BigDingus

I agree. This is also why I don't want us trading up to the top 10 & giving away a ton of picks. There are so many colleges and so many players, there's no way you can get a good look at all of them. A lot of it has to do with the situation they're drafted into, the coaching, opportunities, surrounding talent, etc. I didn't want the Bills to draft Allen, if only because I still had PTSD from the drought & had zero confidence they could develop a raw QB. Thankfully this was a much different organization, and the support, coaching & FO were significantly more capable than in the past. You have great WRs like Diggs, Hill, & Nacua all drafted late, or guys like Terrell Owens from colleges nobody pays attention to like Chattanooga. I hope the Bills don't get hung up on one guy & trade away the farm to grab him, but instead cast the widest net possible to scour every corner for potential quality starters

No matter who they draft, it'll be up to Joe Brady & Josh to elevate their game this season. Diggs was a huge leader on & off the field, so Josh will have to step up. The upside is he'll have a clean slate & nobody barking in his ear about targets. All the receivers, TEs & RBs will be looking to him for orders. And Brady will have to do better than Dorsey about scheming guys open & not getting figured out so early in the season. Some of his success could be attributed to his newness, though I don't think it was the biggest factor. He won't have that same benefit next year, so he'll need to make sure that no matter who we draft, they're incorporated into the offense quickly. Really hoping we find our new WR1 in the draft, but if not, gotta get creative (see Andy Reid).

So who tf is it?!

We should just make a thread going over all players we'd be willing to use specifically to trade up. On a scale of 1-10, with 1 being "zero desire to trade" & 10 being "cya later!" I'll start: Josh Allen - 1 James Cook - 5 Khalil Shakir - 4 Curtis Samuel - 1 (just signed) Mack Hollins - 1 (just signed) Dalton Kincaid - 1 Dion Dawkins - 3 Connor McGovern - 4 O'Cyrus Torrence - 2 Spencer Brown - 5 Greg Rousseau - 6 DaQuan Jones - 4 Ed Oliver - 1 Von Miller - 9 (in a fantasy scenario where it was possible) Matt Milano - 1 Terrel Bernard - 2 Dorian Williams - 6 Rasul Douglas - 2 Kaiir Elam - 10 Christian Benford - 6 (always injured) Taron Johnson - 1 Anyone else is either not relevant enough, nobody cares, is a recent signing, or wouldn't be worth a 7th round pick in a trade value anyway.

Yeah, lets just trade away ALL of our locker room leadership... I know we want to get younger, but Milano is the Josh Allen of the defense. We need him to anchor the unit & be the general out there.

"Best" implies how good of a player they were, so in that regard, it's Diggs by a landslide. If we're just going off of who I liked the most, it's Fitzpatrick.

Since we don't even use a 2nd helmet, does this actually change anything for us?

All this tells me is that you have a 61% chance to find one of these WRs outside of the 1st round, and only a 39% chance within it 😉 The Bills just have to be smart and take multiple shots at it. They'll find one eventually!

You also have to look beyond the 1st & 2nd rounds. Nico Collins - 3rd Round Keenan Allen - 3rd Round Terry McLaurin - 3rd Round Cooper Kupp - 3rd Round Amon-Ra St. Brown - 4th Round Stefon Diggs - 5th Round Tyreek Hill - 5th Round Puca Nacua - 5th Round You definitely can find the more sure-fire picks earlier in the draft, but smart teams find stars in the later rounds every year. The Bills would be smart to go after multiple guys, including those that aren't given 1st or 2nd round grades.

Both men's and women's college basketball is great, but I'd watch ANY regular season Bills game over a NCAA Championship Basketball game. Same goes for any other sport though. I'd take Bills football over everything else.

Let's be real, Josh knows he threw that game away. And Diggs (or anyone) saying something critical probably would've struck a nerve. I doubt it had anything to do with Josh disliking Diggs, but rather a moment where he was already hard on himself & not in the mood to deal with anything extra.

If anyone wants to know how to read articles like this without paying, type in: "https://archive.is/" followed by the rest of the URL It'll pull up a link to the archived version of the page that you can read for free.

I said it before, but I feel like fans are hoping for a big splash to overcompensate for losing Diggs. Remember what we gave up to the Vikings to get Diggs? We'd have to give up even more to move so far up in the draft. Even though Diggs did well for us, had we been more confident & drafted well, we could've stayed put & drafted Justin Jefferson ourselves. And to make this kind of trade for a WR? That wreaks of desperation. Look at what the Chiefs traded us to move up to #10 & draft Mahomes... a guy who changed the destiny of their franchise & turned them into a dynasty. Do we think any of these WRs are THAT impactful that they could so something similar? And are they going to be so absurdly good that they're more valuable than the 2 x 1st rounders, 2 x 2nd rounders and additional picks we could've drafted? As fun as it is to imagine one of those top 3 guys on our team, I don't think it's a smart move to mortgage so much of our future on that prospect.

Maybe, I'm not so sure. Is there any team that has achieved major success pulling off a trade like for a non-QB player? When you're desperately trying to get younger, you need those picks. Who's to say you don't find a great WR with those 2 x 1st rounders & 2 x 2nd rounders? Even the Diggs to Buffalo trade showed how thar works. Vikings just replaced him with Jefferson, an even better WR. Same could even be said about the 2017 draft. We got Tre White out of it & a pick that helped us move up for Josh, but the Chiefs got Mahomes. Point is, we sound desperate right now, but a great player could be right there at all those spots if we just stay patient.

You have to make it to the Chiefs in the playoffs to even get to that point. There are more teams than just the Chiefs to worry about, something we should all understand from the 2022 Divisional Round game. Would you be cool with Diggs going to the Bengals? No. And the Texans made it to the Division Round in just 1 year with Stroud, have a younger team, more talent, better cap situation, already had a number 1 WR, and now added Diggs. So instead of acting like we already made it & our spot is assured next to the Chiefs, we have to contend with reality & recognize there are other teams improving faster & more dramatically than the Bills.

I don't think the trade means there's necessarily any beef between Allen & Diggs. They could still be on decent terms personally, even if Diggs believes the organization is not going in the right direction. Another factor to consider is the loss of all the locker room leadership. Poyer, White, Morse, etc. all gone, plus being cap strapped & unable to lure any big free agents. He probably thinks it's a rebuilding year, and that this version of the team has hit its ceiling. He clearly doesn't believe the Bills are building to win now & wanted out. I also don't think they needed Allen's "blessing," if Diggs is the one who requested a trade. They certainly would've given him a heads up, but then again, Allen probably knew Diggs wanted out already (hell, he may have told Allen himself).

I don't think that's how it'll play out at all. Just like when he left the Vikings, he kept his head down & stayed quiet the whole time. He doesn't take shots in the media, and all his teammates always speak highly of him. I think he sees the Texans as a better up & coming team and wants to win.

I love "told ya so!" posts, even if I'm the one in the wrong. Thankfully, I didn't have any brash take in this thread. Only thing I said was that I didn't believe age was the issue 😅

Not impressed by this trade at all. You don't have a legit number 1, your number 2 left in FA, and don't have an early 1st round draft pick to grab one of the best WRs. Oh, and plenty of dead cap to go with it, unless I missed something (which I may have, didn't read the whole thread). If they can't get a top WR, I hope they go OL so Josh will have more time to find these underwhelming receivers & for them to get open.

At this point, I feel everyone's trying to preemptively prep their brains for the idea that the Bills may not draft a WR with their 1st round pick. By the end of the season, finding Josh more weapons & drafting a WR was the universal consensus. But as we get closer to the draft, more & more posts are popping up saying "what if we didn't draft a WR after all?" It feels like people are starting to doubt we'll get a good WR at our spot in the draft, so they're turning their attention elsewhere. And that may be true, but if that's the case, don't expect the Bills offense to be significantly better this year with the WRs currently on the roster. Sure, they can draft a WR in the 2nd or later, but at that point you'd be lucky to get someone to replicate Gabe's numbers. It'd be nice if we got lucky & found a hidden gem, but I'm sure it'll be slow & steady even getting into the rotation for a while.

It must be annoying to the XFL that the second someone looks good, the NFL is going to come take away your player 😆

I forgot he was a 2nd rounder. I do remember that was the draft we wasted on Aaron Maybin, perhaps the worst 1st round pick we've ever made.

It's almost like I called this exact response by NFL fans & the media months ago during the season... people just didn't want to believe it. If you're terminally online (like I tend to be on my days off) & step outside of the Bills bubble, you'll see many NFL fans had turned Allen into a meme. The turnovers were too noticeable, the Bills under performing throughout the season was a huge talking point, and losing a 3rd time to the Chiefs in the playoffs only served as confirmation bias for what people already believed. Even if it's dumb, only significant team success can change the narrative at this point. The most annoying part is how much credit Burrow gets for LOSING a Super Bowl 3 seasons ago. Isn't the goal to win a SB? I get he made it further, but so what? People talk about him like he's already got a ring. He's lucky his defense stepped up in the 2nd half of that AFCCG & Mahomes completely collapsed, otherwise he wouldn't even have that going for him. Unfortunately, head-to-head matters, and everyone remembers how thoroughly the Bengals walked all over us in our own building. Then the rematch this year didn't go well either, so all people see is Josh is 0-2 against Burrow, and 0-3 against Mahomes in the playoffs. The narrative is dumb, but it won't change until Josh changes the narrative.

I mostly agree. As I said, I'm also wanting to draft a WR in the 1st. O-Line is impactful though, as it can allow our existing QB/WRs/TEs/RB to thrive & reach their full potential. Josh with a comfortable pocket & time to survey the field would increase his accuracy & decision-making, allow routes to develop for receivers, not allow defenses to pressure the QB without blitzing, open up holes for the RB or Josh to take off, etc. The Chiefs targeted their O-line in FA & the draft and managed to win multiple SBs after trading away one of the top 3 WRs in the game. Building up the OL will help establish everything for years to come, but I say this while still wanting a WR in round 1. If anything, we need a plan in place to replace Diggs when that time comes. It's not about any perceived drama, only the inevitable slowing down.

I wish there was more interest in reviewing previous mock drafts to see who was most accurate and over how many years. Every knows Kiper, McShay, Florio, etc. but they're very rarely accurate. While I was typing this comment, I decided to search 2023 mock drafts & found an article reviewing mocks! - https://www.bleedinggreennation.com/2023/5/1/23706510/nfl-mock-draft-grades-2023-accuracy-football-grading-scores-will-levis Using Kiper's mock from 2023, he got 1 pick correct. ONE. He did get a decent amount correct in regards to players drafted in the 1st round, but overall he was just middle of the pack. The person who scored highest was Albert Breer from Sports Illustrated. Unfortunately, I couldn't find an available 2024 mock from him yet, so I checked the #2 Charlie Campbell's (Walter Football) mock, and he has the Bills taking Xavier Worthy. And since he said the Bills are taking a WR, which is what I wanted to hear, I agree with his take!