Rampant Buffalo

Yeah there's truth to this.

Agreed. That said, you haven't addressed Buffblue's question as to why the Texans need a guy like Diggs.

Let's say you were to put me out there and tell me to be an NFL QB. I don't have the talent to be a good QB, or even a plausible QB. Due to my lack of talent, I'd do a lot of the same stuff Trent Edwards did, such as dumping the ball off to the RB. What I'm saying is that there is a good chance Edwards didn't have the talent or ability to be a successful NFL QB. He compensated by focusing on the stuff which required the least amount of talent. If he's your most frustrating player, then he's your most frustrating player. Nothing wrong with that. What I'm saying is that his problem might not have been cowardice. It might have been that he simply lacked the ability to be successful.

Lumping WR and RB together is just foolishness. In the most recent playoff loss to the Chiefs, Bills WRs had 160 yards worth of drops. Put another way: upgrading our WR corps could have gotten us an additional 160 yards of offense. That's an order of magnitude greater impact than you'd expect if you'd upgraded the RB position. Another difference is that a rookie RB can contribute on opening day. Whereas they say a WR doesn't come into his own until year 3. While there are exceptions to that rule, Nico Collins is not one of them. He had more production in year 3, than in years 1 and 2 combined. Think about it this way. A RB's good years could be years 1 - 5 of his career. You draft a RB and let him leave after his rookie contract? You got 80% of his good years (at least in this example). A WR could have 10 good years, and those could be years 3 - 12 of his career. You draft a WR and let him leave after his first contract? In this case you're only getting 20% of his good years. Unlike RB, WR is a premium position. What possible reason could you have, for being too cheap to re-sign your own draft day successes at the WR position?

My litmus test for a player is this: did he give what he had while on the field? A guy like Kelvin Benjamin is a clear and obvious no, which is why he was my most frustrating player. I put Leslie Frazier in that category as well. The defenses he called in our playoff losses snuffed out any chance of our players putting up much of a fight. There's an argument that Trent Edwards fits into this category as well. But it's not as clear cut. Imagine this scenario. Trent Edwards is in his prime. You're an offensive coordinator, tasked with building an offense around him. Edwards is responding well to hypnosis therapy. Depending what he's told in hypnosis, he can be as cautious or as bold as you want. Great. What kind of an offense do you build around him? What were his strengths as a player, upon which you would wish to capitalize? Personally I can't think of much. If a guy lacks talent in a particular area, it's natural for him to seek out the lowest difficulty tasks. Those are the things he's least likely to mess up. So you had Edwards' lack of talent as maybe the core of this. Then there was the weakness of his supporting cast, reducing the likelihood of stuff working. Then you had the influence of Dick Jauron: a defensively-oriented HC who abhorred risk.

Trent Edwards made a habit of playing behind bad/very bad OLs, both at Stanford and with the Bills. If a player takes enough hits, maybe he gets shell shocked. The solution to that was supposed to be a West Coast offense. But for a West Coast offense to work, a QB absolutely, 100% has to be able to hit horizontally moving targets in stride. At least based on a video of Trent Edwards in practice, he couldn't. The WRs had to slow down to catch his passes. At the time the Bills lacked a credible OL. WR was a position of need. The OC was mediocre at best. The HC provided the leadership of, don't take risks, play not to lose. The QB was put in a really bad spot, and lacked the ability to be a good West Coast QB. There are reasons why Trent Edwards turned into a guy who dumped the ball off to stationary targets, such as RBs. That said, the only time I saw Edwards show any kind of anger or fire in his belly was the following. He was a rookie, and Losman was the starter. A reporter presented the possibility of Edwards starting over Losman. Edwards said that Losman was the starter, and seemed angry the reporter would suggest otherwise. Sometimes you hear, "I'd rather rein in a QB who's too aggressive, versus putting fire into the belly of a QB who isn't aggressive enough." Trent Edwards was an example of the latter.

You're going to have to work very hard to convince Bill from NYC that we would have been better off with a 10 year Pro Bowl RT, than with a gadget RB. Okay, maybe not all that hard!

Most frustrating player: Kelvin Benjamin. Obviously. Most frustrating coach: Leslie Frazier. Were there times when Frazier came up with good game plans? Absolutely. No question. But, in our playoff games against the Chiefs and Bengals, he loved using a soft zone/prevent defense. You're simply allowing the other team to make plays, and disallowing your own players from doing anything about it. During Frazier's time here, the Bills defense never generated more than two stops in a playoff game against the Chiefs or Bengals. Very frustrating to see a portion of Allen's Super Bowl opportunities thrown away, due to a catastrophic failure of defensive coaching when it mattered most.

Let's say you got engaged to a woman. She comes home from work, and tells you about the man who was grinding on her without her consent. How would you feel about that situation?

A lot of this is based on what women signed up for. If a woman goes dancing at a night club, she knows there's a chance everyone will be bunched up together, causing some level of physical contact. But if a woman becomes a flight attendant, she's probably not expecting a kicker to start handing out $100 bills, with the intention of creating a party atmosphere or sexualized environment. If the allegations are true, the Jaguars are to blame as well, because they shouldn't be allowing stuff like this to happen on their charter flights. Or if for some reason the Jaguars do want stuff like this to happen on their charter flights, then they need to create separate roles/job descriptions. A person is hired to be a flight attendant or is hired to provide entertainment. As opposed to mixing the two roles together for women who thought they were being hired for flight attendant roles only.

Think about the Bills' offensive weapons. Which ones would you rate as above-average? Which ones are elite? Above-average Dalton Kincaid (on the threshold of becoming elite) James Cook Shakir (Above-average as a slot receiver only. Below-average as a boundary WR.) Elite No one (yet) What about the draft picks? I don't want to start labeling our draft picks "above average" or "elite," before they've played a single down of NFL football. That's counting your chickens before they've hatched. The Bills' best offensive weapon is Dalton Kincaid. Other than him, the only other above-average weapons are a speed RB in the form of Cook, and a good slot receiver in the form of Shakir. I'm not familiar enough with the other teams in the AFC to know if that's top 5 or not. But, you'd think it wouldn't be.

The blame for Losman and Manuel was 100% on the front office, for drafting them. No question there. Sometimes, things aren't quite as simple as that. Take a guy like Alex Smith. Back when he was in San Francisco, he was okay. Towards the end of his time there, he was benched in favor of Colin Kaepernick. Greg Roman's offense requires a mobile quarterback, such as Kaepernick. Also, Roman was good at hiding Kaepernick's shortcomings. Alex Smith found his way to the Chiefs. In his last year there, his yards per pass attempt compared favorably to the career average of Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers. Some of that was Andy Reid's excellent offensive system, and some was being surrounded by good offensive talent. What about Kaepernick? After Greg Roman left the 49ers, their offense began putting less emphasis on a QB's running ability, and more on his passing. Kaepernick spent his last two years with the 49ers in a QB competition with Blaine Gabbert. After those two years ended, Gabbert signed a vet minimum contract with some other team, while Kaepernick exited the league. If you're a running QB, like Kaepernick, you want your team to run a Greg Roman-style offense. Whereas if you're a passing QB, you want to avoid all things Greg Roman like the plague!

Imagine an ambitious and somewhat unscrupulous businessman. He decides to compete with Ticketmaster head-on. He creates two companies. He names the real company World Ticket. He runs that company himself. There is also a second company, headed by one of the businessman's associates. The goal of this second company isn't to gain sales. Its mission is to achieve name recognition. That, and literally nothing else. What is the name of this second company? Ticket African Slave. The more people hear the name Ticket African Slave, the less they're going to like the name Ticketmaster. What our ambitious and unscrupulous businessman really wants is protests. Protests directed against the ugly racial implications of a name like Ticketmaster. The name Ticketmaster doesn't currently have racial implications, but our ambitious businessman is determined to change that. So he sits down with some kind of community leader. He says, "Listen. You have a thousand followers. I wouldn't mind at all, if you got a bunch of those followers together to protest the ugly racial implications of a name like Ticketmaster. I'm guessing you wouldn't mind if an extra ten grand appeared in your bank account. What do you say we work together?" He'd create an initial wave of protests by using that tactic. Once the initial wave got extensive media coverage, a follow-on wave will occur on its own, without the businessman having to pay for it. Event planners wouldn't want to deal with this stuff, so they'd switch to World Ticket instead. Okay, so the events I've described above are more likely not to happen, than they are to happen. That said, I wouldn't shed a tear if they did happen, because I hate Ticketmaster!

I wouldn't necessarily read too much into it. Among the WRs, it's entirely possible Hollins has the biggest personality. That could easily explain why he's the one Josh happened to mention first.

Maybe he's cultivating a little bit of a barbarian persona. I'm guessing that he'll mellow after he retires. There was this hotel I once stayed at. I parked underneath a billboard. It was late at night, and I wasn't paying attention to whether there was or wasn't a billboard above my parking space. The next morning, my vehicle was covered in bird poop. It turns out that billboard was a nesting site for birds. I'm fascinated to learn that the creatures which produced that poop were purely imaginary.

Back in the '90s and 2000s, it was common for the Bills to use a first round pick on a CB. He'd spend five or (Nate Clements) six years with the team, then leave in free agency. Another first round pick would be used on his replacement. The RB position was similar, except the duration of RBs was often even shorter than for CBs. There was a period of 40 years, during which the Bills used 1/4 of their first picks of the draft on DBs, and another 1/4 on RBs. Leaving only 50% for everything else. Needless to say, the Bills lost more games than they won during those 40 years. When I evaluate the success of a particular draft pick, I look at the quality of the player. But I also look at the duration of play he provided for the team which drafted him. Both Cordy Glenn and Travis Henry were drafted in the second round. Glenn was with the team for far longer than Travis Henry, which is one of several reasons why Glenn was a much more successful use of a 2nd round pick. Edmunds had great athleticism. For certain situations or in certain games he played at a high level. But, his football instincts were poor, and he was bad at shedding blocks. Someone posted a stat that, during his time with the Bills, he was blitzed 70 times or so (I forget the exact number). That resulted in zero pressures. If you take into account both the good and bad parts of his game, he was not worth anything close to the monster contract he got. At least not to me. I would never want to use a first round pick on an off-the-ball linebacker whose game had as many weaknesses as Edmunds' did, and who was only going to be with the team for five years. Harrison Phillips is a very solid player. But, like you said, a very solid player for the Vikings. Just as Wyatt Teller is an excellent player for the Cleveland Browns. I give Beane a lot of credit for drafting both those players in the first place. But he gets anti-credit for failing to keep them. Either player would be a real benefit to the Bills, if added right now. In terms of that draft, I give Beane the most credit for taking Josh Allen (obviously), and the second-most for Taron Johnson. Johnson may not be as good a player as a guy like Wyatt Teller, but at least he's still with the team.

Let's say you have a market with many choices. For example, imagine a city with 100 pizza places. One pizza place in particular decides to behave badly, for example by jacking up its prices or by lowering the quality of their product. That pizza place is going to lose sales to its competitors. That's accountability. Sometimes, companies manage to break free from this form of accountability. They are able to behave badly while going unpunished. This normally happens when consumer choice has been curtailed or eliminated. Ticketmaster is an excellent example of this. I am happy this lawsuit was filed, and I hope the Justice Department is successful.

No it doesn't. Beane's best overall draft class was the Josh Allen pick. Period, end of story. Josh Allen is worth more to the team than every one of Beane's picks from the 2024 draft. That said, I could definitely see Beane's 2024 draft working out well.

I'd love for you to be right about this! The way I see it, there are several possible outcomes for Coleman. 1) Bust 2) Significant disappointment 3) Stevie Johnson level play, ideally for at least 7 years in a Bills uniform. 4) Eric Moulds level play. 5) Hall of Fame level play. I'd be happy with outcome 3). Not thrilled to the point where I'd be doing naked cartwheels down the street. Which perhaps is just as well, because I'm no good at cartwheels. But I'd be happy. Anything over and above outcome 3 is even better.

One other thing I'd like to add. According to the NFL.com draft profile for Coleman, his athleticism score is 66 (est). That's the 35th best score for a WR in the 2024 combine. Yeah, I'm almost certain you could point to a number of NFL receivers with similar or worse athletic tools than those, who got the job done. But, it's not like people are going to wake up in the dead of night, with their eyes literally popping out of their sockets, due to their awe at Coleman's athleticism.

You make some good points. If a football expert watches Keon Coleman's film, he or she will get more out of it than I would, if I watched that same film. Nevertheless, I've found that I can learn a lot about a player very quickly, by watching his film. For example, I remember reading about how Trent Edwards had a great practice. He was hitting horizontally moving targets in perfect stride! I watched the video clip myself, and saw the opposite. Receivers had to slow down considerably to catch his passes. Based on that, I concluded he lacked a crucial trait necessary for a West Coast quarterback to be successful. The other lesson I learned that day is that watching the film makes you a lot more informed. More grounded in reality. I'd believed the hype about him hitting his targets in perfect stride, right up until I watched the film. I watched a video of every pass attempt to Coleman for the 2023 season. What did I see? Lots of passes broken up due to a defender being right there. There were a lot of short passes/short completions. These were too short for the defense to provide tight coverage. This type of pass became significantly more common later in the video (i.e., later in the season). There were a few passes where there was no one near him, due to what the announcers described as defensive miscommunication. What I saw very little of, was him getting nice and open due to having run a good route. I'm not saying this never happened, just that it was rare. Those are the raw data, at least as seen through my eyes. Now comes the tricky part. Interpretation. An apparent lack of separation can be the QB's fault, either due to a late throw, or an inaccurate throw. The OC can contribute to the problem, by failing to scheme guys open. All that being said, the subjective impression I came away with was that I really didn't want to rely on Coleman to get open, for anything over 5 yards. It felt like the offense would suffocate, if you were relying on him to get open on anything more than a very short pass. Okay, so that's just my subjective impression. I could be right, or I could be wrong. But for the sake of argument, consider the players who weren't good at route running at the college level. Of those, how many become good at running routes in the NFL? That's the risk you take when you draft a guy like Coleman. Running routes and getting open is about more than just athleticism. Take a guy like Justin Shorter. Good size. Good height. Good 40 time. At least at first glance, you have to like his physical traits. What kind of NFL career are you expecting Shorter to have? I'm not saying Coleman will be the next Shorter. But neither am I saying he's the next Jerry Rice, or even the next Stevie Johnson. Bottom line: the Bills took a chance on a guy becoming a better football player in the NFL than he was in college. We'll see how this pans out.

Very good post. If a player is picked early in the second round, there is no a priori reason to believe he'll be either a success or a failure. Both possibilities remain open, at least at the start of the discussion. After extensive research, a person might develop a strong feeling for or against a particular player. But even that is far from a mathematical certainty, as shown by the high error rates among front offices around the league. "I will no longer be responding to any of the individual’s posts on player evaluations, as it has been made clear that any comments that take issue with his analyses are not welcome." I can only speak for myself here. I have no objection to you or anyone else responding to or disagreeing with PBF81's posts. The only thing I would ask is for you or anyone else commenting to acknowledge when you don't know something. For instance, let's say PBF81 writes a long post. You haven't read it yet. It might have confirmation bias. It might not. You don't yet know. So then you read the post, or at least some of it. He's talking about whether Coleman did or didn't get separation. There are times when it's very clear whether a player got separation or not. But other times when maybe it's more subjective. Has confirmation bias been established yet? No! It's possible that his perspective on whether Coleman gained separation is exactly the same as what yours would have been, had you watched the film. So then you watch some of the plays yourself, and decide the extent to which his view of those plays overlaps with yours. If your own analysis is far more favorable to Coleman than his, then at that point you have evidence of confirmation bias. It could be his analysis that's flawed, or your analysis, or maybe both analyses are flawed. But at least now there's something on the table to talk about. If you don't want to do all that work, that's fine. Life is short, and you may choose to spend your time doing something other than football analysis. Totally cool. But if you start throwing around "confirmation bias" anyway, without having watched film or examined a post in detail, then you're deprecating someone else's analysis without having any idea whether it deserves to be deprecated. That does not meet my definition of fairness.

You appear to believe that PBF81 doesn't have the right to do his own analysis, unless he's able to articulately explain the offensive concept, the defense, and WR keys. If he does his own analysis anyways, without understanding those things, then that's a form of hubris. Unless he understands what he's seeing at that level, his conclusions can be ignored or dismissed as the parroting of someone else's opinions. I myself don't claim to understand football at that level. But when I watched the video footage of every pass attempt for Coleman, there sure were a lot of plays where the defender was right there. When a pass attempt to Coleman fell incomplete, the typical cause was a defender right there, making a play on the ball. There are some posters here who understand football at a deep level. If one of them says, "Hey! Coleman was a lot better at separation than it may have seemed, due to X, Y, and Z," then of course I'll listen. But I'm not aware that there's any sort of consensus to that effect, among posters with that level of football expertise. From NFL.com's draft profile for Coleman: "Could struggle finding separation to avoid excessive contested catches." If you want to disagree with that, fine. Except in matters of principle, I like hearing both sides of the discussion. In this case, however, I haven't heard a single argument against any of PBF81's positions. The only thing I'm hearing from those who disagree with him is wholesale explanations as to why every word he types should be dismissed or ignored.

You make it sound as though bias is a quality possessed by PBF81 alone. Something which uniquely taints his analyses, in comparison to the unbiased analyses you could get elsewhere. We all have biases. You have a very strong bias against PBF81. That's why you haven't listened to a single thing he's had to say, except for the purpose of dismissing it. There's a chance the Bills' front office's assessment of Coleman is accurate, and that he will turn into the player we all hope he becomes. But any draft pick involves risk. The specific risk with Coleman is that PBF81 is right. It's not as though PBF81 made up stuff out of whole cloth, for the sole purpose of bringing down your mood. I've watched every pass attempt to Coleman for his 2023 season, and I can see why PBF81 is saying the stuff he is. I'm not saying his predictions are right or wrong. I strongly hope Coleman becomes an excellent receiving option for Josh Allen. Allen definitely deserves a better supporting cast than he's gotten thus far! I firmly believe that differences in perspective can be extremely valuable to this board. That value creation happens most when people explain why they believe what they believe. The next time you respond to one of PBF81's posts, I would strongly appreciate if you asked yourself the question, how can I respond to this, in the way which adds good value to this board?

I'd take Allen. That's not homerism. I believe Dan Marino was better than Jim Kelly, Reggie White may well have been better than Bruce Smith, Barry Sanders was better than O.J. Simpson. Just because a guy dons a Bills uniform, doesn't mean he suddenly becomes all bright and shiny in my eyes. In this particular instance, however, I believe that Josh Allen is a better quarterback than Pat Mahomes. But, the Chiefs are plugging their QB into a much better, more effective offensive system than is the case for the Bills.