Beck Water

Who did we sign or trade for that was drafted in the first round? I musta blinked and missed it Samuel is a 2nd round pick who has performed consistently in his career. So there's that. The thing is, when you take a shot on a 2nd round pick like Claypool who started out well but after his first two years has been kicked around like a playground milk carton, or a 2nd round pick like KJ Hamler who had an OK year as a rookie but has barely been able to play since due to injury - you're really taking a "rifle shot". It's not like the guy is a 2nd round pick who has to prove himself, these are guys who have had 4 years to figure it out and haven't been able to. I will say that the same issues apply to @Kirby Jackson's point that KC "traded for a guy drafted in the 1st last year". When the team that drafted a guy in the 1st is willing to ship him off for a 3rd midway through his 2nd season, that's also a "rifle shot", and Toney lived down to his billing.

How about in Nov - Dec, may we quote you then?

I'm pretty sure there were scenes of Diggs yelling at Cousins on the sideline.

Yeah, it's also kind of weak sauce defense: "He's just misunderstood!" "You say drama, I say passion!" There's no question that Diggs has a PhD in route-running moves. The questions are: 1) has he lost a step as far as speed and game savvy? He was observed breaking his routes short of the sticks and taking a long time to get off the line last season? 2) can he hold up over the course of a season and into the playoffs? Last two years he has started off hot, and cooled off big time. That's not uncommon as "Father Time" takes his inevitable toll, the hard part about a football season for older players is recovery each week, and also healing from nagging injuries Also, the way defenses like KC (twice), PHI, NWE, CINN etc manage to neutralize or limit Diggs effectiveness is by being physical with him all game and holding him as much as the refs will let them get away with. It's great to have all those slick moves Keenum talks about, but they don't mean as much if the CB is allowed to get his hands on you downfield

Hulu! OK, will look there. I think I miss-spoke, I meant that NFL thing you pay for to watch coach's film. Hard Knocks was on there.

I was going to loop back and comment on my own post, so thank you for responding and saving me the gaucherie! It's a really good interview. I highly recommend watching it.

Dang then I had to look it up. @NoHuddleKelly12 coined it I never understood why Edwards-Helaire didn't get more touches last season vs Pacheco. Edwards-Helaire was a 1st round pick and KC just rocks at drafting.

He was solid as a backup LB a couple years back. Father Time was catching up with him the last couple years - he's the type who makes up for athletic limitations by going full-throttle every play, which, you can continue to do on ST as you age, but not every down as an LB

I agree with you - don't count on Claypool. And your point about MVS is valid. He averages 500 yds per season (has 3155 yds over 6 seasons) but he does alternate high and low yardage seasons. Minor nit: if anyone got force-fed on the Raiders in 2022, it was Davonte Adams who had 180 targets, and many of them were low probability deep balls (he had a career low catch % of 56% and a career high Y/R, with a bunch of drops and INT on throws to him). Mack Hollins was just the "*****, Davonte's covered like flies on poo" best of a bad crop outlet in a "we got Davonte Adams and who?" WR room. The thing that bothers me about all this WR talk is that it's all a bit contrived. It's like the plot of a B grade detective novel where several of the characters must behave in specific, contrived ways to make the plot work. We want the Bills to gain over 4100 yds because that's what's needed to have a top-10 credible passing game. So we look at our receivers and say OK, Shakir gained 611 last season, so surely he can take another leap and give us 800 or who knows, 900 or 1000. And Kincaid, likewise, almost 700 last year, 900 this season. And Samuel has been a 600-ish yd guy 3 of the 4 seasons he wasn't on IR, but the 4th season with Brady he gained 850 so surely he'll do that with Allen. MVS, 600 yd year. Coleman, good rookie season with 600 yds like Kincaid last year. Add in 400 receiving yards from Cook and there you are, Baby, 4200 yds! OK, great, but what if Shakir's production actually levels or even falls off when he doesn't have Diggs taking the #1 CB with him; what if Kincaid doesn't "level up; what if MVS and Samuel achieve their career averages? Now we're adding those 4 plus cook and it's 2800-3000 yds and suddenly we need Coleman to have a monster year his college performance suggests he needs some development time to achieve, if he achieves it. Obviously I hope for the former, but when we judge future performance by past results, it's pretty clear why the pundits are skeptical.

Anyone else concerned it seems to feature Josh Allen running on like, half the plays shown?

This is a very interesting quote. Thank you for finding and sharing it - do you happen to have a link to the whole interview? Edit: I see in small type you actually have the link. Let's see if I can embed it below. I'll rummage around and look for it, but Kurt Warner, who as a QB made his living with his mind and his ability to read the D and instantly make the correct "routine" play, has made a very similar comment about Josh - that Josh can make amazing plays very few QB can make on a regular basis, but he'd like to see him take the routine plays in front of him more often.

I think I wrote reasonably clear English explaining what I meant. The post to which I responded said, and I quote "Diggs/Davis/Beasley/Brown is a Top 3 receiving corps?" Receiving corps. Not WR corps. Like most people here, I'm responding to a specific post (by Avesian), not to "50 pages back". Thanks

What kind of smart are you talking about? Life smarts? Intelligence measured by tests? Intelligence measured by life accomplishments that require intelligence for success? Sure, bunch of folks here That Smart by those criteria and more. If you're talking about actual knowledge of the game and football talent evaluation abilities, Pfft. I mean no disrespect, I know there are guys here who have scouted, coached college and HS ball, played DI ball and who have a deep knowledge of the game. But when it's actually your full time job and you do it to put bread on the table, you're at a different level. Of course there are many roles in an NFL FO and not all of them require deep football knowledge, so there are probably people in the building some of us would outclass.

Speaking of Hard Knocks - is there any other way to watch it than NFL Network?

Well, sure, yeah, but What's Your Point? As Dion Dawkins wrote in the Player's Tribune about the Cardinals beating us and celebrating their asses off like they won the damned superbowl, "they won, they can do (feel, say) anything they like"

I don't think the board over-rates the Beasley the Bills saw in 2020. I think that's Cold Hard Football Facts supportable by data. There's this stat, "receiving success %", which is not some frankenstat you need a PhD in computer science to really understand. It's simply how often the receiver gains 40% of the yards required on 1D, 60% on 2nd down, and 100% on 3rd or 4th down, divided by # targets. In 2020, Beasley was 7th in the league there. He and Allen had learned to be on the same page, Josh had learned to throw with anticipation, Josh trusted him, and he fought for every blade of grass. In 2021, he fell off in both 1D and in success % and that's one reason the Bills moved on. If good playoff WR is your criterion, we ought to really miss Gabe Davis. If by "several", you mean we were starting the Little Sisters of the Poor and a one-winged chicken at LB, yeah. (edit: credit to @NewEra I think for that LSotP phrase) Um Wait Wat?

People seem to be focused on the W/L prediction instead of the position by position analysis. I thought that latter was pretty fair. They pointed out that at skill positions, we lost our two productive WR, that Shakir and Kincaid and Cook were still with the team and we had added Samuel and a 2nd round pick (implication: no stars). They pointed out the loss of Morse on the OL, and I thought they could have made more of that since he was the C and McGovern is totally unproven at C. They made mention of the fact that the OL had a league-low in sacks and a running QB is part of that. They pointed out the turnover in the defensive backfield, but also that Hyde and Poyer actually allowed quite high ratings against them while Rapp and Edwards were both lower in QB rating against, and that we'd been playing without White anyway while Douglas and Benford had been pretty durn good. They captured the fact that our sack leader departed, we really need more from Rousseau, and we're counting on The Return Of the Real Von Miller. I thought they glossed over the weakness at kicker, and didn't comment on DL which is core to McDermott's defensive concepts. Overall fair assessment of the roster IMHO. I don't GAF about the W-L predictions since they're typically projecting last year's performance into the future.

I believe if you put the 2020 version of Diggs and the 2020 version of Beasley on the field in 2023, they would still be a top receiver pairing. It's also kind of hard to argue that the other top WR in 2020 (Kelce, Hopkins, Adams, Ridley) wouldn't still be dominant as their 2020 selves in 2023.

So it's kind of a trick statement. It raises the question "what do you mean by a top 3 WR corps?" If you mean, "had the most top producers at WR": Diggs was the top WR in the league in 2020. Top in targets, receptions, yards; second to Davonte Adams and Cole Beasley for catch % in the top 32 WR. Beasley was just outside the top-20 for yards and receptions - 23 and 21 I think. One can make an argument for KC that year, with Kelce and Hill, beiong the best receiving corps, then the Bills, then Minn with Jefferson and Theilen. Carolina with DJ Moore and Chosen would be up there, and Tenn with AJ Brown and Corey Davis would be in the mix. If by "top 3 receiving corps" you mean "overall talent in the 3-4 receivers on the field", then "Nah". But there really weren't any dominant Chase-Higgins-Boyd trios that season.

Not even on the side of the highway. Blocking a lane on the freewayl

Absolutely no disagreement about the need to surround a top passing QB with top receiving talent and a top pass protecting OL I *think* that Brady emphasized the run so much last year, especially for a couple of games (Cowboys and Chargers, which skewed the overall stats) - not because he intends the Bills to be a "run first" team but because Allen injured his shoulder worse than they wanted anyone to know, and it was getting re-aggrevated to the point that it was seriously affecting his passing motion. So they tried to give him "rest in place" games. But that could just be wishful thinking on my part. Facts, after Brady took over we had 5 games (including WC playoff) where we had more run plays than pass plays, 3 games where we had more pass plays than run plays, and the KC division loss was even. So make of that what you will. It's really the key unanswered question of the Bills 2024 season, "what exactly are Brady's intentions for the offense, and will he be able to fulfil them with the guys he has in the room?" PS it's a nit, but IMHO it's selling Samuel way short to call him a "gadget guy". While he can execute gadget plays and line up in the backfield, he is a capable slot receiver and can run routes from all the positions. He gets 600+ yds routinely when healthy, which is way more than the "gadget guy" manages.

I think that Jones has the pocket awareness of a stoned snail. And that's a problem. To be fair, Isaiah Hodgins wasn't their best receiver in 2022, and they grabbed him up because Sterling Shepard, Wan'dale Robinson, and finally Darius Slayton (who is their best receiver) was playing hurt. However and to your point, when the team's best receiver is 26 and has never had more than 50 receptions or exceeded 800 receiving yards, that is a problem. I can't. Why can you "live with" a drop off in protecting the only true and demonstrated "freakazoid" on the offense and one of the best players on the team? The Bills didn't have the fewest sacks in the league because their OL is brilliant and can afford Allen great protection if they drop off a bit, they had the fewest sacks because of Allen's ability to extend the play, move out of trouble, and scramble

It's a fair point. I'd counter that prior to his injury, DaQuan Jones was averaging just a scootch over 50% of the snaps (rising to 55% and 60% in the playoffs) If you look it up it says 43% but that's silliness arising from him going down with injury early in a game. Ed Oliver on the other hand has been a rising tide, with as many as 80-90% of the snaps in some games. Overall 72% last season and I think they'd like it to be a bit lower, they just ran out of quality bodies when Phillips went down. Personally, I think there's an argument to be made for the starter/rotational player with one guy getting 70-80% of the snaps and his backup giving him breathers, but McDermott has pretty much made it clear he will ride-or-die with a DL rotation as HC, and the impacts that has on cap and draft strategy - and this is one area where I would bet lunch money that McDermott influences draft strategy heavily. The point I was trying to make was not to label you as a teeth gnasher, but that as fans, our viewpoint about the wisdom or un-wisdom of a pick really depends upon how the player works out (and I include myself in this, just to be clear). Right after the draft, there are always "that guy was a reach" and "WTF, Beane, we need a MLB and the one thing that guy isn't projected as is just that". Then, in a couple years, if the player bombs with us, some are happy to thump their manly bosoms and say "I told you all that was a waste of a pick with no chance to work out here" and if he succeeds against predictions, you are a welcome exception but others will post their retraction in fine print on page 44 FWIW Lance Zierlein projected DeWayne as a 4th-5th round pick, but also as the 11th best DT in the draft (and he was the 8 DT drafted), so Zierlein would agree with you on the "reach". I'm not sure how much that means, as every year even the better draft pundits grade some players higher and others lower than the teams.

All McDermott's DTs are "rotational guys" I'm gonna sound like a gol durn broken record, but there was much ranting and wailing and gnashing of teeth about Beane drafting Terrel Bernard in Rd 3 - a guy who was too small and light and projected out as a weak side LB in the NFL. Well, so far the evidence says that it may have been a good pick (and may also be an example of drafting to fill an essential position before it's a desperate need), since he and Tre Edmunds overlapped a year. Even more wailing and gnashing about Dorian Williams last season, if he works out this season Beane looks smart and look, drafting before it's a desperate hole. Ditto DeWayne Carter - we drafted him while he has a year to develop. Of course, if he doesn't work out, like Cody Ford didn't work out on OL and Zack Moss didn't work out here at RB, then Beane is dumb.

I get it people have hopes for Shorter and there's also Tyrell Shavers and another UDFA Bryan Thompson who the Bills liked enough to hang on to after a season on PS. I do think the "Beane Should Have Double Dipped" folks were thinking of late 2nd through early 5th round