DCofNC

What!? Why?

I’ll preface this with saying, I hope I’m super wrong and have to go shoot an actual crow to eat. Shakir is not likely to suddenly become Andre Reed. He will be lucky to reach Cole Beasley/John Brown levels of success. If he manages to just eat up Davis’ catches and 20% of Diggs, that would be a HUGE success. On the MOST optimistic thought I can come up with, if he gets 85 catches for ~1000 yards, he’s had a remarkable year. Kincaid is going to come down to how they use him. Is he really just going to be a WR or are they going to leave him in to block half the time? 100 catches is a BIG task, averaging about 6 a game. Can he? Absolutely. But don’t forget they intend to pass less, run more, and have Knox to eat up 40ish TE catches. If they cut Kincaid loose and let him serve as a giant slot, cool, he can get 100. If he does that, it eats up the touches for Shakir. The question is going to become, how will they keep teams from jamming the box and taking away everything they want to do. There is zero threat to take the top off. So that task may be left to Shakir. Samuel has speed, but he’s also not typically a deep route guy, Hamler is no lock to make the roster, nor is Isabella, MVS, or anyone else with fear inducing speed. Coleman and Hollins basically are possession guys, all working in the same presumed zones as Kincaid/Knox. I’m pretty confident Brady is smarter than I am and has a plan for this, but everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. So let’s hope it is a good one.

To me both Herbert and Lawrence lack the “it” factor, tremendously talented athletes, but I just don’t believe they love the game and have a burning passion for it. Are they competitors? Absolutely. I think they are closer to Luck than Manning though. This is their job, not their life. The difference watching Mahomes, Allen, Burrow, Brady etc is/was Football is everything. They may say all the right things, but are they living it? I venture to say no. It may only be 1% different, but passion matters.

How anyone has Herbert that high baffles me.

This is a little of what the Patriots did for years, in the idea of evaluating the trends and going directly against them in order to exploit the weakness and create opportunities that others couldn’t counter. In a way, I REALLY like it. I actually believe it COULD work because of Allen. When you have a QB that CAN do anything, it keeps teams honest. The reason it could absolutely fail miserably is Allen. He wants the big play, he’s shown a real lack of ability to settle for the easy stuff, especially when they are down and when he’s being coached to do it, he almost looked disinterested at times. If they set him up, kind of the way Reid has with Mahomes, where he doesn’t have to take a ton of shot plays, BUT still lets him freewheel it a little bit and be creative, I think Josh can thrive. That said, how long before he feels compelled to take over and starts making bone head plays? That’s the real risk here. Obviously not. The Chiefs have shown the way you win with a highly paid QB. You MUST draft well, your defense MUST show up when it matters and your QB MUST be darn near perfect to win. Thus far, only Allen being darn near perfect has happened when it mattered. Allen put the team in position to win against the Chiefs in the playoffs twice and the team let it go. Some of that is coaching, some of that is poor drafting( not finding any truly impact players) in the early rounds, which has left the team incapable of making that one play they need. They let Mahomes march down in 13 seconds and Jones hit Allen enough to stop a TD when they needed it, resulting in the missed kick.

The real deal here is, nothing matters until the games count. Keon getting open against vanilla zones is a positive sign, at least he’s seeing those areas and he’s not getting jammed up at the line. I don’t know what to make of this pick, on one hand, I like the idea of a bigger bodied guy with athleticism to go up and take the ball, I’m not super worried about him being 1/10th of a second slow in a straight line, track contest, it is what it is. I hope he turns into a Brandon Marshall/ Anquon Boldin type of guy that’s just impossible for defenders to stop. On the other hand, I feel like this team really needed a guy to take the top off the D and if they were hell bent on a big bodied guy, they could have approached the draft differently, his skill set typically goes later in a draft, see Gabe Davis, Baker this year etc. I’m not saying he is the exact same as those guys, time will tell. I would have preferred to go with the elite traits early and settled to a possession guy later. Raw skill wise, Worthy looked like the pick, I love what Mitchell brings too, so there were others that I feel might have been the better choice where they drafted. I hope I’m dead wrong, he turns into an absolute monster and can’t be stopped.

Sounds painfully accurate. Really time for a new regime, no more wasting Allen.

Dream on.

Fair as well. Allen is the saving grace for the entire franchise. Could you imagine if he had been gone or they had gone for anyone besides Jackson in that draft? We’d still be routing for anything better than last place. To that end, I give them credit, they got a generational talent at 7. Now they need to pair the franchise QB with anybody else that can genuinely make a difference. When we look at the Chiefs, even if we say Allen and Mahomes are even (they aren’t), you still see them pairing Mahomes with Kelce, Jones, and spending a lot of draft capital on WRs/ weapons in general to help him. They have found elite talent, while drafting later than the Bills, so even that excuse is out the window. Until then, they won’t overtake the Chiefs and ultimately, none of these “solid” rosters will make any difference when you are watching the SB from home.

I have to agree with your assessment, as much as I don’t want to. I hope Coleman turns out to be an animal and does so quickly because early on, it sure looks like we let a young Desean Jackson pass us by. What’s more concerning is knowing the Bills have already traded the rights to Maholmes and Justin Jefferson, so their evaluation/decision making is ABSOLUTELY fair to question. To me, this follows the Beane mold of locking on a specific position and drafting it, damned of all the other options. He wanted an X and he got an X. He locked in on Kincaid last year, I like Kincaid, but LaPorta is a complete TE that out performed Kincaid at the one dimension he offers, so it can’t be said he’s not a pass catcher. He clearly locked in on/got obsessed with Ed Oliver, and clearly wasn’t going to let a CB get away when he took Elam. These are just not good moves and what’s worse is the compounding effect they have. This pick lead to trading a 3rd rounder to get a CB to play in front of Elam, which then lead to trading Worthy to the Chiefs so he could get the 3rd back. He got obsessed with pass rushers and forced 2 picks in a row with Groot, who is an average DE and then Boogie who I’m not even sure is still in the league. All because he’s drafting for needs instead of looking for the best talent available. Not having a pass rush made him force the Von move, which is screwing the cap, having EO already stopped him from taking the best talent in the Groot draft, etc. It’s all compounding. This team has 1 elite player and no cap room and it’s ALL ON BEANE. It’s a “good” roster, but it’s not good enough to get over the hump. It doesn’t even have us as the clear favorite in our own division.

This to me is the ENTIRE point. Beane without Allen is already fired. Because of Allen, he’s given a lot of grace. What only a few actually know is, who did he really want in that QB class? He was lucky it fell the way it did because had Allen gone earlier, in a draft where the Giants REALLY screwed the pooch, he’d be out of a job. If Allen really was his target all along, great for him, but all we really know is he wanted him over Rosen and Lamar. He’s failed to draft any elite talent aside from Allen in his entire tenure. Capable guys? Sure. Quality players? Yeah. Elite? Nothing.

Should be by the end of week 4. No they didn’t.

Exactly, from what I’ve seen, I don’t really want either of them, but at very least MT has had a little success in the league and Lance has not.

The minute a starter goes down for a contender, he’s getting called and he’s absolutely going to be the best available. He’s past his prime, but he’s still a mid to low level starter, capable enough to get you to the playoffs.

What on earth are you watching to think Lance is more than hot garbage? The guy sucks, so does MT. They are back-ups for a reason. Lance is the #3 to a leprechaun, and Rush is CLEARLY better than him. Let Dallas tank themselves if they are banking on Lance. This team is all on JA, if he’s out, none of it matters anyway. This offense is a joke without Allen, it doesn’t matter what back-up you put out there, there’s no real talent to work with, it’s not going to be good.

La Porta is a FAR more complete TE that out produced Kincaid all year, so how is he NOT better? Oh and was taken well later. Rousseau was a solid pick, shouldn’t have been drafting DE when the position was dried up, Barramore was there for the taking, but you can have this one. You answered your own question for Edmunds. Tre wasn’t his pick, so it doesn’t matter now does it? And yet again, you claim Beane to be a Wizard, but misses guys that went later.. So it appears you just don’t like my opinion, because facts ruin your story.

That’s exactly ONE time he got the best player available at the position he chose to draft, forget all the others available to take, in all his drafts. Also Tre White is Whaley.

I have them as a dark horse SB contender.

Cousins is a top 10 QB and they got a guy they think can be one, I have no issue with it. Cousins is 10x anything we had here between JA and Kelly.

This is one thing I really like about what they have done, they built a team that can score with anyone in perfect conditions (well, ok, they have JA17), but they also added big bodies to try to win some physical battles in Dec/Jan. They saw a problem and attempted to fix it? I’ll take that.

Good time to be a Falcons fan, they are all in.

Look, the stats are what they are, BUT who’s to say another guy wouldn’t have been just as good, if not better. RBs have been plugged into systems and succeeded for stints for many teams, over many years. The most famous being the Broncos, making everyone and their brother look good. Cook is pretty fast, but it’s all he brings. I would argue, Ty Johnson would be just as successful and possibly more reliable than Cook. So long as Davis gets over the fumble issue, he will over take Cook as the primary guy, pretty quickly and Johnson may be the primary back-up. NFL is Not For Long when you can’t do the basics. He sucks at pass blocking, can’t be relied on to catch and isn’t a strong inside runner. Davis does all of it, Samuel can do everything Cook does and Johnson is just as fast, just slightly less bounce to him. Cook may find himself the odd man out, pretty quickly this year.

I’m guessing we will be shopping for a kicker at cut down time. Bass can’t be making 2/3 of his kicks and missing the distance you really need to have in the bag, especially when that’s already cost you playoff games.

I mean that was basically the scouting report coming out and why Zamir White was ahead of him in college.. but Beane outsmarted everyone and got Kamara .02.

He sucked, had he been a 5th round pick he’d probably be looking for a camp invite, his potential seems to keep people waiting for him to be more than he is.