Beck Water

Interesting that this is going on with McDermott apparently away from practice for a "family matter"

Uh-oh

(Note: this was said during practice, and is a joke. But yeah, would that be funny.

I care, and am also interested to know if it's Bates or Morse in at Center, because if the DL is pushing the OL back into Allen today but that didn't happen previously, it would be good if there are other OLmen on the roster who are capable of anchoring

Agree - McDermott's defense is totally designed to be a symbiotic unit where the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts - and it can fail and give up big plays when one guy is out of position. It fascinates me, actually. I'm forgetting who did a great breakdown on the 1st NWE game in 2021. We played some base D with Dodson, and whoever broke it down pointed out how Poyer chose the wrong gap and gave up a big gain, because Dodson looked the wrong way towards one gap, but then covered the other. Interesting look at the intricacies of how these guys communicate with each other on the field. Fans in preseason go for "eye candy" and can get all enthused about players like Tank Carder or Kiko Alonso who are actually free-lancing out of position and going for the ball - which can make for a big play at times, but is not what NFL defense is all about. AJ Klein First, it would help if you would explain what you mean by "below average player". Are you talking "no longer a starter"? But most teams keep 5 or 6 LB. Are you thinking, relative to the 180 or so LB that are signed to NFL rosters for half or so of the games during a given season, he's in the bottom 90? Whatever your metric is, what is your basis for your opinion that he is a below average player? That's something we can discuss.

Good writeup as usual, Gunner, with interesting points, so Thank You for that. I'm curious about how you see point #3 about Spector's "ceiling wise he is the best STer"? It's a fact that Spector was actually a healthy scratch much of the year, and when he did play, between him and Bernard, Bernard still got more ST snaps. Is this just hypothetical, based on athleticism and size?

From your keyboard to God's ears!

C'mon Dawkins, you gonna let AJE beatcha?

It could change, but so far it seems as though a bunch of the stalwart guys for real-time updates aren't at practice today. While that's understandable (tickets are scarce and maybe they gotta work for a living sometime), it means updates may be slim.

More Butler interview: Basically, I think what that translates to is saying Elam does not (yet) excel as an off-ball CB in the zone defense the Bills primarily rely on. That ain't a good sign for a 1st round pick. Whereas he's saying Benford really gets it when it comes to playing zone. Anyone else see it differently?

Indeed, interesting if the 3-legged race is sliding to 2 legs. I still think AJ Klein is in the mix, they just are confident in what he can and can't do and want to look at the younger players. So far it seems to be a pattern that Torrence is with the 1s for the initial, pre-stretching warm up segment that's half-speed or something like that Then Bates takes over with the 1's after the calisthenics/stretching, but sometimes Torrence mixes back in. Will be interesting to see if Morse takes over at C again today or sits out.

Anybody home? We see Allen walking on two legs without visible gimping, that's a Good Thing Chris Brown coverage of pre-practice Butler interview:

I use Twitter. One used to be able to not have an account and just view in a web browser, now it's broken if you don't have an account. The best live updates of practice are Greg Tompsett (@GregTompsett) if he's there. Cover1 is good. Jon Scott (@JonScottTV). Matt Bove (@Matt_Bove). Edit: add @AjayCybulski from Buffalo Rumblings. Afterwards, AstroNotes are classic if he's there, they do a great job of giving one that 'flavor" of being there https://buffalofambase.com/author/deankindig/ Sal Capaccio https://www.audacy.com/wgr550/sports/bills Matt Parrino (nyup) Joe Buscaglia (paywall, The Athletic) post camp reports pretty promptly TBN seems to trend towards feature pieces rather than day-by-day updates, as far as I can tell - maybe I'm missing a reporter at TBN who does these. It's important to note that the credentialed media evidently have restrictions about describing plays and so forth. The uncredentialled attendees like Cover1, Astro, etc have the advantage that they didn't sign any restrictions so they say what they want. Kinda broken it from my POV, but that's just me. I don't think I'm their intended target market.

"you would say the same", so wait. What I said was "the difference between spending adequate or good resources on OL, and insufficient effort - largely is a call made in hindsight depending upon whether or not those efforts actually succeed in producing a capable or good OL. If a player is performing at a high level, can we agree that it no longer matters where he was drafted? " So...you really want to make an argument that the Bengals have built a better OL for Burrow, because they drafted 2 OLmen in the 1st who didn't work out, and drafted a T in the 2nd round who started 6 games his rookie year at GUARD and none last season? Or that once a player is in the league, his draft position still matters? If you can't agree that signing a FA who was previously drafted in the 2nd and has been a reliable C for 4 years is a better move than drafting a C in the 1st who struggles, gets traded, and gets replaced by one of the "journeymen" you spoke of.....are you really being logical? Tor reprise, the question isn't what draft resources and $$ Beane has expended, it's whether he's built a functional line in front of Allen. At times the answer has been "N" (2018 was one example, last year arguably another). At times it's been "Y". It's certainly been as good a line at times as other teams who have expended much greater draft resources, at times. I think to see if the approach "made sense" you have to look at the overall team building, not just the OL. And there's a fair point to be made that if the team acquires OLmen who they feel have proven ability for solid play, it's a "safer" approach than draft. As implied by my post, even top-of-the-1st round draft picks have something like a 50% success rate of being solid NFL players - not stars, solid NFL players. At the bottom where we've been drafting, it's more like 30% and pretty much the same as the 2nd round, last time I looked. And frankly, I would still maintain that where Beane didn't do enough last season is at WR, to replace Saunders and Beasley. He was counting on not one, but two backups to "step up" and live up to the big flashes they'd showin in certain games, and it didn't work - but even there, he did "belt and suspenders" with Jamison Crowder and drafting Shakir. But I also, as a team building philosophy, understand the logic of what he saw as the "big splash" need. I'm not doing Teller again. I've gone over the facts about Teller. I don't think anyone should be able to bring him up without answering a 3 Q pop quiz: 1) who did we keep instead of Teller, and why? 2) when after the trade did Teller become a regular starter for his new team? 3) when after the treade did Teller become a pro-bowl (not all pro) player? Obviously, I didn't write as clearly as I should have, but please try to understand the points I was making in context, and not just fixate on one thing

I don't get your "Fact Check". In context, it should be clear I'm talking about the Chiefs here, in addressing the points of the OP I was discussing with. The point is, the Chiefs had a mere 2nd round pick in front of their rookie QB instead of drafting Billy Price in the 1st round like the Bengals (a guy who struggled, and was traded before the end of his 1st contract to a team that replaced him with Jon Feliciano) Though since you see the need for this I probsbly didn't write as clearly as I could have. Mitch Morse was NOT the starting C for the Chiefs in 2017, the first year I was talking about. He was injured. However, looking it up, he did start 5 games which is more than I thought. Point still stands.

The problem is that the new generation of guys covering the team via blogs and podcasts aren’t credentialed as media. So they have to compete against the rest of us punks for tickets, and the skill set that’s best for covering football outside traditional media isn’t the skill set for optimal ticket-grabbing.

Why? Where are these reports? Reports linked here are that he hesitated to get up and gestured toward his stomach area (as though he were winded), got up and limped (unclear why), was seen kneeling on the sideline between Dorsey and Diggs for the last two plays, and then walked around signing autographs (Coach Sal) and that he said he was all right to members of the media and gave a CBS interview (Matt Parrino) No trainer attention.

Sal Capaccio https://www.audacy.com/wgr550/sports/bills/allen-goes-down-briefly-as-bills-put-pads-on-for-first-time His take on the Allen hit: Also most detailed write up I've seen on Mitch Morse:

I haven't seen every video, but in some that I've watched, you can definitely see Hyde pulling up. For example, in the TD to Gabe Davis you can see he gets into position to make the tackle, then he puts on the brakes and lets Gabe run by him But we'll see when it's "for real". Hyde in his youngest days was never going to keep up with Hardy or a speedster like Hill or even for that matter Isaiah McKenzie, who perennially let him know about it, too.

Matt Parrino's article on today's practice: https://www.newyorkupstate.com/buffalo-bills/2023/07/scary-moment-with-josh-allen-on-day-5-of-bills-camp-highlights-1st-day-in-pads-observations.html Seems like a couple of people have commented favorably on Gouraige

This is awesome. Thank you for writing this. Landing on him full body weight is indefensible and it sounds as though the take of "accidental contact" is also BS from your view.

It keeps your brain stiff and inflexible? Thanks, this is exactly the sort of information I was hoping to gain in response.

This is just my opinion and I don't have the depth of knowledge that some do here. but I felt from early on, Edmunds played the pass the way Frazier wanted and worked in sync with Milano and Edmunds. His run D was a work in progress and took strides last season as far as I could tell. He also didn't "clinch the deal" by actually getting picks as often as they would have liked. He would discourage a pass from being thrown due to coverage, or get a hand in there for a PBU, but possession didn't change. I think Dodson has the potential to be a better run defender, but is a big step down in pass coverage. At least that's what I see so far. I don't know about Spector, I didn't see enough of last preseason to tell. He played 6 games, and only on ST last season. He was inactive for the last 8 games of the season, which is usually not a good sign. Bernard was active all 16 regular season games and 1 playoff game, and played significant ST snaps which usually indicates a guy the coaches see as ahead of the other guy. He saw time at the end of two early season blowouts which are hard to tell since the other team's "2"s were in and they were kind of phoning it in. His major playing time was for Milano, in the Jets game. And let's just say, it was NOT pretty. Now I grant he had Jacquan Johnson and Damar Hamlin behind him as safeties, but still.