FireChans

The problem is certainly not with the retentions on their face. I would say that easily 90% of this board agrees that Benford’s extension was a good deal for Buffalo. Their issue is that it’s being spun as we could only sign the PED crew and Josh Palmer because we HAD to pay Benford, Bernard etc etc. Which is not only not true, it makes those extensions seem worse if that was the cost associated with them.

DK Metcalf. Do you remember Josh going 9 for 30 against the Texans?

Sure but if they view it that way now they should sell high now. Thats the point. You don’t want to be trading Cook in august.

Nothing and no one is a lock to make clutch plays. Josh Allen isn’t a lock to make clutch plays, but I would take him over the field, wouldn’t you? Doesn’t that make him the next best thing? I find this take very odd tbh. Do you have a method for “locks” to make clutch plays? Or a method to improve our luck? If so, can you please tell One Bills Drive before I die?

Nothing guarantees you a playoff berth much less a playoff win. like @Dr. Who said, you can’t control for luck, so what are you supposed to do? the answer is do your best to make luck irrelevant. Or the refs irrelevant. Or injuries irrelevant.

Problem with this strategy is that if Cook hits FA and gets a big deal, he may contribute a 3rd or 4th in a comp pick. Does it make sense to sell him during a hold out for 2 fifth’s? one of the einstein’s, either @Einstein's Dog or @Einstein is right. If Beane thinks this is heading to a hold out, get rid of him now.

None of those players were FAs haha. Probably 90% of the money spent by Beane this offseason was keeping pieces of that 2024 roster through 2026 and beyond. Not improving the 2025 roster. I like the Benford deal. I’m ambivalent on the Bernard deal. I don’t like the Rousseau deal. I like the Shakir deal. I think if you told the board heading into FA that our big offseason moves were going to be big money extensions to 4 existing players, a moderate overpay for Josh Palmer, a one year deal for Joey Boss and then rotation guys, it would be received with massive disappointment tbh.

Very interesting take when you think the difference in the game was making a play or two on offense or defense. I personally believe that good players make more plays than bad players and elite players make more plays than good players.

Lmao the fantasy football forum. Very funny. See you in October when we have to desperately try to find an answer at WR again. Fair enough, but my counter would be that it’s unlikely that a WR significantly better than Metcalf becomes available for anything other than 2 1sts starting price, which most would likely say is far too much to pay.

Apparently yes. Asking for any improvement on the offensive side of the ball is not allowed. We must draft 10 defensive players.

The 2024 offense scored less PPG than the 2020 offense.

He sucks

Which basically does not affect his 2025 cap at all. Again, will likely not affect his 2025 cap at all (if they even choose to extend him) But while there is not a real “choice” between re-signing those players and bringing in new players, it’s framed that way. Sounds better than “we are just running back the same team last year with a different old, often hurt, possibly washed EDGE,” I suppose.

Have we ever had a player worthy of using the tag? Maybe Edmunds but it sounded like they were out on him before that

So who cares if Mack Hollins tier players have 100 yards less each if the offense is better? Are we working for Mack’s agent? Josh Allen played the best football of his career from start to finish last year. Surrounded by a lesser supporting cast. That’s why he won MVP despite not having mouth dropping passing numbers. Obviously I’m not arguing the 2024 offense wasn’t effective. I’m arguing two points: the 2024 offense being great doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t improve the offense expecting Josh Allen to play perfectly every year is not a good strategy Mahomes’ 2022 with lesser weapons than he was used was one of the all time great seasons by a QB ever. He was a one man show that learned to best cover 2 and be patient without Tyreek. His 2023 and 2024 were honestly awful comparatively. That’s what I would like to avoid. And sure they were in the SB both years but somehow our defense can never stop a nosebleed vs them. That’s the point. sure improve the defense. Cool. No problems at all. But when there’s no big fish to chase on defense, but there is on offense, don’t let good be the enemy of great. The 2024 team scored a lot of points because they played an extra game and the defense turned it over a lot. the 2020 offense had more PPG and more total yards.

A bad fit unless he significantly progresses

Respectfully, if you still think that after what we saw last season, I think you missed the point. We played this game last offseason. Folks tried to bar napkin the math of how Josh could easily throw for 4000+ yards just spreading the targets around to non-Diggs players. Of course, that’s not reality, because lesser players don’t get open as much, they don’t have favorable matchups as much, and they aren’t the #1 option on as many plays. Khalil Shakir saw his targets more than DOUBLE between 2023 and 2024. He went from 45 to 100. He only had 200 more yards on much worse efficiency. If we had Jamar Chase getting those 55 targets, would we get more or less than 200 yards? Obviously more. Here’s another example. The 2019 Bills passed the ball 14 more times than the 2018 Bills. But they had almost 400 yards more of passing offense. Why? Because of the quality of the receiving targets improved. Sure, is it not exactly add a 1700 yard receiver and you get exactly 1700 yards more of offense? Yes. Would it considerably improve the offensive production? Of course it would. Would it make the offense 800 yards WORSE like @Ed_Formerly_of_Roch said? Of course it wouldn’t and I really question the acumen of anyone who believes that. Sorry but we have the data already. the Bills offenses from 2020 - 2023 with a #1 WR had more yards than the 2024 Bills offense. They would never be 600-800 yards worse by adding a #1 WR. That’s crazy talk.

Yes. Some folks really try to make this “we couldn’t have upgraded at WR, we need to spend another 5th round pick on CB” The bottom line is heading into FA, there were 4 major difference makers rumoured to be available. Garrett, Metcalf, Higgins and Hendrickson. we had lots of debates over who was a better pick, offense vs defense etc. Which is totally fine because there is opportunity cost. But now we know that only 1 was available, and he was available for a second round pick. I can accept “I would rather give up 2 1sts for Garrett than 1 2nd for DK.” I cannot accept “I would rather draft DT8 or CB7 or S4 with that second round pick instead of having DK.” Can’t do it. Won’t do it.

Josh Allen threw the ball almost 100 times fewer than he did in 2020, and almost 160 times fewer than 2021. He had around 800 less passing yards than those two seasons. The Bills offense was 10th in yards in 2024, after being 4rh, 2nd, 5th, and 2nd. So no, I don’t think adding Jamar Chase brings the offense down 800 yards less. That’s actually nuts.

Yawn. We will comfortably win the AFCE again.

It took the best year of Josh’s career and a true MVP performance to have our offense performing that well. Now maybe this is the new Josh Allen and he continues to have a basically perfect season every year, but the history of the NFL says that is not so. The truly elite QB’s over the course of their career fluctuate year to year. You don’t have to just look at Mahomes (even though he is a great example of how he can basically be a 1 man offense in 2022 and then a struggle immediately). Guys like Peyton, Brady, etc all saw their year to year performances and numbers fluctuate. So while the 2024 Bills offense was on the whole quite excellent, I still think we saw some chinks in the armor, particularly when Baltimore and Houston stifled our offenses with a neutralized slot threat. One general rule in the NFL is if you aren’t getting better, you are getting worse. The moral of the story of the 2025 offense shouldn’t be “well we were great last year, no need to make changes.” Just like it shouldn’t have been that in 2024 or 2023 or 2022 or 2021 or 2020. We should aggressively attack our weaknesses whenever possible. And with Allen being the force multiplier he is, I can’t think of a better way to attack our weaknesses than fill in a glaring need at boundary WR. We have a QB capable of putting up Star Wars numbers in his prime, and while that shouldn’t be the only objective, adding a star or star adjacent WR may be the difference between another 1000 yards of offense and handful of TDs which would directly lead to wins.

“Reaching” would be ignoring the 31M we paid to ship him out of town lol

Thread is approaching “Patrick Mahomes struggling in camp” level of salt.

The Bills only acquired Cooper, Coleman, Palmer and Mack Hollins to start on the boundary instead of Shakir to keep defenses guessing.

It’s funny you bring up 2015. The point about RBs is not that you can’t get someone special. It’s that they are just bad investments. There have been a lot of special backs since 2015. But they rise and fall so fast. The rule i have is that is based on ROI. If this guy is a perennial ProBowl or fringe annual AP type player, does he ever leave the building? QB, EDGE, WR, OT, CB the answer is approaching 100% no. Put another way, James Cook is a very nice player. If he was an equivalent very nice EDGE or WR, he’d already have a $120M contract rather than debating if he should be traded now or not. That’s the point. Your draft picks are investments and your investments should have the highest upside whenever possible. When talking about generational running backs there are maybe 3 right now, all drafted 7+ years ago, all playing for different teams than the ones that drafted them. Thats bad business and bad investments. CMC wasn’t even the first RB off the board in his draft. Neither was Henry. There’s really no way to justify taking dudes like that in the first or second round as a practice. It’s talking yourself into exceptions that cause dumb teams like the Giants into taking Saquon over Josh or Lamar or even Darnold.