Bills the worst team in the NFL this season?

[BuckeyeBill]

I remember so many people for so many years saying that the Bills would be the worst team and they were always wrong.  Too bad too.  I would have liked a #1 pick.  Not since 1985 if I'm not mistaken.  I think 2-14 is better than 6-10.

[4merper4mer]

15 minutes ago, SouthNYfan said:

 

Chiefs are better if mahomes is good.

They are a better team than us all around, much better offensively, we are a few ticks better defensively, but mahomes is a big question mark.

If he's good they're a top AFC team.

If he's not, then they aren't.

(Kind of like us with AJ, but I'd rather be in their QB situation than ours)

Raiders was an anomaly last year, they are very talented, Carr is very good, and gruden is running the show now.

Chargers are better at the places that matter most (QB, pass rush, receivers) and most likely will be better than us.

 

My point was the guy said we were the 6th best team in the AFC East unless proven otherwise.

I'm not sure why he thinks that off-season moves don't matter.

 

 

We are worse at wr.

Matthews is gone, Zay night not be fit to play, Benjamin had off-season knee surgery, again.

 

Lb Milano is very solid, but lorax is about 90 years old. We literally are barren at lb with zero depth.

 

Dline is very solid if star can regain his form previously under MCD, if he plays like last year he's a bust.

 

OLine we are a mess.

QB we are actually a step back unless AJ can perform at above average starter level (again, it was the right move and in the long term with the right draft choice we will be better)

 

We definitely aren't a 2 win team.

We also aren't the 9 win team we were last year, since what was an overachieve, though I was happy with the coaching and I think we are good for a while going forward.

 

This year should be viewed as a possible step back from last year in terms of W-L as we will be integrating many new young players and a brew QBs into the mix.

I see 6-7 wins this year as a solid number, with 4-5 possible in the cards depending on the QB situation.

 

People need to be realistic.

Optimism is 8 wins, but unrealistic looking at the schedule.

 

Exactly what I'm saying.

Point differential is tough to gauge this year with the QB position turnover though, but as I even said in my other response, if AJ is much better than expected, then we could rock 8-9 wins.

Dude.  You came up with 7 better teams and two of them were the Jags.

[Seanbillsfan2206]

48 minutes ago, Gugny said:

 

Just in case anyone was wondering (I did):

 

That’s quite accurate 

[SouthNYfan]

2 minutes ago, 4merper4mer said:

Dude.  You came up with 7 better teams and two of them were the Jags.

 

I failed at typing.

I meant the last spot as the Titans, then I said but they were probably a coinflip.

Totally didn't mean to write the jags twice ??

[BuckeyeBill]

Hauschka will win us at least two games himself.

Edited April 21, 2018 by BuckeyeBill

[thurst44]

10 minutes ago, SouthNYfan said:

 

We are worse at wr.

Matthews is gone, Zay night not be fit to play, Benjamin had off-season knee surgery, again.

Benjamin was not here when we started last year, Matthews had questions going in. Zay hadn't played a game last year (he may be imploding, or he may see the yips and a near-death experience as the impetus to take the next step). Jeremy Kerley is slightly better than Andre Holmes (who is still here and likely better than Philly Brown) and Deonte Thompson was a mid-season replacement so also wasn't there at the start. Not worse. At worst, impossible to say. It's a bit of a silly argument though as my point is mostly that our WR was pretty awful going into last season .

 

Anyway, I think we're not that far apart on opinions, but just feel it's a bit more wide open. My initial reaction (more tart than I meant it) was that the poster was not saying anything about current quality of teams, and likely more making the point that last year when we started so many people here predicted we were tanking and we went 9-7. Oddly, I might be more inclined to believe the 2 win season a possibility (although i'm tired of the prognosticators teeing off on the bills), but that a 2 loss is also not impossible. Also, as Barley has hinted at, there's still a lot of moves to be made. Go Bills! 

 

 

[SouthNYfan]

1 minute ago, thurst44 said:

Benjamin was not here when we started last year, Matthews had questions going in. Zay hadn't played a game last year (he may be imploding, or he may see the yips and a near-death experience as the impetus to take the next step). Jeremy Kerley is slightly better than Andre Holmes (who is still here and likely better than Philly Brown) and Deonte Thompson was a mid-season replacement so also wasn't there at the start. Not worse. At worst, impossible to say. It's a bit of a silly argument though as my point is mostly that our WR was pretty awful going into last season .

 

Anyway, I think we're not that far apart on opinions, but just feel it's a bit more wide open. My initial reaction (more tart than I meant it) was that the poster was not saying anything about current quality of teams, and likely more making the point that last year when we started so many people here predicted we were tanking and we went 9-7. Oddly, I might be more inclined to believe the 2 win season a possibility (although i'm tired of the prognosticators teeing off on the bills), but that a 2 loss is also not impossible. Also, as Barley has hinted at, there's still a lot of moves to be made. Go Bills! 

 

 

 

Let's assume we are the same.

We were hot garbage at wr last year lol

3 minutes ago, BuckeyeBill said:

Hauschka will win us at least two games himself.

 

Assuming we get into fg range

[thurst44]

Just now, SouthNYfan said:

 

Let's assume we are the same.

We were hot garbage at wr last year lol

Haha, fair enough. We'll see where we are in September. 

[SouthNYfan]

4 minutes ago, thurst44 said:

Haha, fair enough. We'll see where we are in September. 

 

Andre Reed could probably still be our #2

[SlimShady'sSpaceForce]

9 hours ago, Seanbillsfan2206 said:

Now personally I think this guy is a pigdick and probably eats paint, but that’s just my opinion...

 

https://billswire.usatoday.com/2018/04/20/2018-nfl-season-buffalo-bills-espn-worst-team-in-nfl/amp/

The idiots said the same thing last year and the year before and the year before that.  

[Behindenemylines]

9 hours ago, Seanbillsfan2206 said:

Wow you put that all together by yourself?!? Good job little buddy! Now if we can just get you to stop shitting your bed and drooling on yourself

Wow a bit aggressive don't you think?

[The Frankish Reich]

8 hours ago, Richard Noggin said:

The Mike Clay references in this article are completely off base. Clay, personally, is not predicting the Bills to go an NFL-worst 2-14. He personally projects them to go 5-11 (which is curiously ALSO the worst NFL record in 2018). The referenced prediction is a somewhat arbitrary exercise/experiment in forecasting, which he's entirely open about and not at all personally married to. Check out his Twitter feed on the subject, and his subsequent interactions with #BillsMafia (cited by Rodak as well). Just sayin: bad reporting.

 

But in the spirit of healthy debate: is it THAT unfathomable to Bills fans that the 2018 team (which has very little to do with the 2017 team) might not win many games?

Even with exactly the same roster, all other things being equal, we start out by assuming that the Bills will have a worse record in 2018, simply because our points allowed: points scored ratio generally would have equated to a worse record:

 

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-way-everybody-measures-nfl-schedule-strength-its-wrong/

 

Revisiting the 2017 NFL season

The teams that had the biggest discrepancies between their actual win totals and their expected win totals based on points scored and allowed

BIGGEST CLIMBERS
TEAM	WINS	EXPECTED WINS	DIFF
Cleveland	0	3.3	+3.3
Jacksonville	10	11.8	+1.8
Tampa Bay	5	6.8	+1.8
Houston	4	5.7	+1.7
Baltimore	9	10.4	+1.4
BIGGEST DROPPERS
TEAM	WINS	EXPECTED WINS	DIFF
Buffalo	9	6.4	-2.6
Pittsburgh	13	10.5	-2.5
Carolina	11	9	-2.0
Arizona	8	6.1	-1.9
Tennessee	9	7.4	-1.6

SOURCE: PRO-FOOTBALL-REFERENCE.COM

[BobChalmers]

2 hours ago, OldTimeAFLGuy said:

 

 

...pretty pathetic how it happens EVERY year..........and of course they NEVER come back to do mea culpas when they badly missed..............

 

What I like is how this happens EVERY year RIGHT HERE ON TBD!!

 

And EVERY YEAR I offer $500 or so on 8-8 vs. their asinine 2-14, 4-12 predictions, and EVERY YEAR they go silent.

 

There's just a whole heaping pile of stupid on the internet, and you don't even have to go looking to find it.  

[Ed_Formerly_of_Roch]

9 hours ago, klos63 said:

Just in general, to make any prediction before the draft, mini camp, training camp.... is ridiculous. I also always found reporters predictions to be such a stupid exercise. I mean, who cares what they think, they're predictions have no more credibility than any of ours. Just an ego trip.

 

Obviously you care or you wouldn't be posting as is everyone who's responded in this thread and the 1000's who likely read the article.  It's an article which he's paid to write in the hopes that people read and talk about which is what is happening here.  There are only 256 wins in an NFL season (unless you're ESPN) so looking at it objectively that's what he thinks they will add up to.  It has nothing to do with EGO, he's just doing his job, but god help anyone who says anything in the slightest negative about the Bills. Then he becomes this terrible person.  Will he be right, who knows, probably some teams records will be close to his predictions, but some will be way off either better or worse.

 

I'm sure if he had predicted an 11-5 record he'd be praised around here.  Jay S predicted 6-10, so is he on an ego trip also??

[The Frankish Reich]

So which team (pre-draft! pre-preseason! pre-injuries!) projects to be the worst in the NFL this year? Right now, I'd go with Miami, which just took big steps backwards in multiple ways. Now if Tannehill comes all the way back and is his old (mediocre) self, that may change. So really, let's be honest here: other than Miami, aren't the Bills in the mix with Indy (assuming Andrew Luck isn't the same old Andrew Luck, or at least isn't for a large part of the season), the Jets, the Bears, the Browns (who WILL win games, probably at least 5)?  Other teams with worse records clearly have strong cases for massive improvement: the Giants, the Bucs, the Niners (obviously), Texans (Watson/Watt).  There's always a freaky team that plummets to the bottom (see Giants, 2017) so there is that, but I gotta say ... it's not insane to project the Bills as one of the worst teams in the NFL in 2018. I wish that wasn't the case, but this ain't about wishes and fairies and leprechauns ...

Edited April 21, 2018 by The Frankish Reich

[BobChalmers]

Just now, Ed_Formerly_of_Roch said:

I'm sure if he had predicted an 11-5 record he'd be praised around here.  Jay S predicted 6-10, so is he on an ego trip also??

 

Uhm - no, if someone said 11-5 I'd say they are probably nuts.

 

falling back to 6-10 given the upheaval and tough schedule isn't unreasonable but I'd say that's at the low end of it.

 

The idiots who every year say the Bills will get 4+ games WORSE than the prior year with logic like "because Bills" are tiresome.

 

Dropping from 9-7 to 2-14 this year is a ridiculous prediction.  Almost certainly from one of TT's national-media idiot suck-ups who never watched him play.

[The Frankish Reich]

12 minutes ago, BobChalmers said:

 

Uhm - no, if someone said 11-5 I'd say they are probably nuts.

 

falling back to 6-10 given the upheaval and tough schedule isn't unreasonable but I'd say that's at the low end of it.

 

The idiots who every year say the Bills will get 4+ games WORSE than the prior year with logic like "because Bills" are tiresome.

 

Dropping from 9-7 to 2-14 this year is a ridiculous prediction.  Almost certainly from one of TT's national-media idiot suck-ups who never watched him play.

Well, first of all, it's pretty much an average schedule. Some difficult out-of-conference games for sure, and the Pats in the division, but we also always get the Dolphins and Jets 4X, so it evens out. But I think 6-10 is pretty realistic, not as a low end, but as an actual prediction (right now; things will change). I see more upside than downside - if McCarron is at least Tyrod-good, if the draft fills a couple big holes, if players (Benjamin is a huge one) stay healthy, I could see a 2017 repeat. Downside? It's hard not to win at least 4 or 5 games in the NFL (example: the Bears were a bad team last year, playing in a division with no gimmees, and they still won 5), and there's enough talent on the roster (and those 4 in-division games ought to generate at least 2 wins as a starting point) that 5-11 is my realistic worst case scenario.

Edited April 21, 2018 by The Frankish Reich

[thurst44]

31 minutes ago, The Frankish Reich said:

Even with exactly the same roster, all other things being equal, we start out by assuming that the Bills will have a worse record in 2018, simply because our points allowed: points scored ratio generally would have equated to a worse record:

 

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-way-everybody-measures-nfl-schedule-strength-its-wrong/

 

Revisiting the 2017 NFL season

The teams that had the biggest discrepancies between their actual win totals and their expected win totals based on points scored and allowed

BIGGEST CLIMBERS
TEAM	WINS	EXPECTED WINS	DIFF
Cleveland	0	3.3	+3.3
Jacksonville	10	11.8	+1.8
Tampa Bay	5	6.8	+1.8
Houston	4	5.7	+1.7
Baltimore	9	10.4	+1.4
BIGGEST DROPPERS
TEAM	WINS	EXPECTED WINS	DIFF
Buffalo	9	6.4	-2.6
Pittsburgh	13	10.5	-2.5
Carolina	11	9	-2.0
Arizona	8	6.1	-1.9
Tennessee	9	7.4	-1.6

SOURCE: PRO-FOOTBALL-REFERENCE.COM

Again, not to try to find the silver lining in everything, but there is a non-biased reason to believe the Bills are an outlier in this theory, and this is a case where the stats might not be telling the whole story. I'd like to see the stats for before and after our nosedive. Yes, the worst games happened, but we watched the season and know how the season played out. That was a historically bad three-game stretch which kind of spiraled out of control and were outscored by 80 pts. It does seem important to gauging the quality of a team, how these losses and stats happened. It really seems more telling how they were able to get it back together after it epically fell apart, and I'd be curious to see how 538 would address that.

 

Edited April 21, 2018 by thurst44

[The Frankish Reich]

3 minutes ago, thurst44 said:

Again, not to try to find the silver lining in everything, but there is a non-biased reason to believe the Bills are an outlier in this theory, and this is a case where the stats might not be telling the whole story. I'd like to see the stats for before and after our nosedive. Yes, the worst games happened, but we watched the season and know how the season played out. That was a historically bad three-game stretch which kind of spiraled out of control and were outscored by 80 pts. It does seem important to gauging the quality of a team, how these losses and stats happened. It really seems more telling how they were able to get it back together after it epically fell apart, and I'd be curious to see how 538 would address that.

 

Valid point. And (although lots of teams can play the same game here, so maybe it's not fair doing this for our team?) we have to remember that point differential in 2017 was inflated by 2 disastrous losses - the Peterman Game (as it shall forevermore be known) and that Saints blowout. Take those games away, and we look a lot more like a legit 9-7 last year.  Point differential is a much better measure of success in baseball where you play 10 times more games and where even a "blowout" is a loss by 6 or 7 runs, whereas the NFL equivalent is a loss by 25 or 40 points ....

Edited April 21, 2018 by The Frankish Reich

[JOSH HUFF]

I have to think that this is a rough season,  especially if they through all the picks in for a QB.  O-line is a mess, best players are old, no proven QB.  Right now we look like the Browns of the past few years.  Speaking of the Browns they will be much better this season.