PBF81

We'll see what this season brings. Hopefully Samuel will be the 1,000 yard 8 TD WR that people seem to believe he will be. BTW, I certainly wouldn't have wagered against 15 rushing TDs either. Cook isn't a goal-line RB and doesn't even carry the ball on 3rd-downs. Great! We can all look forward to Samuel being the difference this season then. Looking forward to it.

If you want to join in, I'd highly suggest reading what I wrote to start this first.

I found it difficult to believe that he was below 30 this season. I'd have wagered a grand prior to the season on 30+. As a team, our offensive scoring was slightly less under Brady. Under Brady, our offensive scoring would have been good for 8th in the league on average using his 7 games in the regular season. That's underachievement. Over the last three games of the season we averaged fewer than 20 ppg. Much as with Dorsey over the first four games of the season, we came out swinging, sort of, against the Jets, Eagles, and Cowboys, Now our biggest scoring WR is gone, we still have no #2 of the caliber that everyone's claiming we need. Diggs, apparently, is in decline. Why, at this point and things unchanged, would our scoring be better than it was last season? Who knows, maybe we'll be #1 in scoring this season. Right now things don't seem to be aligning in that way however. OK, then why haven't any of the other WRs that we've picked up since Allen's been here improved as such? Seriously, why not?

You nailed them. Beasley, he's the only one with a pronounced increase however. Brown, not so much although it's debatable. Improved, yes, but to suggest that it was significant in his case may be a bit of a reach. His two best seasons, one here ('19), one in Arizona ('15), were all but carbon copies of one another. In AZ he posted 1,003 yards and 7 TDS, here he had 1,060 yards and 6 TDs. On a per start basis, here vs. elsewhere, he averaged marginally more, but not significantly more. If we applied the same percentage increase to Samuel, Samuel would go from being about a 500 yard & 3 TD WR to a 700 yard and 4 TD WR. Not much more. We'll need more than that from somewhere. Otherwise, and thanks for answering, but if those are the only two examples, that's pretty much the point. Consider all of the other WRs that we've picked up that have done nothing, or even worse than they've done elsewhere. It's hardly a guarantee either. Everyone's saying the exact same things about Samuel that they said about Harty last year. It's typical. Is that the point that I've been making?

Well, if Diggs is really finished like everyone here assumes, we'd better have an answer better than Samuel or yes, that's exactly where we're headed. Allen was down about 20% as it was this season from prior years. Hopefully we draft a WR in round 1. Also, I'm not on the train claiming that Diggs is finished. IMO it's how he's used. In fact, someone posted a piece recently, forget where, it may have been linked on the front page, that Diggs was used in slot nearly 50% of the time. If that's true, and there's no reason to consider the guy's research false, then that would certainly explain the dropoff in production from Diggs. Complimentary Football as McD likes to call it. We can expect Kincaid to pick up some of the slack though, but he's not a WR.

Oh, I forgot to include other facts. Davis has logged a TD for every 11 targets. Samuel every 22 targets. Someone's going to have to step up No weight at all for 8 weeks is not common. Particularly for someone with an athletic/fit build. But that's fine, well see either way. Presumably your implication is that he'll easily be back at 100%. If we've learned anything as football fans over the years, isn't one of those things along these lines. Look at Tre. Who among us thought that he would suck as bad as he has. He was tops in the league.

Davis' drops were bad for one season. Discounting that singular season, that everyone made a mountain of a narrative over, do you know what Samuel's drop % is compared to Davis'? Davis' drops other than in '22 are quite average in terms of drop %. You may want to look that up before making comments like that. Otherwise, once again, the comment misses the mark and still does not address the issue. You'll see, again, this season quite likely, ... unless Samuel becomes a scoring machine. Hope he does, but I wouldn't put money on it.

It can be added that for a QB whose only bowl game win was in the Alamo Bowl over a team with a siht defense, three seasons ago, he might want to keep his mouth closed, at least until he's actually drafted. I've never understood this level of hype in the guy. Reminds me of how the hype was for Young, Russell, and Newton. He's a lumberjack and he's OK ...

A reasonable guess would be that it's a meme created by a Bears fan.

Well summed up!

In 7 seasons they should have done something besides merely signing Diggs to begin with. Same for the OL and the (up until last year) hodgepodge way they've pieces our OL together. It's become an issue and it's their problem to solve. Let's see how they do. It's quite possible that it's the overall methodology that's the issue. Just sayin'.

Uhhh, scoring maybe. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ until they start determining game outcomes by yardage gained ... Samuel, Mr. 3-TDs/season over 7 seasons on average, on two different teams, isn't likely to turn into a scoring machine now. He may be a great addition, who knows now, but it's pretty likely he's not going to go from averaging a TD every 15 catches to a TD every 6. Call me nuts, but for a WR that's averaged just over 3 catches/game, on a team where no one even knows the right for for him, it seems unlikely that'll change significantly. He's not going to be averaging 8 catches/game either. Which begs the question, who's going to be doing the scoring on the receiving end. I suspect that Kincaid will pick up much of that slack.

No doubt. They're still going to price people out though. Many of the people commenting appear to simply be fed up with the overall situation and are already preempting it. They're not club level STHs. I haven't been a STH in years, and there's nothing like going to a live game, but when paying for live games means dropping money that could go towards other significant expenses or leisure options besides a few hours, that's when things change for me. Love the Bills, but it's not a religion and if my status as a fan becomes determined by how much money I drop to go see them, well, something's amiss. Other than for an occasional aftermarket ticket purchase for myself and whomever wants to go with me to a good game, I'm fine with watching on TV either at home or at a Bills Backers bar. I mean heck, for less than a hundred bucks I can eat and drink myself silly at a BB bar. IDK, seems as if it's all gotten out of hand the last decade or two. It's a business, but the cost for the live product has simply gotten to the point where I'd rather do other things with my money. And that's apart from the fact that I would never pay a PSL merely on principle regardless of the cost.

Speaking of stadium construction, I looked at the Bufnews piece and comments on the PSLs and they're taking a beating. The next month or two is going to be very interesting.

Well, OK, other than for Diggs, name the other WRs that we've had here that have played significantly better than they have elsewhere?

You missed the point entirely. It's about efficiency, not gross numbers. That should have been clear. Again, we'll see. I'm way past believing how players that our staff is familiar with, typically from Carolina, are all of a sudden after years of mediocrity, are going to shine here for some inexplicable rain. Same for Harty & Sherfield last year at this time. And Knox is a TE, and other than for his '21 season, he too has defined mediocrity, at best, on a good day, averaging 350 yards and 3 TDs per season otherwise in four other seasons.

So you're essentially arguing that a WR's ability to find the end zone is insignificant then. Well, OK. I suppose there's at least some reasonable debate in there. IMO it's relevant, particularly on a team like ours where receiving TD producers seem to be rare. Let's hope he has his best season ever.

Nah, I'll pass. Not much in the mood for an ad hominem exchange here. I've already explained some of the other stuff. Sorry that you think that the singular analysis is FUBAR. I don't think so. So we'll simply have to agree to disagree. Otherwise, I'll look Forward to Samuel's career season forthcoming.

So your argument is that Samuel is a clutch player though? Seems like another good but far from great and certainly not a game-changing signing. We'll see what he contributes.

There isn't a player on our roster, during McD's entire tenure, that even approaches Davis' ability to score TDs. The best we have is Diggs and he's averaged a TD every 12 catches. In the playoffs Davis walks away with it. It's not an end-all-to-be-all indicator, but none are. But swapping out an enigmatic WR that doesn't fill a need at Slot but also isn't truly a #1/#2 split type either should at least be a concern. We do this every season, everyone we sign is going to make some kind of difference or something. Samuel's best season ever, which was four seasons ago, had him log 851 yards and 3 TDs and 36 1st-Downs on 77 catches. Two of those three TDs were in losses and the other was in a shutout/blowout. That doesn't exactly scream out that he's a clutch player. It's always a flag too, two things actually, when people go back to a players' draft status after two contract terms (7 years) in the league; but moreover, anytime we grab someone from Carolina because one of our coaches or Beane "drafted him" or "is familiar with him." Last season Davis had 45 catches, 7 TDs, and 31 1st-Downs. That's nowhere near an even swap. Davis was far more efficient on a per-catch basis. As to our team generating a lot more passing TDs than average (assuming you mean passing TDs since we're talking WRs here), the Skins had 407 completions, 3,725 passing yards, and 24 passing TDs. We had 385 completions (22 fewer), 4,154 yards (429 more), and 29 passing TDs. (5 more, marginal) Davis was 25% of those 29 TDs too. Considering that Kincaid will probably pick up more of the slack, I'm not sure I see Samuel matching Davis' TD numbers when he hasn't put up more than 4 TDs in any of his last four seasons. We'll see.

If we can't at least win this miserable Division then it's time for some really major changes. We own Miami and the Jets and Pats, until further notice, both suck.

Samuel's a lot of hype here for a WR that's averaged fewer than 500 yards per season and an average of 3 TDs/season. He may have a drop or two fewer, but Davis averaged a TD for every 6 receptions. Samuel's averaged a TD for every 15 receptions. Drops, or lack thereof, don't win games. TDs/points do. That seems to be lost on many. Perhaps most concerning is that there's yet another Carolina connection. Have any of those worked our for us. This "familiarity" thing ... LOL

Miami's not a concern. No matter how good they are, we typically go 2-0 against them. The playoff game against Thompson was a little bit of a wake-up call, but otherwise no matter how good Miami is or isn't, we beat them. We're 11-1 after Allen's first start against them and our only loss was that ridiculous heat game a couple of seasons ago where we actually seriously outplayed Miami but lost 21-19 anyway. And the Wings are better in Buffalo than they are in France too.

Everyone's assuming that Milano will be 100% or close to it. It's concerning that he wasn't able to put any weight on his injured leg for two months. That's a long time for a reportedly simple break of his tibia. That's not normal.

I'll feel pretty good when we make the playoffs and beat something better than a wild-card team. Merely winning the division is old hat and a pretty low expectation with Allen at QB and in a relatively weak division at this point. Right now we're on pretty much exactly the same trajectory that the Chargers were on under Norv Turner with Rivers at QB. We have better talent than that.