Beane on WR "We worked out a guy today we are going to end up signing"

[davefan66]

3 minutes ago, Kirby Jackson said:

1-32 where to you rank the Bills WRs? I’m not talking about the TEs or RBs. Where do you think that they are in terms of WR rooms? Please list all of the teams that you think are worse than them. 

Rank how?  Do a WR for WR rating?

 

Naw.

 

Plenty of good WR rooms in the NFL.  Not all of them do well.  Need the right QB making the right reads.  Offensive coordinator calling the best plays.  Offensive line allowing for plays to develop.  Way more than to a successful offense than just having the best receivers.  Oh, and having one of the top 3 QB’s in the league helps.

 

Have to ask? What do you rank the chiefs WR room?  Probably pretty low.  Won the Super Bowl.

[Kirby Jackson]

4 minutes ago, LABILLBACKER said:

Chark would be a big upgrade over Sherfield. 

I don’t know about “big” but definite upgrade. Sherfield caught one more TD than me (that one that bounced in the air). That guy sucks. 
 

The Bills are okay at WR depth imo. The problem is that they’re missing the top of the depth chart. 

Just now, davefan66 said:

Rank how?  Do a WR for WR rating?

 

Naw.

 

Plenty of good WR rooms in the NFL.  Not all of them do well.  Need the right QB making the right reads.  Offensive coordinator calling the best plays.  Offensive line allowing for plays to develop.  Way more than to a successful offense than just having the best receivers.  Oh, and having one of the top 3 QB’s in the league helps.

 

Have to ask? What do you rank the chiefs WR room?  Probably pretty low.  Won the Super Bowl.

So you like it better than last year but won’t compare it to others? Got it.

 

I’m not picking on you. A lot of people are saying that the WR room is pretty good. When you ask them to compare it to others, they won’t because it becomes real. They are absolutely in the bottom 3 and may be last. If you go team by team and compare them it’ll reveal a harsh reality.

 

As for the Chiefs, they are probably 20ish off the top of my head. They used early picks on Worthy, Moore, and Rice. Toney and Hollywood Brown are former #1 picks that they are trying to rehabilitate. They’ve allocated resources to the WR room. It’s not great but light years ahead of the Bills.

[FireChans]

20 minutes ago, Kirby Jackson said:

1-32 where to you rank the Bills WRs? I’m not talking about the TEs or RBs. Where do you think that they are in terms of WR rooms? Please list all of the teams that you think are worse than them. 

No one will take you up on this because anyone who believes the Bills have a good WR room doesn’t follow the league as a whole.

[transient]

29 minutes ago, Kirby Jackson said:

Even if he is at 100 as a “non traditional WR” there are still a whole bunch of targets unaccounted for. Do the math and find the 600 targets within this group. It is not an easy exercise.

So out of curiosity, I went back to last season's stats to look. Here are the targets:

Diggs 160

Davis 81

Shakir 45

Sherfield 22

Harty 21

 

Among WRs that's 329 targets. I think you can make up 329 targets between Samuel, Shakir, and Coleman with a combination of Hamler, Hollins, and whomever else they bring in added in.

 

Among TEs it was:

Kincaid 91

Knox 36

Morris 3

Gilliam 1

 

Among TEs that's 131 targets. Kincaid was already shouldering a pretty big load, and there's no reason to think he couldn't hit 120+ targets in season 2 IMO.

 

Among backs:

Cook 54

Murray 22

Johnson 7

Harris 2

 

So for the backs that's 85 targets. I could see Cook's workload going up out of the backfield if he learns to concentrate on catching easy TD's, and R Davis was a weapon out of the backfield in college. 

 

I'm not saying it's going to work. My biggest concern is who's going to draw the coverage that Diggs did and can these guys step up. My point is that from a purely numbers standpoint the WR targets are not insurmountable with this group.

Edited April 28 by transient

[Kirby Jackson]

9 minutes ago, FireChans said:

No one will take you up on this because anyone who believes the Bills have a good WR room doesn’t follow the league as a whole.

Some guy on Twitter yesterday listed Washington, Carolina and New England. Carolina has Thielen, Legette and Dionte Johnson. That’s 3 guys all better than our best (plus Mingo). The Pats have Juju, Bourne, Douglas, Baker and KJ Osborn (who people here wanted). That’s not good but better. McLaurin is miles ahead of anyone we have. Even if the other guys are a bit of a wash, Washington is better because of McLaurin. It’s a harsh reality and people (especially homers) don’t want to hear it. The Bills WR room is bad and doesn’t have the diverse skillsets needed. They don’t have a vertical threat, they don’t have a great separator, and they don’t have anyone that has proven they can handle large volume (despite having 300ish targets from last year gone). 

5 minutes ago, transient said:

So out of curiosity, I went back to last season's stats to look. Here are the targets:

Diggs 160

Davis 81

Shakir 45

Sherfield 22

Harty 21

 

Among WRs that's 329 targets. I think you can make up 329 targets between Samuel, Shakir, and Coleman with a combination of Hamler, Hollins, and whomever else they bring in added in.

 

Among TEs it was:

Kincaid 91

Knox 36

Morris 3

Gilliam 1

 

Among TEs that's 131 targets. Kincaid was already shouldering a pretty big load, and there's no reason to think he couldn't hit 120+ targets in season 2 IMO.

 

Among backs:

Cook 54

Murray 22

Johnson 7

Harris 2

 

So for the backs that's 85 targets. I could see Cook's workload going up out of the backfield if he learns to concentrate on catching easy TD's, and R Davis was a weapon out of the backfield in college. 

 

I'm not saying it's going to work. My biggest concern is who's going to draw the coverage that Diggs did and can these guys step up. My point is that from a purely numbers standpoint the WR targets are not insurmountable with this group.

Maybe not insurmountable but we are asking a guy like Shakir to have 2.5-3x as many targets, with significantly more defensive attention (and limited space to work with). That’s a big ask. 
 

Coleman is a guy, to quote Buddy Nix, “that’s open when he’s not.” That doesn’t feel like a high volume skill set. If he gets what Davis got, that would be a lot. You’re still looking for another 130 or so targets from the WRs. 
 

Call Samuel 90 for the sake of this. That leaves 40ish for the other scrubs (roughly what the scrubs got last year). 
 

It’s a big ask for guys that haven’t seen the attention that they’ll see now. The Bills have quality role players playing leading roles. 

[GunnerBill]

33 minutes ago, LEBills said:

yea Chark is the best guy left out there. Add him and one more vet that has actually produced in the league (OBJ, Boyd, Renfrow, etc) and I’ll feel better about WR for this year. I do not want Justin Shorter or Mack Hollins as next man up 

 

For what our need is I agree. Chark is the best fit. I actually wanted him last year.

12 minutes ago, Kirby Jackson said:

Some guy on Twitter yesterday listed Washington, Carolina and New England. Carolina has Thielen, Legette and Dionte Johnson. That’s 3 guys all better than our best (plus Mingo). The Pats have Juju, Bourne, Douglas, Baker and KJ Osborn (who people here wanted). That’s not good but better. McLaurin is miles ahead of anyone we have. Even if the other guys are a bit of a wash, Washington is better because of McLaurin. It’s a harsh reality and people (especially homers) don’t want to hear it. The Bills WR room is bad and doesn’t have the diverse skillsets needed. They don’t have a vertical threat, they don’t have a great separator, and they don’t have anyone that has proven they can handle large volume (despite having 300ish targets from last year gone). 

Maybe not insurmountable but we are asking a guy like Shakir to have 2.5-3x as many targets, with significantly more defensive attention (and limited space to work with). That’s a big ask. 
 

Coleman is a guy, to quote Buddy Nix, “that’s open when he’s not.” That doesn’t feel like a high volume skill set. If he gets what Davis got, that would be a lot. You’re still looking for another 130 or so targets from the WRs. 
 

Call Samuel 90 for the sake of this. That leaves 40ish for the other scrubs (roughly what the scrubs got last year). 
 

It’s a big ask for guys that haven’t seen the attention that they’ll see now. The Bills have quality role players playing leading roles. 

 

I have us New England and LAC as the worst 3. I don't think ours is worse than theirs necessarily but it isn't better.

[boyst]

47 minutes ago, Kirby Jackson said:

1-32 where to you rank the Bills WRs? I’m not talking about the TEs or RBs. Where do you think that they are in terms of WR rooms? Please list all of the teams that you think are worse than them. 

I don't know enough of who is where next year. And I'm not going to gulp the scrote of the bears just yet, but on draft day many teams got significantly better. We did not. We needed 2 WRs if we didn't get one for the top 3. Or even top 5.

 

Ranking... Hell, we are at Carolina Panthers last year. 

[Kirby Jackson]

2 minutes ago, GunnerBill said:

 

For what our need is I agree. Chark is the best fit. I actually wanted him last year.

 

I have us New England and LAC as the worst 3. I don't think ours is worse than theirs necessarily but it isn't better.

That’s fair. None are very good. 

[GunnerBill]

Just now, Kirby Jackson said:

That’s fair. None are very good. 

 

Nope. LAC is the worst "proven" group. But they have 3 new wildcards to throw at it. Ours is probably second least proven and we added one dart but a second tier one. New England is probably slightly more proven (never been a big Juju guy but do like Kendrick Bourne and that duo more proven than Samuel and Shakir) they have two low second high third tier new darts in Polk and Baker. It is much of a muchness.

[BCAS Baritone]

1 hour ago, LEBills said:

The good with Harmon’s analysis is that he does a pretty good job isolating the WR and their route. So if one WR has a good QB getting them the ball or a bad QB not getting them the ball, it can account for bad stats.

 

Where I think RP is a bit flawed is that he basically solely looks at how a player gets open. So for example he - and a lot of people - loved Ricky Pearsall because he does run good routes. But it doesn’t really take into account that the boy is light, struggles with physicality through the catch and as a runner. It also doesn’t weigh for age where Pearsall has had 3 extra years of life to develop his route running than say Keon Coleman

 

So it’s a good way to tell you how good of a route runner a player is right now. But not exactly what they will become and how they are in other aspects of being a WR. In general, Harmon’s RP is very good though.

Yeah, I am a big time devotee of Matt Harmon and Reception Perception ever since he touted Allen Robinson before his breakout year.  But everybody has a bias, and Matt's bias is in favor of guys getting open.  Not a crazy bias to have when it comes to receivers.  But it isn't the only thing to consider.  And Matt's analysis can't take into consideration team fit.  Almost every other guy people are touting here in this spot is a smaller receiver, either faster or shiftier.  But we already have two guys in that mold - Samuel and Shakir.  The need here is for a bigger receiver (i.e. a replacement for Gabe Davis, and preferably an upgrade).  An upgrade that is making a couple million a year instead of 12 or 13 million a year.

 

But as you also point out, Matt's analysis is of a point in time.  Will this guy become better (or worse) over the next couple of years?  Harmon can't say.  He can show you the law of averages, but the law of averages says that QB's that have accuracy issues in college NEVER get more accurate in the pros.  At least it used to say that until Josh Allen cam along.  Now the consensus is that every big-armed QB with accuracy issues in college will definitely get more accurate in the pros, so you might as well make all of them first round picks.

[transient]

9 minutes ago, Kirby Jackson said:

Coleman is a guy, to quote Buddy Nix, “that’s open when he’s not.” That doesn’t feel like a high volume skill set. If he gets what Davis got, that would be a lot. You’re still looking for another 130 or so targets from the WRs. 
 

Call Samuel 90 for the sake of this. That leaves 40ish for the other scrubs (roughly what the scrubs got last year). 
 

It’s a big ask for guys that haven’t seen the attention that they’ll see now. The Bills have quality role players playing leading roles. 

That's the concerning thing. We've seen this FO do this before with Davis, overestimating what the player had to give based on promising results in a limited role the season before.

 

Regarding the point about where do the remaining targets come from, for comparisons sake I took a look at KC's target distribution from 2023; they had a pretty middling WR corp but obviously still won the SB.

 

599 targets, with 319 going to 8 different WRs, and only Rice with more than 100 targets with 102. That left 108 targets to the RBs and 171 to the TEs. Kelce led the team with 121 targets. I suspect we'll see something along the same lines next season, likely with a similar drop in offensive production.

 

If the room stays as it is or similar to where it is I don't think they're going to replace all of the WR production lost with WR production. I think it's going to have to be spread around with increased production from the backs and TEs as well as redistributed within the WRs, and I think they're going to have to hope Kincaid plays a big role in that. 

[nedboy7]

I have no expectations anymore from Beane to make an intelligent decision for the WR room. 

[Alphadawg7]

1 hour ago, Kirby Jackson said:

That’s not what happens. @LEBills explains it perfectly. He basically judges route running and ability to get space. Coleman was not successful at that. It doesn’t mean that he can’t be a good receiver. If you watch the video it names other guys with similar separation in college that succeeded as pros (Kupp, St. Brown, Boyd). They were all big slots though. Guys that got similar separation to Coleman in college have not translated to the boundary in the NFL. He lists the names. You can defend the WR room all that you want. If he succeeds on the outside, he will be an outlier. Josh was an outlier. It obviously can happen but it would be overcoming math and data. 

What I am saying is that Matt Harmon doesn’t have the same qualifications to make that assessment over people who know a lot more about film breakdown, football, scouting, and grading prospects who don’t have the same concerns about him getting separation in the NFL.  
 

So going back to the original point…Coleman was not as “polarizing” as you put it among the experts that he was amongst the fans, and Mark Harmon is a fan you created a career around fantasy football breakdowns.  He isn’t a trained scout.  And most real football professionals were very high on him and had him generally ranked in the WR6 range ahead of most the WRs other people wanted us to draft.

Edited April 28 by Alphadawg7

[transient]

2 hours ago, Brianmoorman4jesus said:

I was willing to be patient after the Diggs trade and gave these guys the benefit of the doubt. I expected us ti move way up and take one of the top guys. I also expected us to trade for Ayuk or Samuel….now we are through that and what we have is nowhere good enough. You can’t go into a season with Allen in his prime and these weapons at WR. It’s inexcusable. This list of WRs is nowhere near comforting but the only was this off-season isn’t a total failure is OBJ or Thomas. None of those other guys are even better than what we already have. I’d still like to explore that 49ers trade but I’m assuming that ship has sailed.

1. The Chiefs did a similar thing to Mahomes’ WR corp the last 2 seasons… was that inexcusable?

2. If this offseason has been bad, adding 2024 OBJ or Michael Thomas, both washed up headcases, would make it that much worse. 

[Kirby Jackson]

1 hour ago, GunnerBill said:

 

Nope. LAC is the worst "proven" group. But they have 3 new wildcards to throw at it. Ours is probably second least proven and we added one dart but a second tier one. New England is probably slightly more proven (never been a big Juju guy but do like Kendrick Bourne and that duo more proven than Samuel and Shakir) they have two low second high third tier new darts in Polk and Baker. It is much of a muchness.

Bourne is my favorite of the established WRs on any of those teams. He’s pretty good IMO.

[Mat68]

2 hours ago, Brianmoorman4jesus said:

I was willing to be patient after the Diggs trade and gave these guys the benefit of the doubt. I expected us ti move way up and take one of the top guys. I also expected us to trade for Ayuk or Samuel….now we are through that and what we have is nowhere good enough. You can’t go into a season with Allen in his prime and these weapons at WR. It’s inexcusable. This list of WRs is nowhere near comforting but the only was this off-season isn’t a total failure is OBJ or Thomas. None of those other guys are even better than what we already have. I’d still like to explore that 49ers trade but I’m assuming that ship has sailed.

Shakir and Kincaid were the top 2 pass catchers last year down the stretch and playoffs. I think Coleman gives the offense more than Davis.  Samuel a good compliment to what the offense has.  Top 5 targets are going to 1. Kincaid 2. Shakir 3. Coleman 4. Samuel 5. Cook.  You have Knox Hollins and what ever player makes the roster at wr 5 and 6.  Fighting for scraps.   Offense will be fine.  Probably more efficient.  

[Kirby Jackson]

26 minutes ago, Alphadawg7 said:

What I am saying is that Matt Harmon doesn’t have the same qualifications to make that assessment over people who know a lot more about film breakdown, football, scouting, and grading prospects who don’t have the same concerns about him getting separation in the NFL.  
 

So going back to the original point…Coleman was not as “polarizing” as you put it among the experts that he was amongst the fans, and Mark Harmon is a fan you created a career around fantasy football breakdowns.  He isn’t a trained scout.  And most real football professionals were very high on him and had him generally ranked in the WR6 range ahead of most the WRs other people wanted us to draft.

So you disagree with the 35 names that he names with similar profiles? Instead of agreeing with the data, we are going to discredit the (reliable) source? We have so much of that in the US right now. If you don’t like the facts, poke at the source.

 

Here’s a scout that says he doesn’t separate (feel free to discredit him):

 

[Dr. Who]

2 hours ago, Kirby Jackson said:

1-32 where to you rank the Bills WRs? I’m not talking about the TEs or RBs. Where do you think that they are in terms of WR rooms? Please list all of the teams that you think are worse than them. 

Toledo Mudhens.

[The Jokeman]

2 hours ago, LabattBlue said:

I am convinced that the Bills FO looks at KC’s crap at WR, and think they can get by with the same.  

Baltimore's WR room isn't great, Lions outside Brown not great. Green Bay has a collection but no elite guys. Yet these teams made the playoffs in 2023. 

[Alphadawg7]

14 minutes ago, Kirby Jackson said:

So you disagree with the 35 names that he names with similar profiles? Instead of agreeing with the data, we are going to discredit the (reliable) source? We have so much of that in the US right now. If you don’t like the facts, poke at the source.

 

Here’s a scout that says he doesn’t separate (feel free to discredit him):

 

Im not discrediting facts, I literally said I trust the facts coming from actual professionals not a fantasy football fan who turned his love for fantasy football into a job.

 

And you just shared a scout comparing him to a borderline HOF WR.  If he has the same rookie season Boldin had we might finally advance in the playoffs.

 

PS:  He’s also faster, taller and more athletic than Anquan Boldin.

Edited April 28 by Alphadawg7