Beck Water

Well, we'll have to agree to disagree on that one. I don't think the Chiefs would have worried a bit about Duke Williams, and I don't think he'd have managed to haul in the TD pass that made it 34-0. I don't think the Chiefs would have worried a bit about some JAG substitute for AJ Brown, either. I used the term "receivers" not "wide receivers" advisedly. I'm referring to Dalton Kincaid and Keon Coleman. Don't get me wrong, I haven't given up - they've both shown flashes - but they have GOT to take a big step next year for us to have what we need, both of them.

That's very true, but Mostert is 32. His breakout year with SFO was his 5th year in the league. The Bills could likely pay Cook on a 4 year contract and he would still be within his shelf life at the end. That said, as I posted elsewhere - Cook didn't carry the load in rush attempts that the rush leaders in the NFL did - Henry, Barkley, Robinson, Taylor, Gibbs, Jacobs, Kyren Williams. Of those 7, only Gibbs had fewer than 300 rush attempts while Cook had 207. He was 5th in Y/A, but he hasn't shown he can carry the load that those other top backs carry. And he doesn't make up for it in contributions to the pass game - the Bills cut his workload in the passing game in favor of Ray Davis and Ty Johnson. So it's very unclear to me what exactly are Cook's agents' arguments to pay him more than any RB but Christian McCaffery, who is a one-man wrecking crew when he's healthy.

A counterpoint is that while Cook's contributions have been solid for an RB as a receiver (84% catch rate, 8 Y/R), his use in the passing game really dropped off last year in favor of Ty Johnson and Ray Davis. He had 54 targets last season, 38 this past season - with 44 targets going to Ty Johnson and Ray Davis. This probably reflects Cook having a drop % of 9.4 his rookie year and 11.1% this past year. The Bills seemed like they took some of the routes they were using Cook on in 2022 and 2023 out of his playbook and gave them to Ty Johnson and Ray Davis. Cook is not built to be the physical beast that Henry and Barkley are. He isn't carrying the rush attempt load that they, or Josh Jacobs or Jonathan Taylor are. In fact, he literally has only 2/3 of the rush attempts those guys do - they're all >300 rush attempts to Cook's 207. And it's not clear he'd physically hold up to that kind of workload. So he's not carrying the rush attempt workload of the top backs, he's not adding in the passing contribution that other RBs make. I think the Bills are open to paying him, but I'm honestly puzzled in his "$15M a year" unless it's all bluster.

The quiet part of this is: WR in general is a position that tends to Diva a bit. Not sure why, maybe the guys on here who have played at least in college at WR or CB can give some insight. Maybe because the WR and CB are often alone 1 on 1 with all eyes on them, so they're positions where guys have to have a lot of self-confidence and a short memory for bad plays? Maybe because they're getting punished hard on almost every play hitting or being hit? So when you pay a WR top $$, his inner Diva seems to blossom, and he seems to feel he's "The Man", the Star, and he should get the ball whenever there's a possibility he's open. I don't think the Bills should go out and pay a guy $30M. But I do think the Bills need better WR than they had this year.

So just for giggles I decided to look at the Iggles and the Chiffs. Iggles 1069 run + pass plays. 621 rush plays or 58% rush plays. Of their 42% or 448 pass plays, 261 targeted WR thus 58% of their pass plays targeted WR (so less overall plays targeting WR than the Bills 295, but a higher % since they had fewer pass plays) Overall, 24% of their offensive plays targeted a WR Chiffs 1050 run plus pass plays. 450 rush plays or 43% rush plays. Of their 57% or 600 pass plays, 283 targeted WR thus 47% of their pass plays targeted WR. Overall, 27% of their offensive plays targeted a WR Yes.

I'm late to the show here so need to catch up on what point is trying to be supported with the various stats? Correct on the WR target pass plays. Bills had 520 passing attempts, so that would be 295/520 or 57% of their pass plays targeting a WR The Bills are listed in pro.football.reference as having 1025 plays: the sum of their pass attempts and rush attempts is 1011. That makes them 49% rush, 51% pass. Overall 29% of the Bills offensive plays targeted a WR. Close - see above, 29%. I expect the Bills might have liked to have more pass plays targeting a WR, but their WR weren't up to the job, which is why we saw Ty Johnson getting critical targets in critical games.

Monos and Dunne are buddies and Dunne got his "Go Long" start by dredging up Monos and Doug Whaley for "dirt" on the Bills organization and critique about how they would do it differently. Well buddies, you had your chance and right now Beane and his crew are exceeding anything you ever did, so a lot of what Monos says kind of looks like sour grapes and "armchair QBing". My opinion. It isn't in question that Beane and the Bills have gotten poor ROI for their 1st and 2nd round picks. Beane has had 13 1st round picks. Out of that, he's had 1 Superstar (Allen), 2 pro-bowlers (Tremaine Edmunds and Cook), 4 decent to good football players (Oliver, Epenesa, Rousseau, and Torrence), 4 duds (Ford, Basham, Elam), and 3 guys who have shown flashes, but the jury is still out on whether they'll make it (Kincaid, Bishop, Coleman). When we throw in that in two of those cases, the Bills traded a 4th round pick to move up a few slots in the 1st, thus giving them fewer shots on goal in the draft, the ROI looks worse. I'll be somewhat contrarian and say, that isn't the real problem with the Bills Rd 1-3 draft picks. The real problem has been that even with the players who eventually become good players or pro-bowlers, it seems to take them 3 years to really contribute. It's kind of canonical that teams should expect immediate production from their Day 1 and Day 2 picks, and many teams get this, but this has been relatively rare for the Bills. AJ Epenesa took 3 years to really start looking like he could play football. Rousseau and Cook took 2. Beane does have a pattern of going for high ceiling/low floor guys who are gonna take longer to develop and who have a higher probability of just busting. That begs the question: what is the hit rate and how quickly do players develop for other GMs around the league? If you go look at the Eagles over the same time period, what do you see? They moved on from their 2019 1st round tackle Andre Dillard after 3 years. Jalen Reagor after 2. So that's at least 2 duds. Cam Jurgens is playing now but took 3 years to come on. Nolan Smith and Jalen Carter are playing now but took 2 years to come on. It kind of looks like a better hit rate, but there's also the fact that 3 of those years, the Eagles were drafting considerably higher at 10, 13, and 9, so it could just be the price of consistent success for the Bills. But drafting at pick 22 last season, the Eagles did bring in 2 players who were starters and strong contributors on their defense. So yeah, overall, if the Bills are to take a step, Beane has to do better in the draft.

Really good post, but you gotta fix that typo Other than that, I gotta point out that clutch WR play did seem to play a key role in winning that Superbowl for Davonta Smith - who was able to make some of those key receptions because the Chiefs were busy trying to smother AJ Brown. I think your assessment means it's even more critical to identify WR talent that can contribute immediately in the draft - and so far the Bills are 0 for 2 in getting immediate contributions from their 1st and 2nd round receiver picks.

Ciano isn't the strength coach, though, right? I gotta say there's less info on the staff to be found on the Buffalo Bills webpage than there used to be, unless I am missing something.

Just want to interject that until Cook broke 1000 yds in 2023, the Bills had not had a 1000+ yd rusher since Shady McCoy in 2017 - despite using 2 3rd round, 1 2nd round, and 1 4th round pick at RB. So it might not be that easy. Now of course, one can point to confounding factors and say that 2nd half of last year and this year, we built the scheme and the OL to be more run-friendly, with 50+ more rush attempts over the season. And there would be some truth to that. But neither of the RBs we moved on from (Moss, Singletary) lit it up with new teams, either. I'm not saying Cook should get $15M a year but I think it's possible it's a bit harder to draft a Cook-level guy than you might thing. I'm personally not in favor of moving on from any of the good players on offense, because we need more playmakers there, not less.

Did NOT see that coming. Thought the Bills S&C were highly regarded. The Bills were keeping some guys on the roster instead of IRing them, who wound up missing 4 or more games. Wonder if that had something to do with it? If they bring in someone better I have no problem with it. Where did you read this? Please share!

You can edit the title, dude. Just edit your OP post, and it makes the title editable for you.

Even better hilarity - Geno Smith Semi-seriously, I don't see the ingredients that allowed Darnold to be successful with the Vikings as present with the Jets: 1) good run game with Aaron Jones 2) decent OL in pass protect and run game 3) top-notch WR talent with Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison and TJ Hockinson

But there's a reason Brady never saw that much pressure. He was the master of making his reads quickly, moving subtly in the pocket to find himself space, and getting the ball out quickly, accurately, and in rhythm to guys like Welker and Pedelman or Gronkowski, who made YAC for him.

Gaaaah! No! One of Elam's flaws is his unwillingness to lay himself out and thump in tackling. It's one reason why he's inactive, instead of playing teams. That's the very essence of what the Bills need from a safety, and Elam is missing it.

I'm snipping most of your post to focus in on what I believe to be a key point. In 2020, the Bills rolled over the league with a pass-centric offense. They weren't alone in this: the Chiefs, Bucs, Chargers, Texans, Falcons all very pass-centric teams of which the Chiefs, Bills, and Bucs were the most successful. The Colts, Seahawks and Packers were two successful passing teams that could also run successfully. The writing was on the wall in 2021 with the season opener against Pittsburgh and the embarrassing loss to the Jags. Some teams had figured out how to defend the offense Daboll was running. By 2022, teams had "caught up" defensively. So our scheme had to adjust, and lean a lot more on the run game. I think that's a league wide trend - I forget what pundit it was, but someone was proselytizing about how there's been a change and so many running backs are now among the top players by some metric of added value. The Bills defense was built primarily to shut down high powered passing offenses. They could stop the run when they sold out the passing game to do it, as with the 2020 and 2021 era Ravens and Seahawks. But when a team had a top run game backed up by a sound passing attack, our D struggled. The Colts gave the Bills all they could handle in the playoffs. We needed to move on from Daboll and his disciple Dorsey because teams had "solved" that offense. Thanks to the Giants hiring Daboll and McDermott firing Dorsey, we did. What I think we need to do, but haven't done that successfully yet, is re-cast our defensive scheme to catch up to the new offensive "arms race."

Cue "another panthers hire" in 3...2....1.....

I agree that losing Tre White was the beginning of the end for the Bills more dominant D, but it was really just one factor. Bringing up Benford as a "future CB1 playing as a CB2" - eh, Benford excels as a zone corner I think. It has to be recalled that the Bills used a Rd 1 pick on Kaiir Elam because HE was supposed to be our CB1, and we would have two "CB1s" of Tre White and Kaiir Elam in the backfield for 4 years. That was the plan. Benford was a lucky find.

LOL I got to give you Nick Sirianni's perspective on this. He's the best goddamned coach in the NFL and he'll be happy to tell you all about it and what to do if you disagree.

Chiefs can move on for practically nothing in football player terms ($2.55M) before the 3rd day of the new league year. After 3/14/2025 they owe him a $11.5M roster bonus. I'm not exactly sure I'm understanding your suggestion - are you suggesting the Chiefs drive their decision on whether or not to roster Travis Kelce based on whether Taylor Swift remains his girlfriend? I don't think that's practical for them if so - they got to make up their mind whether or not to pay him that big 'ol roster bonus mid-March, and Taylor could still be writing one of her famous breakup songs in August for all they know. In any case, slowing or not, Kelce was still the Chiefs top receiver for the 3rd year in a row. Rashee Rice, if there is justice, will be getting hit with some legal consequences and big 'ol fat NFL suspension. So Swift or no Swift, the Chiefs may decide they can't get better by moving on just yet.

He is indeed, and it shows in his stats - not just total catches and yards, but Y per touch, Y per game. But he is still Mahomes most trusted outlet and "guy" when he needs a 1st down, and he's almost as bad as Gronkowski was for pushing off and getting away with it to lose coverage when he changes direction. So even though he's gonna be 36 and he's definitely slower, he would still be a loss the Chiefs may not have replaced - remains to be seen whether Noah Grey can take a step and fill Kelce's shoes rather than catching passes when the attention goes to Kelce.

He was. But the 3 TDs at the end of the3 game will mask that.

I mean, in 2020 vs Tampa they only scored 9 points and Mahomes completed 26 of 49 (53%) for 0 TD and 2 INT, but that hasn't seemed to matter Refs got the spot correct?

Me too. Would have loved that so much.

Soooooo that was thoroughly enjoyable to me as a Bills fan Watched with a friend who was also rooting for the Eagles We made "rules" early in the game that our puppy got a carrot (loves carrots) or other veg every time the Eagles scored and a piece of cheese or a cracker every time the Eagles sacked Mahomes or the Chiefs turned the ball over. By the end of the 1st half the pupper was looking a little uncomfortable. Too many treats! Never mind, some yogurt and a little walkie and she's all good now. My quick thoughts on the game: -The Eagles DL was like McDermott's Wet Dream of a D-line. That's how McDermott envisions his D to work: the DL brings pressure with 4 and forces the QB off his spot, then keeps up the pursuit. They kind of took their foot off the gas at the very end and KC got a couple "pride" scores, but eh. -It was so much fun watching Mahomes get engulfed by those green guys and watching Kelce and Hopkins miss catches that would have made a difference -KC did a great job limiting Barkley and bringing some pressure on Hurts, but in the end it didn't matter. -My word, did y'all catch Sirianni's "Dano, you can tongue my bean bags" press conference after the NFCCG? When I heard all his "I'm the best coach in the NFL" stuff, I felt FEAR that it would inspire the Chiefs. No worries fellas!