DCOrange

The Josh Allen section is too long IMO to quote the whole thing, but it's the very first section of the article. http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/25518645/rookie-nfl-quarterback-progress-reports-2018-draft-picks-shown-far

Why exactly does he need to be replaced by someone on a one year deal? I don’t think the fact that we have other needs is really all that important to be honest. The point, in my opinion, is that McCoy is a replacement level player at this point and he’s being paid top dollar. We can cut him, sign a cheap alternative, add a rookie (which we should do with or without McCoy), and probably have upgraded the position while having additional savings to spend on other needs.

The obvious answer is no. He’s paid like a top 3 RB. He simply is not that level of player anymore.

That would leave Washington spending roughly $40-50 million per year on bad QB play. I can’t see it. Same reason Jacksonville might be a long shot. Those two teams are destined for rookies IMO.

I would guess 3-4 years and somewhere between 9-11 million per year but that's just a guess on my part. In a normal year I think he'd be more in the $7-9 million range but there's more money to go around this offseason than usual and less WR options in free agency, so I'm guessing it'll inflate his price.

It's based on average target depth. Benjamin and Mike Evans rank in the top 15 in the league this year in terms of how deep their average target is. They certainly aren't the typical archetype of a deep threat, but that's the way the numbers have averaged out this year. Evans just barely snuck into the top 15. There's actually only 6 WRs in the entire league that have received deeper targets on average than Benjamin.

See above

Zay is in a group of 17. And the beauty of this is that the QB play should, in theory, not matter. Having Peterman/Anderson throw off-target passes to Zay aren't being counted here. It's only counted if he has an actual chance to catch the ball. There's definitely some limitations there, as I imagine there's at least a decent degree of subjectiveness in determining what is and isn't catchable. But for example, Zay was targeted 74 times as a rookie but only 47 of them were considered catchable. This year, he's been targeted 78 times and only 63 are considered catchable.

I mentioned this in the article, but it's based on average target depth. So in Foster's case, he's #1 in the league in terms of average target depth, so his peer group is the top 15 deep threats. Same deal with Zay; I put him in the middle of his peer group, so his average target depth on PFF is roughly 12 yards give or take. I then took the 8 above him and the 8 below him to form his peer group. So their respective peer groups are made up of guys that are roughly performing the same role as them. Foster is compared to pure deep threats (though a couple surprising guys like Mike Evans and Kelvin Benjamin are in there too) while Zay is compared to guys that are running more intermediate routes.

The reason I went in the direction that I did is because if I simply took the 15 guys around Zay in terms of PFF ranks: 1. We'd be comparing him to basically the worst WRs in the NFL, and I'm not sure there's all that much value in that 2. We'd be comparing guys that are purely deep threats or purely screen-kinda guys to Zay, who is performing a completely different role. I think comparing Foster to other deep threats and comparing Zay to other all-around WRs makes more sense personally, but to each their own. Yeah, not every pass is caught or dropped. A pass that's heavily contested and isn't caught would be deemed catchable but wouldn't count as a drop.

I did this last year to see how Zay Jones compared to his peers as a rookie and thought that it would be fun to update it for this year. I've also analyzed Robert Foster compared to some of his peers to see how he stacks up (albeit on a small sample size at this point in his career). PlayerProfiler.com is a very cool website, and one of the many things that they do (and what I'm focusing on here) is that they strip out the passes that they believe are "uncatchable", which allows us to see how WRs have performed strictly when they have an actual chance at catching the ball. The results, particularly with Foster, are pretty cool IMO. https://www.buffalorumblings.com/2018/12/12/18137664/zay-jones-amp-robert-foster-advanced-metrics

I think this is easily the best WR class we've had since the Sammy/Odell/Evans class. It doesn't have the top end talent that that class had but I think there's seriously like 20 WRs in this class that project as future starters (obviously they won't all pan out, but the point is there's an absurd amount of depth in this class).

I imagine so with Keenan Allen and Mike Williams already in the fold. Tyrell will probably be looking for a larger role than the one he has with the Chargers and in a weak free agency class, someone will probably pay him a lot of money.

There's almost certainly no #1 WR available via free agency (unless someone is released that we aren't talking about yet). Guys like Quincy Enunwa, Chris Conley, Tyrell Williams, and Adam Humphries are worth pursuing IMO, but none of them appear to be #1 caliber receivers. It seems like the only guy really worth considering in the top 10 of the draft is DK Metcalf, but if it were me personally, I'd just wait until the 2nd-4th round and probably take two guys in that range rather than spending a 1st round pick on a WR; this class is absurdly deep and the guys you can draft in the 2nd-4th are probably just as likely to become good WRs as anyone you'd take in the first round. My personal favorites in that range are N'Keal Harry (if he falls to the 2nd), Deebo Samuel, and Collin Johnson.

That's pretty hilarious that this is published literally one day after I published a similar article in their FanPosts section

Relatively speaking, they haven't done as much work on OLine guys (as far as we know) as they have on other positions, so my hope is that they either plan on investing in free agency there and then maybe 1 or 2 rookies sprinkled in, or they simply feel comfortable scouting OLine on film rather than having to go see them in person.

I would guess #3 is the most likely reasoning, and I hope to hell that it's not #4 lol. Having said that though, as someone that has rooted for the Bucs on the side for most of my life, they were in sort of a similar situation the past couple years and as it turned out, #4 was what they went with. Their O-Line has been pathetic each of the past 4 or 5 years with basically all of their young guys except Ali Marpet underperforming, but the GM opted to make one splash signing (making Ryan Jensen the highest paid center in the NFL) and keep the rest the same, keeping faith that the young guys would ultimately gel. They have not, and Jensen has been horrible on top of that.

Yeah, the relative lack of scouting they’ve done on OLine so far is interesting to me but it could mean one of many things: 1. They’re locked in on a couple particular guys and don’t want to bother scouting the rest 2. They feel confident in their ability to scout OLine on film rather than in person 3. They plan to spend on OLine in free agency as their main way of addressing it 4. Least likely of the bunch...they actually feel good about the OLine and think the young guys will gel with another offseason together.

I put together a pair of 4-round mock drafts for just the Bills picks based on who we’ve been scouting so far this year: https://www.buffalorumblings.com/2018/12/11/18136298/who-the-bills-have-been-scouting-update-featuring-a-4-round-bills

OP and thread title have been updated so that people can easily find the updated article rather than having to scroll to the 3rd page of the thread

Matt Miller has updated his big board and positional rankings, and so I've gone through and updated everything. You can see it all at the link here: https://www.buffalorumblings.com/201...-4-round-billsThe Bills have seemingly expanded their WR scouting quite a bit since the last update, which is a welcome sight to see.My post on BR includes updates at each position as well as two separate 4-round mocks of what the Bills might look to do based on who they've scouted so far. Is it realistic to expect them to have personally gone to games for every prospect that they draft? No, but these mocks should give an idea of the types of players I could see them going for based on who has been scouted so far.

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2810100-2019-nfl-draft-big-board-matt-millers-latest-rankings Matt Miller's latest big board (top 50); also includes top 10-15 at each position.

They were literally one of the worst defenses in the league on a consistent basis when he was there. He's clearly an elite player but by no means was he making a significant impact. Last season, the defense was 29th in points allowed per drive and yards allowed per drive. This year, they're 30th and 29th. There's been almost no drop-off without him

As someone that has watched almost every Bucs game since he was drafted, I concur.

Even if the Raiders had the money, they were a bottom 5 defense three of the four years they had him and were showing zero signs of improvement. It's hard to justify paying him almost $24 million per year when he's not really making any discernible impact on the field for you. I can't say I blame the Raiders at all for taking multiple first round picks and the cap space instead of paying him.