Beck Water

Agree. There were 3 he could have had though. We'll see Weds if they count them as drops.

OK. So that would be Indy, KC, SFO, LAR for Coleman and KC, SFO, LAR for Kincaid. Let's hear your argument that those games were more "fire" than, say, DET, SEA, TEN, JAX, and 2nd MIA: Go. Now on to the second point, let's hear your argument that the absence of Coleman and Kincaid were causal factors. Coleman already is WR4 or 5 in the playoffs. In case you weren't watching, neither Shakir, nor Cooper, nor Kincaid, nor Knox played a single snap. That would seem to indicate that the Bills consider Shakir, Cooper, and Kincaid at least of more importance than Coleman, making him functionally #4 or #5. He fights back to the ball plenty. I think his instructions for yesterday were, "Don't".

The last thing you say is true. WR will continue to be a massive hole on the Bills until/unless we have a receiving corps the like of Chase/Higgins/Boyd or St Brown/Williams/LaPorta or Jefferson/Addison/Hockenson or maybe Kupp/Nacua/Higbee. The next couple sentences up remind me of the sort of thing people wrote about Allen after the draft, his rookie season, and whenever he had a bad game his second year. Because everyone knows, the player you draft is the player the team will get, Forever and Ever, Worlds without End, Amen. I'll leave the "lot better option available and Beane fumbled it" bit for after next season. I think we need to bear in mind that Beane has been pinning the Bills receiving hopes (for years) on guys who can play, but are relatively short and can get neutralized by aggressive, physical defense. Then we get annihllated in the playoffs when the refs say "let 'em play" and fail to call DH or DPI, or (as with the Lions) call it, but only a fraction of the time that it's actually going on. You can't change the outcome by doing the same thing. Beane also has a profile of drafting relatively raw but immensely physically talented players (Allen, Edmunds, Rousseau, now Coleman) on the theory the staff and the players will "coach them up" if the player has the right mindset. Sometimes it works well (Allen, Rousseau), sometimes it works OK (Edmunds), sometimes it doesn't work (Elam, apparently). Coleman is to be determined.

That, my fellow Bills fan, is the one aspect of yesterday's performance that truly worries me. I do not think that was done on purpose.

Gawd, that was Ugly. Although to be fair, I think Reid didn't truly understand until yesterday just how broken Carson Wentz remains.

It's possible. But I think it's also possible that Keon will buckle down in the off season and take a big step.

What the hell is your point here? Do you want to list every single promising player who was not available when the Bills drafted and pine after them, too? It's not like we could have worked a simple trade of a 4th and swap up 2 slots last year to draft Thomas. He was drafted 6 slots before us and we didn't have a 3rd round pick going into the draft. And in case you didn't notice, the Jags finished 4-13 with the #26 rated offense on points; the Bills finished #2; #9 for passing yards vs the Jags #24. They started the year with Christian Kirk and Gabe Davis ahead of Thomas as WR, and both of them were injured by November; Devin Duvernay spent October and early Nov on IR. Thomas put up the numbers he did because he was competing for targets with Parker Washington (6th round) and Tim Jones (who?) and he was getting Fed. Thomas was the best WR on a bad team who just fired their head coach. C'mon Man. If you want to pine, Go Big. Pine after Justin Jefferson who was actually drafted with the pick the Bills traded away to get Diggs. Or maybe pine after Amon-Ra St Brown who was drafted in the 4th; maybe Beane could have drafted him in the 2nd round instead of doubling down at DE and taking Boogie Basham - St Brown was forecast by pundits to go in the 2nd or 3rd. Toss in Puka Nacua if you want to.

It's not just teams adjusting to Wilson. Wilson's decision making as a professional QB is just not good. Example: at the end of the game with :46 seconds left and a FG needed to win: 1st and 10 at the Pitt 42, Wilson scrambled instead of throwing the ball away. Worse, he didn't get OOB on that scramble. It cost the Steelers 19 seconds off the clock. Then the next play, he took a sack costing them 5 yards and their final time out. Two things every QB gets drilled on in end of game clock management: the few yards you get from a run play are not worth the time (unless you're in FG range and working for ball placement) and Don't Take A Sack. I don't think the Steelers as a team believe that Russ Wilson can QB them to wins any more, and when a team doesn't believe that, it affects how everyone performs. That said, Pickens is an ass.

I mean, he's a harsh critic but he's not wrong

People who live in Buffalo itself Tranplanted Bills fans who live far outside Upstate NY

Was this pre-draft or yesterday or ??

I was worried myself. But I think there are a couple of things at play. One is, I think when a receiver is used to tracking and catching balls from Allen, it makes it harder to track and catch balls from other QB. There is that much difference in the velocity thus the timing of when the ball gets there. Trubisky said after the game "if we'd had a few more reps to build timing, I think we would have gotten a couple of those." Two is, Brady wasn't making any efforts to scheme Keon more open. Three is, the reason that Beane traded for Amari Cooper was that the Ravens game showed us we really didn't have enough WR talent to divide a good D's attention and the Houston game showed us that without Shakir, we don't have enough WR talent period. So Beane spun the roladex and 2 weeks later Cooper was here. But we just spun the roladex back to "Shakir out, no Cooper" and it was generally not pretty. [in case anyone was wondering, Collins got 100% of the snaps, Coleman 97%, and Samuel 67%; no other receiver got snaps] So yesterday, without Cooper AND Shakir, AND running vanilla plays, there just wasn't enough to divert attention from Coleman and Hollins. Alex Austin, one of NE starting corners, played more than 3/4 of the game and I think he was covering Coleman a good bit. Then add in that Trubisky takes longer to make up his mind and throw and the ball takes longer to get there, and it wasn't good. There's no question that Coleman needs to work on his release and his route running this off-season though.

Relax, McDermott had ya. They wanted to get Jimbo his tuddy and McD had a plan. I don't think they intended Bass to miss the XP though, that was scary. And that's exactly what McD did. Don't we think McDermott, who has a career-long track record of bemusing rookie QB, couldn't have called a defense that would have bemused and confused Milton and had him seeing ghosts? Vanilla, Vanilla, Vanilla was the flavor of the day.

LOL yeah, Pats 17 Bills 16 at the time. That was McD's insurance against the Bills D being able to score a safety or the O being in position to kick a chip shot FG and win.

Did you watch the KC-Denver game? I would say KC was actively trying to lose. Wentz looked Gawdawful. Mahomes, watching Wentz play QB, looked as though he was in pain and close to requiring sedation on the sidelines. C'mon man, 27 rush yards, 98 passing yards, 5 sacks for 27 yards, 2 fumbles, 5 (FIVE!) 1st downs, 1 3rd down conversio with only 18 minutes TOP. Their D looked Gawdawful too. For Denver's offense 321 passing yards and 4 TD, 159 rush yards, 29 (TWENTY NINE!) 1st downs, 10 out of 14 3rd down and 2 of 2 4th down conversions with 41:49 TOP. There's no way a team like KC puts up and allows numbers like that, unless they are actively trying to lose. As "trying to lose" goes, that was a bank heist in broad daylight in the center of town. Buffalo, on the other hand, actually put up 259 yds of offense, 2 TD, 16 1st downs and 6 of 15 3rd down conversions, 28:46 TOP vs 309 yds of offense allowed, 241 passing yards and 309 yds of offense, 1 TD, 19 1st downs, 4 of 12 3rd down conversions and 31:14 TOP. We actually held the lead for 7 minutes of the 3rd Q. As "trying to lose" goes, that was (relative to KC) subtle. The Bills were far from doing all they could have, and they weren't going to give any plays away to playoff opponents. But Man!! that was a coaching Masterclass in doing just enough to let your guys earn incentives and to put guys you want to evaluate in positions to succeed and show you what they got, while at the same time very carefully not doing too much. To me, pulling Trubisky for Mike White in the 4th Q after the Patriots went up 17 to 16 is the key indicator that winning was truly not a priority for McDermott in this game. It was hard not to let the guys score when they recovered a botched snap on the NE16 and they wanted to get Cook a TD, but after NE scored on the next drive to re-take the lead, McDermott was Taking No Chances that Trubisky might play too well and do too much.

Right on! I think Buffalo Joe is to the NFL kind of like Buddy Holly or Elvis Costello are to rock stars. Birth Control glasses, geeky looks - "hell, if he can be a rock star, I can be a rock star!" So he has that sort of "everyman" appeal to him. [Edit: I'm not saying Buffalo Joe wears birth control glasses or looks geeky, just that if a kid from Lancaster can go from UB to walk on at training camp to making the Bills roster, Well Hey!] But just like Holly was and Costello is actually an exceptional musician, "Buffalo Joe" has to be pretty exceptional to even make it from walk-on to starting an NFL game AND wearing the green dot in that game, even a game with little meaning (to the Bills).

If he had the green dot (which I think he did) then setting up all of the D was part of what Buffalo was evaluating. I thought he had the D generally in the right position. I'm sure we were going very vanilla on D, but not entirely from what I saw. I think it's pretty normal for players to be slow to react their first year. They are still thinking about things, it is see-process-react whereas when they develop the processing bit becomes automatic and it's see-react, see-react. (this is the rust IMO that Milano is scraping off) I actually felt Buffalo Joe looked less "lost in space" than Bernard did his first year or Williams his first year, which is positive. He'll benefit from a full off season of NFL level strength training and conditioning for sure.

Going from 11-6 to 3-13 tends to focus the attention

Scout team reps as QB is what I can find online. It seems to me the more likely thing the Vikings do, if they're smart, is franchise Darnold and trade him. The model in my mind is what the Chiefs did with Mahomes, where they drafted Mahomes while they had Smith under contract for 2 more years, let Mahomes have a full year to watch and learn, and then traded Alex Smith to Washington with a year left on his contract. Darnold has had a very very good year for the Vikings, and he's going to get paid. It seems like a very low-risk thing for the Vikings to try the tag-and-trade on him.

The strange journey of Baker Mayfield -Mayfield's 1st year, looked pretty good under Hue Jackson and Todd Haley, then Freddie Kitchens. Looked like he was worth the #1 pick. Then Hue Jackson was fired and Freddie Kitchens hired; @BarleyNY may correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the rumor was that Mayfield was given a strong voice in those decisions -Mayfield's 2nd year, big fall-off. Lower completion %, as many INTs as TD, just looked like a hot mess -Mayfield's 3rd year under Stefanski and Alex Van Pelt was like "Jim Dandy to the Rescue! Jim Dandy to the Rescue! Completion percentage back up, Interceptions way down, TD up - looked once again as though the Browns had something. -Mayfield's 4th year, played through an injury (was it a shoulder?), missed some games, did not look so good. Then of course came the organizational decision to ditch Mayfield for You_Sick_*****. My feeling was, Mayfield is confident, which is needed, but at times it verged on cocky or arrogant early in his career. He's had some of the arrogance knocked out of him, and replaced by solid football knowledge when he had a chance to work as an understudy to a Great Football Mind out in San Francisco, and he's solid now - absolutely a QB a team can win with.

Lead the Bills with 9 combined tackles but stats are far from the story of course. Thoughts? Did anyone see any noteworthy plays? Any noteworthy gaffes? I saw neither, but I thought he looked solid.

The Fish have already said they are keeping him. So the point is moot. Oh hell to the no's, Dorsey did unto his bridge, the bridge equivalent of his tablet smashing tantrum in the coach's booth at Miami. Then he poured charcoal lighter onto it and threw matches. A man with sense.

Nice resource - doesn't seem to include much along the routes we're interested in, but good to know

It's not just the KC backups. KC was running the most vanilla preseason defense possible. The Bills, from what I could decode on the TV broadcast, were mixing it up a bit more more on D, I presume because they wanted to see how Buffalo Joe handled adjusting the play call for presnap changes, and how well Ulofoshio and Bishop and the other players knew their assignments after those adjustments

Well hey, Hendrickson, I know a team...