Shaw66

Same with me. I hadn't looked at this for days. Those gifs are great. I like the possibility too. He's not a number one guy but he is close. Best insurance if Watkins goes down. If they're both playing its a dynamic combo.

Yes. And in two years all of those good decisions will look like bad ones when the Bills hire Rob Ryan and he cleans house. Round and round we go.

Nice analysis. There's a lot of pressure on Hughes and Lawson.

I agree. Analysis of the roster does very little for me. Plus, even the roster analysis is light. The Bills are probably BETTER at safety than they were last year, and there's a good chance they're no worse at corner. They lost Brown and gain Ragland. What happens at receiver is much dependent on what Watkins does. If he's what he should be, the Bills have more than enough talent at receiver to replace the guys lost. The roster isn't the issue. The coach is the issue. And there are only two questions about the coach: Will he succeed? How soon? After that, Tyrod is the only question. If the Bills get two good answers about the coach and one about Tyrod, the rest of the roster is fine.

Awful contract? His average salary is 6th in the league. He's a top 10 tight end playing on a team that doesn't throw the ball. Not sure it's all that horrible.

The Tyrod narrative around here is unbelievable. In 2016 the Bills threw fewer passes than any other team and playing 15 games Clay finished 8th among tight ends in receptions. In 2015 the Bills threw the second fewest passes in the league and playing 13 games Clay finished 12th among tight ends in receptions. So how in the world are people concluding that Taylor doesn't see Clay? I know, you sat in your basement for three weeks straight and watched All-22 and counted the times you think Clay was open and you think Taylor should have seen him and thrown to him. Or you saw a stat someplace that said Taylor throws over the middle less than other QBs, and since the TE runs patterns over the middle, Taylor wasn't throwing to Clay enough. How often could Taylor possibly have missed Clay when Clay's a top 10 receiver among tight ends playing for the offense that passes less than any other offense in the league. The question isn't why didn't Taylor throw more to Clay. The question is why didn't he throw more to the wideouts.

I don't much about Barnridge, but I don't think this makes a lot of sense. If I understand it correctly, if the Bills cut Clay now he count's $13,500,000 against the cap. That's a big hit; as some said, it's more than keeping him. So the the strategy would be to keep Clay and sign Barnridge to a low ball deal this year with a big guaranteed boost next season. But cutting Clay even next season isn't so pretty - it's still a $9 million cap hit next year. So the Bills are likely to keep Clay for the next two seasons. Plus, I don't know where this "damaged" goods stuff comes from. In the last four seasons Clay has missed six games. That's more than adequate reliability. He caught 57 passes last season, which if I counted correctly was 8th in the league. And that's on a team with he fewest passing attempts in the league. Clay's played six seasons and has caught 100 more passes than Barnidge has caught in eight. So why would the Bills be anxious to replace Clay with Barnidge?

Clay has been injury prone? He has missed 6 games in 4 years. I will take that all day.

This a good example why stats get less useful the more detailed they get. Tonyou run a lot your TOP is skewed upward becausemthw clock stops less.fequently than if you pass a lot. Passing teams usually have lousy TOP.

the season rides mostly on McDermott. If he's good Taylor can be ordinary and the Bills are okay. If McD isn't good it doesn't matter how good Taylor is. Of course it sums it up. All he said is that for the Bills to be good, the defense has to be good, the run game has to be good and the pass game has be good. Powerful insight.

You say 15, I say 20. It's a pretty big number. But you are correct, none are available. And most of your 15 probably aren't upgrades.

Yes, this is correct. I think the Bills have a pretty good team with, at best, an unproven QB. Sammy healthy and the defense playing well, Tyrod takes them to the playoffs, along with about 20 other QBs. That, in fact, is the strategy that many teams follow. Panthers, Ravens, Atlanta (although you can at least argue about Ryan being elite), Houston (with disastrous results so far), Atizona, Kansas City. I think we all agree on one thing, and that is that the only way you can compete for the Super Bowl, year in and year out, is to have an elite QB. If you have one of those, you're in the fight every year. Peyton, Brady, Rodgers, Ben, maybe Ryan. If you don't have one but you have one of the 20, you're trying to get everything to come together for a season or two. If you can, you can make a run at the Lombardi. In the meantime, everyone is looking for the elite QB. The real debate here has been whether the Bills should be actively looking for someone better to replace Tyrod, because he's at the bottom of the 20, or should be actively building around him because he has the potential to be around the top of those 20.

Sorry, I didn't read your post carefully enough. You're right. I thought you were saying these things were the case, but you clearly didn't say that. If they WERE true, then you're absolutely correct - plenty of non-Tyrod reasons that Watkins would be on the block.

Yeah, I don't think Taylor had trouble getting the ball to Watkins. He played 13 games in 2015. I think he missed the games Manuel played. He had 60 receptions for over 1000 yards. in 2016 he played half a season, and he was hurting some of the time, and he still had 430 yards. That doesn't sound like his QB couldn't get him the ball. The year before is the year his QB couldn't get him the ball - that's when EJ was throwing to him. If they trade Watkins before this season, it MAY mean they don't have confidence in Taylor, but what I think it really means is that there IS a general housecleaning coming. That McD really does want a total rebuild. If Watkins goes, he'll be the second, behind Gilmore, but ahead of some others who will go at the end of the season. I don't think that's happening, but it could be. I think they're keeping Watkins for this season. If he's still injured, they may give up at the end of the season. But if he has his first big season, they re-sign or franchise him.

I don't disagree with that. But where is the long-term outlook saying he isn't going to be available? As I said, my understanding is that it's typically a two-year recovery from this injury, and Sammy's well into his second year. Julio Jones recovered. I think Marquise Goodwin is chronically injured. Sammy played all through college uninjured. This is more than likely just a bad string of injuries, not something chronic. (Of course, the Bills may have another opinion, and they have better info.)

Actually, my questions were serious. Maybe there's more out than I know about. I know it's the wrong thread, but the only important rule here is that you never give up on potentially great talent too early. It's always better to keep a guy with big potential a year too long than to dump him a year too early. Great talent is special.

Where'd you get all of this stuff? Prognosis on the foot is not good? My understanding is that most guys do just fine recovering from this, just not in a year. If I recall correctly, Julio Jones did the same thing. Was it reported that Watkins' agent said Watkins wants to leave. Was it reported that Watkins wants more in a contract than the Bills will offer? Was it reported that Watkins is still hurt? Was it reported that the Bills are done with him, that they've decided he doesn't fit? And, by the way, this notion that the Bills don't want him because there isn't another player on the roster who replicates his skills would mean that the Bills also wouldn't want Julio Jones, Adrian Peterson, Aaron Rodgers, JJ Watt or any other guy who's a top 20 player in the league, That's a really stupid idea.

The offense will be multi-dimensional this season, I'm confident of that. Whether both dimensions will be a threat is tougher to predict. If I'm Taylor I'm REALLY pissed if the Bills trade Watkins.

Oh. True, if you're talking about constant improvement of field position, 3 and outs are relevant. But I'd rather have some sustained drives for scores and some three and outs instead of two first downs and a punt on every drive. Wins are what matters. Points scored and points allowed are next most important. "Constant improvement of field position," whatever that means, is way down the list of important stats.

10th in points per game, and that's the stat that really matters. Plus, I think when you run a run-first offense, you have a lot of possessions where you run twice and you're third and seven eight or nine. Tough to convert those. It's another way to look at the same statement most of us make over and over - Bills need a more balanced attack, with more passes per game. It's hard to win consistently when everyone knows you're going to run all game, every game. It's another lesson to be learned from the Pats. They crush an opponent with passes one week, and the next week they run 40 times for 195 yards and throw 22 passes. When you can run AND pass, the defense has to prepare for everything, and that's when it's feasible to take what the defense is giving you.

I live 400 miles away and go to most of the games. I can't always find people to give the tix to if I'm not going. Where do you donate them? That's a good solution.

Of course? Why wouldn't I? I love being at the games. Great excitement, always interesting things to see. Nothing better than being with 50-60,000 people who care about their team and let the opponent know we're there. Love it.

True, but there are two counters to that. One is that kickers age differently. Their careers are much longer, so Hauschka is still in his prime. The other is that when you have All-Pro talent, which is what Hauschka is, you aren't going to get much discount if he's still in his prime and he's had just one off year.

I suggest Peter King look up the stats. Hauschka is the third most accurate field goal kicker in history, and over his career he's succeeded on more than 50% of his attempts over 50 yards. Yes, Hauschka struggled last year, but he's been a great kicker, he isn't too old, and the Bills have made about the 10th highest paid kicker in the league. It just isn't all that unusual.

How is this not a rebuild? I'll tell you, but you have to promise to use the word "rebuild" in the way that it is typically used in reference to sports franchises. A rebuild is when the leadership of the team actively releases players, including good players who have multiple years left in their careers and who will play someplace else. It's an active decision to turn over the roster more rapidly that it would ordinarily turn over from the draft, free agency, cuts and retirements. It's a drastic change in personnel because the decision has been made to start over. The word also implies that management is consciously making the team worse in the short-run because they've decided the fastest way to get good is to start over. Yes, using the the word "rebuild" in the generic, general English language sense, the front office has been rebuilt. But when sports fans talk about rebuilding a team, they're talking about the roster, not the front office. There has been nothing, at least not yet, that is anything like a roster rebuild in Buffalo. Woods, Goodwin and Brown were pretty normal free agency departures - the Bills would have like to keep them, just not at the prices they were asking. They didn't leave because there was a conscious decision to start over. This isn't a rebuild. Doesn't mean that there won't be one. A new GM and a new coach could decide in January that a thorough roster housecleaning is the best way to go forward, but they certainly aren't going to do that yet. You aren't going to cut talent at this time of year, because your opportunity to get talent is very small. All the good talent has been drafted or signed already. For example, a rebuild could result in guys like Incognito, Dareus and Hughes being cut. Imagine the headlines on ESPN and imagine the free agency frenzy that would start if those guys were cut. The league would be frantic to sign those guys. But the Bills would have no opportunity to replace them, because no other teams are releasing talent. It's very unlikely that a coach or GM would cut a bunch of guys like that at this time of year. Now, I could imagine McDermott deciding in August he's fed up with a player, like a Dareus or a Hughes and just cut him, but that's not a rebuild. That's just a coach getting rid of someone he considers a bad apple. So if there's going to be a rebuild, it'll be a 2018 rebuild.