PBF81

BTW, and for purposes of the discussion at hand, one of the ways in which Beane has been "original," is in getting a generational franchise QB and then doing next to nothing to build an effective OL in front of him both to protect him as well as to help him develop. Most GMs and all good GMS that have that kind of a QB realize the importance of protecting him and then do something significant about it besides a revolving door of journeymen OL-men, a 2nd-round pick, and a late 3rd-round pick in five drafts. So there's that originality as well. Just sayin'.

Maybe, but as some have typically pointed out here, there's not always snowstorms here in Buffalo in December. Cold yes, typically, but cold alone does not hinder a passing game, at least it shouldn't to that extent. We have clear-weather December games more often than not.

And yet, he outcoached the coach that you're defending as being great no matter the roster he's been handed, when he had Moss/Welker for Cassel to throw to, while Sparano had Pennington throwing to Ginn Jr. & Camarillo and on a purely apples-to-apples comp otherwise. I'll put it another way, Sparano, whom you just implied sucks, with no argument from anyone, led his 21st ranked offense and 9th ranked defense that season to the same 11-5 record as Belichick and his 8th ranked offense and 8th ranked defense in 2009, while beating the same exact teams for all intents and purposes, and while leading his team to the playoffs while Belichick was left out on tiebreaker, and you're claim by implication is that Sparano would have done worse on NE with more talent, while simultaneously implying that Belichick would have done better under the same circumstances otherwise, with less talent in Miami. Sure. LOL You know what they say about holes ... Over next to the stadium they have some excavators for you to borrow since the shovel you're using doesn't appear to be big enough.

People put too much emphasis on the #2/#3 nomenclature. Davis has a role as a deep Alvin Harper type. Harper probabaly wasn't a typical #2 either, but he consistently finished 2nd in receiving yards on Dallas. Davis does it well, catches TDs and logs 1st-Downs for huge plays. We have no one else that does what he does. He's a very effective part of the offense despite that he's not a fan favorite. If he catches 50-60 passes averaging 17 YPR for 8-10 TDs he's tremendously valuable.

Good point, no actually. So if the stats had held on average, Davis would have had another 3 catches for another 51 yards and would have finished the season with nearly 900 yards. As to Allen, he'd have finished 4th. I see no reason as to why he can't lead the NFL, again, my point. He still would have been 700 yards away from Mahomes. Imagine say 5,500 yards from Allen? Unattainable? Who knows, but IMO it's entirely possible, again, IF the offense clicks on Dorsey's end.

If Kincaid works out to what they said he will, then his role will be identical to Kelce's, their size has nothing to do with it. Kelce does anything but play in a conventional TE role. He's primarily on the field as a receiver. If all we get from Kincaid is "Hernandez," then it'll be yet another draft failure for Beane. Which TE Evans are you referring to? Hence my comment in response.

Agreed, but think about it, the more he has to scramble isn't a good sign re: the OL for example. Could also implicate the play-calling. Allen's got the arm, they need him to use it more.

Interesting point. The D has helped us in the regular season, but folded in the postseason with only a couple of semi-irrelevant exceptions in what, 9 playoff games I think. During the regular season we held 7 teams to 17 or fewer points, 10 teams to 20 or fewer points, and all but three teams to fewer than 24 points. Yes, in the playoffs we only go as far as Allen takes us as our defense seems to disappear then being one of the worst in the playoffs.

Kelce is an unconventional TE. If Kincaid is what the team has said he'll be when they drafted him, he and Kelce will be the only two like them in the league.

We're largely in agreement on that. The only way I see Davis catching 60-70 passes is if Allen puts up more completions and therefore yards than he has to date, which I do expect him to do. If not it will likely be problematic. Allen was 7th in passing yards and 9th in completions last season. No reason for that. So we'll see, but even then it doesn't mean that Davis gets that many of those extra balls although he would obviously be a beneficiary. But consider, if Davis merely adds 25% to his catches from last season, he's got 60 (up from 48), and at his career YPR rate of 16.8, those 60 would put him at over 1,000 and around 10 TDs. (He's averaged a TD every 100 yards) WRs tend to improve into their 3rd/4th seasons, and given his injury last season, it's reasonable to expect him to make such a leap this season. I'm also bigger on Davis than most. ... which appears to be an unpopular opinion. LOL And yeah, his feet weren't the reasons for his drops. Speaking of feet, part of my thinking is that Allen really does run less and throws more. Who knows, maybe that doesn't happen, which would also be unfortunate.

I'm tellin' ya, if Dorsey's on this season, expect franchise bests from this offense. The play of the D will be rendered to secondary status if that happens. A patently average defense will be more than enough under those circumstances.

I'm sure it is. Where'd I lose ya? LOL I'm sorry, I didn't realize that Davis put up 1,200 yards and a dozen TDs last season. I must've missed some games. No, my proof is that a team can have two top-10 WRs. There are other examples in NFL history. Feel free to go find them. This implication that it's absurd is ignornant. You said nothing about heisman awards or draft status previously, now all of a sudden this irrelevant-to-the-discussion circumstance enters the discussion. Diggs was a 5th rounder originally. So your point is ... what, exactly? Seems as if your goal is to prove that Davis sucks. OK, great. I happen to have more hope for him and for our offense this season. Sorry for being so optimistic. Otherwise, I was being pretty civil with you, not sure why you're erupting and engaging like this. I'm crushed. LOL

The only "originality" I see in those picks, beside the possible exception of Rousseau, who's also proven nothing yet, is in trying to get 1st/2nd-rounders in rounds later than the better ones normally would have been selected. What was so original about the Epenesa pick? Specfically? Brown? Bernard? Kincaid, again, the crux of my point, was an unoriginal attempt to create in Buffalo what Reid has created in KC using Kelce. Hardly original. Rousseau, possibly, given the versatility, but again, perhaps I should have defined "originality" a little bit better. When I first said it, I was generally referring to a style of play, particularly offensively, but also defensively. And on the flip side, I wasn't referring to constantly taking unconventional risks that don't pan out to the extent that he's done that, like with Rousseau. Signing Diggs, Poyer, Hyde, Morse, a bunch of revolving door WRs, a few TEs too, many OL-men, signing depth-caliber LBs to hopefully start, and even many DL-men, many of which were overpaid or at least paid top-dollar for what they are, is hardly original. The whole 2 LB thing is original, but my point there is that it wasn't deliberate, it was forced upon them due to very specifically a lack of Beane being on top of things, per above, read it again if you don't know what I'm talking about. Otherwise, if his drafts and team/roster building are so original, then they've largely failed in so many ways. You may see it differently, great. So be it. I'm content with it. Go BILLS!!!

Allen was an incredibly anomalous risky pick that worked out. I really don't think it appropriate to bring Beane up at this point in time in the season, but since you insist, and in defense I will. It gets really old having Beane's ability as a GM revolve entirely around Allen and the enormous project risk that he was. Many other QBs with similar skills in college have come and gone w/o anything even sniffing that level of success. To ignore that is to ignore the risk that Beane & Co. took. It worked out, great, here we are, all tremendously thankful. My take at the time was that Allen didn't come with the skillset, but that since he was brilliant there was hope. And he is brilliant. At the same time, I'm not going to rave about how great Beane's been for another decade because of Allen. Now, onto the more meaty part of your post; 🙄 Beane has largely addressed needs on this team as they've existed. There's been incredibly little planning for future holes. Apart from five years of signing 1-2 year journeyman free-agents for our OL, the most recent example is MLB. He did nothing to address the original loss of Lorax, when we switched to a 2 LB system. Sure, you can argue how "brilliant" it was and planned, but I don't buy that for a second and nor should anyone as there isn't a shred of evidence to suggest that they would have played 3 LBs otherwise if they'd actually had the talent, and they did for a while using Klein to little effect, because he's purely depth-caliber (part of my argument). But he did nothing to prepare for the loss of Edmunds. Now we're grasping at straws hoping that several incredibly unlikely candidates will fill the sizeable hole left by his departure. Othwerwise, you're asking me to prove a negative. You are the one that insists that they're not merely doing what other teams traditionally do, general paradigms in essence, but that they've had some kind of plan that they've effectively managed to execute. The only problem is that we have a preponderance of free-agents and a serious void of draftees that make that kind of impact for our team, which further contributes to that angle. If you don't want to demonstrate how there's been originality, other than in enormous risk-taking, that's fine, I can understand why you wouldn't as it's a tall task if it's even possible at all. It also amazes me how people get so emotional over a simple opinion. Anyway, unless you want to demonstrate something that you now insist exists, I think we're finished here. I see no reason to continue this discussion. I'm sorry it offended you. Truly, I am. Tomorrow's a new day. The season is on the cusp of beginning. GO BILLS!!!! Here's hoping for a Championship, finally!!!

Allow me to clarify. OK, to start I said under the right circumstances. I'm also of the mind that if Dorsey improves to being a top-notch OC, not even the best in the league, simply say top-5, then I see our offense easily being the best in franchise history. I've said this many times over the past month or so. IF, and I realize that's a big if, Dorsey does that, I see no reason why we can't have multiple 1,000-yard receivers on the team, Diggs, Davis, and quite possibly even a third although that's probably a reach although I can see two 1,000+ and an 800/900 fairly easily if the Dorsey/Allen/play-calling sync is 100%. Smith on Philly last season put up 1,196 (1,200 essentially) and 7 TDs, yet was only #2 by a significant margin. Adams had 1,516/14. But Diggs isn't the TD producer that Adams is, and Davis is a better TD producer than Smith is, so I can see similar here, for example, Diggs 1,500/12 and Davis 1,200/12. Davis ranks very high among WRs catch% for TDs generally speaking. I'd say that there's a fair chance, not great, that this occurs, but I can easily see it happening. Again, IMO whether or not we're historically great or merely top-4 or 5 in the league this season, depends upon Dorsey's coaching regimen a year into his tenure as OC.

Where do you see originality in the building of our team/roster over the past 6 seasons, particularly via the drafts? Maybe I'm missing a lot. I'm open to the possibility. Convince me.

Yes Thanks for pointing that out.

I wouldn't disagree with that. I didn't mean to insinuate that he's got the same skillset at Diggs, obviously he doesn't. He is one of Beane's better draft picks however. He was the 17th WR taken in that draft class in 2020, yet, he's scored more TDs than all but Jefferson, more than 14 WRs drafted ahead of him, and has more yards than 8 WRs drafted ahead of him. Corroborating your statement, he strikes me as more of an Alvin Harper guy to compliment Irvin, rather than the top-dog. IMO he has almost no chance of ever becoming any team's #1 WR, at least if that team's going to be any good. OTOH, I can defintely see him putting up 1,200 Yards and a dozen TDs on 65-70 receptions under the right circumstances, possibly a little bit more.

BTW, after giving this some more thought, that same season proves the bolded completely false. Miami and NE both beat the same teams, record-wise, considering that they split and were both 11-5. The only difference was that Miami beat the Chargers (8-8) while NE beat Arizona (9-7), and both Sparano and Belichick ended up 11-5 with Sparano edging Belichick to make the playoffs, which completely invalidates that particular premise that you threw up in that very same season. Factor in that that Cassel/Belichick had Moss/Welker to Miami's Ginn Jr./Greg Camarillo and it holds even less water. Just sayin'. It's a nice narrative, but completely false.

I hear ya, and while it's definitely a good discussion, not sure there's a right or wrong here, but to me, if we go into the season with a player that's a 3 on a 10-scale at MLB, it's going to be problematic. I'm not sure this is the time of year to discuss Beane's team/roster-building, so no need to get into that, but if you recall, McD played with 3 traditional LBs until Lorax retired. We had no one in the pipeline or on the roster that was a starting caliber LB otherwise, so we went to 2 LBs. It can be discussed, argued, etc., on the horse/cart aspect of it, but the reality is that we've at least had a MLB with the other LB being an OLB. Now we have 2 OLBs, so this is unmistakeably uncharted territory for McD. I see that being a whole lot different than what we had. We'll see, maybe it'll work out just fine, and I supposed there's the possibilty that Spector, Dodson, or Bernard will suffice, but if any of them ever turned into an even average starting MLB/ILB it should come as more of a surprise than an expectation. All three were touted as reliable backups in draft profiles on nfl.com and a few other prominent draft sites. They're all missing something traditionally associated with average or better starting MLB/ILBs. I think at times that we focus too much on depth over starting players in addressing team needs. JMO And putting together a great "fantasty" roster doesn't necessarily translate to a great actual roster. We have tons of talent and have spent tons of money getting it, contrasted with making the most out of first-contract draftees, so from that perspective I completely agree with you.

Gabe Davis in his third season (injured): 48 catches, 836 yards, 7 TDs, 28 other 1st-Downs Stefon Diggs in his third season: 64 catches, 849 yards, 8 TDs, 34 other 1st-Downs FWIW

With a few favorable shakes and bounces I can see our OL performing into top-10 status. We shall see. It's all talk until it isn't.

We'll see how big of a need MLB was soon. Without a significant presence at MLB opposing OC's will definitely exploit that to one extent or another. Having an oversized safety at the position, or an otherwise depth caliber player starting there can easily be problematic. I'm not sure why anyone would view that otherwise. MLB is the closest thing that the D has to a QB in that regard in terms of defensive cohesiveness.

That's it right there, it's all gonna fall on Dorsey as to whether or not he's a more cunning OC than his counterparts will be at DC. If he's lacks originality, he'll be aiding them. Beane drafted Kincaid in a monkey-see-monkey-do attempt to replicate Kelce. We haven't seen much originality in the team/roster-building strategies on this team. If it works out, fantastic. Right now Kincaid's playing the part and affirming the decision to draft him. But between an improved OL, the addition of Kincaid, better depth at WR, Knox too let's not forget, the potential is there to dominate the NFL this season. The problem with now is that it's camp, not real games. Are the offensive players looking better because the defense isn't going to be so good? Are both units playing excellently with the offense merely topping the defense, etc. Who knows, we'll know more in 6 weeks. All we can do is hope for now, but Dorsey's got a big step up from his coaching last year to optimize the talent on his side of the field and be better as an OC than his counterparts at DC will be. Whether he does it we'll know soon.

An opportunity to be the highest scoring O in franchise history, possibly in modern league history. I realize that that second one is a reach, but not unreachable if all goes well. The skill positions are adequate, so if the OL is what you said, ... [fingers crossed] ...