Beck Water

To your point: Diggs appeared on the Bills injury report Week 10 with an injury "back" after a collision with a security guard when he ran OOB Wk 9. In a rare move for him, he was limited in practice all that week. Gardner decided to pick him up and supplex him after the whistle Wk 11. He was penalized and fined 10k, to which he responded ambiguously "pain" I don't think one has to be a tin-hat conspiracy theorist to think that maybe Gardner knew Diggs had been on the injury report for a back injury the previous week, and maybe causing him some "pain" could aggravate it and knock him out. It's a fact that teams follow their opponents injury report and players go after known injured body parts with extra vigor. It's also a fact that Diggs big drop in productivity followed his Week 9, 6 reception on 7 target 86 yd game against Cincy - after which he showed up on the injury report.

Exactly. There is ample precedent for players, after the season, to report on actual surgery-requiring injuries (Hughes) or that the injury reported bluntly as "ribs" was actually multiple broken bones (Fitzpatrick, Beasley). These may or may not have appeared on the injury report, and if they did appear on the injury report, they may have disappeared more promptly than the typical course of healing for such an injury would suggest. I believe you're one of the guys who has pointed out that Diggs gets assaulted on almost every play. Opponents "accidentally" kick or knee or elbow his head, often while he's down, with no repercussions from the ref. It's why on some "mic'd up" segments you can see other players racing over after he's tackled yelling as they go "HEY HEY HEY HEY I'M HERE I'M HERE I'M HERE!" (Davis in one mic'd up segment). We all saw "Sauce" Gardner viciously supplex Diggs during the Nov. 19 Jets game. It's not hard to believe that at the least, that caused a massive contusion, even if the team (and Diggs) don't consider it significant enough to report.

Right. I pointed this out elsewhere, but it's worth re-stating here. In early 2020, Jerry Hughes posted on social media about having surgery to repair torn ligaments in his wrist which he had played through all 2019 season. He appeared on injury report, but only for "Vet Rest". The NFL investigated whether the Bills had violated their injury reporting policy - and concluded that the Bills had done nothing wrong This is for a documented, acknowledged by the player, honest to god "I was playing with torn wrist ligaments all season long" injury. I think McDermott's actual words were "nothing significant" or something like that. So we all need to calibrate that against the learning that apparently playing through actual torn ligaments requiring surgery is "nothing significant" per the Bills, and the NFL actually agreed with them.

Oh, C'mon. With a 53 man roster, practice squad, 32 teams in the league, and a Win-and-In game that's essentially "Win or Go Home", SURELY we can find something?

You should include the full context There's obviously some weasel words. If the Bills felt Allen's shoulder injury no longer affected his performance (taking him off injury report before Week 17), they're allowed to say "that's what we thought based on practice and the report from our head trainer, but whoops". It's also possible that he got a "ding" early in the game that re-aggrevated it and affected him. On the Diggs thing, I believe McDermott's actual words were something like "no significant injuries". By this time in the season, almost all the players have various dings and bruises. So as long as he's taking every rep in practice and there's no question he's going to play, there are all kinds of weaseling. Remember the NFL concluded the Bills did NOT violate their injury policy when they had Jerry Hughes (their best pass rusher) on injury report only for "Vet Rest" then he got post-season tendon surgery on his wrist and revealed he'd been playing all season with torn wrist ligaments.

Apologies, but I'm not going to wade through the thread to find it. It really doesn't depend upon the "extent to which injury has affected his play lately". No NFL player's agent worth his salt is going to acknowledge a falloff in skill on the part of his player when many other things can legit contribute - offensive scheme, quality of pass protection, usage, inaccurate throws from the QB. Diggs is currently a top-10 receiver in the league for receptions. His agents will argue he can't control how he is being used (all those stupid screens that don't work) or the accuracy of his QB's throws. They're not gonna go with "hey, he's being paid like a #5 but producing like a #15 for yards so sure, we'll take a salary cut we don't have to take".

We already gave up a 3rd rounder for Rasul Douglas. I'm not clear on which that was, but if you're talking comp pick for Edmunds, I don't think a comp pick (>96 in the 3rd round) plus a "mid rounder" gets you from wherever we finish (mid-20's?) to top 12.

Didn't the Bills do something similar in 2021 when they drafted Rousseau in Round 1 and Basham in Round 2? They decided after the season that their #1 priority was to "affect the opposing QB" so they went with a high ceiling/low floor guy Round 1 and doubled down with a guy regarded as more of a solid prospect (higher floor/lower ceiling) in Round 2. Later that decision was highly criticized (by me among others) as neglecting other positions such as OL. The bandwagon on that POV filled up suddenly when Beane raised the white flag and traded Basham to the Giants for along with the swap of a bag of used footballs for a bag of sweaty gym socks. The fact is, top contributors can be found in all rounds - look at Elam (round 1) vs Benford (round 6) so while I agree on investing a high pick and doubling down, I don't think a 1-2 punch is necessarily the best strategy

I always thought those were specific for Tom Brady. Wasn't it labeled accordingly?

Erm....it's not the same coaches. Rico Dennison (OC who reportedly banged the table to start Peterman over Taylor) was unceremoniously shown the door after the season, probably in large part for "making the boss look like a dang fool in public"

If the Bills were hoping that Sherfield or Harty could replicate what they did with Brown or with Beasley, that hope was badly misplaced. Sherfield was a 5 year vet career STer who put up decent numbers for 1 year with Miami, playing behind one of the best 1-2 punches at WR in the league. Harty had one decent year with NO in 2021 but has struggled career long with hammy and foot injuries, missing almost all of 2022. Brown put up 4 seasons that were better than Sherfield's single best season, including a 1000+ yd season as a #2 Beasley was a legit slot contributor for 7 years in Dallas. I think Beane was hoping Sherfield would replace Kumerow on ST but be better able to play WR (that's probably true - but a fairly low bar) I think Beane hoped Harty would replace McKenzie as the "gadget guy", #4-5 WR but have a more complete route tree and better ball tracking skills/focus and also be able to return punts and kicks if needed. He has been our punt returner since Nyheim Hines went on NFI, so that worked out, but he's not been able to replicate McKenzie. I think this is a fair point, and the gram of truth behind some of the kvetching "he only cares about defense" Ty Dunne published. Someone at Buffalo Rumblings - I think "Skarekrow"? did a thing last year (I think) showing that while overall, the number of draft picks and cap expenditure were fairly equal offense/defense, when you look under the hood in terms of FA signings and draft picks, Beane has tended to use more high draft picks for defense and used offensive FA $$ to sign more lower-tier guys instead of a few serious contributors. I'll be damned, you're right, Peterman did do trick shot videos as well. Huh. Tanney's were cooler though.

I think you're confusing Peterman with Alex Tanney.

Dude, Just Stop. It's not the same injury, and it's not just Twitter and "some no name".

I Know, Right? Except most of his "inside information" was publicly available since Week 6. If Josh actually needed surgery and had a condition the Bills thought would be worsened by continuing to play, I do not think the Bills would keep putting him out there. If anyone questions the "week 6" thing, here' s a link to Banged Up Bills Week 6 Injury Review. https://bangedupbills.com/2023/10/17/buffalo-bills-vs-new-york-giants-week-6-injury-review/ So there we have it. Allen suffered an AC Joint sprain Week 6 vs the Giants. It is evidently Grade 2 (since it's lingered more than Grade 1) but not Grade 3 (since no surgery). The Bills duly put Allen on the Injury Report and he has "DNP" a couple times early in the week. Trimble also has a diagram of what a normal shoulder, and 3 different grades of sprain in the shoulder, look like if anyone wants to see.

Thanks for the gouge on Caggiano. As far as "theorized" though, is that really the appropriate word, when in fact Allen acknowledged a shoulder injury after the Giants game and has appeared on the injury list with a "right shoulder" injury every game since up until last week? That's not theoretical... OTOH if we want to theorize, I would guess that one reason behind the "hardly threw at all" Cowboys game and the lower passing totals games since is that when Josh threw 51 times against the Eagles and 42 against KC, he may have aggravated something in his shoulder. He was still passing pretty well after the injury, and his completion percentage has dropped into the 50 %s the last 4 games. I'd love to hear someone who is good at assessing throwing motion comment, but my guess is he's reverted to a more overhead motion After brief search, Allen found on every injury report since week 7 with...wait for it..."RIGHT SHOULDER". He was not on the report last week. Possibly he participated in full in practice and wasn't seeking extra treatment. Possibly that was a mistake.

I can't argue that. I expect after that game, Beane started burning up the phone lines to bring in new cavalry on defense. He didn't burn a 3rd round draft pick to trade for Rasul Douglas and sign Linval Joseph just for giggles

Tua is leading the league in passing yards while being 8th in attempts. On a per-game basis he was 12th last year. Yes, they're going to re-sign him and he's going to get paid.

Dude, if you want to try to take the position that Bailey Zappe "outplayed" Josh Allen, I'm just gonna sit here with the 🍿. That's not a discussion I even want to try to get into, other than the necessarily apology I already made to people I pooh-poohed when they told us that was happening. It may be a mystery to you, but others have pointed out that not only were we missing the defenders who were injured in the Jax game, we were missing Big Ed and still trying to start Dorian Williams for Milano. I don't think that's very mysterious.

I think if we look at players who are asked to take pay cuts and agree there is usually leverage on the team’s side: 1) no or very low guaranteed money for the upcoming season 2) low or manageable dead money if the player were to be cut In Diggs case, his $18.5M 2024 salary guarantees in March 2024, and the Bills would accrue $31.9M dead cap if they cut him. So what would be Diggs motivation to listen to that?

That was great. I especially like Lamar driving Harbaugh then Joe Flacco drives up behind them. And of course, the end 😄

LOL. OKay.

I mean seriously - if you don't want to read a long post, what on earth do you think you're accomplishing by announcing that to the world? How about this - if you don't want to read something, just...DON'T READ IT.

I don't think Brady was ever a sho-in to get the OC job, but he did have a chance for a great audition, and so far the results are mixed.

I think you might be giving overall W-L not home W-L

2018 L W W 2019 L L 2020 W W 2021 L W W 2022 W W W 2023 W W W-L 11-4 (if you want to exclude the 2019 Jets game 11-3) Next So you do know it gets cold in Buffalo prior to December, right? and that cold weather /winds affect other aspects of the game like WR catch rate etc.?