dave mcbride

This is what is lurking in my mind: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/pit/2012.htm https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/nor/2014.htm https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/gnb/2006.htm Point is, fallow years happen to teams who succeed over long stretches. The Brady-era Pats are definitely the exception.

I hope you're right, but I think the Fins finally put it together and win 11 or 12 games. They are not without weaknesses, but by and large they have too much talent, sadly. I don't know what to think of the Jets, but if Rogers is healthy and at least pretty good, I think the Bills wind up in 3rd place. As I said above, the Bills' defensive talent level now is pretty sobering. I can't see NE winning more than 4-5 games max.

I honestly think the Seahawks are a potential candidate for first overall pick. I can't help but think that Geno is going to turn back into a pumpkin at some point, and they have sack magnet/turnover machine Sam Howell as his backup. Not a good situation, and Carroll, who was a great coach, covered up a lot of deficiencies. Their defense was a disaster last season.

I don't buy that. They were 2nd and 4th in points allowed in 2022 and 2023, and 6th and 9th in yards allowed. They were fourth in turnovers forced in 2022 and third in 2023. Those are elite numbers. But the personnel now is very average and the alarmingly bad safety situation is going to really expose the CBs. The Bills under McDermott have excelled at stopping big plays. I predict that ends this season because of the problems on the back end combined with pretty average pass rush talent.

I hope they go 14-3, of course, but I can't help but think we're in for a fallow rebuilding year and grind it out to 9-8, akin to some of those Brees and Roethlisberger years for the Saints/Steelers. I think the defense is going to disappoint and cost the team a number of games. The talent on the D now is very, very average.

Non Bills 1. Giants win 10 or 11 games and make the playoffs, helped by an absolutely ferocious pass rush, a decent year from Daniel Jones, and Malik Nabors winning the rookie of the year award. 2. Cincinnati is the AFC champ. 3. Dolphins win the AFC East. 4. Green Bay is the NFC champ. 5. New England, Seattle, and the Raiders battle it out for the top overall pick. 6. Sam Darnold, finally in a good offense, puts up strong numbers and the Vikings battle legitimately for a wild card slot. Bills 1. Go 9-8 and fans come to realize that this really is a rebuilding year and not a reset year -- made evident recently by the fact that they didn't try to sign Simmons despite a pretty dire safety situation. Whether they make the playoffs depends entirely on forces outside their control, but 9-8 is usually on the outside looking in. 2. Dalton Kincaid puts up 1,000+ yards and lives up to the hype. 3. Von Miller has a max of five sacks. 4. The defense, whose overall talent is now very average, sinks to the middle of the pack/slightly below (16-21 range for ranking) after regularly being in the top ten. It costs them multiple games. 5. Curtis Samuel proves that he's a good player who just needed a good QB and puts up Percy Harvin year three-type numbers. 6. Special teams continue to be a problem.

I see your point, but I was referring to the term "best receiver." Shakhir without question is a better player than Gabe Davis right now not factoring in specific WR sub-position. Davis was useless down the stretch in 2023.

You seem to have it in for him for whatever reason (given how much you post about him), which is ... interesting to me. But whatever. I stand by what I said. He's fine. He's better than Dorsey was for the Bills, and we'll see about Brady (who also was "bad" -- by your standards -- when he had a bad QB playing for him in Carolina). It's all about Josh Allen anyway.

I honestly don't have a dog in this fight, but I think Daboll is fine. Genius? Certainly not. But he's had to deal with an astoundingly outsized share of games helmed by terrible QBs. For instance, with a middle-of-the-road mediocre qb who played all season along with a mediocre offense overall in 2022, the Giants finished smack dab in the middle of the pack offensively. Bottom line: he's a decent-enough offensive coach (honestly, probably smarter than most, although smarts only get you so far) who, if given a good qb, can deliver good results. And with a bad QB/offensive roster, bad results. Like almost every other offensive coach in the league.

By the latter part of 2023, Shakhir was a significantly better receiver than Davis, so they didn’t lose their top two receivers.

“Perceived” context? C’mon. Actually look at the qbs he had to work with and come back to me. And also look at at the unit he had to work with in the first half of the 2018 season. In the first ten games, he had an incredibly raw Josh Allen for 4.5 of them and Peterman et al for the rest.

You keep bringing up the fact that Daboll was fired three times as a coordinator without mentioning once who his quarterbacks were in those years. I’ll keep it simple—over a three-job stretch, I suspect that there is no OC in NFL history who was cursed with such a terrible crew of quarterbacks. OCs too often get fired for results, not for their skills, and if the players are terrible, they take the fall.

Pegula is clueless.

Reading Graham’s sad explainer tweets and factoring in that he (as a reporter) is DEEP in the hip pocket (because of access reasons) of a mostly clueless owner who just happens to have lucked into a generational talent at QB tells you all you need to know. Just crappy stuff.

Oh jeez. Terry P, stay the F away from Josh Allen. And save us your “executive” pablum. My god.

You are absolutely right about that game. And over the years in the Rivers era it felt like they lost a dozen or so games they should have won because of kicking failures. In the Philly game this year - the one where Elliott kicked the 58 yarder in the wind and rain to tie the game — pat mcafee said before the game that all of bass’s practice kicks from 55 yards out in pre-game were falling 5-10 short of the goal post and that bills fans should not expect to see any long kicks. He is a PROBLEM.

When he was healthy in his first couple of seasons, he looked every bit as good as early years-OBJ and Mike Evans. In this game -- https://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/201601030buf.htm -- he essentially handed Revis Island precise directions to the proverbial glue factory. He was uncoverable in that game and was the best player on the field by a LOT. He cost the Jets the playoffs (along with a classic Fitzpick to Leodis in the EZ late in the 4th).

He actually had 11 TDs in his rookie season (two rushing TDs). He also had 956 yards from scrimmage in his second season because he had 14 carries for 96 yards (6.9 yards per rushing attempt). He was legit good in his first years, and in both of those seasons he had to share the ball with a lot of other high-volume targets: Diontae Johnson (both seasons), Ju Ju (2020), Najee Harris (2021), Ebron (2020), and Freiermuth (2021).

Excellent piece. Sorta confirms what I say above about playing in bad offenses with bad QBs setting him off, and not in a helpful way. Now he's playing with a bigger and better version of Roethlisberger, though.

My take on Claypool is that he might (emphasis on might) be one of those receivers who can’t stomach playing with bad quarterbacks who don’t know how to (or can’t) implement a passing game that’s reasonably sophisticated in design because they’re either not good processors or not good physical talents. Some people react very badly to incompetence at the top, and that might well be a Claypool trait. That makes them bad team players when the person at the top (the QB) isn’t good. However, we never heard anything like this about Claypool when Roethlisberger was the QB, and now Claypool is playing with a QB who is inarguably one of the 2-3 best in the NFL and the most physically talented to boot. Anyway, something to consider.

LOL! Never thought I'd see a Mark Arm reference on TBD. I saw them a few months ago in the West Village (Manhattan) and they were phenomenal.

He actually had 536 yards over the last 10 games, which averages out to 911 yards. One of those games was the Dallas game, where Allen only had 7 completions in a blowout win. I'd personally also factor in the two most important games - the playoffs. Not a lot of yardage but two TDs.

There is good drill-down info in this piece about why he hasn’t elevated his game yet three years in: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5524835/2024/05/29/trevor-lawrence-contract-jaguars-doug-pederson/

I'm not talking about mere stat lines - I'm talking about what saw on the field. He looked utterly helpless out there -- simply unable to cover anyone all game, beaten on every type of route (short, medium ...). Ridley had his way with him in terms of technique every time he lined against him. Basically, he didn't look like he knew how to play the position. By comparison, Mickey Washington looked like an all pro. Having said all of this, I do realize that the injury may well have been affecting him and honestly I haven't given up on him. He is a very good athlete with excellent length, so maybe the light goes on this year.

He was absolutely terrible in the Jax game in London - repeatedly spun around like a helpless top by Calvin Ridley in what was one of the worst single-game performances of a Bills CB I have ever seen. So it’s reasonable that the coaches had little faith in him. That said, he IS physically talented, and he seems bright enough. I am hoping for an Eric Moulds situation, where the light finally switches on in year three. But he has been a liability so far. Saying otherwise is whistling past the graveyard.