Beck Water

Market for a player like Devante Parker, reasonable take Market for 'WR who you hope will be your WR3...."....Factually, there are 31 players (including Parker) with a contract AAV of $11M/yr and above. Who are the "WR who you hope will be your WR3 if all goes right" on this list? Some WR2 there. WR3????? https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/contracts/sort-average/wide-receiver/limit-100/ Does it strike you as weird that the Pats let Jakobi Meyers (age 26) walk in FA for a 3 yr, $33M contract with the Raiders, and are now extending Devonte Parker (age 30) the same deal? Meyers had ~5 r/g for 57 ypg, 12 y/r and almost 70% catch %. Parker had 2.4 r/g for 42 ypg, 17 y/r and 66% catch %. I don't watch either team unless they're playing the Bills. Obviously Bill O'Brien thinks Parker brings something to the offense that Meyers didn't but if it's a deep threat, paying a 30 yr old seems strange. All true, but it seems to me a big part of the engine that fueled those great gm moves was Tom Brady and the Patriots record of winning championships. Players were willing to take less than market value to play for the Pats with Tom Brady, so he had a ready pipeline to backfill when he traded away peak performers who were starting to clamor for market value pay.

Dryer vent stories. My kid and her BF living in their first apartment. Visiting us. Tells me they don't dry jeans in the dryer that came with the apartment because "it takes too long and uses too much power". Was surprised how fast her jeans dried in our (decade old) dryer. I suggest they call the landlord and request that the dryer vent hose be cleaned. Turned out it was jammed full of lint, almost impacted. Airflow doubled once it was cleaned. Now their jeans dry! Huh. Our friend is a landlord - rents 3 properties. She's a mech E and a bugger for maintenance, does everything by the book. Manual says pull the fridge out and vacuum the coils every year, that's what happens. Always thought her kid wasn't paying much attention. Welp, kid now renting a house in college. Landlord just moved to another city and decided to rent his house instead of selling it. Turns out kid knows way more about home maintenance than her new landlord does! She's been soaking it all up, all along. Dryer wasn't working well. Landlord: "It's old. That's just what happens when dryers get old". Kid pulled the dryer out, noticed the hose was crimped, uncrimped it. Still not working well. Took the hose off the fitting through the house wall, found it was packed full of lint, cleaned that all out. Dryer works now! Huh. @boyst right about fire risk, according to NFPA, dryer fires cause 13,000+ home fires a year and the cause of 1/3 of them is "failure to clean".

Congrats from here too! If you're handy, @Draconator, disregard. If you're not, one popular strategy is to obtain a home warranty. My niece is pretty busy with a demanding job and 3 kids, and fix-and-repair is NOT her husband's thing. So she got one, and has found it's paid off many times over. Her drier breaks? Call the warranty company. AC? Ditto. https://www.realtor.com/advice/buy/what-is-a-home-warranty/ Just be careful to look at reviews and at the fine print of what's covered and what's not. I think this just highlights the need to research the company in question - even Boyst admits it worked out in his wife's favor on her previous house. Same with my niece. We don't have one ourselves, but we're highly fortunate to be able to fix a lot of stuff ourselves.

I believe that's the same study I brought up when folks were all "Tre White should be back on the field already or it means he had some setback!" and I'm like no, the average RTP is 12 months so he's on schedule. There's some points - for example, how do the stats on being in the league 3 years post injury compare to a control group that didn't have an ACL reconstruction? And obviously marginal players who were barely hanging on, are going to be less likely to get further chances vs. starters and stars. But there's a little bit of strangeness here. Lemme see if I can bring in the graph (it should get bigger if you click). TL;DR - the text says that there's a significant difference in AV pre and post injury. But the figure caption says that X is the mean, the center line represents the median - not the average. And it's the center line that is 4.3 and 1.5 (called out in the figure legend as the median). If "X" is the mean, then given the size of the error bars, the difference is much less significant. That's not a nit - it's something the authors and the reviewer should have clarified prior to publication. Whether or not that's an error, we see a similar phenomenon when we look at the more relevant position specific change in AV here. We see that for DBs, the change in AV is small (-4.5) and the error bars straddle 0. It's entirely possible that Tre' won't return to his previous "Takeaway Tre'" , first-team all-Pro level of play. But I don't think that article provides very strong support for an argument that he won't. 🤷‍♂️

Don't buy the "by virtue of their positions". Kelce is split out wide much of the time; given his number of targets, he absolutely functions as a receiver in the Chief's offense, usually a slot but sometimes on deeper routes. Diggs and Kelce were both the #1 receivers on their teams last season, by every metric And, you could say that Diggs has target value in the Bills offense that gores beyond the numbers as well - in fact, given the (correct IMO) argument that the rest of the WR corps was better on the Chiefs than on the Bills, wouldn't you have to argue that Diggs has value that goes beyond the numbers as well? Kelce is "Pat's guy", but Diggs has been "Allen's guy" the last couple years - in fact one of Diggs dissatisfactions may very well be that he was less "The Man" in Dorsey's offense. Anyway, potato potahto - on the fundamental point about the relative quality of the receiving corps last year, we seem to agree KC > Bills. So we can both take the flak for that argument

Why? Most players who have had an ACL injury seem to find the 1st year back a struggle, and the 2nd year back much closer to form.

I agree with your basic premise that KC was not "questionable" in having good receiving targets, overall better than the Bills. I'm a bit curious how you come up with Kelce > Diggs though. By most metrics I don't think that tracks. TikTokBoy > Davis and MVS > McK is a pretty straightforward case, and the Chiefs got more receiving from their RB as well.

The question, of course, is whether we plan to continue to run 2TE sets at one of the lowest frequencies in the league? If so, then obviously investing a 1st round pick on Kincaid was foolish. But I don't think that's the plan. I believe that at the "U" in Miami, Dorsey made heavy use of his TE as receiving weapons. In Carolina, it was Mike Shula's offense of course, but once they acquired Ed Dickson in FA, he was on the field almost half the time while Greg Olson was taking >95% of the snaps. Most of those years, Olson was also leading the team in receiving yards. So at least in theory, Dorsey knows how to utilize 2 TE sets in the passing game.

Seems like a pretty fair assessment, though it seems a bit double-dipping to mention the safety position 2x and Deonte Harty 2x. I would think the Bengals feel 'dissed' to not be mentioned as a top-3 team, wonder what the logic is there? One can make a pretty sound argument for them having one of the best OL and one of the best WR corps in football.

Strangely enough, I have read several threads and posts on other threads about that very WR depth concern, right on this message board. 😅😅 For example this from @Jerry Jabber

I don't understand the laughy face response. Josh Allen gave him props that he is really good at separating vs. man coverage. He is. It's how he killed the Patriots and the Dolphins. The problem is, the Bills don't see a lot of man coverage.

It's from 3 weeks ago, during voluntary OTAs. You're just seeing it all over today because some pundit used it to suggest Allen was throwing shade at Diggs. I think it's pretty clear from the original context that it wasn't a "dig" at Diggs, Allen was asked to comment on the new receivers and he gave props to Sherfield.

100% agree. That would indeed, be a terrible trade. I know Ben Albright has good connections and knows some Ball but that's actually bad on the level of some of the crazy trade posts we get here, along the lines of "Oliver sucks, let's trade him and a 5th round pick to the Vikings for Justin Jefferson" or the like. (Proposing we trade a player who is disappointing to us, to another team for one of their best players and peanuts in picks.

Like @Southern_Bills said, person can know that and still have problems if they are trying to save someone else who doesn't know or panics.

https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2023/jun/27/ryan-mallett-dead-at-35/ Swimming accident in the Gulf of Mexico can be many things. Rip tide would be one. Sounds as though swimming pool may be incorrect. Which is not to say that intoxicants might not be involved, but no need to go straight there.

Diggs is on such a different level than Sherfield right now that stuff like that probably doesn't register with him. Let Sherfield start taking snaps or targets from him and then see. Until then, I doubt Sherfield and praise of Sherfield are even on his radar. And even if they were, the "Diggs is mad because DHop wasn't signed with the money freed up by re-negotiating his contract:" crowd should expect him to be pleased if one of the Bills signings looks like he might work out (and take some defensive attention from Diggs).

That's one of those "who knows?" things. He stood up and announced he was "stepping away due to health issues". He def. did have some health issues, but he ws only 57 🤷‍♂️ So opinions vary, just as they do as to whether Frazier legit chose to step back for a year, or was pushed out by being told McD would call plays, or was shadow-fired. There's no question on the last. My only point is that it's hardly the sure bet to jettison a winning coach and bring in someone new, that some folks seem to believe. It may lead to a better result, it may not.

Pretty sure it's "What you wanna do?"

I agree with your point that people trying to make drama out of Allen praising a newly acquired Bills player seem to be pot-stirring Also doubtful that anyone posting here knows Diggs on a personal level. As for the final line though - are you implying that other high end talent won't "flock" to the Bills because of media and fans who you say are "the problem"? That seems like a silly take, if so. I doubt top NFL talent gives too much of a damn about media coverage and fans. Past events seem to indicate they care about 1) getting paid well 2) playing for a team that's likely to win a bunch, because losing sucks 3) receivers care somewhat about playing for a QB who can help them put up the numbers - though top receivers like Hill and Hopkins seem to believe they can "make" the QB. And there might be some reason to that- what was it Tyreek Hill said to a Miami reporter, "I could put up numbers with you throwing to me"?

No. Reads like standard "praise the new guy" stuff to me.

No, I was talking about the 5 years Reid coached in Kansas City (11, 9, 11, 12, and 10 win seasons, 4 playoff appearances) prior to starting his elite QB. No one could reasonably argue that Mahomes didn't elevate that offense to an entire new level. But it's also a fair point that KC had the #6 offense in the league the year before Mahomes first started, and a top-10 offense 3 of those 5 years. They also had a top-10 defense 4 of those 5 years. The point is, they were a team with considerable offensive and defensive talent in place and with an established culture of winning and knowing what it takes to win, before the elite Mahomes was given the keys.

Del? I don't discount Brown having no off-season. He also had ankle injuries last season IIRC. But, I'm a bit skeptical as to what that means for him as an NFL OLman. Maybe now that he's had the surgery he'll be all good - that's the same hope we hold for Micah Hyde. On the other hand, we fans were hearing a very similar story from Brandon Beane about Cody Ford going into the 2021 season (his 3rd): how he's played more games injured than healthy, how fans are discounting the impact of him needing off-season surgery and having no off-season strength training, how his best football is ahead of him. And we know how that worked out: with Ford losing his starting job as a guard to Daryl Williams, then being traded before the 2022 season.

You make some excellent points. There's something to be said for being a vocal, "in your face" leader. I seem to remember a game - against Miami? the Bills were getting pwn'd in the 1st half. They came out in the 2nd half and turned it around. Beasley was asked what happened, he said something to the effect "the coaches yelled at us in the locker room, maybe next time they should do it before the game". If the team isn't taking another team seriously and lacks focus, maybe some yelling is merited. But as far as the OL. There's nothing harder on an elite athlete (and every man who makes it to the NFL is an elite athlete, the guy no one could handle in HS and more often than not in college) than getting technically whipped by the opponent and feeling like there's nothing he can do about it. Yelling probably doesn't improve Saffold's ability to anchor and hand technique or Spencer Brown's footwork during a game. Things that may help: 1) technical position coaching, from teammates or coaches. Is a mistake being made and placing a hand *here* instead of *there* might help? 2) different protection calls/blocking assistance from 6th OL or RB/TE 3) play calls, recognizing the OL is struggling and changing to plays where we're getting the ball out fast

FWIW, McDermott mentioned "better decision making" as a skill Allen needed to build on to take the next step with the team. Also FWIW, some people here like to dunk on Kurt Warner's fillm breakdowns of Josh because Warner was a very different style of QB who played in a very different style of offense. I think that misses the point that a guy like Warner with a limited physical skill set made it to the Superbowl because of his "grey matter"; he is well able to understand and dissect what the defense is doing and exactly what that means for the available options on offense. His "Study Ball" "QB Confidential" film breakdowns on Allen are worth watching during this slow time of the off-season. https://www.youtube.com/@kurtwarnerqbc/search?query=Allen Warner has fundamentally become an Allen fan, and openly acknowledges that Josh has options he didn't because of Allen's great physical gifts. But his points about decision making and how that played into the Bills red zone woes at times last season are IMHO worth revisiting.

Would just like to point out something else he had in 2020 - a very good "always open" slot receiver in Beasley AND a credible deep threat in John Brown/rookie Gabe Davis. Because Beasley was running option routes, it took a while for defenses to "break the code" and figure out how to take them away 2020 Beasley still had the quickness/speed off the line and shiftiness that 2021 Beasley had begun to lack, plus by 2021 there was enough film of defenses successfully taking away Beasley that, especially after the rib injury, he wasn't as able to be effective in 2021.