Kelly the Dog

Fair enough. Mine is only an opinion as well. But it is based on watching Barkley a lot, in college, in Philly and Chicago... If he had Fitzy's arm I would totally agree with you and I would actually very much like Barkley as our backup. But it's not even close. Fitzy has a lower tier arm, and it is substantially stronger than MB's. Fitzy, as they say, can make all the throws. Barkley cannot.

Not if they choose the 11th freebie spot. You would be wrong. That is an easy one.

Yup. Gone are the days of our WRs trying to catch footballs like sea lions. Well, except Zay of course.

More trying to temper exceedingly lofty painting of pictures based on one regular season game where if you watch it again he made a bunch of good throws and a bunch of lucky ones. I like him as a #3, I'm very happy with what he can teach Josh, he's a great teammate and yes, he is better than several #2s we have had in the last couple decades.

A good back up gets you 2-2 in four games your starter gets knocked out of. If you're really lucky, 3-1. I think Barkley is 1-3 and the same chance to go 0-4 as 2-2. And extremely unlikely to go 3-1 unless the rest of the offense as well as the defense plays great, which is just as unlikely. He's capable of playing like he did against the Jets if he gets extremely lucky, which he did with several of his floater passes. If you play that same game again he's not likely to get the same result and it's not because he isn't smart, experienced or accurate. He is. He couldn't do it before because of his arm, which is still his arm.

I take a little umbrage with the idea that he just needed to follow his blocks and it was an automatic touchdown. Watch the play again. One could easily argue with his speed that he would have run in for the TD. But the DB had an angle behind him and was gaining. His cut toward the middle was what broke the last tackle. By then he would have had to blindly cut back to the right to get the escort blocks to the endzone and I don't think Shady or any veteran RB would have done that. By then he was already going to the middle of the field. It's likely that he could have outrun everyone to the endzone without the cutback but not a sure thing at all. He felt someone behind him and cut to the middle to avoid that tackle, which was the right thing to do if you feel it behind. If he didn't do that he may have been tackled from behind.

That article has at least one minor mistake, one omission, and doesn't clear up a big question. And reports an opinion as fact.

I'm saying he is not even a good back-up QB. There are not a lot of great ones, and not a huge amount of good ones, so we could do worse and have lately. Mine is more of a warning sign that Bills fans think that the Jets game and preseason are signs of what we would get from him, and they are ignoring that his limitations are very much still there and if he is forced to play more than a half or a game in the regular season it is much, much more likely to be a disaster than a triumph.

My question has been that it seems obvious he doesn't have to clear waivers to be 11th PS member. But then he can't play. What happens if the Bills WANT to have him available this season and put him on the PS as one of their 10. Not the freebie. Surely he would have to go through waivers. But can they do that is the question. I haven't seen that addressed in articles.

Except I never once even considered Reich in anything I thought or said. I was only talking about Barkley being overrated by Bills fans.

Which means a substantial amount less than nothing.

When you don’t have the arm you don’t have the arm. You can get away with stuff some of the time in real games. He was always a smart qb

True. But they use the metric system. So he’s 27 in our years.

It was really because there isn’t a unit I’m worried about. We could improve in a lot of areas of course. We could use a star player or two. But we are not really weak anywhere. IMO McD is a good coach in a lot of ways but quite weak there.

Great post. Thanks for that. Impossible not to like what Josh looked like

In game coaching decisions.

The OL was unbelievably bad the last couple years. Stats be damned. Josh was under severe pressure all game every game. There were VERY few holes in the run game all year. They were criminally awful and Josh didnt get nearly enough credit for just ignoring, brushing off, shoving away, or juking pass rushers that were sacks against most other Qbs. These guys are different.

I agree with that. For sure. But there is no denying that the Bills were insanely undisciplined last year. There were some season when Rex coached the Jets when they were in the top ten of least penalized teams, and he is likely the least disciplined HC in the last 30-40 years.

Yep. The team is 33% different. The OL was bottom of the league bad and the replacements look a lot different. The WR were bottom of the league bad and the replacements look a lot different. The RB were bottom third of the league and the replacements look a lot different. Josh and Edmunds were young, raw, hugely talented guys, they look a lot different. The OL, WR, ST coaches all seemed lousy and their replacements look a lot different.

Not enough!

Some penalties are undisciplined, some are over-aggressive, some are because you suck and you have to hold because you cannot do it right, some are because you are a scumbag like Vontaze Burfict. The Bills had a ridiculous amount of unforced error penalties because they were undisciplined, from a coach who screams for it.

It depends on what kind of penalties they are.

This will be one of the more interesting elements of the season. For a HC who is SO invested in character and doing things right and getting the right kind of players, the Bills were WILDLY unorganized last year. The motion and Offside and ST penalties were insane. McD also has to get substantially better in his own in-game management. He has been terrible overall in his first two seasons. This year he needs to step up his game, too.

If anything it shows the depth that we do not have.

Exactly! Not to mention the guy with the sprinkles!