Florida Bills Fanatic

Many people were not very high on the wide receivers coming out in this most recent draft. In fact, several sources said there were only about 19 players that had solid first round grades. Kincaid was one of those 19. Beane made the move to get what I believe was the last first round rated offensive skill player that was left on the board. He gives the Bills options to create mismatches to exploit. Even if he isn't getting the ball, he will be forcing coverages that allow others to be open. I think Kincaid was a great pick.

You are exactly correct. Kincaid does not really create a dilemma for the defense until he is a threat to throw a devastating run block on a slot corner that is on the field to cover him. If he can consistently do that, you will see teams try to cover him with LB's. Most LB's on Kincaid are over matched in pass coverage.

Until we hear an official report that details his injury, I'm not ready to panic over this. Something as simple as a pulled muscle would make it very painful to bend to pick up a helmet. The Bills do have some decent options as others have pointed out. I always find it humorous when the "sky is falling crowd" wants to shuffle two or three positions to fill an injury opening or find some yet to be identified free agent. The Bills brought in some new guys this year to improve the depth, flexibility, and talent. Flexibility will allow the team to play the best five linemen (hopefully making the best unit).

I agree with you about this HOF class. It appears to me that they really stretched to elect a couple of these guys. When a guy wasn't the kind of player that affected the opposition's game plan to account for them, the guy probably does not deserve to be in the HOF. Revis and Ware are no brainers. They were both dominating players.

Hacket was terrible in Buffalo and the passing of time will not change that. Payton's comments were spot on but they were not in good taste.

Regardless of what the pundits say, Hurts is not great at tight window throws. Philly management must also recognize this because of their effort to give him receivers that gain significant separation. Other than this average accuracy, he is very good. I think he is number 3 or 4 overall depending on how you view Burrow.

The excessively paid players end up taking money from other players potential earnings. Teams are committed to spend the cap with the unspent portion going over to the next season. When they overspend on a player, that over spent amount is no longer available to pay another guy. Some players end up being underpaid or released as a result. Teams model their economics to build the best overall roster possible with the cap money they have. Teams have also learned that a really good offense does not need to have a highly paid star running back. Saquon and Jacobs are not going to change the narrative no matter what they do or don't do.

Put down the bong and quietly step away from your computer.

Having lived in multiple NFL markets, I have to say that we have had it pretty good in Buffalo. Whether it was Van Miller for the Bills or Ted Darling with the Sabres, I had no complaints. A good PBP guy makes everything about the game and not about him. A lot of the guys really struggle with that.

ESPN and their parent company forgot what made them successful. For ESPN, it was good sports coverage and excellent sports news content. They provide little of that anymore. Somewhere along the line they felt it was their duty to instruct all of us on their view of social morality whether the viewers wanted it or not. People didn't fight them, they merely found a different source of their sports entertainment. As the cost of content from the professional/college sports leagues went up and viewership went down, advertising revenue and cable fees could not keep pace. Their economic model is increasingly unsustainable.

I generally disregard everything coming from ESPN anymore. I do pay attention to various sports book sources and almost all don't have the Bill's in crisis mode as most New York based media do. Many Bills fans read some of these opinion pieces and their hair immediately catches fire. There are really very few inside media sources that have a clue about talent levels of teams. We seem to go through this every summer and at least for the last four years, the sky hasn't fallen. We just need to chill until we actually see the team in some full speed action.

Exactly! When you watch the teams that change leadership frequently, they are an ongoing clown show. It is hard to consistently win in the NFL and these guys have shown the ability to build a good roster and win games to compete for a championship. New GM's and coaches most often want to purge a roster and get their guys which usually leads to a significant rebuild (losing season) There is no guarantee that a new coach and GM would do better than these guys. In fact when you look around the league, many new coaches have not been a significant improvement over the guys they replaced. At best it is a roll of the dice. For the people that want a change, I'd be interested to know who the sure fire improvement replacement candidates would be. When I look around the league at the last few coaching changes, most don't strike me as an improvement ( TB, Carolina, AZ, Chargers, Saints, Minnesota, Browns, Colts, Atlanta )

Towels and ice bags work pretty well in the absence of a more substantial solution. If health and safety is a big concern of the league, they should mandate a solution. I guess someone will have to die from heat stroke before anything changes.

Hopefully he crosses paths with a 4th degree black belt that gives him what he deserves.

I hated the Jim Ritcher pick back in the day. I was sure he would be a complete bust. After 16 years in the NFL, I was totally wrong and reminded of it for 16 years. I have to give honorable mention to Perry Tuttle (thought he would be good and was completely wrong).

People are disregarding the impact that injuries had on the team. The obvious ones were the players that missed games. The less obvious ones were the guys that played through injuries but were significantly less than 100% (Dawkins, Davis, Poyer, Oliver, Jones, Morse, Phillips, and Brown). White at less than 100% impacted everything that they wanted to do on defense. The analysis of the team was a vast over simplification of what the Bills do on defense. If you really watch them closely, they vary spacing on the d-line and alignment of the front 7 in general. They really try to give a similar presnap look on every play but break into different coverages at the snap. People recently have accepted the analysis of Lombardi as being factual. This guy has been a failure and is desperate to hang onto some relevance in the NFL. His take is an opinion with nothing to back it up. Everybody needs to chill out because the Bills still have a great roster, a front office that continues to develop people, and a coaching staff that wins a lot of games.

Your take on this is your right to have but you are wrong in some of your basic assumptions. Floyd had multiple offers and chose Buffalo for less money. Edmunds was not one of the best at his position and the Bears over paid him. If he was that good, a good team with money would have paid him. Your so-called back-up lineman was a starter in Dallas that they wanted to keep but the player wanted to leave. He is a huge upgrade over Saffold. Harris is a better player than Motor. I suggest that you watch some video of Torrence in college and review his stats against SEC teams. The Torrence is a beast. Rapp is a major upgrade of the team's depth at safety. If Beane had done a bad job, I'd be one of the first people on this board to be critical.

Colleen Cowpie spews what his west coast writers create for him. His take on most things is based on relatively superficial research. His take on the Bills' off season is pretty much off the mark. What he neglects to acknowledge is that the 2023 draft class was pretty weak overall and the CAP constrained free agent activity. Beane has taken what was already a really good roster and improved it. He may not have done it like many of us wanted but it is better nonetheless.

Every good defense sets the edge. Containing the edge does not mean that they don't rush the passer but it does mean that the edge guys won't be driving inside and letting the QB escape the pocket to the outside. The idea is to use the outside rush to get the passer or to force the QB to step up into the pocket and collapse it on him. It's the disciplined approach that McD used in Carolina and I expect to see him use it when he is running the defense this year. Freelance pass rushers can give up big plays if they gamble and don't get the QB. Miller is one of the best at controlling the edge while generating pressure on the QB (thus the big contract).

Go back and watch Carolina games during their winning seasons (including super bowl season) and we'll have a good idea of what to expect. Collapsing the pocket from the d-tackles, containing the edge, few free releases for WR's, wide variety in the blitz game, continued rotation on the d-line, more third and long specific personnel grouping substitutions, playing more of the game in the offensive backfield, and corners on an island more often are the things that have been seen from McD in the past.

Some news outlets have it ranked at 15th or 16th highest with the 8th most guaranteed money. With the way that the cap and salaries are escalating, this contract will look like a bargain in a couple of years. Frazier frequently had the guy playing two gap which was a complete misuse of his skill set (probably one of several reasons that Frazier is gone). I'll be interested to see if McD actually uses his speed and quickness to disrupt the offense.

Drops, bad route runner, and had trouble identifying man vs zone coverage. At times, it looked like he didn't know what he was doing on the play. When two receivers ended up being too close together on their routes, McKenzie was usually one of them. Had Crowder not been injured, McKenzie would have been a regular inactive on game day or even cut.

SI has not really been relevant for a number of years. Putting out controversial opinions is the only way they can hope to draw back readers. They are a joke and so are most of their contributors.

How was Beane supposed to know that Jefferson would be this good and that he was even going to be available at pick 27? All of this retrospection of past drafts is a bunch of crap. It's easy to look back on every team's moves and throw rocks. When I look at the roster and cap that Beane inherited and compare it to the roster today, I have to say that he has done an excellent job. Wins and losses tell the story, not results of any one individual draft pick or one free agent signing. Every GM has some hits and misses with some good and bad breaks along the way. We all tend to let players off the hook and blame coaches and GM's, when the reality is that some players choose not to put in the effort to be good at their job.

A couple of weeks ago, I spent some time with a friend of mine that works in the NFL (not the Bills). He had some interesting takes on some of the Bills recent personnel moves. He believes McGovern was a steal and will prove to be a solid player for the Bills. He also could not believe that Torrence fell to the Bills in round two. He compared him to Ruben Brown. He also liked the addition of Sherfield, Harty, and Shorter. Overall, he thought Beane had done an excellent job and that the team was better than the 2022 version. He believes that Hyde and a healthy White are the real difference makers that allow the Bills to do much of what makes their defense very good. He talked a little bit about the AFC East. According to him, the JESTS are much over rated by a New York driven sports media that is desperate for some degree of relevance. He believes that Rodgers is pretty much at the end and they gave up way too much for him for what may turn out to be a one year shot. He thinks Miami will be decent but will continue to struggle with road games. He's not convinced that Tua can remain healthy enough to carry the team for multiple seasons. All he said about NE was that they are a joke. He also said that Frazier was shown the door and that some in the Bills front office wanted him gone after the 13 seconds in KC. After our talk, I felt better about some of the things that Beane had done.