Beck Water

FireChans: "Josh: “I had to rework my mechanics this off-season because my injuries had me compensating incorrectly and making me a worse player” Beane: “I want Josh to keep that LB mentality and never change” 2024 off-season in a nutshell. Response: points out that Josh was injured in the pocket, not while acting like a linebacker and running downfield hitting people Adds "I'm not Team All-Josh's-Injuries-Are-In-The-Pocket 'cuz it's not true, and also 'cuz bangs and dings and bumps accumulate and your body hands you the bill in your 30s and 40s. But let's not pretend that being a QB who stays behind the LOS precludes injury, because it doesn't." You're precious, you really are

What size and style of hat? Enquiring minds wish to know.

You do realize that Josh injured his UCL in 2022 vs the Jets on a passing play where he stayed behind the LOS and was looking to throw, right? And he injured his shoulder in 2023, again hitting the ground shoulder first after throwing a pass? I'm not Team All-Josh's-Injuries-Are-In-The-Pocket 'cuz it's not true, and also 'cuz bangs and dings and bumps accumulate and your body hands you the bill in your 30s and 40s. But let's not pretend that being a QB who stays behind the LOS precludes injury, because it doesn't.

I want a pony. And an all-inclusive trip to Aruba.

It's a team sport so you certainly can't hang it up to one aspect of one player - even the most important player on the team But Rodgers does seem to be too into himself

1st 2, no latter removes the paywall notification but still stops at 1 page

Yo, @boyst, what are those tools for doing an end-around on paywalls? I've tried a bunch I know of like archive.ph and 12ft.io and Dunne has proofed his paywall against them so far, so it's time to call in the Big Guns. Normally I believe in the right to intellectual property but if ever a guy deserved the end-around that'd be Dunne IMO Surprised Beane talked to him after that hit-piece on McDermott Hopefully Beane (or the PR guys who approved it) consulted with McDermott before agreeing to it

I actually thought penis was on the naughty word list here and would be ******. I mean I can't say s n a t c h here, even in the context of " ***** defeat from the jaws of victory". I was mistaken I guess. The ways of the TBD naughty word filter are opaque.

I believe in South America (and maybe Spain/Italy) that gesture indicates the maker's opinion of the size of the viewer's male organ I believe in South America (and maybe Spain/Italy) that gesture indicates the maker's opinion of the size of the viewer's male organ

Good write up. I'm certainly in "Missouri" mode on our WR ("I'm from Missouri. You have to Show Me.") As far as the shuffling things around, I thought it was useful to ask "why didn't Beane double-dip at WR this draft?" and my answer is, because he thought between last year's 5th round pick Shorter, last year's UDFA signings Shavers and Thompson, and perennially injured 2020 2nd round pick KJ Hamler, Beane thought he had comparable talent to the late round guys already on the roster. That means he has to give them a look in training camp to see if he's right, or if he needs to go beating some bushes extra-hard to turn up more talent

Completely fair take. I think people overlook part of the strategy of trading for Diggs, a quality proven vet WR. Put yourself in the GM's shoes: Josh Allen is going into his 3rd year. In May of his 4th year, the GM has to decide whether or not to pick up his 5th year option, now fully guaranteed at that point. And usually, if a team wants to keep a guy, the off-season of the 4th year is when they start contract negotiations. So Josh Allen's 3rd season was ride-or-die? decision time for Beane. Josh improved between 2018 and 2019, but it was clear the WR corps was not all it needed to be, Beasley and Brown could both be blanketed and taken away by good defenses. What to do? Beane could have brought in a 1st round WR and hoped he'd develop quickly enough to see what Allen could be with a solid room of 3 WR. Or, he could trade for a proven guy and see what happened then. Trading for a vet vs. drafting a top rookie WR was the worse move for the Bills cap situation, but the better move for allowing Beane and his staff to make that critical decision on their QB - and after all, paying top QB dollar to a QB who really isn't The Man, is just about the worst cap sin a GM can commit. Rapp scares the crap out of me. "Friendly fire" isn't. Who was it he took out during the Steelers playoff game, Benford? Bernard? Maybe Benford would have made a couple more plays than Dane Jackson against KC. If it was Bernard, starting Klein vs Bernard against KC was huge. So far this preseason, he's already shaken up Shakir and the pads aren't even on. Guy is a loose cannon.

Exactly. He explicitly said he works out, throws, and tries to maintain his weight. He's talked about reviewing his film from the previous season and getting his mechanics assessed. You have to look at context. "Bussin' with the Boys" has a particular vibe to it. Allen seems to like to present himself as "The Natural", and he'll say stuff about how he doesn't lift weights with his upper body like he's just "country strong". But then there are tidbits about how he works with Ryan Flaherty, who coaches QBs and QB candidates to focus on training and strengthening the small muscles of the shoulder girdle (the 4 rotator cuff muscles, for example), banded workouts, various pushup variations, and NOT bench-press. Allen has talked about working with S&C staff in Cali and the Bills who focus on keeping him flexible. That stuff is year-round or it doesn't work; you can't build flexibility in a few weeks. Except, as he's mentioned, "I still work out and throw some", and the aforementioned work with S&C specialists to strengthen small muscles and develop flexibility. Look, I really don't care what you think about me or what I say. The points were made and the tea leaves read in that thread. My point was and is that Josh has never said "He used to work on his craft more than he did the last couple years. He’s getting back to that." Your stuff about Hess is off. Hess has been on the record that he started working with Josh in March of 2020 (not 2019 as you state above), and Josh has commented in exit interviews that he planned to review his mechanics to make sure things weren't getting off after the 2021 and 2022 seasons (that would be with Chris Hess). I expect he couldn't do much in 2022 due to needing to let his UCL heal. Your implication that he only worked with Hess in 2019 (wrong) and 2020 and now again in 2024 is your interpretation - though it's pretty clear after 2023 season that Josh was in need of more work. Exactly. You got it. Unless we have ahold of Josh's calendar (why do you think it's paper?) none of us outside Josh's inner circle know what he's actually doing or not doing. That's my point.

Same article reports KJ Hamler and Bryan Thompson sightings:

I don't _fault_ Beane in the sense of thinking it was a stupid deal to sign Von Miller. After all, if Miller stayed healthy and we won a championship, we'd all be lauding Beane for it. It was a risky deal because of Miller's age, but statistically apparently muscle injuries are more common in older players while ligament injuries are evenly distributed. So Miller's ACL was rotten luck. On the other hand, you have to judge whether a deal is a good one or a bad one based upon how it works out, right? And the fact is, signing Miller has been a very poor ROI for the Bills and is one of the reasons we're in Cap Purgatory. If Fat Kelvin had returned to his 2016 form and had 63 receptions for 941 yds, we'd judge that 3rd round pick we gave up for him much more kindly. Instead he checked out once he got his 5th year guaranteed pay, so it was a poor ROI.

Yeah, Coleman was a trade - 7th round pick. He just particularly pissed me off because the Bills, in a cap crunch, assumed a $3.5M guaranteed salary for a guy they kept through training camp cut before the regular season. They got a bit of relief when he signed with the Giants, but still - they took on $3M dead cap for a guy who never played a snap. And this was in a year where our WR corps was Zay Jones, Robert Foster, and Kelvin Benjamin; our OL was atrocious; and Beane was pleading "no money" as a reason for not doing better (he acknowledged after the season that he could have done more, at least on OL). There've been articles about McDermott seeking learnings after he was fired as the Eagles DC, and taking to heart the message "you got to make sure players are bought in", especially on DL. McDermott is always talking about how "DT is the most selfless position". It seems like a reasonable connect-the-dots that McDermott became gun-shy about bringing in DLmen who might not "buy in" to his particular "selfless" philosophy of DL usage in a league where pay is performance-driven and statistics are one of the key performance metrics (sacks, TFL, QB knockdowns and hurries). I think Beane has control over the 53 and it's not just on paper, but I think McDermott pushed for preference given to "known quantities" on DL and it took the total disintegration of Lotulelei's effort to persuade McD that he had to let go of that a bit.

I don't wanna make excuses for Rodgers, but apparently he broke the thumb on his throwing hand in Week 5 The team had 7 losses and 1 win Week 5 and following So, did the loss of Adams affect Rodgers, almost certainly. The Packers invested a 3rd round 2022 pick, a 2nd round 2023 pick, and a 5th round 2023 pick at WR, and gave up on the 2022 guy partway through the 2023 season. They didn't sign any FA of note, either. But injuries and deteriorating skill likely played a role as well.

Nice breakdown. Ooh, I forgot about Tyler Kroft. We paid him $10M which is certainly an over-pay for what we got, but he did play. WR I think you got to factor in gimondulous whiffs like Corey Coleman and "gee, I just paid 3.5x more for less" whiffs like swapping out McKenzie for Deonte Harty. RB similar swapping Nyheim Hines for Zack Moss - the Colts got the better production end of that one, and DL I have to note that Beane has been hampered by McDermott's insistence on "selfless" guys who "buy in". It led to our keeping duds like Star Lotulelei, Vernon Butler, and Mario Addison for far too long.

It's not a debate. A debate is something like when @Shaw66 and I disagree about whether swiss-Army-knife WR are the wave of the NFL future vs more specialized boundary/X and slot receivers. We each have points on our side and we lay them out. The problem is that you brought it up as "He used to work on his craft more than he did the last couple years. He’s getting back to that." and attributed that to Josh Allen's own words. That's wrong. Correct quote, but that's not saying "work on his craft" less. That's saying he doesn't work out 4x a week from January 21 (Division round) to April 15 (start of OTAs). And he's saying he still throws and works out, just not as intensely, 4x a week. There are other aspects for a QB of working on their craft - watching film, getting in the playbook, etc. He may be doing that less, more, or the same - he didn't go into that. I don't think he's "getting back to that" ie working out 4x a week in Feb/March. What he's said is that he's specifically working this off-season on tweaking his mechanics because with the shoulder and elbow injury, they got off. And it's not clear to me when this work started. Might have started in Feb or March, might have started after Phase I OTAs. It matters to me because in the thread you alluded to we had all sorts of people extrapolating and generalizing from a few words (which they mis-quoted in some instances) to diss on Allen.

I agree but, I will grant that McDaniel (despite my initial impressions) appears to be a decent football coach

There's a whole 'nother discussion about how the "bloated and non-performing" Whaley era differed. My bottom line: QB. Second place: Only 1 HC, not needing to re-make the roster. I chose B, but it would really be B+ or A-. I would give Beane a top-10 GM and he's certainly put us in position to win, but his Big Buck "Freakazoid" spends or contract extensions haven't provided good ROI. In 2 of 3 cases, that's been due to injury, so not entirely predictable, but the fact is, he swung and missed with Tre' White, Von Miller, and then for whatever reason Diggs and that left us with a "bloated" cap with 3 guys who weren't performing (2 due to injury, 1 due to whatever) Best pick up of the draft? This may be an outlier choice, I would have to say Taron Johnson. If he has another strong year, can make a good case for Terrel Bernard. I want to say Dalton Kincaid and James Cook, but, Too Soon. Biggest miss? Tie between Cody Ford and Boogie Basham. In general, I feel that Beane has gotten better value in later rounds of the draft than first 2 rounds. Free agency - I guess Beane can't take credit for Poyer and Hyde. Gonna go with Mitch Morse. People don't remember the Bad Old Days with Russell Bodine at Center. Morse signed in 2019 and stabilized the C position for Allen for 5 seasons. Solid. Runner up: Cole Beasley. Biggest miss: Von Miller, so far. He gave us 11 good games and 8 sacks in 2022 and that's it for 2 seasons so far. That's not a lot of ROI for $120M ($51M guaranteed). So far, he's been paid $35M. That's like $49k a snap. Not good value.

So it was pretty clear initially that Dorsey was trying to NOT use Josh as a running weapon as much early in the season. So more focus on hands up could be part of that. But I'm wondering if @Buffalo716 comments about Josh having reverted to a more elongated throwing motion has something to do with that. It gives the CB more time to react to the throw.

You may well be correct, but: memo to journalist, don't use words if you don't know what they mean, or how to use them in a sentence. That's an egregious gaffe

The talk is not particularly novel or insightful, but I found this interesting for the extra footage of the various receivers.

Well, Alex Brasky put himself as the author - he's been on one of his gigs (Batavia) since 2018. 6 years seems long enough to grasp English, starting as a native speaker......Dunno, maybe he used AI

Bass-turd We're carrying a $7.3M dead cap hit if we cut him and move on, too psychotherapist, no; sports psychologist, yes.