lean on at times. That's about it. If you think he doesn't want the offense to score 40 points a week, and that he'd rather win 17-16 games...I just don't know what evidence you have to support that claim whatsoever. For all the things one can criticize Sean McDermott about -- and there is a decent sized list -- being a conservative, old school, "grind it out" coach just isn't one of them. That old trope needs to die.

Agreed. They're not threatening on the perimeter or on the deep ball. I'd be loading up the box, spamming the middle of the field, and keying on the run game. Prove you can beat me outside. Prove you can beat me deep. As for Buffalo countering that: MVS, for whatever anyone may think of him, didn't suddenly become slow or unable to get open deep. Keon Coleman was brought in to be a jump ball specialist downfield and to be open even when he's covered (which he's done a bit of already). Curtis Samuel is not slow, either. The Bills potentially HAVE the horses to make defenses pay for this type of strategy, but they have not yet done so. Personally, I'd like to see a mix of 12 personnel with Coleman and MVS as the outside receivers (which I think presents the run threat and opens up play-action possibilities short and intermediate to our talented TEs and deep to the WRs) and 11 personnel with Coleman, Samuel, Shakir, and Kincaid and Cook as the tailback. Pair these with plenty of motion and play-action. This, to me, is the way to make our offense dangerous again.

It certainly feels like the combination of coming back from London, having to re-adjust their body clocks, and having to deal with the confusion/distraction of their head coach being fired and adjust to whatever the new chain of command is -- not to mention the potential upset of the defensive players who probably actually LIKED Saleh -- could be a hard thing for Jets players to overcome as they prepare for a big primetime divisional showdown. I see your "post-firing emotional bump" talk and raise you a "this is a whole lot of distractions to have to overcome while preparing for a big game". In terms of intangible impact on the game, I'd call this one a push at the very worst.

While I'm here and we're on the topic of receivers separating against man coverage... As someone who was against drafting Keon Coleman, I would be remiss not to post the following. Not too shabby, rook. #FeedKeon

If I'm not mistaken, the Ravens also reverted to the old "play tight man coverage and blitz the hell out of 'em" strategy we used to see a ton prior to Diggs' arrival. So that would be two games in a row. Granted, most teams likely don't have the DL or the corners necessary to do this as successfully and as often as the Ravens and Texans did it.

I mean... The Bills offense DOES appear to primarily be built to beat the two-deep shell the Bills (and other high powered offenses) have been seeing a ton for the better part of two seasons. The Bills offense NO LONGER appears to be as ideally suited (at least based on the past two games' results) to beat man coverage, at least based on the lack of separation we've seen by these receivers against it the past two games I understand what you're saying, but...I think the Tweet in the OP is pretty on target.

Not to oversimplify things, but.... This. This is pretty much it.

Agreed. Mayo will be one-and-done as a head coach. They need to start completely fresh next year.

Hadn't seen this posted yet, but forgive me if it was and I just missed it. Joe Douglas was apparently not in the room when Saleh was fired. Yikes.