Billy Claude

You are most probably right about Matt Breida and Duke Johnson -- they were definitely way past their prime and they were all meant to be third down backs (including Hines). However, TJ Yeldon was only 25 when he signed with the Bills and had 55 receptions for the Jaguars the previous season. Once he joined the Bills, he disappeared. He was only active for 6 games and had 13 receptions his first year with the Bills. Instead they chose to run Frank Gore into the line at a blistering 3.6 yards per carry. I never understood why Yeldon wasn't given more of an opportunity. Beane also tried to sign JD McKissic for a decent amount of money. The Bills were lucky the deal fell through. I doubt he would have been used anymore than Hines was.

This is just a long line of disconnect between Beane and the coaches regarding pass catching running backs. Pretty much from when he started in Buffalo, Beane has been signing guys who are supposed to be receiving options out of the backfield (TJ Yeldon, Matt Breida, Duke Johnson, Nyheim Hines) who the OC then refuses to use.

They really need to revive the "Da Bears" SNL sketch with Josh Allen and the Bills Mafia. Who would win the Super Bowl if Josh Allen was forced to play with only 10 on offense but had Andy Reid calling the plays? Josh Allen of course. He would win with nine if one of them was Travis Kelce. Would Josh Allen win the Super Bowl if every other person (players, coaches, front office, M&O folks, ticket sellers, etc.) in the Bills organization were not totally incompetent? Of course, Josh Allen would win, just replace Sean McDermott by a random fan. Is every turnover Josh Allen ever had the fault of his receivers? Yes, of course, even the fumbles, and it turns out that turnovers, at least for Josh Allen, are actually good things.

It was hardly "by far", the Bills benefited from one less accepted DPI than the 49ers and the Saints. If you include DPIs that were not accepted then the Bills had one more DPI in favor than the 49ers and the Saints. I agree that the WR room plays a role in the numbers but clearly a lot of other factors go into play and I doubt that the lack of speed is that large a factor. No one would say the 49ers had a bad WR room or lack speed. The "by far" numbers is for the Jaguars. They benefited from 19 DPIs (3 more than the next team) and also had only one DPI against (3 less than the next team). https://www.nflpenalties.com/penalty/defensive-pass-interference?year=2023

Right, its not the yards that matter, its the automatic first downs from defensive holding that matters. I have to think Kelce is a large reason for this -- and no, its not a Taylor Swift effect -- KC has been leading the league in benefitting from defensive holding every season since 2021.

It was low but they came up with a really strange cutoff to make it look as bad as possible. I would wonder what the ranking would be historically if they chose the cutoff to be 3000 routes run instead of 3200. The Bills weren't even the lowest number of accepted DH + DPI beneficiaries last season (from NFLpenalties.com): New England 8 (6 DPI + 2 DH) New Orleans 9 (4 DPI + 5 DH) Chicago 9 (5 DPI + 4 DH) Las Vegas 10 (9 DPI + 1 DH) Buffalo 10 (3 DPI + 7 DH) Miami 11 (6 DPI + 5 DH) Of course this is partly because New England and Chicago barely passed, However, even on a per pass basis the Bills would only be 2nd lowest behind New Orleans.

The time is in the link given in the 2nd post in this thread. It has a picture of the police report which has the time on it.

OK, you're correct about his XP rate being good. I was basing my statement on missing one or two XP to be at league average based on the 96% conversion rate last season but it was only 94.2% over the four seasons that Bass has been around. Bass XP conversion rate hasn't been extraordinary in any particular season (#10 in 2020, #9 in 2021, #15 in 2022, #10 in 2023) but he has been very consistent. He has the third highest XP conversion rate among active kickers behind Justin Tucker and Chase McLaughlin.

That Jones was sacked at about the same rate as UDFA Tommy Devito is not a good look, especially as Devito was blitzed more and had a more make-shift line to deal with.

Its not only how long he holds the ball on average, but also how often he goes to the hot route so that there is no chance that the defense can get pressure on him. I get the feeling that when he sees a blitz coming, rather than going to the hot route like most QBs, his first inclination is to see it as an opportunity to scramble out of it and make a play downfield agains the reduce coverage. This is partly because he gets blitz a lot, about 30% of the time versus 20% for the league leaders like Purdy, Mahomes, and Tua which is also partly because defenses know he doesn't go to his hot reads very ofien.

XP percentages are most likely not very statistically meaningful even over 4 years since one or two more missed XP would change the percentage from very good to average, this is demonstrated by Bass' XP percentage in the playoffs which at just under 90% is very bad. They definitely should have some alternatives that they can go to quickly if issues continue in training camp or during the season.

Giants OL was definitely bad but a significant factor was DeVito and Jones: Jones: 1 sack out of every 6.3 dropbacks (att+sacks) Taylor: 1 out of 11.6 DeVito: 1 out of 5.8 Giants: 1 out of 7.2 -- essentially Rob Johnson numbers (1 out of 6.6) For comparision Allen: 1 out of 25.1 Mahomes: 1 out of 23.1 2023 league average: 1 out of 14.4

As this thread is pretty much off track .... Probably an unpopular opinion but I regard deflategate as no big deal. The harshness of the punishment was mainly due to the justified criticism of Goodell's handling of the Patriots' video cheating. Any other team and it would have been a one game suspension at most and more likely just a fine.

I don't see the similarity between Douglas and Beane. Douglas has used 10 out of his 14 first two day draft choices on the offense, including 4 OL (3 in the first round) and 4 WR. His bigger FA signings has also been primarily OL and WR. He just hasn't been very good at it, though he had a great draft 3 years ago. Of course it is a lot easier to draft well if you have three first rounders including two picks in the top ten. Douglas also has had a lot more out and out busts than Beane has. The similarity you can argue between Douglas and Beane is that they both seem to put more emphasis on traits than on college production.

Hopefully it was just the rookie wall for Torrence and certainly you expect to him to get better with experience. As for Morse, I think I value his leadership and experience than most fans on the board.

To me there is a good chance the Bills' offensive line will take a serious step back this coming season. The reasons have been mentioned by others many times: (1) The Bills are downgrading at left guard from McGovern to David Edwards. (2) Folks like to belittle Morse's contributions but he was still a decent NFL starter and will most likely will be the starter at Jacksonville this season. There's a lot more to playing center than being bigger and stronger. Throwing a guy in who only played center during his sophomore year in college is seriously rolling the dice. (3) Torrence's play declined at the end of last season. Either Torrence hitted the rookie wall or NFL defenses figured him out. Him and Kromer will need to adjust. (4) A large part of oline's success least season was due to that it was injury free. This is unlikely to happen again. Without Bates, the depth is either extremly inexperienced (van Demark, Anderson, and Pran-Granger have played in 2, 0, and 0 NFL games) or most likely washed up (Collins). Agree but it is also up to the QB to recognize the blitz pre-snap and go to the hot read to discourage blitzing. The Bills rarely do this.

Pretty sure Rodgers has been at every OTA which was what was so surprising about him missing the mandatory.

Some other poster said that the NBA lost a lawsuit that required NBA to offer a single team option but did not specify how much they could charge for it.

Don't get your hopes up on the cheaper price part. The NBA has a single team access for League Pass. $14.99 per month for the entire league, $13.99 per month if you just want one team.

Nice deflection. You get called out for saying Allen gets blitz a lot because the oline stinks and then bring up an entirely irrelevant point. First as it turns out Allen doesn't actually get blitz an extremely high percentage of time. He ranks high in number of times he is blitzed because he passes a lot. He is blitzed on 30.2% of dropbacks where dropbacks are counted as attempts + sacks. This turns out to rank 11th among qualifying qbs, so above average but clearly in the main portion of the bell curve. Jordan Love leads at 35.3% while Brock Purdy is just below Allen at 30.1%. Second there is little correlation between how good an oline is and whether the opponents blitzs a lot. Lamar Jackson (34.2%), Jared Goff (33.5%), Jalen Hurts (32.2%) and Matthew Stafford (31.2%) were all blitz at a higher rate than Allen and I think most people would agree that those QBs had good olines protecting them. OTOH, Zach Wilson (27.3%), the Giants QBS (28.2%) and Kyler Murray (25.5%) all were blitzed at a lower rate than Allen. Again, I think most people would agree that the Jets, Giants and Cardinals had some of the worse olines in the league last season. The QBs blitzed at the lowest rate were Burrow (21.3%), Mahomes (21.2%), and Tagovailoa (19.7%). This is just another indication that blitz percentage is primarily a QB/OC stat rather than an oline stat. I would definitely like to see the blitz percentage on Allen be a lot closer to Mahomes but that is up to Allen and Brady and not a reflection of the quality of the oline.

If Allen took the hot read he wouldn't need to scramble so much and eventually there will be a lot less blitzing. Is there correlation between a high blitz rate and quality of the oline? If the oline was really bad, why bother blitzing at all -- you can get there without it.

27 catches on 75 targets and jumping out of a window naked in between seasons are some of the reasons people didn't expect a lot from him. The folks who expected anything significant from Zay Jones in his 2nd year are the same people assume that Shakir will be all pro this season.

I think what the high blitz percentage and high air yards per attempt really implies is that Allen doesn't audible into a hot route very often and that he really should be doing a lot more of it.

If you weren't only looking at expectations and where they ended up, no one was expecting much from Zay Jones his second year after his 35% catch percentage his rookie year.

I think we just have to disagree with your assessment of the last three games. In my opinion offense looked very good both against the Steelers and the Dolphins They also looked pretty decent against the #2 defense in the NFL against the Chiefs. This is just an opinion so I do not contest your right to have yours.