PBF81

So did a lot of people. IMO your assessment wasn't off. There was almost no evidence that he could even read defenses in college. You know how difficult it is to become a pro QB when you come in never really having had to, or perhaps simply never having read defenses well. I cannot think of a single QB that got drafted with that as a weakness and become anything better than a backup. My take at that time was that he was a man among boys in college, which he was. Of all of the QBs in the draft that year, including the ones that never got drafted, he had the worst performance against power-5 competition of any of them. At Wyoming, generally speaking, he overcame the fundamentals like that with sheer athleticism, which is why he was so poor the handful of times he played against power-5 teams, because that athletic advantage was heavily mitigated. The one hope that I held out for him was his intellect, which I gave about a 5% chance at the time of sustaining him in the NFL. And by golly, he did it. The kid's incredibly bright, which is obvious in how well spoken and well thought out he is. It's players like Zay Jones, Watkins, Spiller, Oliver that are much easier to accurately predict how good they'll be in the NFL based upon what they did and how they did it in college. QB play also always has a whole bunch of complexities that cannot always be synthesized in an analysis, or let's just say are more difficult to synthesize due to the mental aspect of the play, unlike any other position. Missing on Allen is hardly a knock on someone. He defied the odds, in a major way.

All I know is that unless McD needs 3 all-pro WRs, an all-pro TE, an all-pro RB, and several all-pro OL-men, he has more than enough to out compete any team in the league this season on offense if he and Dorsey can put it all together, part of which includes ensuring that Allen uses his high-percentage short-game much more than he did last season and more like he did with Beasley here. I suspect that will happen, for that very reason, that he did it when Beasley was here but simply didn't have a "Beasley" around last season. We'll see, we first find out in 12 days. GO BILLS!!!

First of all, I don't recall bringing "he" into it. But since you did, consider a few alternate opinions. Was it a tough division during that stretch? Or would you say that it really hasn't been all that competitive? Which other QBs in the division have been very good or better consistently? How much does Allen factor into that? IYO, say Allen was on any number of teams before this one, how would we have been then? You suggesting he'd only be good for a game or two back then? If Allen weren't his QB, how do you see our records? Genius? Anytime a team buys an establshed great player, I'm not sure I'd put that in a genius category. But opinions obviously differ. To me genius would have been drafting Jefferson instead at much lower expense for four seasons. Seems to me he had to sign Diggs because of all the whiffing on getting any great WRs here without buying an established one. JMO however. Again, due to Allen. Only possible because of Allen, nonexistent without him. Why aren't any of the other drafted positions playing at similar levels at their positions? We'll certainly find out if that's the case in his 7th season which starts very soon.

Kincaid is definitely going to be interesting to watch. I can see him being as good as Kelce, which is obviously why they drafted him, or I can see him being patently average. Some of that will obviously depend upon Dorsey, Allen, and even McD. This is going to be a very interesting season. The talent is there on offense to be able to take this team to the Conference Championship and win it, particularly with KC having a serious dearth of receiving talent over there this season. If McD cannot do that, I suspect that there are going to be cracks in the support for "Trust the Process" era.

Depends upon one's perspective. Most of those players appear to be depth caliber to me with only a few exceptions. On D it's Oliver and Rousseau, but neither is much above average. Oliver's great when he's on, but his disappearance acts are concerning and they'll often last several games. I'd put him at above average but not by much. There's quite a bit of hope that Rousseau turns into a much better player too. But after his first few games last season he all but disappeared too. Half of his stats (Sacks, TFLs, QBHits) are in his first five games. After that in his next ten games his stats were below-average. So unless someone uses the lame defense that he was constantly double-teamed thereby opening things up for others nonsense, he was below average after that. He had 0 Sacks, 0 TFLs, and only 1 QBHit in both playoff games. Johnson's good as a nickel, but obviously they don't care for him enough to start at CB. Bernard, Elam ... meh. Bass, he's a kicker. Torrence looks the part as does Kincaid who's not listed as a starter. Cook has yet to prove that he can handle more than 140 touches in college or the NFL. Big season for him. Knox is OK but also inconsistent, and his drop % isn't low. Brown has yet to prove something. Davis is IMO the best draft pick that we have starting with this year's draft class pending. Oddly, that's a minority sentiment.

OK, take 'em off then. But Bass is the starting K, no? Or has something changed. Bernard is currently listed on TOS as the starter. Elam, likely not, but he along with Benford and Jackson are listed collectively as starters. My guess is the team hasn't finalized it yet. Johnson's the starting NCB insofar as we know. I completely agree that neither Bernard nor Elam are starting caliber players, and Bernard's obviously only starting for that reason and unless Dodson starts. So let's take those two off then. I say keep Taron on there as the NCB since they're only starting two LBs on any depth chart that's been put out, and for as unorthodox as it is. Here's what's left. Gabe Davis, 2020, 4th Round Cyress O’Torrence, 2023, 2nd Round Spencer Brown, 2021, 3rd Round Dawson Knox, 2019, 3rd Round James Cook, 2022, 2nd Round Greg Rousseau, 2021, 1st Round Ed Oliver, 2019, 1st Round Taron Johnson, 2018, 4th Round Tyler Bass, 2020, 6th Round

FWIW, Brandon Beane’s Draft Picks other than Allen Listed as Starters to Open the Season Gabe Davis, 2020, 4th Round Cyress O’Torrence, 2023, 2nd Round Spencer Brown, 2021, 3rd Round Dawson Knox, 2019, 3rd Round James Cook, 2022, 2nd Round Greg Rousseau, 2021, 1st Round Ed Oliver, 2019, 1st Round Terrell Bernard, 2022, 3rd Round Kaiir Elam, 2022, 1st Round Taron Johnson, 2018, 4th Round Tyler Bass, 2020, 6th Round

FWIW, Brandon Beane’s Draft Picks other than Allen Listed as Starters to Open the Season Gabe Davis, 2020, 4th Round Cyress O’Torrence, 2023, 2nd Round Spencer Brown, 2021, 3rd Round Dawson Knox, 2019, 3rd Round James Cook, 2022, 2nd Round Greg Rousseau, 2021, 1st Round Ed Oliver, 2019, 1st Round Terrell Bernard, 2022, 3rd Round Kaiir Elam, 2022, 1st Round Taron Johnson, 2018, 4th Round Tyler Bass, 2020, 6th Round

And then a lot of people are going to be saying we should have extended him while he was less expensive. I don't see how he'll stay on the team if he has the big season that we're expecting.

I'm going to agree with you on this.

You forgot New Stadium is crushed by 8' of snow. That is bold considering that if isn't up there like that, that they'll have to do it against the Eagles, Chiefs, Cowboys, and Chargers.

Anyone know when the official depth chart comes out?

Ahhh, gotcha! Yeah, I hear ya. Sounds about right. I'm of the opinion that the OL will be OK, notably better than it's been. The WRs/TEs are the best group we've had under Allen easily. I agree with that generally speaking. I'm expecting the O to be fine, but we'll see. As I've often said, this is going to be a pivotal season. If the OL isn't better than average this season, or at least solid average, if the D regresses, if Allen/Dorsey don't workout the kinks, and/or if Diggs gets hot again, etc., and it ends up costing us, I see a lot of heat being directed at both McD and Beane. No need to abandon ship until she starts taking on water however. GO BILLS!!! I will say, the MNF game vs. the Jets will be key. If we win all will be fine. If it's a good game both ways all will be OK. But if we lose when we shouldn't, it's going to be a really bad harbinger.

It seems to me that there's a shift in the strengths of our team. Seems as if the D getting somewhat worse, say average this season. On the flip side however, I don't see how anyone isn't excited to see this O in action. Granted, Dorsey can F it up to an extent, but if he doesn't, the potential for an enormous offensive season is there. So really, a shift from the emphasis from Defense to Offense, which in today's NFL is a good thing, a positive thing. We shall soon see. And yeah, I'm leaving room for Dorsey to do just that, F it up, but he deserves the benefit of the doubt until he does. Agree, fully. If anyone is the beneficiary it's Josh. Torrence, who looks the part, McGovern, and finally depth at receivers and two competent TEs. I'm not sure what's not to be excited about offensively. Defensively we'll take a step back, possibly more than that, but in the grand scheme it stands to be OK.

No matter how it's sliced, poor planning.

From your lips to my ears!!! I cannot agree more. Nothing wrong with Allen except the decision-making, and using up that clock more and taking 12 plays instead of 3, 4, or 5 to score, would help immensely, particularly come playoff time. Some do, some don't. Obviously I wasn't referring to you or anyone else that did a serious "write-up." The write-ups are fine. More referring to the general commentary.

Yeah, thanks, my bad. Corrected.

Harty's got a nearly $5M dead-cap hit, there's no way that they're going absorb that.

I wouldn't sweat anything yet. It's kinda funny, last week everything sucked, this week everything's great. LOL Not to get in on that emotional fray, let's also realize that even with Chicago's starters on both sides, they were terrible on both offense and defense last season. I'm not sure that it's the goal of teams to win in the preseason, seems that coaches are trying to evaluate players, or get them in real-game thinking mode anyway. My personal curiosity is what the final depth chart looks like, particularly WRT to the LBs. I'm curious what they plan on doing. The offense IMO is going to be fine, if we stay healthy, expect franchise records to be set, perhaps even a league record or two. I'm thinking Air Coryell type of offense here.

Diggs' career max is 166. Allen's career max attempts is 646. I expect that to go up slightly this season. Even at that, If Diggs were to average 10 per game that'd be over 25% of Allen's attempts. Gotta be some balance as well. Jefferson led the league last seaason with 184.

Thank you! Now was that hard. Back to my original point, somewhat subjective then.

Got it then, by your definition. No need reply "no, not like that then."

Ahh, then like how we know that our defense is great even though we're low end in the playoffs. Perhaps like that maybe.

Yeah, not sure about the Jets and Fins. Miami's taken 5 of the last 6 with their only loss having been last season when Skylar Thompson was playing in his first game, @ Jets. Those two teams seem to consider the other the primary rivalry in the East. It was Bills v. Miami years ago when it was Kelly/Marino. Also, it could be that the people you cite seem to think that McD's not as good a coach like so many in Mafia land seem to believe as part of their assessment. As for us, no reason to be concerned about the Fins, which Allen owns, and if we lose to the Pats it'll be our own fault. But while we've beaten the Jets in 5 of our last 6 matchups over the past three seasons, last season they were our two worst games offensiveyl speaking, and we averaged only 18.5 PPG to their 16. We averaged 29 PPG against them under Daboll scoring 27, 27, and 45 in three of those games in the two seasons prior. We'll see what Dorsey has planned. Either way, IMO that first @ Jets game may end up being a lot more significant than many realize, per our exchange.