BillsFanForever19

Short of hopping in a time machine and watching each supplement he took into his body and the circumstances surrounding it - how would they discover that? You think a "trainer" that is being paid by Hoecht wouldn't lie for them and say "oh yeah, that was my mistake. There was something in it that I didn't know was on the list"? Ultimately, it really doesn't matter if they knowingly or unknowingly took a banned substance. The perception is the same and the punishment is the same. I just think it's ridiculous to not question whether he or Ogunjobi are telling the truth when literally everyone who gets popped has the same song and dance explanation. And especially to imply as the poster who I initially replied to did that Rice's punishment should be based on Hoecht's suspension while assuming their innocence.

No, he's not. If he was someone that is that good and just as good on the Outside, he'd be on the Outside full time for the Chargers. Instead, he took 65% of his snaps from the Slot - while having guys like Quentin Johnston and Josh Palmer on the Outside. And when they lost Palmer on the Outside, did they announce they're moving McConkey over there? No. They spent their 2nd Round Pick on Tre Harris and brought back Mike Williams. Why? Bc McConkey plays his best Football out of the Slot. Ladd McConkey is a great WR. But there's a difference between a True Outside WR and a guy like McConkey. In certain situations, against certain DB's, McConkey can take reps on the Outside. But he's small and has difficulty with bigger, physical CB's. He's not a guy you can expect to take 75% or more on the Outside. We lost Stefon Diggs and Gabe Davis. Two true Outside WR's. And all we had was Slot targets or guys who are primarily slot that you can move around now and again (like McConkey) in Khalil Shakir, Dalton Kincaid, and Curtis Samuel - who was said would be used on the Outside and still worked out of the Slot on 42% of snaps (plus snaps out of the backfield). We couldn't Draft another Slot guy or even another Tweener. We had that covered and that's pretty much all we had. We needed replacements for Diggs and Davis on the Outside full time. McConkey, as good as he is, isn't that. It's fair to question whether Coleman will be good. But he shouldn't be compared to McConkey. The guys to be 20/20 hindsight over if he isn't would be Xavier Worthy, Xavier Legette, Ja'Lynn Polk, Adonai Mitchell, and Troy Franklin.

This is again assuming he's telling the truth. Again, *every* single person who gets busted for PED's has a similar story. Bc of that, no one really gets the benefit of the doubt. Even if he is telling the truth, he's just as much to blame. You know that there's a laundry list of things that will get you suspended. You shouldn't put any foreign substance in your body, supplement or not, without knowing every ingredient that's in it. Simply trusting someone else, an employee, a friend, whomever - and not looking into it yourself is DUMB! I can't roll my eyes harder at the "oh it wasn't my fault, it was my trainers fault". You're a grown ass adult. A Professional Football player. In a league where you're being regularly tested. And you're just blindly ingesting things?

Another example of why people who think big contracts at the top don't rise all ships underneath are wrong.

I mean, I don't know anyone that's going to pass up on a good Steak for a Burger. The thing with Steak is it's easier to F up and generally way more expensive. All things equal though, a good steak crushes a good burger and it's not even close.

You are aware that's what literally everyone who gets popped for PED's says, right? It wasn't Ogunjobi's fault either supposedly. If they took everyone at their word that it wasn't their fault, no one would be suspended for PED's and the league would be full of Schwarzenegger looking dudes. With how strict the NFL Testing of today is, if a player puts something in their body without knowing literally everything that's in it or blindly takes something at the suggestion of another person that isn't a team doctor - they're either a.) pretty dumb or b.) flat out trying to skirt the system.

I don't know. it would take us winning the division by not a lot and there to be a Division that has multiple teams in it with a better record than us. That seems to be a pretty unlikely scenario for this current team and what the records are for Wild Card teams generally.

Von got suspended so quickly bc it was announced there'd be no criminal or civil charges almost immediately. The league doesn't suspend until the legal process has completely played out. Save for incredibly heinous acts that will have a player put on the Commissioner's Exempt list until the legal process plays out.

Well, he had to have knee surgery in October last year and missed the rest of the season. So if he's skating suspensions, maybe nature is deciding to suspend him for the league.

Mentioned this in another post, but one plus in the Bye Week coming after Week 6 is that it gives Hoecht and Ogunjobi two full weeks in the building before they hit the field. It may allow both to hit the ground running in Week 8 with extra preparation.

He was used as essentially another Offensive Lineman on the field. I wouldn't want Josh to be looking his way on anything but his last read.

He's our Quarterback. When people speak of "weapons" on Offense, they're generally talking about the QB's weaponry - ie RB's, WR's, TE's. My apologies for not specifying that which I didn't think needed to be specified.

You'd think James Cook walked up to you and your family, stared you dead in the eyes, and then slapped your mother across the face. I just don't get the anger and multitude of demeaning posts about him. It's just business my dude. Like it or not, he was our best offensive weapon last season and likely will be this year too. I look forward to your posts when he wins us games this year, like he did last season.

I'm not saying Douglas and Henry are the same caliber of player. The difference between Douglas hitting the wall and Henry hitting the wall is that Douglas doing so equates to being completely toast and out of the league - wherein Henry losing a step would still have him as a servicable RB. But your argument is he'll still be the force he was last year for up to two years. I think that's a pretty big gamble to take. He definitely doesn't have to "get comfy with 12m at the max". If Josh Jacobs is at 12m and 29 year old Alvin Kamara is at 12.5 - he will easily surpass that. Derrick Henry will be 32 in the Playoffs this season. That's why he's making 15m instead of 21m like Barkley. You know that there's much more that goes into contract value than stats and performance. If Cook hits the market next offseason after another season like last year, I would bet you Dollars to Donuts he's exceeding 12m and probably by more than a couple million.

Exactly. Take Rasul Douglas for example. He went from a pretty solid starter for us in 2023 to completely toast in 2024 (and currently out of the league) seemingly overnight. The 30's come at you fast in the NFL.

He'll be 32 when they're in the Playoffs this season. While I agree it's probably likely he'll still be a force this season, I don't agree that there's often signs the previous year before players hit the wall. Players seemingly hit the wall out of nowhere more often than not. Especially at RB and especially when you get years into the 30's. Again, I wouldn't bet money on that happening this season. But I wouldn't bet money against it either. And I certainly wouldn't say with any kind of certainty he has another 2 full years and at 33 he'll still be going as strong as last season.

While i'll give you that was probably his best play of the year, I wouldn't say him making that play at our own 40 with 9 minutes left in the game and with a 5 point lead "won us the Ravens playoff game". It was one of a number of plays made by a number of people that allowed us the victory. You could just as easily say "Damar Hamlin's sack and strip and Von Miller's recovery and return won us the Ravens playoff game". It doesn't make either worthy of a big contract extension. And it doesn't negate Bernard's average to below average play on the field the rest of the year.

What would you have had us do differently though? Who was traded or available in FA on Defense that would have been significantly better - while still being able to address all the holes we had? We don't need the young players to be great in Year 1 or Year 2. We need them to be better than guys who were a dumpster fire last season. It's really not a big ask. And for each guy you're questioning, there's at least some moderate veteran insurance that can bring at least the quality of guys we're replacing from last season. Worried about Bishop? Well we still have Hamlin to fall back on. And we brought in Darrick Forrest (who has starting experience) as well as Drafted Jordan Hancock. Worried about Hairston? We signed Tre White and Dane Jackson as vet insurance and also Drafted Dorian Strong as double down Rookie insurance like in 2022. We had 7 guys leave the Defense. Between FA and the Draft, we've brought in 13 new players to replace them and to upgrade depth from some guys who are still here. We've kept everyone of value last year. Again, given the money we had to play with and where we were Drafting - I think he did a phenomenal job. I can't imagine looking at all the work he put into the Defense and thinking "we're cooked". WR is a different story 😛

"Basham never got there. Elam never got there."? For every Elam and Basham, there's been a Josh Allen, Tre White, Christian Benford, Taron Johnson, Matt Milano, Greg Rousseau, Tremaine Edmunds, Dion Dawkins, Ed Oliver, James Cook, Khalil Shakir, Spencer Brown, Terrel Bernard, or O'Cyrus Torrence who have stepped into a starting role in Year 1 or Year 2 (like Bishop) and been solid to much more than that. That's not to say that our Year 1 or Year 2 players will all definitively be stars right out of the gate. But to point to just guys like Basham and Elam (I'll give you Ford too) and ignore all the successes is really looking at the glass (less than) half empty. Again, I go back to my original point. We're bringing back everyone on the roster from last year's Defense - except for Rasul Douglas, Von Miller, Dawuane Smoot, Kaiir Elam, Austin Johnson, Quintin Jefferson, and Jordan Phillips. Those guys were so bad that two weeks after the Draft, every single one of them (save for Elam who was traded for peanuts) is currently not on an NFL Roster. Do you really think that Joey Bosa, Maxwell Hairston, Tre White, T.J. Sanders, Michael Hoecht, Landon Jackson, Larry Ogunjobi, and Deone Walker aren't going to be able to fill the shoes of that murderer's row list above? They'd have to work hard at being bad to not be an upgrade over those guys. Given where we were at Cap wise and where we were picking in the Draft, I think Beane has done a masterful job of rebuilding this Defense.

Of the 8 Free Agents we didn't bring back, only Hollins and Morris have found new homes thus far. Amari Cooper, Rasul Douglas, Dawuane Smoot, Austin Johnson, Quintin Jefferson, and Jordan Phillips still floating out there. So is Von Miller (cut).

He's a die hard Dallas Cowboys fan. So "Go Josh Allen" was as far as he was willing to go. Still cool that he likes Josh enough to do something like that.

If you're talking as far as deleting a contract, to me, it's Bernard. He was easily the last of the big 5 to extend in my opinion, even knowing that retaining all 5 was unlikely. He had a very good 2023 but took a noticeable step back in 2024. He seemed to always be out of position. The middle of the field was constantly open in the passing game and for deep runs beyond the line of scrimmage. In 2023, he was popping off the screen quite a bit. In 2024, he was barely noticeable. On top of that, he's shown a penchant for getting dinged up fairly frequently. It's often said that the premium positions in Football are QB, WR, LT, DE, and CB. MLB, like RB, isn't one of those positions. It's also not the kind of position that requires a ton of money or a premium Draft resource to replace. And when it comes down to who the bigger playmaker at their non premium position is and who had more of an impact on victory for us last season, it's easily Cook. From what I saw from Bernard in 2024, I would have waited on paying him this offseason. I wouldn't have been closed off to the idea of paying him in 2026, depending on how he looked this year. But I wouldn't have paid him now as we did.

Is that Cook's asking price? Just bc his brother shot out a tweet doesn't make that his official price. He knows and James knows, he's probably not getting that. But throw out 20 and 15 looks like a compromise.

That may be. But again, there is likely other teams that will take less pass protection from the RB position for another playmaker on the field. This idea that you absolutely can't have him on the field on 3rd Downs bc that's what the Bills do isn't accurate. Not every team stresses as much on blocking players as we do. Not every team runs the same offensive scheme. Also, I don't think not being a good pass blocker is an equivalent to being 31 going on 32 with recurring foot issues when it comes to negatively effecting money. The latter definitely outweighs the former.

The Week 7 Bye works really well with our suspensions. Gives Hoecht and Ogunjobi multiple weeks to get ready.