How Much Did The Bills Actually Improve the OL? PFF Rankings 2018 vs. 2019 Comparison

[RyanC883]

On ‎3‎/‎17‎/‎2019 at 3:40 AM, Peter said:

 

According to the PFF ranking, we made the 13th ranked center the highest paid center in the NFL.  

 

I hope Mitch Morse plays up to his contract . . . otherwise McCoach are overpaying guys just as they thought the prior regime had done.

 

I will wait to see how Morse performs on the field, but it is interesting nonetheless.

 

I don't get PFF's center grade on Morse.  How is a guy who was: (1) the center for the most dynamic QB in the league last year only #13; and (2) a center who has not given up a sack since his rookie year #13.   Something is off here. 

[auburnbillsbacker]

I don't think the Bills will have a great line next year.  They picked up ok players who will get replaced with drafted players over the next 2 years.  Morse is the exception.

[SCBills]

22 minutes ago, auburnbillsbacker said:

I don't think the Bills will have a great line next year.  They picked up ok players who will get replaced with drafted players over the next 2 years.  Morse is the exception.

 

We'll have to see how it plays out, but most NFL OL's are not the Indianapolis Colts.

[Shaw66]

57 minutes ago, eball said:

 

I'm sure it's no surprise that I disagree with much of this post.  The Bills did not intend for last year's UFA class to lead them into the future -- they were stopgap signings in a year they knew would be painful.  The difference between the type of signings Beane has made this year and last year is night and day, and they are ALL team- and cap-friendly.  The signings this year could represent 5-6 starters (Morse, Brown, Beasley, Kroft, Nsekhe, Long) and have completely changed the narrative about the WR room and competition on the OL.

 

Of course Beane shouldn't have to be so active in FA -- that's what happens when the team lacks talent.  I know you think Beane should have come in and run with what was here -- that it was possible to make a few moves and not re-set the entire organization.  That's fine -- you're entitled to your opinion -- but we'll never know if that would have worked.  What we do know is that he did a pretty masterful job of following his plan and cleaning up the books so he and McD could go after the players they wanted.

 

If these UFAs don't perform Beane will be subject to justifiable criticism -- but it doesn't make sense to predict that already, and he built in protections for the team in the way these deals have been structured if they don't pan out.

This.  Plus Beane's stated objective that he builds through the draft.  He wanted to change just about the entire roster, and it's impossible to replace it through the draft in even three years.  So he needed guys to fill in.  Last year he had no mone to being any real talent, so he did the best he could.  Admittedly, he did pretty poprly on the receiver room last year, at least until Foster carme around.  

 

What I'm expecting is that the Bills will have two rookies starting in September and one or two more starting by November.  That's 3-4 young guys.  Add in maybe four free agents playing a lot - Morse, another lineman, Brown and Beasley.  Then they will do it again in 2020 and then they will have their roster set.

[Call_Of_Ktulu]

I think Castillo was complete crap, I expect improvements out of Dawkins and some of the other young players. Morse is a top 5 center if he can stay healthy, from what I can see  and from what I've read he is a very good pass blocking center. Dawkins needs to improve but he is a solid starter, I expect improvement with a new O-Line coach.

[JoshAllenHasBigHands]

2 hours ago, BADOLBILZ said:

 

- the lesson is you don't give unnecessary money out to a player for being a leader.    They lead or they do not.   It's a mistake made by weaker Bills regimes in the past.   In the Wood case it set them up to lose cap room.   But it also irritates others who are leaders in their rooms who then don't get the benefit of the doubt with an early extension.   Gotta' know when to leave well enough alone.   There is a right time to apply the dime.

 

-50%-60% ain't happening.   Their 9 man UFA class last year was almost entirely failures.  If you are signing 10 guys in UFA you are almost inevitably getting a bunch of junk and *maybe* 2-3 players who are worth it.   I don't really agree with the Belichick comp........they handle their personnel in a much more sophisticated manner.......more selectively and with comp picks in mind......they have a different roster situation and are almost the opposite of how Beane has been doing business.   ANY GM who could hit on 50%-60% with 10 UFA's is executive of the year material.    And Beane isn't close to that.   That award goes to the guy who signs like 4 targeted UFA's and 3 of them turn out very good in addition to success in the draft/UDFA/trades/coaching hires etc..  Right now Beane is just playing with the owners money and throwing it against the wall because he has tons of spots to improve and more money than time.  Hopefully the day comes in the future when he doesn't need to be so active in UFA to fill out the roster and we get a better idea about his ability to efficiently manage a roster. 

 

Wait, you don't think Wood was a smart signing?  He was one of our most reliable lineman. Just look how bad things got when he left.  This is wild take.  

[Big Turk]

The problem with these rankings is that admittedly PFF doesn't know what is actually supposed to happen on a play. So if a guard gets beat but its because the center was supposed to double team block and didn't the guard looks like he was bad but in reality it wasn't on him.

 

At best PFF should be used with a serious grain of salt

Edited March 19, 2019 by matter2003

[Kelly the Dog]

6 minutes ago, JoshAllenHasBigHands said:

 

Wait, you don't think Wood was a smart signing?  He was one of our most reliable lineman. Just look how bad things got when he left.  This is wild take.  

He was already signed. They just decided to give him a raise when they didn’t need to. He wasn’t going anywhere and still would have led. That’s what the bad man said. 

[JoshAllenHasBigHands]

1 minute ago, Kelly the Dog said:

He was already signed. They just decided to give him a raise when they didn’t need to. He wasn’t going anywhere and still would have led. That’s what the bad man said. 

 

Ah, I get it. I guarantee there was more to it than that, but yeah, if thats how it went down, it was a bad choice.  

[BADOLBILZ]

1 hour ago, JoshAllenHasBigHands said:

 

Ah, I get it. I guarantee there was more to it than that, but yeah, if thats how it went down, it was a bad choice.  

 

 

Yep........and to further illustrate their intended to attempt to buy love......they also added incentives to McCoy's contract that summer as well............this for a guy who the organization had already given an Antonio Brown-esque double-dip contract to when it acquired him(plus 2 extra years AB didn't even get!).      He was STILL in what would have been the original Eagles portion of his contract and McBeane was giving him another lil' piece-o'-contract.

 

[JoshAllenHasBigHands]

13 minutes ago, BADOLBILZ said:

 

 

Yep........and to further illustrate their intended to attempt to buy love......they also added incentives to McCoy's contract that summer as well............this for a guy who the organization had already given an Antonio Brown-esque double-dip contract to when it acquired him(plus 2 extra years AB didn't even get!).      He was STILL in what would have been the original Eagles portion of his contract and McBeane was giving him another lil' piece-o'-contract.

 

 

I still don't understand the issue, it was a contract extension.  Its fairly normal practice for a player to get extra money on the last year of an old deal if an extension is included.  Why is this a problem? 

[Doc]

6 minutes ago, JoshAllenHasBigHands said:

I still don't understand the issue, it was a contract extension.  Its fairly normal practice for a player to get extra money on the last year of an old deal if an extension is included.  Why is this a problem? 

 

Because BADOL doesn't like him. 

[JoshAllenHasBigHands]

3 minutes ago, Doc said:

 

Because BADOL doesn't like him. 

 

I get not like Wood before, but after he left, and we lived with bad Center play, I don't know how you can think Wood was anything but awesome for us

[HOUSE]

Congrats, You almost had me believing past stats would help predict the future

Edited March 19, 2019 by HOUSE

[Doc]

15 minutes ago, JoshAllenHasBigHands said:

I get not like Wood before, but after he left, and we lived with bad Center play, I don't know how you can think Wood was anything but awesome for us

 

I was referring to Shady.  As for Wood, yes he was awesome compared to the guys last year but Morse should be better.

[BADOLBILZ]

10 minutes ago, JoshAllenHasBigHands said:

 

I still don't understand the issue, it was a contract extension.  Its fairly normal practice for a player to get extra money on the last year of an old deal if an extension is included.  Why is this a problem? 

 

I explained it in more detail earlier in the thread.   They didn't owe Wood anything.  For a significant portion of Wood's contract he had been a disappointment........to the point where even he was expecting to be cut after the 2014 season.   He turned it around under Roman/Kromer but this guy had past inconsistency, injury issues and age woking against him.    They volunteered it entirely unnecessarily.......in an attempt to get Wood to toe a line he was already being paid to.........and it cost them.    

[JoshAllenHasBigHands]

19 minutes ago, BADOLBILZ said:

 

I explained it in more detail earlier in the thread.   They didn't owe Wood anything.  For a significant portion of Wood's contract he had been a disappointment........to the point where even he was expecting to be cut after the 2014 season.   He turned it around under Roman/Kromer but this guy had past inconsistency, injury issues and age woking against him.    They volunteered it entirely unnecessarily.......in an attempt to get Wood to toe a line he was already being paid to.........and it cost them.    

 

8 lines of text and not a single truth.  

 

It was a contract extension, not the repayment of a debt.  They did it because they wanted to secure him for two extra years. 

 

Wood was an above average player to a pro bowler. Show me where its says the Bills considered cutting him? 

23 minutes ago, Doc said:

 

I was referring to Shady.  As for Wood, yes he was awesome compared to the guys last year but Morse should be better.

 

He was always an above average center. 

[SoTier]

4 hours ago, eball said:

 

I'm sure it's no surprise that I disagree with much of this post.  The Bills did not intend for last year's UFA class to lead them into the future -- they were stopgap signings in a year they knew would be painful.  The difference between the type of signings Beane has made this year and last year is night and day, and they are ALL team- and cap-friendly.  The signings this year could represent 5-6 starters (Morse, Brown, Beasley, Kroft, Nsekhe, Long) and have completely changed the narrative about the WR room and competition on the OL.

 

Of course Beane shouldn't have to be so active in FA -- that's what happens when the team lacks talent.  I know you think Beane should have come in and run with what was here -- that it was possible to make a few moves and not re-set the entire organization.  That's fine -- you're entitled to your opinion -- but we'll never know if that would have worked.  What we do know is that he did a pretty masterful job of following his plan and cleaning up the books so he and McD could go after the players they wanted.

 

If these UFAs don't perform Beane will be subject to justifiable criticism -- but it doesn't make sense to predict that already, and he built in protections for the team in the way these deals have been structured if they don't pan out.

 

I didn't realize that Lotulelei and Murphy weren't intended to lead the Bills into the future.  They're pretty expensive "stop gaps" in that case.

 

The reality is that Beane has to be so active in FA in 2019 because McDermott screwed up the 2017 draft by passing on Mahomes to draft a DB.  No DB ever is worth a bonafide franchise QB.  Plus he traded up to take Zay Jones when he could have taken Juju Smith-Schuster and gotten a significantly better WR.  Then McDermott and Beane traded away both Watkins and Dareus because they didn't fit McDermott's "process".  In the wake of the retirements of Wood and Incognito, Beane traded away LT Cordy Glenn as part of his desperate maneuvering to move up in the draft to take Allen ... because the Bills didn't take Mahomes in 2017. The McDermott and Beane failed to recognize the importance of having a competent OL and WR corps, and their incompetence led to a serious to Allen.   IOW, having to sign numerous FAs to fill major holes on the offense in 2019 because McDermott and Beane screwed up personnel decisions in 2017 and 2018.

 

 

[eball]

29 minutes ago, SoTier said:

 

I didn't realize that Lotulelei and Murphy weren't intended to lead the Bills into the future.  They're pretty expensive "stop gaps" in that case.

 

The reality is that Beane has to be so active in FA in 2019 because McDermott screwed up the 2017 draft by passing on Mahomes to draft a DB.  No DB ever is worth a bonafide franchise QB.  Plus he traded up to take Zay Jones when he could have taken Juju Smith-Schuster and gotten a significantly better WR.  Then McDermott and Beane traded away both Watkins and Dareus because they didn't fit McDermott's "process".  In the wake of the retirements of Wood and Incognito, Beane traded away LT Cordy Glenn as part of his desperate maneuvering to move up in the draft to take Allen ... because the Bills didn't take Mahomes in 2017. The McDermott and Beane failed to recognize the importance of having a competent OL and WR corps, and their incompetence led to a serious to Allen.   IOW, having to sign numerous FAs to fill major holes on the offense in 2019 because McDermott and Beane screwed up personnel decisions in 2017 and 2018.

 

 

I'm tired of the 20/20 hindsight regarding Mahomes.  It was not a consensus opinion that he was a franchise guy -- plus everyone knew the 2018 draft was coming.

 

Fair points regarding Star and Murphy, but that's 2 out of 9.  Star did what he was brought here to do, and Murphy got hurt.  Murphy is basically a two year deal, though -- if they cut him after this season he's only 1.75M of dead cap.

 

You can argue about draft picks until the cows come home.  The first two drafts by McD (with Whaley's scouts) and Beane have been pretty good.  You're ignoring the fact that Beane and McD had a plan to reshape the organization and weren't going to try to put band-aids on what Whaley left behind.

[Ronin]

On 3/16/2019 at 11:48 PM, BillyWhiteShows said:

I'm not really too familiar with some of the new lineman that the Bills signed this past week, so I looked up their rankings in PFF.  Here's how the 2018 group compares to the current linemen for 2019.  If the PFF rankings mean anything to you - it appears that the Bills shuffled around the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. 

 

FWIW, the entire free agency except for Morse has been like that. 

 

I mean seriously, reading here about how now we have a #1 WR because we signed Brown?  Seriously?  

 

If anyone had suggested that Brown was our answer to our WR sitution before free agency had begun they'd have been laughed at.  Beasley too.  

 

Brown's catch% is right down there in the bottom-dwelling pits like Jones' is. Think about it, if someone had said prior to FAcy, BEFORE we signed him, that Brown was going to be our "star WR," who would've been excited? I would have laughed. Not sure why I should be excited now just because it's happened. 

The only FA signing that to me is not simply depth-caliber talent is Morse, but before I get too exicted about him he'll have to play in more than the 18 of 32 games he played in over the past two seasons. 

This team is a roster full of depth players on offense, we need above-average impact players. IMO they haven't signed one yet with the sole exception of Morse.  

Beasley's much better than Jones but Allen left so many yards on the table last season looking for players deeper as opposed to where Beasley will typically be on a route, so first Allen has to improve, by leaps and bounds, his short-medium game if this is going to work.

Brown has averaged 645 yards and 4.5 TDs/season. Hardly anything that excites me as our top WR. Only 3 of his 22 TDs have been longer than 33 yards, two in 2014 with Palmer and the other in 2015, none in the past three seasons. Once again, to deemphasize the impact of the deep-game and place the appropriate emphasis on the short-medium game where ALL franchise QBs butter their bread. He barely cracked 1,000 once and has never come close otherwise. 

Beasley has a very good catch%, but he’s averaged less than 500 yards and barely over 3 TDs/season in only 22 starts during a 7-season career. Only 2 of Beasley’s 23 TDs were greater than 24 yards. Also, he’s 30 this season, hardly a spring-chicken and entering his back-9. 

In short, the narrative doesn’t match with reality in terms of the “deep-game.” 

Also, here’s the thing, when you have to expect that players brought on produce to their best seasons ever or better, I’m not sure that’s a well-placed hope, particularly on a team with a QB that was bottom-dwelling in the passing department and one with only depth-caliber offensive talent otherwise and with the QB pending. Are we expecting both of them to post then again 50% of their average production now? If so I'd strongly suggest that that's an unreasonable expectation.  If we get their averages from them they're hardly any "solution" to the passing game.  

I’m not sure whether most people understand what a poor passer Allen is and how much work he needs to do in order to merely become an average PASSER much less a franchise QB caliber passer. The thing is that he’s never performed like that in the passing department, ever, so it’s a tall order. Sure, he’s exciting, can run and hurdle defenders, but that’s not what makes a franchise QB. It's also what's going to get him killed and significantly curtail his career. Let's keep in mind too that teams now have a season of film on him too, no surprise this season. He thrived on surprising opponents last season, this season that advantage is gone.