Billl

The three big injuries were to Von Miller (34), Jordan Poyer (32), and Micah Hyde (32). It’s never a huge shock when players who are over 30 get hurt. It’s a young man’s game, especially now that there’s an extra week during the regular season and only one bye in the postseason. There’s a strong correlation between age and injury. There’s an element of it, but it can’t all be attributed to bad luck. Buffalo had the oldest roster in the league last season, and they got older this year when they let Edmunds walk while extending Poyer and signing Floyd.

Not completely disagreeing here, but I think you’re taking way too much away from regular season games played in weeks 5 and 6 the past two seasons. 8 rookies played large roles for the Chiefs last season. When a team is built that way, they’re going to struggle greatly early on. If they’re coached and developed well, the team at the end of the season is going to be drastically improved by comparison. Veteran heavy teams like the Bills are sort of the opposite. They enter the season essentially a finished product, but with older players you have a larger risk of them wearing down as the season progresses. The Bills in week 1 were a superior team to what they were in the postseason. The opposite is true of teams like Kansas City and Cincinnati. McDermott’s biggest need for improvement IMO is to figure out how to get the team to peak at the right time.

With Von and Hyde out and Poyer and White reduced to shells of their former selves by the postseason, there was nobody on the Bills defense that Kansas City had to worry about. When gameplanning, sometimes you have to look at the opponent’s strengths and work around them. That wasn’t the case for the Bills. Kansas City could have designed their offensive strategy based 100% on what the Chiefs do best and given zero consideration to the notion that a single player could dominate them and ruin the plan. Guys like Milano and Rousseau are good players, but they aren’t game wreckers like Von, and with a depleted secondary on top of Von’s absence, elite offenses could do whatever they wanted.

I guess the shorter version of this is that you can draft BPA and you can draft for need, and both are valid strategies. But if you draft for need, which Beane 10,000% does, you’d better get them on the field sooner rather than later because they’re, by definition, not blocked by an entrenched player.

That would make Kincaid a top 5 player in the league. Pretty good return for the 25th pick in the draft.

Sure he can. He can collateralize the franchise in order to obtain a loan if necessary. Franchises have exploded in value, so he's got billions in equity he can tap into.

There's some merit to this, but it's a reflection of a poor strategy. At some point, you've got to be winning to let high priced veterans go and trust your draft picks. Rookie contracts are incredibly valuable assets.

Those people are wrong. Herbert doesn't belong in the same conversation as Josh.

He's a DT, not a DE, but those are both incredibly important positions that absolutely move the needle in terms of wins and losses. Kansas City has exactly one defensive player with a big contract, and it's Chris Jones, a DT. Their formula isn't the "stars and scrubs" model that so many here talk about. It's superstars and draft. You can afford to pay massive contracts to superstar players if you're able to get excess value elsewhere. One of the biggest differences between the Bills and the Chiefs is that the Chiefs have a ton of players whose production far exceeds their contracts. The Bills have Gregg Rousseau, and that's about it. Beane has got to start finding players in the draft who can be difference makers who can give you multiple seasons of production under their rookie contracts. It's far and away his biggest weakness as a GM. Justin Herbert ain't that guy. He's Phillip Rivers, Dak, Cousins, etc. He's always going to tease you into thinking he's elite, but I don't think he's ever going to take that final step.

I really don’t see him not getting extended. He’s the only defensive player on the team making any money, so it’s pretty easy to pay him. Justin Reid is the next highest paid, and he’ll be gone after this season. They drafted 6 players last season who will either start or get a large amount of playing time on defense this year which gives them a ton of cap flexibility.

Three years into their careers, you could have said the same thing about Baker versus Josh. The reality is that Ed is what he is…a pretty good but unremarkable DT. There’s been zero indication that he has some heretofore untapped level of ability to be a dominant player, though. There’s nothing wrong with that. He’s going to have a long career in Buffalo, and he’ll be well regarded by the Bills Mafia 20 years from now and mostly forgotten by everyone else. Quinnen Williams is a 25 year old emerging superstar that opposing DCs have to game plan around. He got paid 40% more than Oliver, but he’s twice the player. You know what’s more concerning than breaking out in a 4th season? Having 4 years and never breaking out.

Very shrewd of Beane to avoid drafting defensive linemen who will command large second contracts. No idea why this needs to be said every time a great player gets a big contract, but teams don't get into salary cap hell due to paying superstars big money. They do it by overpaying mediocre players.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/03/06/broncos-von-miller-investigation-colorado/

How in the world does Philip Rivers have more of a claim?

…to say nothing of the fact that QBs who run still take the same hits in the pocket. They just take additional hits when they run. It’s like people forget that fact of life. Plus injuries are cumulative. It’s not like Cam’s career went to hell over one specific hit. He absorbed years of punishment that eventually caught up with him. At what age do QBs stop getting injured from hits they take when running?

Josh is the better player. I’m not disputing that. But they’re very similar, and the talent level is FAR closer than most on here are giving Cam credit for. If Josh were to take a serious injury this season that impacted him for the rest of his career, they’d be remembered nearly identically other than Cam has an MVP and played in a Super Bowl. Check out the first minute of this video if you’ve forgotten just how amazing peak Cam really was.

So the Dolphins are a joke because their QB is injury prone. By the end of last season, the Bills were without Von Miller and Micah Hyde while Josh Allen, Jordan Poyer, and Tre White were all limited due to injuries. Should I assume that’s completely different and the Bills should all be expected to bounce back because reasons?

It’s a little ironic that so many people seem to think it’s an insult to compare Josh to Cam simply because their memories of Cam are shaped by seeing him play for several seasons after cumulative punishment turned him into a shell of his former self. He was on a HOF trajectory at Josh’s age.

The Dolphins have a solid roster, and Tua can play when he’s healthy. That team is no joke.

So you think the Dolphins had a one year window, and that’s it? Tua’s still on his rookie contract. So is Waddle. Tyreek will be on the second year of his contract, and they just signed Jalen Ramsey.

Sent them some money last night and immediately started getting blown up by spammers asking for money. It’s amazing how scammers never miss a trick. (Not these people but those who stalk donor lists.)

That is just categorically wrong. Allen wasn’t forced anywhere, and it certainly wouldn’t have been left if caused by a missed block by his LG. He had a reasonably clean pocket, as good as you’re going to get on a third and medium in the postseason, and he allowed himself to get mildly interefered with by Saffold and his man. He was bumped, certainly not clobbered. If he’d have either thrown the ball to Diggs on time or shown any pocket presence whatsoever, it would have been a huge play. It was an uncharacteristically terrible play by Josh at a really inopportune time. It’s okay to admit what everyone in the world saw. Even great QBs make mistakes. He’ll learn from it. What he needs to do is tell Stef that if he ever shows him up like that again he’ll smack the eff out of him in the locker room after the game. I’m going to catch hell for saying this on here, but it’s reality.

The week 18 Bills vs Dolphins game is a win or go home scenario for both teams.

I don’t remember ever seeing him called that. As a Chiefs fan, I’ve never thought of him as a dirty player.