Beck Water

That's a very fair point. But I think most people would agree that "(name a group) are the worst, they don't understand (concept), they just want to be (activity)" is likely to fall into that "bigoted" umbrella. A very astute summation.

Yes, Dunne definitely “stirs the *****” and eggs McKenzie on As I said, not sure the show with Dunne helps McKenzie, either mentally or with the team You disagree with him? You think he’ll get more targets? What part of that can’t you believe?

So..."quickly" means "after his 4th year in the league to you? (Teller was drafted in 2018. Pro bowl season was 2021) Not saying this is you, but there's a lot of "20-20 hindsight" involved in the Teller situation. Overall, teams hit on something like 30% of their 1st-3rd round picks ("hit on" meaning guy becomes a serviceable player, not necessarily an all pro). Teams hit on more like 1 in 5 to 1 in 10 of their later round picks. But not hitting, means you have to keep taking shots. I have nothing against the idea of taking shots on OL in the later rounds, but I'd really like to see Beane make some investment in WR and OL earlier in the draft as well. I loved Beasley's contributions to the team, but bringing back two WR who are >32 years old, one of whom retired and one of whom hasn't been on a team all season, seems rather like a "desperation play".

I actually forgot I had posted that about "the move (Barkley's number change) leaves #11 available". I didn't want to claim forshadowing without proof, so Thank you for "bumping" that. We'll see if anyone picks up Stevenson. I'm not sure he's "through" in the league, or even with the Bills, but you own the bottle for now! Clearly Stevenson #4 out of 4 WR on the practice squad, including a 2019 6th round pick we signed in mid-October who ran a 4.6s 40. That ain't a promising look. I'm going to guess that the Bears or Bengals pick him up. If not the Patriots.

Since we're in this thread: McKenzie pointed out "you have a $250M QB who likes to throw the ball" and "have you seen us play in a dome? we're unstoppable". Didn't say. No. and in reply to:

He's pretty much right IMHO, but yeah, so are you.

Seems that way to me, too. I feel as though I read a lot of stuff here about "drops". By what's scored, a drop is a ball a WR should catch with ordinary effort. We have had some of those, but not as many as people think (exception of last game, when we had 5 scored - and no, it was 1 to Isaiah McKenzie) But, I do feel that our WR don't seem able to come up with that "ooohs" and "aaaahs" contested, challenging catch.

I wonder if this is a little bit of rust because in the past, Smoke has managed to draw a DPI on those underthrown balls by how he "sells" going back for them?

I don't see how this follows at all. The Eagles and Cincinnati are different teams with different strengths. Both good defenses. Eagles good against run and pass. Cincinnati overall weaker against the pass, though they turned it on and had a good plan for KC. Eagles more dependent upon being opportunistic, getting turnovers. Cincinnati overall just solid. Eagles, best point-scoring offense in the league, but a bit more dependent upon their running game. More rushing attempts, more rushing TDs, darn close rushing yards to their passing yards. Cincinnati, almost equal number of run and pass attempts, but much more of a passing-oriented offense. 2:1 ratio of passing to rushing TDs, passing to rushing 1st downs. 26 (tied for 28) in "rush yards per attempt: Then, there's the "any given Sunday" factor. Just because a team is beaten in the regular season, doesn't follow the same team will beat them in the playoffs *cough*. I imagine they'll see, but yeah, I think if Beasley is in playing shape they'll elevate him instead of Brown. But they'll only elevate 1 of the 2 of them. OK, how about some links to this everything you read?

Question: Why do you think we will make roster moves to sign them to the 53 man roster? I think that's probably a bad assumption. Brown has 1 PS elevation left. Beasley will have 3. There are 4 games left. The counter re-sets for the playoffs, with no limit on elevations. The roster move I see possibly coming, is Ike Boettger being activated from PUP. He had a 21 day window opened on Nov. 30, meaning the Bills either need to elevate him or put him on season-ending IR by (I think) Dec. 20th.

You know, with all that....McKenzie has a decent catch %, 69.1%. Would he like to have more, would the Bills like him to have more? Sure. Has he had drops? Sure. But to read what's read about him here, one might think he had a catch % of 46% or 47%....like........ Shakir and Crowder, the guys fans here keep crying for. McKenzie says he's open on film, and a couple weeks back Dorsey launched into a rather impassioned defense of McKenzie as "doing everything we've asked him to do, running every route full speed, clearing routes, blocking". So maybe he's making less "basic mental mistakes" than fans believe? All our receivers have been having trouble hauling stuff in this season. Davis has almost 700 yds and caught 3 out of 4 targets last Sunday, but he was scored with a drop, his 7th of the season, 10% drop rate - that gives him...a higher drop % than Isaiah McKenzie? His overall catch % is 53.5%. A goodly bunch of those were uncatchable throw-aways in his direction, but a number of those were makeable catches not "easy" enough to be scored as drops. On Sunday, the catching statistics from most of the WR were not great, especially in the first half. Diggs finished 3 of 5, but was 1 of 3 in the first half. Shakir, Brown and Davis all missed a catch. Knox was a bright light - he finished 4 of 7 which ain't great, but he was 4 for 4 in the first half I think. IMHO the one who should get more targets is Knox.

There were 3 targets McKenzie didn't haul in. One, he was trying to secure the ball as the defender pushed him out of bounds, it was ruled an incompletion and it was something like 3rd and 16, after several penalties had us 2nd and 20. I don't think we get the 1st down. Two, he drew a holding penalty, so it's "no play", but folks here are counting it as a drop. We took the 5 yards and went on to score a TD. Three, was a drop on 3rd and 3 where we scored a FG and apparently there was a lot of animated discussion on the sideline because other WR were open as well. Pretty sure that's the only one that was scored as a drop, but the tar-and-pitchforks crowd are up in arms about the 3 drops McKenzie had that single-handedly killed 3 different drives and forced us to punt.

Just me, but I feel what changed is that teams decided they don't need to worry about covering McKenzie and Knox and Cook or Motor, and when McKenzie or Shakir are running deeper routes they are basically clearing/decoy routes - so they can focus coverage on Davis. Davis has had maybe a few concentration issues where he's failed to bring in a contested catch or a catchable ball where he's going to be hit right away, but I think the main issue is the focus of coverage, without viable alternatives in the passing game.

I did a bunch of transcription where I went back a couple times and listened What I wrote down (longer post up thread, linked above) was "Dunne suggests "run the ball more, if it's bad weather, just run it, is it that simple?" McKenzie says "No" Dunne says "why not?" McKenzie says "because we can barely run the ball when it's sunny out". (Ouch. McKenzie just opened a can called "Trouble" with his name on it) I think it's throwing shade at all 3 of them (the OL, the RBs, and Dorsey/Kromer for play design) You can see my reaction about the wisdom of that quoted above. Anyway, I heard it as "we can barely run the ball when it's sunny out".

I think one might want to distinguish a bit from what Ty Dunne says or projects on McKenzie, and what McKenzie says himself. Ty Dunne definitely "stirs the *****" at times to raise the controversy/interest level. I'm not sure it's good for McKenzie to do that show. This is pretty much baloney. The improvised lateral Josh threw at him was a concentration issue - he wasn't "expecting the unexpected" until the whistle blew. This is true (that he complained about that). He also said he's open in zone.

You're entitled to your opinion. @john wawrow made it clear he was not condoning or defending Sullivan's comments, just presenting a different aspect of his colleague. Most of us want friends who have our back and will point out our good sides when we mess up in a public way. YMMV. Yep, We disagree 5x5

I guess we must have put in a claim? I don't know. Yeah, basically between Beaseley and Brown we have 4 elevations for 4 remaining games. The reports are that Beasley is expected to play against the 'Fins, but I dunno. I wouldn't expect the Bills to elevate both of them.

Maybe they're just sleeping on it to see if the furor dies down and maybe they'll keep him. He really isn't any of that. He isn't a columnist; he's a sports journalist, working for a media outlet with a high standard for verifying sources and requiring multiple sources with direct knowledge. He comes well-armed to a battle of wits, and has been an occasional (but valued) contributor here for years (though he did recently kinda stalk off in a snit) He's defending his friend, which is a trait most of us find admirable and hope to find in our own friends.

There we go! "I can't be sexist! Some of my best friends are women!": "He can't be sexist! He covers female athletes and women's sports!" What do you call sports reporters of the same era bonding together and having each other's backs? The "thin ink line"? The "typewriter ribbon connection"? Anyway, it's admirable in @john wawrow to defend Jerry Sullivan but sorry, if he sincerely respected women I don't see how he comes out with either of those comments - the one about women fans "not understanding critical journalism" and "just wanting to be cheerleaders" OR the one about "women are better than men".

They can call Brown up this game. It would be his 3rd call-up. Then AFTER this game they would have to move him to the active roster for an additional call-up.

Not really. It's not his thing, and certainly not on screens. Shakir has been getting better at blocking. It's not just the "good coverage LBs", it's that Josh was having to escape from pressure quite a bit (especially in the first half). quick throws over the middle are problematic unless there's a clear passing lane, and once the QB moves out of the pocket to the L or R they can be blocked off. It's not an accident that the passing chart for the Jets game shows a peppering of incompletions to the L, they were getting Josh to roll out to the L.

Who? Crowder? He had 1st downs on 4 of his 6 receptions. Here's the hitch: he had 6 receptions on 13 targets. That's a 46.2% catch %. He had a fumble, he had an INT on a target to him that I'm pretty sure was off a deflection on a catchable ball. He was a nice complement to McKenzie and I think it was valuable to have that competition and that change of pace, but let's not paint him with a Halo in hindsight.

I am probably too prejudiced against the practice of quoting tweets or social media posts made by someone else as sources, without any independent verification. If they did verify with independent sources (and since it's shown true, they may well have) then my criticism is off-base and I own the mistake. Brown gets 3. PS guys get 3. Then it re-sets for playoffs.

I wouldn't waste many brain cycles on the bad feels. For all you know: 1) Niagara Gazette may have had problems with Sullivan's behavior for some time but not considered it rose to fireable levels, and this was the proverbial "straw" 2) They may have asked him to go to some kind of training or take some kind of course and he told them to go get hosed Me, I think when someone tells you who they are, Believe Them. Sullivan says he's a "31 year veteran of Buffalo journalism" so he's at least in his mid-50s, possibly a decade older. I'm sure in that time, he's met thousands if not 10s of thousands of competent female media members and female fans who can diagram a play and critique the details of a player's performance with the best of them, as well as thousands if not 10s of thousands of male fans who actually don't want to hear a critical word and who think "fan" = "cheerleader". I don't think a few hours of sensitivity training are gonna change the core beliefs of someone who must have that background yet can still come out with that Dreck

If you feel all people have a right to their opinion, what is the problem with people demanding that he be fired? They are stating their opinion. Isn't that part of open dialogue? Why do you have a problem with them expressing their opinion, if they're strongly enough moved to want to do it? I think you've got things mixed. "Open dialogue" does not mean "guy has a right to a platform at a specific employer". Being fired by an employer does not mean Sullivan is being "cancelled". He is free to take his opinion down the road and work for someone else, or self-publish, or start a blog/subscriber service like Ty Dunne did, or stand on box on a street corner. If readers with differing opinions enjoy his brand of snark as you say, then surely he won't want for an audience. It has probably never been easier in the history of Humanity for people to reach a large audience by multiple means.