Shaw66

No. Lee Evans was a one-trick pony. Watkins is the real deal. I doubt their plan is to trade away young talent. They traded a guy they knew they wouldn't re-sign, because he will command more in the market than they were willing pay. Watkins isn't built to take the pounding that possession receivers take. Matthews and Boldin have shown they can take that punishment. It's likely that's the kind of guy they want. It simply isn't obvious this was a bad move.

I'm not sure you're right. I loved having Watkins. Amazing skills, and I still believe he's going to be a monster receiver in the league. No doubt Beane and McDermott think the same thing. But that isn't the point. It's about building a team. If you have a philosophy, a plan, then you have to build to that plan. Part of the plan is how and where you're going to spend money. There is a good argument to be made that wide out is NOT the position you should be spending $15 million a year on. Your offensive plan may mot feature the deep ball. So if what I've just said is your philosophy of building a team, then the question is simple: Do you keep Watkins for the season so that your team can win maybe one more game, knowing that at the end of the season he'll be gone? Or do you unload him in a combination of deals that gets you a quality wideout, a presumptive number one receiver, plus a second round and a third round pick? It all depends on whether there's a place on the team you're building for the next five years for a great receiver who will cost you more than you want to spend.

We'll see, but I think he'll surprise you. Tyrod is a superior athlete, one of the best athletes in the league. And he's coachable. This is an offense, I believe, that limits post-snap decision making, Make a presnap read, take the snap, one look at the defense and throw. That's basically athletics. As I said, we'll see.

I agree. If I had to predict today I'd say 7-9, but I think there's more potential Give that run below. Absent big injuries I don't think the Bills will fall below 6-10.

Not sure what you mean. I did say that some players fit some schemes better than others. My point was that it makes a difference but not a huge difference. In the case of Watkins and Matthews my point was that the difference in talent is ls less critical because some of Taylor's talent is wasted in a possession passing scheme. So Matthews might turn out to be nearly as effective as Watkins in the new scheme.

I think that although some players fit a system better than others, football is football, and good players will play well in any system. Better in one system than another, but they still do fine. Look at Kyle Williams - he's played all kinds of systems, and yes, he's more valuable in some than others, but he was an unquestioned starter in every system. Dareus, too. The offensive line. The QB. The running game is largely unchanged, and that's the offense's bread and butter. 6-10 is about as low as McD can go when I might be willing to say "Okay, first year, changing system, blah blah." 5-11 is lousy coaching. 6-10 I'll be really disappointed. Even 7-9. If McD is the right guy, he should go 8-8. Unless he gets hit with key injuries. If Boldin and Matthews go down, the offense will be in big trouble. If the defense isn't better immediately, I'm going to be disappointed. Everyone says it's a simple, run-to-the-ball defense. There's talent all over the field.

I don't understand this AT ALL. I don't know how you put a dollar value on a player for purposes of evaluating the player and the trades. These analytics must not consider Watkins' POTENTIAL, which is what we all loved and hated to lose.

My view is that the GM has two important decisions to make - hire the coach and find a QB. Both are hard, so you can't expect him get it right on the first shot. I give the GM three mistakes - when he's blown the HC call once or twice and the QB choice once or twice, totalling three in all, he's gotta go. In Beane's case, he chose McDermott in the sense that when he came here, he knew he'd be riding McD. If he didn't like McD as a coach, he wouldn't have taken the job. He'll make his first QB decision in a year, when he either signs Taylor to a big deal or drafts a qb. If McD and his first QB fail, I'd give him one more pick each. Either of those fails, he's out. I think in reality I'm talking five years. Continuity is important. As for McD, if the Bills are bad this season, I'm very worried. Those guys could play 500 ball under Rex, and Rex was horrible. If McD's team is worse, as I said, I'm very worried. I give him one more year, and if things don't look a lot better, I might move him. If, on the other hand, the Bills go 8-8 and look decent, I give him at least a couple more years. He's a new HC, and he's going to make mistakes this year.

Oh, I'm not close to annointing Beane and McD anything yet. I haven't seen much I don't like, but I've said all year that we won't know anything, especially about McD, until we see his teams play for a year or two. As for Watkins, I guess I agree that in terms of the actual player, it wasn't the best time to trade him. Yes, if they'd picked up his option, they would have gotten more for him, but not that much more, because of his injury history. Two years of Watkins could mean 16 total games played, at which point he would have cost $10 million or more. I think he was attractive in part because his new team would only have to invest one year in him before deciding. But from the bigger picture, now was the time. Yes, they might not have maximized value because of the option, but his value was only going to go down as the season progressed, and he'd be worth nothing in trade in February. I think he didn't fit McD's view of the offense, so they weren't going to resign him at the money he'd command in the open market. SO why not get what you can? It's the cost of retooling after you change coaches and GMs. When your coach and GM are succeeding and have been in place for 5 years, they aren't forced to make tough choices like this.

I guess I'm an optimist. But what I try to do most of the time is understand why management would do what it did. So I look for reasons that seem logical. That comes off as me sounding like I'm always supporting the team and their decisions. And I generally do support them, because as I think about why they might of done something, I come to understand the logic in their choice. But I actually recognize that some decisions work, and some don't. In this case, for example, I'm not saying that unloading Watkins was without question a good decision. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. But I can see why it fits what they're doing. My views are changing about player personnel. I think the coach is the most important guy on the team, the QB is second, and practically no one else matters. In particular, as much as I love watching them, I think great receivers are pretty much unimportant. Julio Jones hasn't won, Fitzgerald hasn't won. Julian Edelman is far from being in the conversation about great receivers, but he wins. So I've come to think that wideouts are a distraction.

Section - I like what you're saying. Makes sense to me. My only addition would be if the Bills don't get a free agent qb and don't get a qb in the draft, I think the Bills will trade some of their 2018 picks to reposition for 2019 draft.

I'm not as worried as you because of the offense. Taylor's job is to read and throw. I think its less about communication than the previous offense. It's the receivers job to get to the spot and he has two for receivers, veterans, who can do that. Two guys with size and who catch in traffic. So I think the transition to new receivers will be easier than you say. I may be wrong.

Crushed is difficult to respond to. He sounds rational but he's perpetually negative. If you notice, he said stockpiling picks to get a an doesn't work and being mediocre doesn't work. His solution is to tank, even though no team in the history of the league has done that. Well, maybe the Colts. The packers have gotten TWO franchise QBs without tanking. The Psts got theirs withour tanking. Brees went in the second round. Crushers just good at being being negative. And he accused me of being an optimist. My piece was optimistic only when I said I liked what they're doing. I have no idea if it will work. I think the season and the next seasons depend on what kind of HC McDermott is. My view is that he's 50-50 or worse to be any good.

I don't think it's such a big gamble. Losing Watkins and Darby means the Bills will lose, at most. One more game than if they'd kept them. And Matthews and Gained will cut into that considerably. Plus I suspect that Watkins wasn't a good fit for the offense. I'm guessing we will see run dominant, possession passing ball co tell offense, and a gifted burner like Sammy is a luxury in that offense. Matthews fits better. Of course, everything is a gamble, and the Bills could go 5-11. However, if that happens, it will be because McD is failing, not because Sammy wasn't in the lineup.

He's not going to lay out his plan in public. What he thinks about players and the future is confidential for plenty of good reasons. All you can do is divine the plan from what you see him do. They clearly have a good idea about the kind of cornerbacks they want, because they got rid of two expensive cover guys and went after a zone guy. They clearly have an idea of what kind of receivers they want, because with Bolding and Matthews they have two excellent possession receivers with size and who fight for the ball. They also have shown and said that the draft is at the core of their player acquisition strategy. We probably haven't seen the end of top players getting traded for lesser players plus a high pick. Hughes, Dareus and McCoy all are candidates. Personally, I'd hate to see Dareus or McCoy go, but after yesterday, anything is possible. I agree with what you're saying about Taylor, and I think I said the same thing. If I had to handicap it, I'd put a 10% probability on Taylor being the long-term starter. But I also think these guys are smart; they're going to see what Taylor does this season and make their decision about the future next February. There's plenty of logic in what you say; it happens in the NBA all the time. But it doesn't happen in the NFL, and Beane said yesterday it isn't in his DNA. He hates losing, so he's not going to set himself to lose. He and McDermott think the Bills can be just as good with the new guys as with Watkins and Darby. Plus, except for the losses and the high pick, there's no upside in unloading Taylor now. Can't get anything for him - he's on a short contract, it's already very late in the season to install a new QB in the starting role, and he doesn't have much of a track record. Unloading him would be purely a tank job; Beane won't do that and the fans won't stand for it. As I said elsewhere, I'd think it's more likely that one or more of Dareus, McCoy or Hughes gets moved.

I didn't know this. Beane and McDermott keep talking about the kind of people they want, and Matthews seems like he's in their sweet spot.

Part of it is fit. Gilmore is the easy example. He's a man-to-man corner and McDermott is dedicated to zone principles. So he wasn't a good choice at any reasonable price. Part of it is talent vs. value. That's Gillislee. Bills probably concluded that with Tolbert and Williams they're good at the back up running back. They didn't need to pay marginal starter money to a guy just to be a backup. And they didn't think, I suppose, that Gillislee was good enough to replace McCoy without a significant drop off in production. If McDermott and Beane had been, they might not have let Hogan go. Athletic possession receiver with decent speed. He's a poor man's Boldin and Matthews. The real point, however, is that although we can describe in general what the scheme is, the decisions about who fits and what he's worth are still very difficult, complicated and subjective. I'm not saying it's easy; I'm saying that they seem to have a plan that's clear to them, a plan that is more than just signing the best players they can find.

So true about the owners. If McDermott succeeds early, everything is fine. If he doesn't, we'll see how much the Pegulas believe in the story he and Beane are telling.

First, I believe that Brady has a handshake side-deal with Kraft that will pay Brady millions after he retires. That would be classic Patriots bending the rules. It isn't written anywhere, but Brady will make public appearances for the team, show up at some games, etc., and Kraft will pay him millions. Second, I don't think Brady's low salary matters that much. If he was getting $20 million instead of $14, or whatever the numbers, it would just mean that Belichick wouldn't have had the money to spend on Gillislee. I really do not believe that Gillislee is or will be the difference between the Pats winning and losing. Belichick ALWAYS finds somebody, because he has a system that requires good, dedicated, smart athletes. There are enough of those around.

I don't agree about the half-assed rebuild. The Bills are now in a pretty good cap situation going forward. They didn't pay Gilmore and now they don't have to pay Watkins, so they have a manageable number of high-paid guys - Glenn, Hughes, Dareus and McCoy. They can afford just to let those contracts run out. (Doesn't mean they might not unload one or more of them, but they don't have to.) If Taylor somehow makes the big step up, they have enough cap room to sign him. If he doesn't, they'll go after a top rookie QB, and he'll come cheap for several seasons. So there are no worries there. At all the other positions, Beane and McD can make all the changes they want, replacing guys making $5 million or less with other guys making $5 million or less. And all the while they're adding young, inexpensive guys through the draft. The model works IF - and it's a really big IF - the head coach has the talent to build a team that's better than the sum of its parts. The foundation of this strategy is that system trumps talent - in a league where all the teams have more or less equal talent, marginal differences in talent don't matter - marginal differences in system make winners. It's all on McDermott: will his fundamentals-details-family approach win 11-14 games a year?

The Rockpile Review by Shaw66 The Brandon Beane Era Begins Brandon Beane arrived in Buffalo three months ago. He was the new guy in town, replacing the last new guy, who replaced the new guy before him. Over time, each new guy made his mark on the team, and then he left. He made a mark, but he didnt win. So Beane took over in May, and now its his turn to make his mark. He did a few deals, nothing very remarkable. It seemed as though wed have to wait until free agency and the draft in 2018 to get a sense of who this man is and what his team-building strategy looks like. Or so it seemed. Less than a day after an ordinary and uneventful preseason opener, Beane reshaped the 2017 starting lineup and set himself up to build the team that he and Sean McDermott envision. In separate deals, Beane traded Sammy Watkins and Ronald Darby and filled their spots in the lineup with quality starters. He also banked second- and third-round picks in the 2018 draft. Yesterday, we could only speculate about how and what Beane and McDermott want to build. Today, its pretty clear. 1. They want to build through the draft. Beane confirmed it in his press conference. Why through the draft? Because drafted players cost less than free agents; acquiring less expensive players means more players under the cap with the talent and skills McDermott wants. 2. McDermott is confident that system trumps talent, that a lot of good players playing in the right system will beat great players whose talents force the team to adjust to them. He knows Watkins is better than Matthews and Darby is probably better than Gaines, but he also knows that Matthews and Gaines plus the two guys the Bills can draft next year are probably better, collectively, than Watkins and Darby. 3. They think they need a true franchise quarterback, not just a good quarterback. Taylor may be a good a quarterback, but he almost certainly isnt a franchise quarterback. Are they done with Taylor? Not necessarily. But the deals put the Bills in position to go after the QB they want if Taylor doesnt make major strides this season. And if Taylor has a good but not great season, dont be surprised if the Bills trade down again in 2018, stockpiling 2019 picks so that they can have one more year to look at Taylor. 4. Theyre students of the Belichick way. Belichick trades his top talent rather than pay it. He can afford to pay a GIllislee $4 million because he isnt paying anyone other than a QB $14 million. Beane and McDermott will take a good role player (Matthews) over a better, but costlier star (Watkins). Belichick stockpiles draft picks, often trading down. McDermott traded down in the 2017 draft, instead of trading up for a Watkins. In every practice McDermott puts his players into a particular game situation tells them the situation, tells them how to respond, puts them on the field to practice it. It was reported as innovative, but Belichick has been doing that for years. 5. The Pegulas have turned this team over to Beane and McDermott. The deals were bold moves, and Beane must have gone to the Pegulas, if not for their prior approval, at least as a courtesy. A GM that didnt have his owners confidence might have been told to cool it, to hold on to the guy who, at least on paper, was your biggest star. It seems the Pegulas response was its your decision. 6. Doug Whaleys approach to his job was to acquire and keep talent. He proudly announced that he had his top six, the highly paid guys who will lead the team: Taylor, Glenn, Watkins, McCoy, Dareus, Gilmore and Hughes). And in truth it wasnt a bad collection of players. But Whaley never articulated, and his acquisitions never revealed, a greater plan about how to build a team. He was hampered by having had a coach (Rex) and maybe another (Marrone), who also didnt have a well-defined strategy. The GMs and coaches, to one extent or another, seemed to think it was enough to get good players and coach em up. McDermott and Beane have a plan; they have an idea of who players fit the plan. (Sounds a bit like Belichick, doesnt it?) Gilmore didnt fit, not at that price (he may be a fit in Belichicks, but not McDermotts). Watkins didnt fit, not at that price. Hughes, Dareus, Glenn, Taylor, McCoy all have gotten the message. 7. Beane may be young, but hes in charge. He handled the press conference like a real pro. Straight, on-point answers to some questions, always positive about the players he decided to trade while emphasizing that in return he got players who can play, and flatly and directly declining to answer questions that reveal his future plans. 8. Beane may be young, but like Whaley, he isnt afraid. First time GM, one of the youngest in the league; a lot of guys in that position would have backed away from the table and just let 2017 play out with the hand he was dealt. Not Beane. 9. Weve heard a lot about how the Bills will be running a variant of the west coast offense, with an emphasis on possession passing and strong running. We saw a lot of short passes in the preseason opener. The acquisitions of Boldin and Matthews reinforce that view. Big targets, possession receivers. The trades scream that the Bills want to be effective, not flashy. I hated to see Sammy go. Hes a special talent, and its so much fun to watch special talent perform for the team I root for. Itll be brutal to watch if he puts up a monster season this year, and he could. But I like the moves. I like them because the team may be better this season (and in any case not terribly worse) than 2016, and I like them because the moves should make the team stronger going forward. Most of all I like them because they say that the Bills, for the first time in a long time, have men in charge who have a plan, who are pursuing that plan every day, and who wont be distracted froam the goal. They have men in charge who have the full support, emotional and financial, of the owners. I like that. GO BILLS!!! The Rockpile Review is written to share the passion we have for the Buffalo Bills. That passion was born in the Rockpile; its parents were everyday people of western New York who translated their dedication to a full days hard work and simple pleasures into love for a pro football team.

Tolbert is a real running back. Just wait.

Young and naive and, well, you know. That's what I'd like to think. I think one of the smartest things I ever saw Rex say was a few weeks, responding to someone's prediction that the Bills would go 4-12. He said if the Bills have 4-12 talent, then he must have been one of the best coaches of all time. I think Rex coached like his father, and coaching's gotten a lot more sophisticated since then. So I'd like to think that McD is one of the new breed, but we won't know for a few hours, a few weeks and a few months.

no. I'll be out. Can't watch the game on my phone sitting in a restaurant.

To be fair, a new HC tends to make some mistakes in his first season, and it's his second season when he really has his feet on the ground. But I think coaches either get it or don't get it, and even with the mistakes, a rookie head coach who gets it shows it from day one. So he can say what he wants, but efficiency and fundamentals without production isn't enough. When they hired Rex I hoped he knew what he was doing (despite my fears). From day one the Bills were flat and inconsistent, and I knew we were in trouble.