Straight Hucklebuck

The draft in 2022 and 2023 didn’t fall great for the Bills in terms of WR outside of Pickens. Traded up for Kincaid though. Do we want that? Wouldn’t the most straight forward path be a better player than Gabe Davis?

I just will never understand why the 1990's uniforms can't come back with the red end zones. This jersey is ugly.

There is no actual merit to any discussion about Kincaid? It's just a bunch of troll fans like me? So this is exactly what it is supposed to look like? Put it this way, Joe Marino of Locked on Bills said yesterday that he envisions "Dalton Kincaid being the second option in 2024" - all Bills fans are ok with that? There is no clip where he does anything. He catches the ball reliably, then gets tackled/falls down. Average depth of target is 3.26 yards. Not sure how to spin that more positive for anyone.

Show me the clip where he makes something happen after the catch. Also, I said, hard to do when your route tree is: dump off option. This is on Dorsey.

Joe Marino is pushing this idea that the Bills ran into the run looks. I'd argue that the Bills didn't even try to run the ball in London. When we did run with Cook, it was the same delayed Shotgun play that never works. Murray and Harris got a combined 5 carries. We ran the ball 3 times in the second half.

That’s why I put out there exactly what I said. I don’t hide if I’m wrong. Mayer looked like a balanced, old school Tight End with 3 consistent years of production at a large school. And yes, Kincaid so far, hasn’t shown one example of high end athleticism on his 17 catches. He catches the ball and generally falls down. Hard to do when it’s all dump offs, but does anyone have faith that Dorsey will start motioning Kincaid, put him in the backfield, line him up outside? It’s a first round pick that they’re content to sit underneath and catch dump offs and Dorsey calls it “growing” when he talks to the media.

If we go back to our Draft options, I think this is why many people wanted a WR. Zay Flowers stood out to me as the best, then JSN, Quentin Johnston and Jordan Addison I wanted last. But the main concern with Tight End was Allen hasn’t shown that he throws to Tight End. The statistics all said he wants to throw to WR. And we already have paid a Tight End $10M a year. I wanted Mayer the most a Tight End because I thought he was built like the Hulk and was consistent game after game in college, and was balanced pass catching/blocking, something the Bills would have appreciated. Joe Marino says he thinks it will get going as the season goes along and I don’t think Dorsey has shown that he evolves in-season. You get put into a role and you don’t escape it. Kincaid doesn’t look to have high end play speed, he looks 4.7, and it’s what Allen says, he finds pockets and zones really well.

Joe Marino making the case that it's good, Josh Norman can mentor the young players. That stuff reeks of the old 7-9 Bills who looked to every veteran to mentor everyone. And we know McDermott has a soft spot for all these ex-Panthers, if he finds his way onto a football field the Bills deserve what they get.

They've taken all the Allen running out of the playbook. Allen still only has Diggs. We're the 2017-2021 Packers. It's Adams-Rodgers, Allen-Diggs. That's it.

And was there anything ground breaking in the two long ones to Mayer? No. The first one he sits outside the LT, motions across the formation, fakes a chip block at the snap and continues his motion into the flat where Garoppolo rolls and hits him in stride, in space, and he turns up the sideline for an easy 20-yards. The second one, he's in the same alignment, runs diagonally across the field in the 10-12 yard range, Garoppolo hits him in stride and he gets another 7 yards. Was that some earth shattering display of athleticism? Or genius level play design? No. I don't think Dorsey can think of anything. Tight Ends to him (and to Daboll as well) are safety valve players, not vertical players. If it's not copy and paste from Daboll, Dorsey can't think of anything. It's why Gabe looks the exact same, why Shakir has no role, why Harty is Isaiah McKenzie and has no role, and why Kincaid and Knox are RT helpers, and dump off options. The whole league is going to motion based offenses, and the Bills are in the static gun.

So we're back to teams show us a look and we throw our hands up and stop running the ball. 3 attempts in the second half (2 of which were Shotgun draws to Cook for negative yards) and I'm supposed to think that Jacksonville just "took that away"?

When the Bills signed Emmanuel Sanders as our #2 WR was the first time I thought that Allen could be LeBron James in Cleveland the first time around. An elite talent, stuck in an organization that values a balanced team and continuity more than elite talent. Beane has built a balanced roster and clearly has prioritized bringing back as many 2020-2022 pieces as possible to 2023, but isn't it clear that they added Diggs in 2020 and stopped when it came to adding another explosive playmaker? They weren't in on D. Adams, AJ Brown, T. Hill (I give the Bills a pass here because no way the Chiefs are trading him to the Bills), but will the Bills be involved in this trade deadline? With Hopkins, they made a run after all the FA money had been spent and they could only offer the veteran minimum. Gabe Davis' stat line looks good, but his 6-100-1 came in garbage time. I think he's holding the offense back, and of course Dorsey's pedestrian scheme. Allen and Diggs are overcoming Dorsey and generally, mediocre receiving talent.

This is a thought provoking post. Time goes on here, and I think we're in the same position as 2022 - it's Diggs and Allen, with the occasional play from Gabe Davis. Everything else in the offense is an afterthought, even with the resources poured into the Tight End position, and the Bills constant search for the next running back to sit on this roster and do nothing. The Jags game showed me that Dorsey (and McDermott overriding Dorsey) don't have a second pitch when someone actually plays defense. In an 11-7 game in the second half, when the Bills are going 3 and 4 out drive after drive (because they keep trying to pass) and the TOP is racking up for the Jags 2:1 verses the Bills battered backup defense, do the Bills try to run the ball straight ahead with Harris and Murray at all? No. 3 carries in the entire second half, 2 of them were that same stupid draw play to Cook for -2 and 0 yards (5:00 left in the game?). The one other carry was 5 yards to Damien Harris up the middle. Murray got no carries in the second half. Do they line Allen up under Center and use play action? No. Are there any crossing patterns, any quick slants, anything to the middle of the field? No. The Allen designed runs are gone. Our big curveball was a horrible play design with 13 minutes left in the 4th where we brought in 3 Tight Ends and tried to throw to Quintin Morris, it was botched immediately and Dawkins was called for holding. Is it any coincidence that Harty is chained to the same role McKenzie was? Or that the best idea we have for Kincaid is to make him Cole Beasley? We tried last year to copy and paste Jamison Crowder into the same role. If it's not some copy and paste idea, Dorsey can't come up with anything. Several still shots are starting to surface where you have 2-3 players standing in the same spot down the field. It's becoming apparent that once again its Josh Allen and Stefon Diggs elite talent that is the life raft this entire offense is built on. There are no consistent facets of this offense other than those two.

The Bills ran the ball 3 times in the second half. The score was 11-7 for over a quarter of the game. And McDermott wants to talk about how they didn't establish the line of scrimmage? They didn't try to help the defense at all as the time of possession became more and more lopsided as the game went on. We get these lip-service answers from the Coach.

You’re telling me there isn’t one 22-25 year old on a practice squad from a real school somewhere? Norman is 35.

But wait, WGR told me that it was the Jets that are just a bad matchup for the Bills offense. Now it’s the Jags too?

11-7 for the entire 3rd quarter, and the Bills ran the ball a total of 3 times in the second half. Once to Damien Harris under Center for 5 yards. Twice to Cook out of Shotgun for -2 yards (one of those was with 5:00 minutes to go behind two scores). So when McDermott talks about how he wanted to run more but couldn't establish the line of scrimmage, that's just a cliche answer that wasn't pushed back on at all.

Morris I would guess, or maybe we work in David Edwards as a jumbo TE? 17 catches for 118 yards, 6.9 ypc in 5 games is good? That's the bar of what was expected? Is his involvement ramping up? Are there any signs of life that something deeper than 1.8 air yards is coming?

Yeah Pine you can not like it, but a 1st and 4th Round pick for Kincaid (in a stacked Tight End draft) and so far he's been a check down option for a team that is supposed to be in a Super Bowl window. Not one pass attempt in 5-games longer than 10 yards. He's on pace for 377 yards.

This Kincaid pick just gets worse and worse. He was slow to get up on that 14 yard catch.

I will watch the Dorsey interview and hope someone will ask some version of why didn't you run the ball more, why not more play action, were you aware of the time of possession gap, what was the approach, where is Dalton Kincaid. It's a loss so maybe there will be more critical thinking that the past three weeks where it's "describe what Josh Allen means to you"

This is another game that goes into the Daboll/Dorsey pile of why didn't we try to run the ball more? It's a one score game and it's just pass-pass-pass-pass, meanwhile the TOP just got more and more lopsided as the game went on. At the start of the 4th the Jags had the ball for 29 minutes, and the Bills were at 15 minutes. We conclude we couldn't run the ball yesterday, but what is Harris and Murray going to do on 6 combined carries? Why the stubborn, insistence on running out of shotgun with Cook on delayed/draw plays that TAKE TOO LONG?

Well if that’s the case then by all means do what it takes to get that done. Adams is still in his prime (late). And that’s two elite route runners, gets Gabe Davis off the field. If we could make it work, do it. I think it would take a 1st, or a 2nd and another piece.

Somehow it was still 11-7 at the start of the 4th. Dorsey was awful yesterday. And where was McDermott yesterday to get on the radio and remind Dorsey that the Jags were up in TOP 30 to 15 at that point?

It would be really great if our media could ask Dorsey what the heck he was thinking with this sequence: 11-7 Jags 14:00 min left in the 4th quarter. TOP to that point was 29 minutes Jags, 15 minutes Bills. We go: Kincaid for 14 yards Harris up the middle for 5 yards. 2nd-5 - We bring in 3 Tight Ends and try to throw to Q.Morris? Dawkins gets flagged for holding. Now 2nd-15. 2nd-15: Misfire to Knox. 3rd-15: Allen bomb deep to Diggs out of desperation to try and make anything happen - INT. We take a grand total of 1:30 off the clock and the defense is forced to go right back on the field. Jags brutalize the Bills and go up 18-7. Game over. But don't worry Bills fans, since that delayed draw to Cook was working so well, we tried it again with 5:00 to go down 18-13 for -2 yards and a complete waste of 30-seconds. Instead Buffalo media will ask Dorsey about if he is tired today and jet lagged from going to London, and his general feelings towards Josh Allen.