Shaw66

Yeah. There are many ways to skin the cat. They did need a running back, and they got a guy who might have what it takes to replace Cook eventually. And I don't particularly like a plan that says "we need a player, and we'll take two to be sure we get one who works out." You're almost certainly not going to keep both of them, so you're using two picks to fill one position. Not a fan of that, but I can't say it's wrong. Going your way, they would need a running back in free agency. Going the way they did, they would need a receiver. Kind of six of one, half dozen of the other. As someone said, Beane had a plan and he executed it The roster now looks pretty good to me. He had a variety of other ways he might have gone, too. Bottom line for me is that Beane knows what he's doing.

As I said, there's room to criticize McBeane for getting into the situation they were in, but they certainly seem to have navigated the situation quite nicely.

Man, that's excellent. Clear and concise. When I take a step back and look at what's lost and what's been gained, I'm liking it. That's the point of my Rockpile. I like Josh throwing to these guys, and I suspect there still may be an addition.

I often find that it’s useful to forget the money and the hype and the stars and instead to think about the game of football at its most basic. I think about what it’s like to have a career as a high school football coach trying to win a championship. In high school, the raw material for building a roster is left mostly to chance (putting aside the little bit of recruiting that goes on in some places). The head coach has very little control over the quality of players who show up on the first day of tryouts; the physical capabilities of most of those players was largely determined in random bedrooms 16 or 18 years earlier, and now here they are. The coach’s job is to choose a roster from among the guys trying out, and then to train and mold them into a team that wins football games. The programs with the best coaches have up years and down years like everyone else, but they tend to have more up years. Why? Because their brand of leadership, their teaching ability, and their strategic and tactical approach to the game is better than most other coaches. So, even in years when the gene pool has left the coach a little short-handed compared to some other schools, their seasons often are quite successful. (I have had the opportunity to observe this phenomenon up close twice in my life. I played high school basketball for Bob Hettler, one of the greatest high school coaches in New York State history, and I was on the faculty with Morgan Wootten, one of the greatest high school coaches in U.S. history. The players changed year after year, but the winning more or less never stopped. (Wootten did have the advantage of being able to recruit, at least a bit.) Only occasionally did the talent fall together in just the right way to have a true championship caliber team, but even in down years, their teams stood out.) Coaches know when the talent they have is outstanding and when it’s just okay. Good coaches adapt to the challenge each season and look for the ways that this group of players can succeed, whether this group offers raw physical talent that is better or worse than last year’s group. That’s the coach’s job, and good coaches find ways to win. Coaching is coaching, at any level. Pro football coaches face the same annual roster turnover that high school coaches deal with. There are differences, of course: The high school coaches have bigger problem, because their roster will be a collection 16-18 year-old kids with their own issues. The pro coach, on the other hand, can expect at least semi-adult behavior from most of their players. The big difference, however, is the pro coach gets raw material selected from the very best players in the country. The pro coach, year after year, is going to start the season with a training camp roster of 90 of the biggest, fastest, smartest, and toughest football players in the world. And that means that the differences in team success based on physical talent become smaller: the guy being tackled and the guy tackling both excel at their jobs. For sure, if your team has more of the best guys, your team has an advantage, but in the NFL it’s very difficult to collect and hold onto talent that is physically dominant at several important positions. In the current era, it isn’t possible to collect and keep stars like the Kelly-era Bills did. I’m not saying that getting the best talent doesn’t matter. Of course, it matters. What I’m saying is that not having the best talent doesn’t mean that you can’t compete. With coaching, talent that is excellent but not the best can play a team-game that neutralizes the talent advantage any particular team might have. Of course, if I have the best talent AND the best coaching, then the talent will be the difference. People can argue endlessly about the talent on this roster and that roster, but at the end of the day success in the NFL is going to come down to how well coached your team is. Does your coach get your team into the strategically and tactically correct offenses and defenses year-in, year out and game-in, game-out. Does your coach get your team physically and mentally prepared to execute those offenses and defenses? In that context, consider for a moment what has happened to the Bills roster in the past three months that has the fan-base and the media all in a tizzy: The Bills lost six big names from their roster: White, Morse, Davis, Diggs, Hyde, and Poyer. When each of those six came into the league, the draft market place valued them, by draft round, this way: 1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 7. Add ‘em up: 24. And now consider the Bills’ top-six acquisitions over the past three months. Samuel, Coleman, Bishop, Carter, Davis, Van Pran-Granger. 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5. Total: 18. I’m not arguing for a second that there’s anything but the least-sophisticated logic to that analysis. You can’t really just add up draft value and determine which college is better. But those numbers aren't meaningless. Those numbers are some evidence of the fact that the talent every team starts with, at least in terms of what the league thought of them when they came in. Going into most drafts, most GMs would take 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5 over 1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 7. In terms of the quality of talent that will take the field in September compared to what the Bills had three months ago, I think I’ll take exactly where the Bills are today. Think about the departures: White, may still be a player, but at the very best he’s about to wind down, Morse, never the greatest physically, and his days were ending, Davis, the guy everyone loves to hate, Hyde slowing down and needs to go for his own health, Poyer, some years left, perhaps, but not his best. Diggs, may still be good, but not so good that he's worth the headache. Start looking at them player by player, or at least paired: Would you rather have Diggs and Davis or Coleman and Samuel? Would you rather have Morse or Van Pran-Granger? Bishop or (pick one) Hyde or Poyer? White or Carter? Collectively, I'd rather have the youngsters than kept or extended all of those guys. Now, for sure, not all of the rookies necessarily will pan out, and it may take them a year to begin to play at the level that’s needed for them to succeed in the league, but looking at the Bills three months ago and now, I will definitely take the uncertainty of these young talented players over the uncertainty of old, injured, troublesome talented players. Would the Bills be in an even better position if Beane had managed the draft in another way? I don’t think so. The extra talent one of the top three receivers in the draft would have brought to the team couldn’t offset the loss of the rest of the players the Bills drafted. Said another way: six guys are gone, and I like my chances better if I get six new guys instead of two (the new receiver and Curtis Samuel). In terms of how Beane and McDermott have done in their jobs, well, it depends if I’m a glass-half-empty or glass-half-full guy. I like that they’ve improved the team, but I also have to ask why a group of unproven guys actually is better than the gang that just left? How did the Bills get in the position they were in, with a group of guys who no longer were quite good enough to win, and with no backups in sight? However they got to that position, I think if you asked McDermott if he likes the talent he has today, he’d say, “Absolutely!” Can you win a Super Bowl with this talent? “Absolutely!” And that’s not just power-of-positive-thinking Sean speaking. I mean, he and we thought he could win it with the talent he had last year, and if this is actually a better group, then why shouldn’t he think he should win this year? Translate this back to high school football. It’s as though McDermott is coaching high school and has a five-star recruit at QB, several locks at D-1 scholarships (Milano, Oliver, Cook, Coleman, Torrence) and several guys who very well also might go D-1. Considering D-2 and D-3, he has maybe 20 kids who are going to play in college. Maybe one other high school in the state has a 5-star QB. Some other schools might have two five-star players, but unless they have a five-star at QB, they can’t be as good together as the five-star QB he has. Some other schools may end up with a few more D-1 guys than he has, but the reality is that doesn’t make all that much difference. Ask McDermott the high school coach if he likes were he is right now, and I’m sure he’ll say, “Absolutely.” Ask him, the pro coach, and he'll say, "Absolutely." I like what Beane has done since the end of the last season, and I’m looking forward to the 2024. The Bills will be in the middle of the contest for the Lombardi. GO BILLS!!! The Rockpile Review is written to share the passion we have for the Buffalo Bills. That passion was born in the Rockpile; its parents were everyday people of western New York who translated their dedication to a full day’s hard work and simple pleasures into love for a pro football team.

Thank you. You've helped me see better how it works. Samuel will get 30% of the snaps at wideout. So will Shakir. That's 60%. Kincaid will get 10%, minimum. Cook and other running backs will get 5-10%. Bills will play with an 8-man line on 5-10% of snaps. That's 80-90% of a receiver full-time at wideout. Coleman will get 80% of the other side. There are you two wideouts. That's what is going to happen, unless the Bills come up with a more serious answer.

Not that slow.

I thought so, but I am slow.

If you're serious, the thing about the Bengals is that what they did was an accident of timing. You simply can't run your franchise expecting that you can decide to have a receiver room like the Bengals have had and then just do it. Timing allowed them to keep Boyd, then get the other two. Certainly it's happened, and we've seen some other great receiver rooms come and go, but if I tried to build a team around that model, I could be waiting a long time before I have that kind of combo. Lots of pieces fell together for the Bengals.

I said it, not last week, but when the Bills signed him. He is NOT going to play strictly out of the slot. I'm sure of that.

They were anything but proven commodities when they were drafted. What they are is very much what the Bills' receivers are - good hungry athletes ready to play in a system.

Good point. Looks a lot like Cooper Kupp, Puka Nacua, and Demarcus Robinson, before they became a deadly combination. Or St. Brown, Reynolds, LaPorta, and Raymond. Kelce, Rice, Valdez-Scantling, Watson. The style of offense these teams are playing, and getting good production in the passing game, is not dependent of big name receivers. It's a style that repeatedly leverages the defense in ways that allow good athletes to get open. Shakir, Samuel, Coleman, and Kincaid are good athletes and they will get open.

Agreed. Beane's not done, but the pieces are already there. The real question is whether Brady is the man to do something with the quality parts he's been presented with.

You know, not to argue with you, but I don't understand. Shakir fell and was available in the fifth. He had 161 yards receiving in his rookie season. I don't get why people would feel much better about the receiver room if the Bills added a guy who probably will see very little playing time. The Bills are going to come at teams with Coleman, Samuel, Shakir, Hollins. There might be another addition who works his way into what is essentially a four player rotation. I don't think a fifth round guy is breaking into that group.

49ers seem to have been sending mixed signals about whether Aiyuk or Samuel is available. Sure seems like one must be, after going wideout in the first round the other day. I'd much prefer Aiyuk. The mix of skillsets he'd create would be a great combination. Bills already have a Samuel-type; even his name is Samuel. Your welcome, but don't put too much stock in it. I'm happy to write what I think, but that doesn't mean it's correct!

It may be Kincaid. It may be Coleman. Need one on defense, too. Listen to Carter's press conference in Orchard Park. Without bragging, he said Duke was pretty horrible his first two years, but he and some other guys helped change the culture and make them into a good football team. And many people apparently thought he'd enter the portal and go to a bigger time school for his senior year. He made it clear that his loyalty to the program and his teammates kept him there. I think that if you watch his video, it's pretty easy to see that the guy can play, whatever school he went to.