Mandatory Minicamp

[Rocky Landing]

44 minutes ago, HappyDays said:

 

Curtis Samuel is supposed to be the gadget player. I'm surprised how little we've heard about him in OTAs and minicamp, but maybe the Bills are trying to hide his role a bit. I think he will be deployed in a lot of interesting ways.

 

Isabella I have zero interest in. At no point has he produced in this league and it hasn't been injuries holding him back. He just isn't an NFL player. Hamler at least intrigues me because talent has never been his problem, but you can't count on him to be healthy. If you keep him you're probably keeping 7 WRs on the roster and I don't think that's likely.

 

 

I don't believe most teams have last year's PS WRs taking snaps with the 1st team. I see a lot of people saying that it's normal, but is it? I don't remember Shavers for example getting 1st team reps last year, I could be wrong though. In the past there's been a core group of WRs getting regular snaps with Josh Allen, with a couple being mixed in sparingly for injury or rest. This year the distribution of targets so far has seemed to be a bit all over the place.

 

But that's the state of the WR room right now. We have like 7 guys that would be really good WR4s. We'll be scrambling to stack them in the right order and hopefully somebody will elevate their game enough to give our passing offense some sort of top tier ceiling.

Last year, there were a lot more returning WRs, including the two starters. This year, we have Shakir. Regarding Shavers, when we took him as a UDFA last season, the biggest buzz on him was his special teams ability. There has been a lot of turnover on ST this year, most notable Neal, and Matekevich. But with the lack of depth on this team, I think it's likely the Bills are moving away from the ST-only roster spots. If Shavers can be an effective gunner, that's great. But, they'll likely want him to have value on offense, as well. He has an uphill battle, to be sure, but it's not unreasonable for him to be in drills with Josh Allen at a mini-camp.

[Augie]

56 minutes ago, Buffalo_Stampede said:

Almost every kicker has a year or 2 where they’re just off. It’s weird.

 

I was never sure if he had the yips, or was injured. The yips don’t take away distance, so I have to think he was dinged up with a groin or back type of nagging injury. Hoping he bounces back and becomes Mr Automatic again. 

[Cray51]

3 minutes ago, FireChans said:

The Chiefs WR room was 19th in AAV last year.

 

The Bills WR room is 27th in AAV in 2024.

I understand what you are saying.  Investment in the position is in your eyes a direct indicator to success.  However, I think that's a very simplified analysis.  Does it take into account injuries?  As you mentioned, other positions do impact WR results.  If I look at this year, 4 of the bottom 8 spenders currently made the playoffs last year AND won games.  And, 2 of those teams won multiple games.  Key component? They all had great QBs who elevated the position.  

 

This year the Bills are on track to spend more on the WR position than KC last year, even though KC was 19th and the Bills are 26th.  Are you purely going off rankings?  Or absolute spend?  Rankings are interesting, because Minny last year was 5th cheapest, but had the best WR in football (JJ).  Are we really considering them a bottom 5 unit?  GB has several GREAT rookies on deals, their AAV drives down postional spend.  They aren't a bottom 5 unit in production, just AAV.  If you told me the Bills WR impacts this year would be like GB or Minny, I'd be stoked.

 

Bottom 5 spend last year and top 5 spend last year each won ONE playoff game.  I'd say WR spend as a single attribute to define success of a season of a team is a little short sighted

[FireChans]

4 minutes ago, Jauronimo said:

And the biggest part of KC's 2023 WR AAV was paying MVS $10 million per year.  Is our current WR room that much worse than the Chiefs 2023 because we only pay MVS $10.50 an hour?  If we pay MVS $16 million this year do our odds of winning a championship improve?

All would be very good counterpoints as long as your prevailing thesis of the offseason isn't, "no expensive WR rooms have ever won a championship."

1 minute ago, Cray51 said:

I understand what you are saying.  Investment in the position is in your eyes a direct indicator to success.  However, I think that's a very simplified analysis.  Does it take into account injuries?  As you mentioned, other positions do impact WR results.  If I look at this year, 4 of the bottom 8 spenders currently made the playoffs last year AND won games.  And, 2 of those teams won multiple games.  Key component? They all had great QBs who elevated the position.  

 

This year the Bills are on track to spend more on the WR position than KC last year, even though KC was 19th and the Bills are 26th.  Are you purely going off rankings?  Or absolute spend?  Rankings are interesting, because Minny last year was 5th cheapest, but had the best WR in football (JJ).  Are we really considering them a bottom 5 unit?  GB has several GREAT rookies on deals, their AAV drives down postional spend.  They aren't a bottom 5 unit in production, just AAV.  If you told me the Bills WR impacts this year would be like GB or Minny, I'd be stoked.

 

Bottom 5 spend last year and top 5 spend last year each won ONE playoff game.  I'd say WR spend as a single attribute to define success of a season of a team is a little short sighted

 

Just now, FireChans said:

All would be very good counterpoints as long as your prevailing thesis of the offseason isn't, "no expensive WR rooms have ever won a championship."

 

[ngbills]

19 minutes ago, Cray51 said:

KC won the Super Bowl last year with a below average WR room.  Rice is a good player, MVS we have, Moore is bad.  They had Kelce who is all world, but the Bills have Kincaid and Knox who are no slouches.

 

The Bills pure WR room is better than what Kansas City had last year to win the Super Bowl

Do the Bills have Andy Reid too? Reid has proven that he can scheme. Brady in a small sample size has shown he can let Josh put this team on his back via his legs. But the passing game with Brady was way below average. 

[Buffalo_Stampede]

1 hour ago, HappyDays said:

 

Curtis Samuel is supposed to be the gadget player. I'm surprised how little we've heard about him in OTAs and minicamp, but maybe the Bills are trying to hide his role a bit. I think he will be deployed in a lot of interesting ways.

 

Isabella I have zero interest in. At no point has he produced in this league and it hasn't been injuries holding him back. He just isn't an NFL player. Hamler at least intrigues me because talent has never been his problem, but you can't count on him to be healthy. If you keep him you're probably keeping 7 WRs on the roster and I don't think that's likely.

 

 

I don't believe most teams have last year's PS WRs taking snaps with the 1st team. I see a lot of people saying that it's normal, but is it? I don't remember Shavers for example getting 1st team reps last year, I could be wrong though. In the past there's been a core group of WRs getting regular snaps with Josh Allen, with a couple being mixed in sparingly for injury or rest. This year the distribution of targets so far has seemed to be a bit all over the place.

 

But that's the state of the WR room right now. We have like 7 guys that would be really good WR4s. We'll be scrambling to stack them in the right order and hopefully somebody will elevate their game enough to give our passing offense some sort of top tier ceiling.

I’m not sure I’m fully understanding your panicking.

 

So Shavers is running with the 1st team? 

[FireChans]

1 hour ago, HappyDays said:

 

Curtis Samuel is supposed to be the gadget player. I'm surprised how little we've heard about him in OTAs and minicamp, but maybe the Bills are trying to hide his role a bit. I think he will be deployed in a lot of interesting ways.

 

Isabella I have zero interest in. At no point has he produced in this league and it hasn't been injuries holding him back. He just isn't an NFL player. Hamler at least intrigues me because talent has never been his problem, but you can't count on him to be healthy. If you keep him you're probably keeping 7 WRs on the roster and I don't think that's likely.

 

 

I don't believe most teams have last year's PS WRs taking snaps with the 1st team. I see a lot of people saying that it's normal, but is it? I don't remember Shavers for example getting 1st team reps last year, I could be wrong though. In the past there's been a core group of WRs getting regular snaps with Josh Allen, with a couple being mixed in sparingly for injury or rest. This year the distribution of targets so far has seemed to be a bit all over the place.

 

But that's the state of the WR room right now. We have like 7 guys that would be really good WR4s. We'll be scrambling to stack them in the right order and hopefully somebody will elevate their game enough to give our passing offense some sort of top tier ceiling.

I think the argument is that the WR room this year is sorta like the MLB room last year.

 

Last year, there was lots of rotating in and out between Bernard, Williams, Dodson etc. It was a position group without an incumbent starter. We didn't rotate as many bodies at the WR position because we had Diggs and Davis and a bunch of other guys that couldn't really play anyway.

 

The difference is that one of those positions is the running back of the defense and the other is the second highest paid position in football, but alas.

[Miyagi-Do Karate]

2 hours ago, Warcodered said:

 

This is the time for him to work through it if he's going to.

re Bass, kicking seems similar to golf. I know there golfers out there that kind of practice slices and pulls, and then practice correcting those. Maybe he is doing the same?  It’s good to practice figuring out mechanics and how to

fix things so if he has to do it on game day, he knows how to adjust.

[Augie]

9 minutes ago, Buffalo_Stampede said:

I’m not sure I’m fully understanding your panicking.

 

So Shavers is running with the 1st team? 

 

I think we know who’s on the top of the list, and we want to spend more time figuring out who the last guys are, so they get some time with the ones. That seems simple.  🤷‍♂️

 

.

Edited June 12 by Augie

[Buffalo_Stampede]

3 minutes ago, Augie said:

 

I think we know who’s on the top of the list, and we want to spend more time figuring out who the last guys are, so they get some time with the ones. That seems simple.  🤷‍♂️

 

.

He’s acting like the WRs are struggling. 

[pennstate10]

4 minutes ago, Miyagi-Do Karate said:

re Bass, kicking seems similar to golf. I know there golfers out there that kind of practice slices and pulls, and then practice correcting those. Maybe he is doing the same?  It’s good to practice figuring out mechanics and how to

fix things so if he has to do it on game day, he knows how to adjust.

If Bass is practicing to miss kicks, he doing pretty well…

 

I think it’s a concern. If it’s the holder, I’d much rather have a holder who holds at 100% and punts at a 39 yd net than a holder who holds at a 50% clip and has a net average of 44 yds. 

[Augie]

Just now, Buffalo_Stampede said:

He’s acting like the WRs are struggling. 

 

I’ll have no ideas other than those of other people until we start playing actual football in the Fall. I can’t get wrapped up in a few days in June, but you obviously hope for good news. The big thing for me during all team activities before the opener is “DON’T GET HURT!” 

[Mark Vader]

2 hours ago, Buffalo_Stampede said:

Josh’s favorite food is a turnover. 

I thought it was Mexican.

[Alphadawg7]

1 hour ago, FireChans said:

I do know it. It's not a "personal grade," at all. It's completely numerical.

 

https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/position/_/year/2024/table/active/type/contract_average/sort/wr/dir/desc

 

Oh GDI, the Bills are bottom 6. Back to the drawing board.

 

Anyway, we are bottom 6 in AAV of WR's. I can re-do my analysis if you'd like, I doubt it changes much. I think Keon Coleman ***** it up by not signing his contract til the afternoon lol.

 

AAV by year of contracts, per Spotrac.

 

Wait...hold on...Are you declaring Bills talent rankings based on the total of what the receivers make now?  LMAO.  And you are using numbers that don't inlclude Keon's contract too lol.  A team with multiple young players on rookie contracts too.  And also again you are not factoring in TE's either.

 

At least now we know what Beane should do with the extra cap space from Tre...give the WR's a raise so it improves our Super Bowl odds lol

 

This is too out there to address.  I am just gonna move on lol.  

 

 

Edited June 12 by Alphadawg7

[Alphadawg7]

1 hour ago, Jauronimo said:

And the biggest part of KC's 2023 WR AAV was paying MVS $10 million per year.  Is our current WR room that much worse than the Chiefs 2023 because we only pay MVS $10.50 an hour?  If we pay MVS $16 million this year do our odds of winning a championship improve?

 

Now you have really done it introducing context, logic, and commonsense.  How dare you 

[Beck Water]

On 6/11/2024 at 12:06 PM, Buffalo_Stampede said:

Poyer was banged up all year, didn’t have his normal season. Hamlin was a 2nd year player getting his first extensive playing time. I felt he graded out ok, average. I think there was one game if I remember correctly that he really struggled in. I think maybe the Dolphins game late in the season.

 

In general, Damar did not show out well in the games Poyer missed and he was playing with Jaquan Johnson.  That'd be the first Miami game, the Pittsburgh game (which didn't matter, blowout) and the first Jets game which also featured Terrel Bernard trying to play for Milano (spoiler: went badly).  And of course, the Cincy playoff game where Poyer went out and our safeties were...Dean Marlow and Jaquan Johnson.

 

Johnson was pretty well out of football last season, BTW.  Was cut by the Raiders, out of football until he was brought in by Tampa Bay for a brief PS stint in Nov (by brief, I mean like, a week)

[Beck Water]

On 6/11/2024 at 1:58 PM, BillsFooteball said:

Cook dropped an easy pass today 😔 saw this far to often last year as well 

 

I wish Cook would go work with the "eye training" guy Knox worked with or whatever

[FireChans]

42 minutes ago, Alphadawg7 said:

 

Wait...hold on...Are you declaring Bills talent rankings based on the total of what the receivers make now?  LMAO.  And you are using numbers that don't inlclude Keon's contract too lol.  A team with multiple young players on rookie contracts too.  And also again you are not factoring in TE's either.

 

At least now we know what Beane should do with the extra cap space from Tre...give the WR's a raise so it improves our Super Bowl odds lol

 

This is too out there to address.  I am just gonna move on lol.  

 

 

Brother, you made the point about expensive WR’s and not winning. So I made the point about cheap WR’s and not winning. 
 

Do you really not see the link between those two arguments?

[fergie's ire]

15 minutes ago, Beck Water said:

 

I wish Cook would go work with the "eye training" guy Knox worked with or whatever

Actually, I am hoping this drop is him practicing whatever drop program Shakir was working last year.  If you remember the concern in training camp last year regarding Shakir was his tendency to drop passes.  Then he had a lot of drops of easy passes in OTAs and training camp.  Then the season starts and he ends up having the lowest drop rate in the league.  Maybe these drops are part of the patented Shakir process.

[Alphadawg7]

36 minutes ago, FireChans said:

Brother, you made the point about expensive WR’s and not winning. So I made the point about cheap WR’s and not winning. 
 

Do you really not see the link between those two arguments?

 

Ok, thats fair, I was talking with someone else originally so I didn't connect that context in your reply, I get it now.  I also didn't say they didn't win...I asked how many playoff games did they win and how the highest priced WR's aren't a guarantee for a Super Bowl let alone a prerequisite.

 

I still disagree with your application given its missing 2 of our offensive young and important players in Kincaid (who isn't being counted as he is a TE and Keon because he just signed his contract today so I can't see how they can have his salary in there already) and arguably our best WR is Shakir who is playing on a 5th round rookie contract that is not reflective of his talent.  Then you have Claypool playing on a small prove it deal not reflective of is talent, but fairly reflective of how his immaturity sank his stock.  

 

So I don't think you can conclude low AAV always is indicative of less talent.  Just like you wouldn't say the Bengals had weak or mediocre talent when both Chase and Higgins were on rookie deals.  

Edited June 12 by Alphadawg7