Billl

So…Michael Thomas it is?

Winning 4 MVPs kinda grants you an exception.

WTF are you talking about? Kansas City traded picks 32, 95, and 221. Buffalo traded picks 28, 133, and 248. Do you think the Bills drafted some superstars with the 3rd and 7th round picks they got from Kansas City while the Chiefs just wiped their ass with the 4th and 7th round picks they got in return from Buffalo? LOFL

What does any of this even mean? It’s like you go point by point and make up BS facts about why the Chiefs front office is clueless. Smith is more than an inch taller than Worthy and weighed one pound more at the combine. If anything, his frame is less sturdy. Kansas City’s game hasn’t been throwing the deep ball because they don’t have the weapons despite trying with MVS, Toney, and Hardman. Drafting Worthy is a pretty unambiguous statement that they would like to get back to having that be a credible threat. You also act like Buffalo got a third round pick from KC plus a fifth round pick (that didn’t come from Kansas City) but didn’t send them a fourth round pick in return. And oh by the way, that bad track record of WRs they’ve drafted recently includes a guy who just put up 900 yards and 7 TDs in the regular season before setting the all time rookie record for receiving in the postseason.

Considering those guys combined for over 400 targets, I realize you pulled that number out of your ass. Those are 8 of the top 9 receiving options for next season (the other being the 8th WR taken in the draft) and every single one of them has to exceed last season’s production just to have a satisfactory year. How likely does it seem that this will happen? Just to put this into perspective, Tyreek Hill had 1800 yards and 13 TDs last year. The top 3 receivers for the Bills combined had 1900 yards and 8 TDs. Diggs and Davis had 1900 and 15.

I think it will because I think this entire conversation about the WR room, without taking into account other potential weapons, is a bit silly to be honest. You have a very good young TE in Kincaid and a guy in Knox who has been productive in his career (although his propensity for drops on easy catches drives me crazy). It would be like having a conversation about the Chiefs receiving ability and leaving out Kelce. I also think we'll see Cook and Davis involved in the passing game. Is there a single pass catcher on this roster, regardless of position, that you would feel good about if they put up the same numbers in 2024 as they did in 2023? Samuel: 613 yards, 4 TDs Kincaid: 673/2 Shakir: 611/2 Knox: 186/2 MVS: 315/1 Hollins: 251/0 Claypool: 77/1 Cook: 445/4

WTF is this? Who are these 50 guys could have put up better numbers than Rashee Rice? His last 10 games, he saw 89 targets. He caught 69 passes for 780 yards and 4 TDs. In just those 10 games, he put up as good or better numbers in every category than any pass catcher currently under contract for the Bills put up all season. He did that while being the #2 option on the team. And you know what his team still did after the season? They went out and made their biggest FA pickup a WR. Then they traded up in the first round of the draft to grab another WR.

Why do people keep making this ridiculous statement? This literally never happens. There is not a single person claiming Alex Smith is better than Aaron Rodgers even though there were plenty who ranked them in that order coming out of college. Nobody dismisses Peyton Manning’s accomplishments in favor of Ryan Leaf or Mahomes in favor of Trubisky or Watson or Trevor Lawrence because of Zach Wilson. It’s not a thing. It doesn’t exist. Similarly, nobody is saying Allen isn’t great. He’s almost certainly going to be in the HOF. He’s not judged against “good”. He’s judged against other HOF level talents. There’s a thread on this board where people are proclaiming him to be the greatest dual threat QB of all time. I can see how some would consider that to qualify as “over-rating” him. Josh is a special talent, but he’s not without flaws. When game planning against him, the strategy is pretty clear. You try not to let him kill you with the home run plays. If you eliminate those, you can wait until he gets careless with the ball and then seize on it. Coaches know that they’re going to get a few opportunities to take the ball away and that they have to capitalize on his bad decisions, fumbles, etc. Nobody ever went into a game against Manning or Brady with a strategy of sitting back and waiting for them to do something stupid. Now those guys couldn’t make the huge plays that Josh can, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement in Josh’s game if he can reduce the amount of times he makes bad decisions or neglects to protect the ball.

Not sure what this has to do with the conversation, but they also drafted Pacheco. When you’ve got a 7th rounder who puts up 1200 yards, 9 TDs, and only fumbles once in 250 touches, you ride that horse. You’re right, though. That was an impressive display of drafting. Kid’s been in the league 2 years and is 7-0 as a starter in the postseason with 2 rings. Not bad for the 251st pick in the draft.

But that’s NOT the comparison. Nobody is talking about what the Bills offense will do in 2027 when Keon’s in his 4th season. The conversation revolves around what the WRs will produce in 2024 versus what they produced in 2023. What Coleman produces after he’s had 3-4 years in the league is immaterial.

I never understood why Mike Vrabel didn’t get more targets. He had 10 TDs on 14 career targets. He’s easily the GOAT WR. If they’d have simply thrown him the ball 140 times a season, he’d have 1,400 career TDs which would shatter Jerry Rice’s record of 197.

The difference between the way the Bills season went as far as games 1-12 versus 13-17+ has been way over analyzed. Buffalo was 2-6 in one score games over the first 12 games. They were 4-0 over the final 5. It’s really no more complicated than that. By the end of the season, Buffalo was winning the coin-toss type games they were losing previously.

He’s on the last year of his contract. There’s nothing to restructure. They’d have to give him a long term extension in order to free up money in 2024, and it would be massive.

These aren’t three identical products though. A better (but still terrible) analogy in a similar vein would be that you’re choosing from three paintings at an estate sale. They all look equally nice to you, but the best art dealer in the world is offering you $20 to cut in front of you in line because he thinks one of them is a Picasso. Even if you don’t know which one that is, you’re probably better off declining the $20 and hoping to get lucky. You can’t tell them apart, but you can be pretty sure that if there is an actual masterpiece in the bunch, it’s going to be gone after that art dealer makes his selection. And oh by the way, three more guys got to cut in front of you as well. At this point, you’re hoping that you either get lucky and all of the guys who cut the line make bad choices or that you get really lucky and every painting at the sale turns out to be worth millions. It’s just a bad strategy.

There’s no “maybe” about it. It was 100% his thought process. That isn’t the question. The question is whether or not that’s a good strategy, so the debate starts there. Is it smart to move up from the fourth round to the third round at the expense of letting Kansas City, Dallas, Baltimore, and San Francisco jump in front of you in the first round? I don’t think I’m going too far out on a limb when I say that those are 4 of the absolute best front offices in terms of identifying talent in the draft. That being the case, it seems foolish to settle for whomever was left after those teams picked especially given the fact that Kansas City clearly had a strong opinion, and you knew they were targeting a WR. Personally, I don’t see the upside (moving from a 4th round pick to a third round pick) as being worth the potential downside of handing the team whose dynasty was built via swapping picks to move ahead of Buffalo in the draft. Part of me wonders if this was a response to how the 2023 draft went down when Buffalo traded up from 27 to 25 and took Kincaid. It almost feels like they looked back at that and came away thinking they’d have been better served standing pat or even trading back slightly and taking LaPorta if Kincaid didn’t make it to them.

You really need to just stop with this nonsense. Your WR1 is the guy that is the most common first option in the passing game. If that is a player who lines up out wide, they’ll typically have the other team’s best CB lined up against him if that CB travels. If he plays in the slot, the opposing team has CBs dedicated to certain sides of the field, plays zone, etc., then you’ll commonly see them help by shading a Safety or LB his way. Don’t believe me? Try googling “what is a WR1 in the NFL” and see how far you have to scroll until you find something that agrees with you. I’d suggest blocking out the rest of your evening first.

If the season goes poorly, don’t you think they’ve earned the right to tear it down and try again?

Favre is the closest comparison IMO for Allen. He’s considered an all time great because he won 3 consecutive MVPs (and only 1 Lombardi, BTW). He was also runner up twice and finished 3rd and 4th (15 years after he won his first MVP). In absolute terms, Josh may be better than Favre, but you 100% have to take the era into consideration. There was a long stretch during which he was unquestionably the best player in the league by a wide margin. That matters in the GOAT discussion.

WR1 is a label, not a position. Larry Fitzgerald was a slot receiver for half of his career after Arians arrived in 2013. John Brown didn’t magically become their WR1 when move was made. It was still Fitz.

Before the draft, I thought the team’s biggest needs were WR and Edge in that order. After the draft, their biggest needs were Edge and WR in that order.

Stefon Diggs dropped a ball, so that means Josh beats no responsibility for throwing a terrible pass that would have been an easy pick 6 had it not been knocked away from Sneed by McDuffie. It also wasn’t Josh’s fault for fumbling on the next play, and of course it wasn’t Josh’s fault that he missed an open receiver in the end zone after failing to step into a wide open pocket because every LT in the league should be expected to stonewall Chris Jones 1 on 1. There is zero chance you grade Mahomes on the same curve.

Hollywood Brown seems like the obvious pick there. I don’t see him setting the world on fire, but I think he can deliver somewhere in the neighborhood of 750 yards and 6 TDs. Worthy should be good for 600 yards and 5 TDs or so which would put him right around what Mecole Hardman produced as a rookie. Watson is what he is, a guy who does the little things well but doesn’t provide much in the way of tangible production. I don’t see that ever changing. Theoretically, Rice’s production on a per game basis should increase by roughly the same amount that Kelce’s tapers off. The rest of the WRs are bums, so anything they produce is just gravy. It’s still not deep, but Brown and Worthy should be serious upgrades over MVS and Richie James.

Didn’t Leonard Floyd have 10.5 last year?

Kansas City gained 65 yards via defensive holding calls in 2023, just ahead of Tennessee and Carolina who were obviously also favored by the officials.

I remember when I told my son about Santa Claus not being real. He was like “I’ve known that for years. I just didn’t tell you that because I had so much fun every winter talking to you about it and pretending it was real.” I imagine it’s how kids in WNY feel about the Bills ever winning a Super Bowl.