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YOOOOO...but what about this obvious and bizarre and IRRELEVANT insertion of posthumous narrative spin about Tremaine effing Edmunds?! (Used to unnecessarily mitigate Bernard's NOT TERRIBLE ranking (22) -- just a sad remnant of local contrarianism)

Not drafting Mahomes when we (and nine other teams) had the chance to, was a logical choice. No one knew how good he'd be, except the Chiefs, and then they handled him absolutely perfectly. Kudos to them. And the Bills did well with their draft picks, getting White, Allen, and Edmunds. Where the Bills really dropped the ball was not hiring McDermott's former boss, Reid, when he was unemployed. McD is just not in Reid's league. He's a good coach but not good enough.

This may be the sneakiest Edmunds post in the history of the board.

facts r facts r facts....kc has won titles, bills no...any ifs ands or buts mean nothing n woulda coulda shoulda etc etc kc system helps, who knows what mahomes does in buffalo, all speculation, but what is not speculation is that the chiefs have won titles.... cant dispute facts allen dawkins white edmunds neal all have helped the bills win games, just not titles......YET

They didn’t hand them Mahomes. Mahomes is great in part because he plays for the best coach in the NFL. The Bills got TW and leverage to get Dawkins and Edmunds. JA would have at least 1 SB if playing for AR.

Incorrect. They got Tre White and Tremaine Edmunds for the only notable draft pick value that they acquired for the Patrick Mahomes pick trade. People have been mis-stating for years that the Bills were able to move up for Allen with draft pick capital acquired in the Mahomes pick trade...........surprised you are one of them.

Who won the trade? The Chiefs traded up in the first round in the 2017 draft with the Bills and selected Patrick Mahomes, forever changing the franchise and a city for the next decade. Kansas City, which originally had the No. 27 overall pick in that 2017 draft, traded three picks to Buffalo to move up to No. 10 and select Mahomes. So what did the Bills get with the Chiefs' picks? Here's a look at the trade and the players who transpired from the deal: The trade doesn't seem like equal value for Mahomes, but Bills general manager Brandon Beane did some excellent maneuvering to build a Super Bowl-caliber roster with those picks. Buffalo selected Tre'Davious White with that No. 27 overall pick in 2017, and White has become one of the elite cornerbacks in the game with two Pro Bowl and All-Pro selections in his five seasons. Opposing quarterbacks have a career passer rating of just 46.2 targeting White, who has 16 interceptions to just nine touchdowns allowed. 2017 third-round pick (No. 91 overall): Buffalo packaged the pick in a draft trade with the Los Angeles Rams. The Bills traded their 2017 second-round pick (No. 44 overall) and 2017 third-round pick (No. 91 overall) in exchange for the Rams' 2017 second-round pick (No. 37 overall, wide receiver Zay Jones) and a 2017 fifth-round pick (No. 149 overall). 2017 fifth-round pick (No. 149 overall): The Bills packaged that pick with a 2017 third-round pick (No. 75 overall) and a 2017 fifth-round pick (No. 156 overall) to the Atlanta Falcons in exchange for a 2017 second-round pick (No. 63 overall). Buffalo selected offensive tackle Dion Dawkins with the No. 63 pick. 2018 first-round pick (No. 22 overall): The Bills moved up in the draft, parting ways with the 2018 first-round pick and a 2018 third-round pick (No. 65 overall) to the Baltimore Ravens for a 2018 first-round pick (No. 16 overall) and a 2018 fifth-round pick (No. 154 overall). The Bills selected linebacker Tremaine Edmunds with the pick. 2018 fifth-round pick (No. 154 overall): The Bills used this selection on cornerback Siran Neal.

Five guys that I would be looking at: P Matt Araiza. Big leg, legally free and clear, handsome. WR Gabe Davis. Big-bodied, downfield threat. Just needs a real opportunity to be a WR2 for someone. LB Tremaine Edmunds. What he does for you in the pass game simply cannot be quantified by statistics. Still just 25 years old. Probably trending up. DE Carlos "Boogie" Basham. Positional versatility. Very cool name. Non-stop motor. CB Levi Wallace. You can never have enough late round corners with mediocre athleticism and above average zone awareness who never intercept the football. Get 'er done, Big Baller Beane.

I hope the Bears do with him what they did with Edmunds last year. Pay that big salary to get us a better comp pick. I like AJE, have really enjoyed watching him progress and wish we could hang on to him, but if we can't that would be the next best outcome IMO.

McD has a solid history of playing rookies who earn it. Including some who didn't (hey, Cody Ford) Milano, Edmunds, Oliver, Rousseau, White, Allen, Benford, Araiza would have been a starter, Spencer Brown, Gabe Davis, Knox, etc.

So very true....we were so smart with Edmunds & Davis, yet I think Josh's friendship influenced the quick decision. Now we know Kincaid is far superior and unfortunately we're stuck with an expensive blocking TE. We gotta start ending these contracts. The money from Knox and Von alone could be put to better use.

Beane should have done exactly what they are doing with Davis (and what they did with Edmunds), not panic and overpay with a year still left on this contract for a guy that still has questions marks and has proven won't be elite. Let them play their final year and walk if they won't take a team friendly deal. Of course, it's never an easy call and Beane has done so well, he just really messed up on the Knox call. I have to think Allen's friendship with Knox loomed large and maybe caused a decision that went against Beane's better judgement.

To piggy back off this, the best, most consistent players we have on defense were not big FAs or first/second round picks. Milano - R5 Bernard - R3 Hyde - Not a top tier FA Poyer - Wasn’t even considered a good player when we signed him. Jones - Solid, but not a top tier FA Benford - R6 Douglas - Really struggled early in his career, R3 pick traded. Dodson - UDFA Johnson - R4 Epenesa - R2 Ed looked good last year, but took 2-3 years to develop. Groot looks good. Edmunds took 2-3 years to develop into a game manager MLB.

He's never going to be a top edge rusher. He would have shown that by now. But on the off chance he will then you can tag him. He has two years at a reasonable price to prove he is anything more than an average DE. The comp pick is just added bonus for not taking on another bloated contract for an average player. I assume you are happy they got an extra third round pick by letting Edmunds walk.

The Bills use a DL rotation so their best Dlinemen don't get as many reps as the best Dlinemen on teams that usually only sub when necessary. That can certainly impact sack stats, especially for guys who miss a couple of games or who play hurt for several games. I don't know which philosophy is best, but the Bills system works for them with the players they have and seem to like; they had a sound defense this past season despite suffering key injuries on defense. It may be that Beane and McDermott envision a defense where the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. As for the draft, I doubt that the Bills draft a DE in the first round simply because the edge rushers with 1st round grades will be long gone when the Bills get their shot. I wouldn't be surprised to see them use a later pick on one, however. When they realized that Edmunds wasn't going to be the guy at MLB they drafted him to be, they drafted Bernard in the third round in 2022.

I think the discourse on Gabe makes sense. I definitely do NOT want to sign him to a WR2 contract, because I do not believe he is that.. but, I get why people are sentimental on him. He's a homegrown player. Drafted by the Bills and played all 4 years as a pretty notable player on the team. And while the generations prior have the 4 Super Bowl losses, this era has 13 seconds.. and while that's a memory a lot of us would like to forget, no Bills fan will forget Gabe Davis in that game paired with Josh Allen on the sideline firing up the team. It was an iconic performance, even if it didn't go our way. Gabe is a cultural fit in WNY/Buffalo Bills. Low maintenance, likes to fish and hunt.. has a great personality. He's a guy we all wish would be here long term, unfortunately he's not a WR2 and will likely get WR2 offers that we can't match. But I get why he is probably more of a gut punch than Tremaine Edmunds even. And we saw how that worked out...

I like Leggette quite a bit. I think he is fast, but we’ll see what his 40 time is. It won’t bother me if he is at 4.5, but some will think that is slow. Comparison to Rousseau is a good one except Rousseau (and Edmunds) were very young when they came out whereas Legette is older than typical. Legette is yong at the position, but not in age. Isn’t Corley mostly a slot guy? Of course, doesn’t hurt to have competition for Shakir.

Fans have to get over the “all or nothing” mentality. We will sign middle tier players. Rousseau as a $20 million edge is worth it. He’s good at everything. He’s exactly what you extend. I would compare him to Dion Dawkins after year 3-4. You extend Dawkins because he was good at everything and played one of the top positions in the league. Dawkins wasn’t great at anything but had no weaknesses. At the time of signing he was the 5th highest paid LT. Now his contract looks like a bargain. You sign these guys to top 5-10 contracts at their position. Soon they fall down the rankings. These are the players you love to keep. All around good players and won’t break the bank. If we compare to Edmunds. Edmunds was not all around a good player. He had limitations. The GM talked about those limitations publicly. He also played a position that imo is plug and play like RB. You can find LBs easily if you want one.

Kelce's career games vs Bills: 13 catches, 118 yards, two TDs ('20 afc championship) 5 catches, 65 yards, two TDs 8 catches, 96 yards, one TD 6 catches, 57 yards, one TD 8 catches, 108 yards, zero TDs 6 catches, 83 yards, zero TDs 5 catches, 75 yards, two TDs ('23 divisional round) Kelce's best-ever game vs the Bills in the 2020 AFC championship game came against a fully-healthy Bills roster with in-their-prime Poyer, Hyde, White, Johnson, Milano, Edmunds all on the field. Arguably his second-best game vs the Bills—easily his most memorable given the game-winning catch in OT—came against another completely healthy Bills defense. Kelce has cooked basically every defense he's ever played in the playoffs. We've seen Kelce run circles around Milano in two prior playoff games and caught the game-winner over him in the divisional game. In fact, Milano has gotten crucified in the past for getting beat in playoff games, and how many times have we read here, "Why is Kelce always open!" Mahomes targeted Kelce on 39.5% of his pass attempts in the 2020 game. He targeted Kelce on 26% of his pass attempts in this year's game. The Bills haven't had an answer for Kelce for four years now.

Only three years older than Tremaine Edmunds.

old enough to be Edmunds' father

Why do fans have to be "concerned" about Greg Rousseau at this point? He's a good young player with 2 years left on his rookie contract at a bargain price for the level of his play if the Bills pick up his fifth year option (which they would do if he continues to play at his current level). If Rousseau improves, then the Bills will extend him. If he doesn't, then they'll let him walk so somebody else will overpay for him. That's exactly what they did with Edmunds -- and i don't see how that can be seen as a "problem" since the Bills had Terrell Bernard ready to replace him. FTR, most first round draft picks don't become "difference makers", especially those drafted late in the round. Getting a good starting quality DE at the end of the first round who plays for five seasons is not a "miss", especially for a team that has to pay a veteran franchise QB.

Yeah, that's a great question and I'm glad I'm not the one who has to answer it. I think the unknown variable is also that we don't know what Rousseau's camp will be asking for. If he goes out and misses 3 games next year with injury and gets 6.5 sacks again...is his camp really gonna try to ask for top market edge rusher money? I don't know the answer to that. I imagine Beane will set a certain amount that he's comfortable paying and, like usual, he won't exceed that amount. This is what happened with Edmunds. If some other team comes along that IS willing to exceed that amount -- as the Bears did with Edmunds -- then I imagine Rousseau will be gone. That said, the Bills seem to have paid Ed Oliver a pretty fair amount in between what he HAD done and what they thought he COULD do, and he came through this year and had a really nice season. So...certainly a tough question, and there's precedent in both directions. Glad I'm not the one who has to make these decisions.

I guess sort’ve? I’m a big believer in stars winning Superbowls. I don’t think the Bills have enough stars. Rousseau, much like Edmunds, was a guy with superstar potential who is not yet a superstar. You can make that a referendum on whoever you wish. I simply don’t think Chris Jones elevates in the postseason because of Spags. I think he is just a dawg. And we don’t have any. this man hits the nail on the head. why are the Bills consistently a good but not great team? Too many good but not great players, period.

I've been worrying about Rousseau for a couple of year. Let me say first that I think you sort of suggest that Rousseau is a disappointment. If he's a disappointment, it's only in the sense that he isn't the super star that some, mostly unreasonably, imagined he would be. The only time that it's reasonable to expect that a team got a super star is when the team has a top-ten pick. If teams had thought Rousseau was going to be a super star, some team would have taken him before the Bills did. Rousseau has in fact produced at a level that is reasonable to expect for a guy who was drafted late in the first round: Starter almost from the beginning, makes plays, is coachable, is a solid contributor. But Rousseau was a pick sort of like Edmunds - the Bills bet a bit on his high ceiling, and like Edmunds, he hasn't risen to that ceiling. Instead, and more so than Edmunds, he became a solid starter with no weaknesses. The Bears took the second bet on Edmunds' ceiling, because it is so high, but I don't think teams would make the comparable big bet on Greg, because it's pretty clear he isn't going to be a dominant edge rusher like Watt or a Bosa or something. What bothers me about Rousseau is that the Bills need a few more standout players. Allen is one, and Milano probably is the other. They need one or two more. They hoped Miller would be one, but that hasn't happened yet. But McDermott loves his all-purpose players. He want great athletes who can do everything their position demands, so he likes Rousseau, whose really pretty good at pass rushing, run stopping, pursuing, pass coverage. The problem is that he isn't dominant as any of those things; he's just very good. I think the Bills should keep Rousseau, but if unloading him was part of a plan to get a dominant defensive player, almost at any position, I'd be in favor.