Beck Water

I think he didn't change it, he clarified it because it was being misinterpreted. He meant the same thing both times - this is the NFL, it's not Tulane, we'll see how much he can handle and if he can handle learning both, he'll learn both but chances are we'll start him at WLB his first season then look at MLB

I thought Dodson looked ok against Pitts. In fact I thought he looked pretty good. You? It's worth noting that vs Minn, we were starting Jackson and Benford at CB and Damar Hamlin and Cam Lewis at S. It was Benford's 2nd game not splitting snaps (Elam was inactive). But, there is a reason they claimed AJ Klein off waivers 5 days after that game.

They said they'd see how much he could handle, but their thinking was they'd start him at WLB, right after the draft.

Def. showing leadership, but it's one thing to show leadership and another to read your keys and be in the right place at the right time doing the right thing. Which I'm not saying he wasn't, but if they assessed the film from the first 5 practices and decided Dodson and Bernard were significantly ahead, they got to roll with that.

They discussed the plan at the time. They like him, they don't want to overload him, they plan to start him learning WLB and playing ST this season and develop from there. The MLB is a complex role, he has to not only know his role but the role of the other LB, the nickel, the DBs on every play call and then how that changes with pre snap and post snap motion.

Theoretically possible, but given that the other two actually have starts at LB and Spector has limited snaps on ST and was inactive most of last season.... ....unlikely. I think you are taking what Beane said out of context.

I don't think Hamlin would accept that. I could be wrong. Jaquan Johnson is signed with the Raiders. Cam Lewis is still with the Bills and is making his case for a roster spot. I don't think Hamlin was in competition for the pro bowl or AP-1. But I thought he was a solid player in the Bill's system. He hadn't had a lot of playing time on defense before last season because Poyer and Hyde were so durable - saw defensive snaps in 6 games in 2021 with only one game over 20%. So he did have a learning curve. But by midseason I thought he was looking like he belonged - not at a level that would keep the Bills from looking for another safety in 2023 if Hyde couldn't return, but like he belonged. I also think the Bills do like Jared Mayden, who has ~6 games of starting experience for the 49ers and Philly. If I had to pick right now, I'd say Poyer Hyde Hamlin Rapp Right. And people forget that Hyde and Poyer didn't pop onto an NFL field looking like all-pros in their first games. Hyde had played for 4 years and started ~2 seasons worth of games when he came to Buffalo. Poyer had started 10 games in Cleveland. Both had 4 years of NFL experience.

Dorian Williams is, per Beane and McDermott, not in the rotation for MLB this season. He will be backing up Milano. The MLB rotation has been Dodson-Bernard-Spector. The kerfluffle is that on Tuesday, which would have been Spector's day, Dodson ran with the 1sts. So the question is, does that mean Spector is out of the race, or was it just a switch-around for some reason?

Must we do this? Apparently we must. "McKenzie has never had a year in his career as good as the 2021 Harty had" By what criteria? Yards? Ok. Receptions? Advantage, McKenzie. 1D? McKenzie. TD? McKenzie Catch %? McKenzie (click to be able to read) And don't overlook that "Best Ability is AVAIL ability" mantra of Sean McDermott. "Crowder hardly even played" He broke his leg the 4th game of the season with the Bills, you know that, right? It can be "not better than what we saw on the field last year" if Hardy can't stay available and if it turns out Sherfield needed Hill and Waddle on the same team to be able to be productive. I'm on team "theoretically, we improved". Theoretically, Sherfield > Kumerow as a WR and Harty has a higher ceiling than McKenzie - IF he can stay healthy. But games aren't played in theory, they're played on grass or turf on Sunday.

"Ignore" doesn't ignore when the post is quoted. So if you ignore someone who, on occasion, posts something good, there's an excellent chance that someone will quote it and you'll see it.

It means I answered your question. Simple as that You'd never know I answered it if from your response. And dude, seriously - this is a message board. People can respond to your post specifically or to any part of your post specifically. We are not limited to the premise of the topic, or to the entirely of your post, or the point you feel we should discuss. It's frustrating sometimes, when I make a nice post and people pick out one little bit to respond to - but that's Life on a Message Board. Dude, seriously? You need this answered? Briefly, the Dolphins W-L record, the quality of their offense and defense as shown by league ranking, and their single playoff appearance and loss, are not on the same par as the Bills. Yet. Meanwhile, the Bills W-L record, the quality of their offense and defense as shown by league ranking, and their playoff appearances and wins, along with their two regular season victories and the "13 seconds" very close Divisional game in 2021, are thought by most football-knowledgeable people to put them in the same conversation as the Chiefs. Equal, no, in the same convo, yes. The Dolphins, for the past four seasons, are 5-11, 10-6, 9-8, 9-8. They've been to one playoff game, and lost it. We're in their division, we play twice a season, they know us well and play us hard, especially when we have to go to Miami early in the season where they par-broil their opponents. They have a new coach, maybe they're like the 2019 Bills and they're on the rise and will take the league by storm this season. Maybe Vic Fangio will have their defense Rockin' and Rollin. But until they show that, the idea that they're in the same conversation as the Bills rates Not Proven. The analogous thing would be if someone asked a KC fan, Why aren't the Chargers spoken about in the same breath as the Chiefs? In 2020 and 2021, they've beaten you. They were 10-7 last season, were within 3 points of beating the Chiefs and could have beaten you both games, went to the playoffs where they could have won (within 1 point). They could be a team on the rise. But until they show they are, they're not talked about in the same breath as the Chiefs because they haven't, overall, yet, shown that they deserve to be. Maybe stop trying to square circles?

I don't know. But evidently Josh is big into Deez Nutz jokes, all day all the time in the Bills facility.

Yes You raise a number of valid concerns that are important to make people aware of. I don't want to sound like I'm minimizing them, but it's also important to me for folks to understand that this is really pretty straightforward to address. I don't want people to feel that it's "whole house generator or bad idea" when it comes to emergency preparedness. Agreed feeding power from a generator into the power panel could be a potential danger to power workers if the mains to the panel are not shut off. That's the whole point of installing an interlock switch and a mains power alarm - the fact that it locks-out the mains switch to prevent that turn-off-mains step from being omitted (or thoughtlessly reversed) while feeding power from the generator, causing backfeed. It's physically impossible to cause backfeed, because the mains are physically locked into the "Off" position while the circuit that powers the panel from the generator is turned on. Either-or, Not Both. The interlock would not be particularly difficult for an electrically knowledgeable person to DIY, but it's an obvious modification to the power panel so IMHO a licensed electrician is 100% the way to go here. You're correct that modern appliances have a lot of electronics that can be potentially damanged by the spikes and surges of a standard generator. Having stable and consistent power is the point of having an inverter generator rather than a standard one. I can tell you know this, but for others, the battery, inverter, and alternator in the inverter generator are designed to produce spike and surge free AC that won't damage appliances. And yes, we started with a spreadsheet with the power draw of everything in the house and decided what we wanted to be able to operate to stay functional when sizing the generators. Being able to power the neighbor's fridges requires careful consideration of what we run. Again, I don't want to minimize your valid concerns. My point is to ensure people who might benefit from emergency power, but who can't or don't want to put out the money for a whole house generator, know these are relatively standard and straightforward to address. Love the username by the way. TRIPLE T! The pain train's coming!

We've joked about that, actually.

https://www.si.com/nfl/dolphins/news/miami-dolphins-ten-things-kellly-column 'sup, Pats Fan, trying to make that 20 -7 loss you sustained to the Fins in the season opener feel better? You're not wrong that we could have lost to them in the playoffs and that it would have been VERY embarrassing, but .....if the Dolphins are indeed such talented team now, why would that embarrassment be true? In fact, it would have been embarrassing because the Bills played a very sloppy game once they got up 17-0, including 2 picks and 4 fumbles (1 lost) and gave up 15 points off turnovers.

You said: " So my question is, if Miami hasn’t shown that they belong in a conversation with Buffalo, what has Buffalo done to belong in a conversation with Kansas City?" The answer is, beaten you at home 38-20 and 24-20 in the last 2 regular season games, and taken the game to 13 seconds and a coin flip in the 2021 AFC Division round. You didn't ask about the Bengals, Championships won, etc. If you don't like that answer, fine, but "we're 2x Superbowl Champions and You're Not, Nah Nah" doesn't seem like much of a response, especially since in fact, the Bengals pretty much embarrassed the Chiefs in the 2021 AFC championship - it wasn't as close as the final score - supporting the idea that the Bills gave the Chiefs everything they could handle and depleted them the prior game. Then there's that 31-9 loss to Tampa in the 2020 Superbowl, wanna brag on that?

So if you want to make a case that Beasley and Brown were brought in as "sure handed veterans Josh knows he can trust" because he didn't trust Davis, McKenzie, and Shakir, you need to be able to show that Beasley and Brown took snaps from those "droppy" guys when they were otherwise healthy. Spoiler: they didn't. McKenzie pulled a hammy in the final NWE game, was inactive vs Miami in the WC round, and had a lower load in the Bengals game - because of the hammy, not because of drops.

Same. Jets D is legit. In a recent interview, Dawkins called out Cowherd when he talked as though he made the assumption the Bills would just be expected to beat the Jets. He praised their defense and said they give us all we can handle. What the Jets lacked, was a QB - and now they have one.

That's why fans think they brought in Smoke and Beas (that order). But it doesn't add up. I think it was, purely and simply, a numbers game. Crowder broke his leg October 8. Hodgins was on the roster. Then, in a "squeeze play" with Tre White needing to be activated but not quite ready to play at the beginning of Nov so we needed to roster an extra CB, we exposed Hodgins to waivers and the G-men pounced. Less than 2 weeks later we put Kumerow on IR. At that point, the Bills had only 4 WR left on the roster - Diggs Davis McKenzie and Shakir!!!! We needed depth! We were elevating Tanner Gentry off the practice squad and using Quintin Morris some as a WR (which actually, is not a bad thing in my view but I digress). If you look at the snap counts, it's pretty clear they were not trusting Brown and Beasley above McKenzie and Shakir. They were trusting them above Tanner Gentry and Keesean Johnson. Also, if Josh didn't trust Davis, he was targeting the hell out of a guy he didn't trust, because Davis target share went up if anything the 2nd half of the season, while Diggs target share dipped at times.

The Bills certainly went into training camp having Shakir slotted in as the #3 guy, Harty slotted in as the #4 and "gadget" guy, and Sherfield as the #5 "Kumerow" replacement who can play ST. After drafting Kinkaid, the hope is that Kinkaid will become that "go to" outlet/slot receiver for Allen while the expectations on the slot wide receiver role will be reduced. My perception of the situation (given that Kinkaid continues to look like "all that" as the padded practices continue) is that a reduced expectation for slot production sort of puts Shakir into a general pool of "backup WR" where other considerations (how well can they play outside? do they play ST and where?) apply. I would definitely put Shakir below Harty on the overall "depth chart" right now WITH the huge caveat of the injury concern, because Harty is a more proven KR/PR and I believe his speed and elusiveness may make him a more successful outside receiver vs. Shakir. And Sherfield also has that ST edge. Which brings me back to a general concern as to whether the Bills have truly done "enough" at WR.

That might be true if Shakir were only on the field for a handful of snaps. Maybe 60 snaps or something. The point often missed by people who look at those 20 targets, is that Shakir was on the field for 275 snaps - at least 24% of the snaps. Yet he was only targeted on 7.2% of his snaps. So only 3.6% of his snaps led to a known positive result. What was he doing the rest of the time? For comparison, Gabe Davis (who was on the field 797 snaps as a rookie, and targeted a similar percentage - 7.8%) was extolled for his strong blocking abilities. We haven't heard that about Shakir. What we did see was Allen forcing the ball into Gabe Davis a lot, which says to me that Diggs wasn't open and either McKenzie/Shakir weren't, or Josh didn't trust their catching abilities relative to the defense when they were open. It's harsh, but when a guy is down the depth chart, he needs to take advantage of the opportunities he gets. We saw that with McKenzie. And last, you say "not his MO". Well, if 20 targets isn't a credible statistical sample (valid), isn't it true that it isn't a sufficient sample to judge what is his MO?

(click to make it readable) So to your point.....Fangio's big claim to DC fame, I think, are the SF defenses from his stint with the 9'ers 2011-2014. He had the #32 ranked D his previous stint as DC, 2005 in Houston. And SF had some pretty serious D talent in those days, especially at LB and Safety. The 2018 Bears (most recent claim) had a LB corps of Mack, Trevethan, Roquan Smith and Leonard Floyd, along with Akiem Hicks at DE and a couple of very talented DB. I personally thought the Miami D over-achieved under Flores/Josh Boyer. And they've certainly tried to add talent with Jalen Ramsey and Terron Armstead. But it's notable they have been running a 4-3 D and Vic Fangio's notable defenses have all used a 3-4 alignment. The Bills certainly saw a drop in quality when a #4 4-3 D was taken over by a DC whose bread and butter was a 3-4 alignment, and we didn't have the personnel to slot neatly into his wants. So I don't think it's a sure bet that Fangio's D will be the best in the AFC E this year. As for putting him as the best defensive coordinator in the AFCE, I guess that might be true considering his competition as actual DC are no one (Bills), Jeff Ulbrich (Jets, 3 years as DC), and no one (NWE, with Steve Belichick calling the D) By the way, Spotrac (FWIW) says "Ramsey will undergo knee surgery to repair a torn meniscus and is expected to remain out until at least December of the 2023-2024 season."

I believe those 2 teams are allowed to start training camp a week earlier because of it

As far as Diggs drops vs Shakir - here's that "eyeball test". When you're leading the team in receptions and yards as Diggs does, sure, you hate to see a drop. But in context of 150+ targets, 8 drops is relatively insignificant (5.2%). But when you're a rookie trying to prove yourself and earn more playing time as Shakir is, and you've gotten 20 targets, dropping 2 of them (scored drops, not contested or difficult catches of which there were also some "he coulda got that one" examples) is a much bigger deal that deserves its scrutiny. I like Shakir, and want him to succeed, but the cold hard football facts are that WR spots on the 53 man roster are limited, and need to go to a guy who won't drop 10% of his targets if the team wants to go places. So if Shakir wants to be that guy, he needs to fix it. The injury concern with Harty looms large to me. When you have posters whose opinions are often as diametrically opposed as myself and @BADOLBILZ and they both unanimously hone in on same concern on a player, it's probably legit. He's fast, and we have a good training staff, but scar tissue and damage from repeated injuries is a Thing.