Calling it now: You're all about to witness the arrival of Shakir

[PBF81]

On 4/4/2024 at 11:45 PM, Alphadawg7 said:

 

As you can see by the responses here...most still see him as more of a role player as I was saying.  Nothing wrong with that, but this is what I mean when I say I believe everyone is about to see the arrival of Shakir as more than just a role player many think he is.

 

It'll be interesting, out entire offense is going to be interesting.  

 

The skill position lineup seems to be a lot closer to what it was in 2019 than what it was before Diggs arrived.  

 

Shakir didn't draw double coverage last year.  Will any of our WRs command double coverage.  

 

 

[HappyDays]

2 hours ago, Chaos said:

My observation was on the rare occassion Allen actually forced a ball to Diggs, it was because Josh so no one open, and played as if he thought Diggs was his best option.

 

Not only that but Diggs was basically the automatic read in obvious man coverage looks.

[GunnerBill]

1 minute ago, PBF81 said:

 

It'll be interesting, out entire offense is going to be interesting.  

 

The skill position lineup seems to be a lot closer to what it was in 2019 than what it was before Diggs arrived.  

 

Shakir didn't draw double coverage last year.  Will any of our WRs command double coverage.  

 

I don't think there is going to be one guy on this offense that defenses key in on every week like they did on Stef. Certainly not early in the year anyway. In a sense that might give us a little bit of an advantage early on in the season if Josh genuinely can spread the ball around. I expect at some point teams will revert to a "don't let Samuel win deep and force Kincaid to break off his routes short rather than threaten the seam." But it will take some time for defenses to workout how this offense is going to run and if we can hit the ground ready to roll in week 1 that might even be in our favour. 

[PBF81]

6 minutes ago, GunnerBill said:

 

I don't think there is going to be one guy on this offense that defenses key in on every week like they did on Stef. Certainly not early in the year anyway. In a sense that might give us a little bit of an advantage early on in the season if Josh genuinely can spread the ball around. I expect at some point teams will revert to a "don't let Samuel win deep and force Kincaid to break off his routes short rather than threaten the seam." But it will take some time for defenses to workout how this offense is going to run and if we can hit the ground ready to roll in week 1 that might even be in our favour. 

 

True, but it could also take a while for ourselves to figure it out with the advantage tilting not to our opponents in the early going.   

 

Unlike you and others I'm far from convinced that Brady's what we need.  

 

We will see.  

 

The schedule can't come out soon enough.  LOL 

 

 

[GunnerBill]

2 minutes ago, PBF81 said:

 

True, but it could also take a while for ourselves to figure it out with the advantage tilting not to our opponents in the early going.   

 

Unlike you and others I'm far from convinced that Brady's what we need.  

 

We will see.  

 

The schedule can't come out soon enough.  LOL 

 

It might take us a while. It is depending on us hitting the ground running. I'm not convinced Brady is the answer. I do think he will be better than Dorsey who I was not a fan of for this team and I do think he was one of the better available options. But ultimately the proof will be in the pudding. 

[PonyBoy]

2 hours ago, Chaos said:

My observation was on the rare occassion Allen actually forced a ball to Diggs, it was because Josh so no one open, and played as if he thought Diggs was his best option.  I would be curious to see videos or photos of plays where Allen obviously passed up an open reciever to throw to a covered Diggs. 

My inference which I could have explained better was,  I think Diggs could have been in his head where if his targets/catches were down, Josh was going to hear about it on the sidelines or in the locker room. When Brady came in as OC, definitely better ball distribution.

 

I think Diggs was a voice in his head that he will not have to deal with this year. Just my opinion.

 

I mentioned in a post a few weeks back, Josh is the point guard. Let him dish and score when needed. 

[NewEra]

1 hour ago, PBF81 said:

 

It'll be interesting, out entire offense is going to be interesting.  

 

The skill position lineup seems to be a lot closer to what it was in 2019 than what it was before Diggs arrived.  

 

Shakir didn't draw double coverage last year.  Will any of our WRs command double coverage.  

 

 

No, but Kincaid will

[FLFan]

On 4/4/2024 at 11:22 PM, Alphadawg7 said:

 

If he gets 80 receptions, he will definitely be over 1000 yards.  He is too good after the catch not to be.  Cole was amazing at getting to a spot and making the play to move the chains.  He wasn't the YAC guy that Shakir is, Cole was easy to take down and tackle.  

Shakir is also far more versatile than Beasley, capable of making passing game plays at intermediate and deep areas of the field as well as the short hitches and slants that Beasley lived on.  I think he and Samuel are very similar players so it will be fascinating to watch how Brady incorporates them both.  I am not sold on depth as yet, and Coleman has to rise to his potential, but I like the Bills top 3 WRs combined skill sets.

[BADOLBILZ]

36 minutes ago, NewEra said:

No, but Kincaid will

 

 

I can't see that happening.    I can see a team putting a good CB on him and calling it a win.   That shuts down most TE's if teams are so unthreatened by your WR that they can afford to do that.   First time I really saw it was Wade putting Antoine Winfield on Tony Gonzales and shutting him down.   The tactic basically ruined Jimmy Grahams career when he went to Seattle and all they had were guys like Baldwin and Kearse outside.    Kelce was a real exception as a guy who isn't very impactful inline but still tears up whoever he gets in coverage.   Not sure Kincaid is going to become as much of a physical presence as Kelce.   He's pretty finesse.  

[BigDingus]

Is he going to be throw out wide more often? 

 

We can't run everyone in the slot, even Coleman is projected as a big slot guy, so they'll have to get creative when getting him opportunities. 

 

 

[PBF81]

1 hour ago, NewEra said:

No, but Kincaid will

 

We will see. 

 

 

[GASabresIUFan]

2 hours ago, PBF81 said:

 

It'll be interesting, out entire offense is going to be interesting.  

 

The skill position lineup seems to be a lot closer to what it was in 2019 than what it was before Diggs arrived.  

 

Shakir didn't draw double coverage last year.  Will any of our WRs command double coverage.  

 

 

Why does it matter?  We are going to present defenses with a new set of challenges.  Instead of just having to worry about Diggs, they are going to have to worry about 5 different players in Cook, Kincaid, Coleman, Shakir and Samuel.  This will be one of those years where Josh can sit back and take what the defense gives and no longer have to feed Diggs. Each week we may see a different hot hand getting the targets depending on the holes in the defense.

 

When Brady was in Carolina they had 4 players with over 1000 yards from scrimmage; 3 WRs and 1 RB.  Their  RBs had 100 targets in the passing game.  Their top 3 WRs had 136, 118 and 97 targets and all that with trading McCaffery 3 games into the season and no TE worth a crap.  

 

The Bills last year only had 2 players with 1000+ yards from scrimmage.; Cook with 1567 and Diggs with 1188.  The only other player over 700 yards was Davis.  This season I expect all 5 guys I listed to exceed 700 scrimmage yards.

 

 

[Alphadawg7]

2 hours ago, PBF81 said:

 

It'll be interesting, out entire offense is going to be interesting.  

 

The skill position lineup seems to be a lot closer to what it was in 2019 than what it was before Diggs arrived.  

 

Shakir didn't draw double coverage last year.  Will any of our WRs command double coverage.  

 

 

Good question…one, I don’t think we need anyone to draw double coverage because every guy on the field can win their matchup now between Coleman, Shakir, Samuel, Kincaid, Knox, Cook, and Davis.  We can put pressure anywhere we want really.  
 

But, I do think Coleman is going to start drawing double coverage if he comes in and finds early success because with his size there really isn’t any other way to cover him.  
 

There is a lot of people down on our offensive group as a whole right now, but I’m honestly very excited about it and think we will be better than last year, especially with Brady getting to finally install his full offense.  

[Bleeding Bills Blue]

27 minutes ago, Alphadawg7 said:

Good question…one, I don’t think we need anyone to draw double coverage because every guy on the field can win their matchup now between Coleman, Shakir, Samuel, Kincaid, Knox, Cook, and Davis.  We can put pressure anywhere we want really.  
 

But, I do think Coleman is going to start drawing double coverage if he comes in and finds early success because with his size there really isn’t any other way to cover him.  
 

There is a lot of people down on our offensive group as a whole right now, but I’m honestly very excited about it and think we will be better than last year, especially with Brady getting to finally install his full offense.  

 

Teams double when they have to, its not ideally something you want to do as a defense.  We will see a lot of zone this season because a man coverage plan with linebackers covering cook/davis, kincaid/knox is challenging to run, and you also have allen as a bigger running threat in man coverage.  If you add a DB to the back end to man up better, Buffalo can run the ball.  If the WRs can shake press and create separation though that really forces teams to play more zone.  

 

So in those zone situations you have a few different ways to attack with the skillsets of coleman (size and catch radius), shakir (sneaky athletic), samuel (Speed), as well as kincaid.  I feel like Coleman will also be a good freelancer after Allen evades pressure.  

Edited May 2 by Bleeding Bills Blue

[Alphadawg7]

1 hour ago, BigDingus said:

Is he going to be throw out wide more often? 

 

We can't run everyone in the slot, even Coleman is projected as a big slot guy, so they'll have to get creative when getting him opportunities. 

 

 

 

Coleman isn't going to be a big slot here, it was already stated by Beane he is coming in as an X WR who can also play some Z.  In other words, they drafted Coleman to be our WR1.  

 

I wouldn't make too much of the "projections" which are the same projections that said guys like Justin Jefferson would be big slot WR's too in the NFL or that Mike Evans couldn't be an X WR in the NFL.  

13 minutes ago, Bleeding Bills Blue said:

 

Teams double when they have to, its not ideally something you want to do as a defense.  We will see a lot of zone this season because a man coverage plan with linebackers covering cook/davis, kincaid/knox is challenging to run, and you also have allen as a bigger running threat in man coverage.  If you add a DB to the back end to man up better, Buffalo can run the ball.  If the WRs can shake press and create separation though that really forces teams to play more zone.  

 

So in those zone situations you have a few different ways to attack with the skillsets of coleman (size and catch radius), shakir (sneaky athletic), samuel (Speed), as well as kincaid.  I feel like Coleman will also be a good freelancer after Allen evades pressure.  

 

I agree with this, and what I was saying about Coleman is that if he does have early chemistry with Josh and success on the field, teams are going to have to double him some because that is the only way to defend his size and athleticism if he is doing his thing out there.  If Coleman and Josh are clicking, and they don't start keying on him and sometimes doubling on Coleman then he will be in line for a very big season.  Coleman is just too big and athletic to not draw extra attention if he and Josh are having success. 

[PBF81]

45 minutes ago, GASabresIUFan said:

Why does it matter?  We are going to present defenses with a new set of challenges.  Instead of just having to worry about Diggs, they are going to have to worry about 5 different players in Cook, Kincaid, Coleman, Shakir and Samuel.  This will be one of those years where Josh can sit back and take what the defense gives and no longer have to feed Diggs. Each week we may see a different hot hand getting the targets depending on the holes in the defense.

 

When Brady was in Carolina they had 4 players with over 1000 yards from scrimmage; 3 WRs and 1 RB.  Their  RBs had 100 targets in the passing game.  Their top 3 WRs had 136, 118 and 97 targets and all that with trading McCaffery 3 games into the season and no TE worth a crap.  

 

The Bills last year only had 2 players with 1000+ yards from scrimmage.; Cook with 1567 and Diggs with 1188.  The only other player over 700 yards was Davis.  This season I expect all 5 guys I listed to exceed 700 scrimmage yards.

 

 

 

You've gotta love comps like that. 

 

And oddly Diggs' season extrapolated YFS under Brady was 765.  Under Dorsey it was over twice that at 1,475.  Thoughts?  

 

The only reason why Cook was over it under Brady is because McD thinks that with Allen at QB the way to win games is to run the ball and have a defense that is great, except when it comes to playoff time when his D takes a premature vacation that is, while minimizing Allen's passing game.  In the playoffs he simply throws everything to the four winds and stands aside while Allen takes over.  Great coaching there.  Why do you think that they drafted Davis, at pick #128, coincidentally the same pick that the other Davis, Gabe was picked at, when we had other more prominent needs.  This team has no idea what it's doing until they do it on the offensive side.  Our offense is an overlooked inconvenience by McD.  

 

Also, to start, Carolina also had DJ Moore.  We have no received that is Moore's equal here.  

Secondly, in 2020 he also had the 24th ranked scoring offense and 21st ranked yardage offense, which regressed to the 29th and 30th in 2021.  So maybe all those YFS don't translate to scoring.  Maybe we can expect a similar regression by 5 and 9 rankings here too.  

You're also taking some extreme liberties, Samuel was barely over 1k YFS, but he needed 200 rushing yards to get that, which you fail to mention.  If we start using Samuel to run the ball for the 41 carries that he had, then something's wrong. 

 

It's difficult to imagine our offense improving over last season's, and the scoring and yardage metrics were better under Dorsey than they were under Brady, not by much, but they were.  And the way that our offense faded down the stretch over the last three regular season games, when every game was like a playoff game and every win was needed for even a wild-card, along with our sluggish 19.5 PPG over the last three regular season games, and against teams ranked 24th, 15th, and 22nd in scoring D.  And it's not like we really stepped it up in the playoffs.  Our offensive performances in the playoffs were incredibly average by our season standard.  

 

If you want to run comps, look at how our players last season did in that regard under Brady.   There wasn't a receiver that even sniffed 1,000 YFS extrapolated for 17 games on his watch.  Shakir was the closest at just over 900, but keep in mind that he had Diggs & Davis drawing coverage.  Cook did, easily, but that was largely due to that huge Dallas game.  Cook faded severely, when wins were needed the most, in the last 3 regular season games and the playoffs where he averaged a mere 3.4 yards-per-touch and a horrid 3.5 yards-per-carry over the last five games including our two playoff games.  Cook didn't have a TD either rushing or receiving in any of those last five games.  Was that because he's not used to getting so many carries?  He started frittering out when he hit about 190.  

 

Without that outlier Dallas game our per-game metrics were notably worse than under Dorsey.  After that our offense all but collapsed.  

 

Do you expect that we're going to have two WRs over 1,000 YFS?  

 

 

[Chaos]

4 hours ago, GunnerBill said:

 

I don't think there is going to be one guy on this offense that defenses key in on every week like they did on Stef. Certainly not early in the year anyway. In a sense that might give us a little bit of an advantage early on in the season if Josh genuinely can spread the ball around. I expect at some point teams will revert to a "don't let Samuel win deep and force Kincaid to break off his routes short rather than threaten the seam." But it will take some time for defenses to workout how this offense is going to run and if we can hit the ground ready to roll in week 1 that might even be in our favour. 

Josh is not the limiting factor on spreading the ball around.  Multiple different people having the ability to get open is the limiting factor on spreading it around.  If just throws for 4300 yards again this season and all of those yards to only 1 guy, I would be fine with that.  

[SoMAn]

I've had similar sentiments towards Shakir since first seeing him in preseason. After some action in 2022 and then the 2023 season, I made a comparison to Andre Reed. I think he could have a similar impact and be a vital piece to the puzzle.

[PBF81]

1 hour ago, Alphadawg7 said:

Good question…one, I don’t think we need anyone to draw double coverage because every guy on the field can win their matchup now between Coleman, Shakir, Samuel, Kincaid, Knox, Cook, and Davis.  We can put pressure anywhere we want really.  
 

But, I do think Coleman is going to start drawing double coverage if he comes in and finds early success because with his size there really isn’t any other way to cover him.  
 

There is a lot of people down on our offensive group as a whole right now, but I’m honestly very excited about it and think we will be better than last year, especially with Brady getting to finally install his full offense.  

 

Well, again, we'll see, but there are several false narratives surrounding Brady that will come to light this fall to at least some extent.  

 

Otherwise, I decided to watch an every target video of Coleman this a.m.  It's only a 22 minute video but took me a couple of hours to go through.  Even by my low standards I'm not impressed, in fact, if anything it lessened, not heightened my expectations there.  I see the hype even less after viewing it.  And while drops are measured differently, I counted at least 15 dropped passes or at least passes that he should have caught but did not.  We can go thru them if you like, game by game.  Watch the passes against BC, what, three, four drops?  Louisvile a few too.  

 

The other thing that I noticed with him, that much like Watkins, he had a lot of bubble screens and gadget plays, which typically aren't effective in the NFL.  So that's also worrisome.  Otherwise, most of his catches were on shorter throws where he was wide-opened or screened, per above, and a bunch of very short crossing routes.  I saw precious few catches that he made in coverage.  His LSU game seems to stand out, but after that, it's difficult to find much that's impressive in his other 41 catches in his 536 yards in 11 other games otherwise.  In fact, I see absolutely nothing that tells me that if he were to line up to go deep that any DC in the league would worry about putting more than one DB on him.  

 

I can see his appeal on "highlight" videos, which would be short for this past season, like that one play where he hurdled the defender, but again, on a pass where he was open on deep coverage on 3rd-and-14, against Southern Miss, a Sunbelt team with one of the worst Ds in the NCAAs btw.  But those are few.  Then the second TD catch in the Clemson game.  On the first he was WIDE open.  That second catch against Syracuse was spectacular.  The TD against Syracuse was against CB Isaiah Johnson, a senior, who went undrafted and according to NFL.com's draft profile would be on the bottom of a roster or a practice squad.  So beating him wasn't particularly impressive.  He won't see that coverage in the NFL with even a hint of regularity.  One great route vs. Duke for about 30 yards.  And another nice catch for a bunch vs. Duke.  His TD catch vs. Wake Forest was nice, not spectacular, but nice, but WF had a horrid D too.  His second TD against Wake was on Caelen Carson, drafted late in the 5th round.  

 

So while watching that, I can see how while viewing just the above catches, one could come away thinking that he's some kind of steal and an Andre Johnson lite, but while watching the other 90% of his play, it makes me wonder why anyone sees anything in him at all worthy of a day 1 or even day 2 pick at all.  He reminds me of Knox in terms of receiving skills and highlights.  Just enough huge plays here or there to make you think there's more in there when there isn't.  

 

About the biggest kick in the nads to Allen that we could give him would be using Coleman as he was used at FSU.  Getting Watkins vibes here in fact, except that Watkins did in fact have speed.  

 

Either way, the schtick is that he's got great hands and makes all these contested catches.  Is that what you see while watching the video?  I'd be interested in your take.  Again, since there's not much else to do 'til the schedule release, I'd be happy to go thru game by game and itemize each target.  

 

 

[GASabresIUFan]

@PBF81  You conveniently left out the 2 of the 4 players over 1000 yards were RB Mike Davis and WR Robbie Anderson.  That was Davis' one good year in the NFL and while you dismiss Cook, I don't think you can argue that Davis is anywhere near the player Cook is.  Shakir is probably at least as good as Anderson.

 

What you also fail to acknowledge is that Shakir had 600+ yards on only 45 targets last season, averaging 15.7 yards per catch. Shakir had 17 explosive plays last year on only 45 targets which has one of the best ratios in the NFL (Diggs had 19 on 160 targets and Davis 21 of 81 targets).  What is he going to do with 80 or 90 targets? Kincaid is much the same.  Both guys, as the focal points of the offense, should increase their targets substantially and should approach 1000 yards if healthy.  May I also point out that Cook, Shakir and Kincaid caught 80% of their targets, unlike Diggs, Davis, Harty and Sherfield; all of which are now gone.

 

Personally, I'm not counting on Samuel giving us more than 650-700 yards.  As to the rookie Coleman, he is almost certainly going to be a better rookie than Gabe Davis.  Davis had 35 catches for 599 and 7TDs as a rookie.  My guess is Coleman improves on those numbers.  Another comparison for Coleman is Higgins (33rd in 2020) and Pittman (34th in 2020).  Both guys are a similar size and speed to Coleman.  Higgins had 900 yards and started immediately while Pittman had 500 yards and didn't start immediately.  Using Davis, Pittman and Higgins as reference points, I think we'll see at least 700 yards and 7 TDs from Coleman next season. 

 

You asked about Samuel's 200 rushing yards.  I expect Ray Davis to pick up that slack.  He is a good pass catcher and blocker and I suspect we'll see him often next season as a 3rd down back.

 

So the general answer is I fully expect the top 5 Bills skill players to all have 700 or more yards from scrimmage next season with Cook well over 1000 and Shakir and Kincaid knocking on that door.