Thurman#1

This. Probably three cities in Canada anywhere close to enough of an economic / population base to think about supporting an NFL team. Getting Americans to watch might be a reason for this. Or making it even more of a development league for the NFL. I wonder if this will work out for them.

We don't "need" young WRs. The group we have now on offense is putting up 34 points per game. I wouldn't mind it. At every position you want to bring in young talent to develop. WR is no exception, but we don't have any special need there. As for overpaying, we are using 12% of our cap this year on WRs. That's cheap. And it seems like a tactic - historically used often by Super Bowl-winning teams to deal with having to pay a top-flight QB - of putting together a top-flight roster on both sides of the ball. One of the benefits of having an elite QB is that he can be effective and productive without expensive WRs. The Chiefs and the Brady-era Pats are the best recent examples, but there are plenty of others. Yeah, this, please.

The reason why not is that you're right that he's historically played a lot of snaps, but also historically he's been injured a lot. There's a good chance that there is a relationship between those two facts. They want to limit his snaps this year. And it's a great idea. But with Hoecht out for the first six weeks, Groot playing with a bone bruise (according to Joe B. in the Athletic), Landon Jackson not yet getting it so that he's not active and Solomon being a liability on run plays, that pretty much leaves Epenesa and Bosa as the only two DEs who are healthy, available and up to speed on any given play. Expect Bosa to see a lot less action later in the season, so that he's fully healthy going into the playoffs.

Groot's got a bone bruise. They're saying it's from the Ravens game. He's not playing the way he will when he's better. Ahhh, Dave McBride already posted it. Thanks, Dave.

You're not right. It isn't that they've been top 10 every year but one. They've been top ten every single year under Sean. 2024 1st 2023 3rd 2022 4th 2021 3rd 2020 3rd 2019 10th 2018 8th 2017 9th It's an amazing thing, even more so as the year before, in 2016, they were 23rd.

All very reasonable. But very much pointing out that winning the turnover battle is NOT a Josh Allen thing. It's a Buffalo Bills thing. Josh is a big factor. But .... Again, the Bills D has been top four in takeaways the last five years, which is just about unheard of, that kind of defensive consistency. 2024 1st 2023 3rd 2022 4th 2021 3rd 2020 3rd That's sensational. And is a huge part of us winning the turnover battle so consistently.

Yes, this.

They are contributing. They're playing. Mostly at a decent level so far, certainly well for DLs in their first three games. Playing is contributing. Playing STs is contributing. Just about all of them are contributing. As for doing more than that in the first three games, high draft pick or not, "expecting them to" do more than "contribute right away" only shows that you're wackily expecting the world to bend to your will. Slightly more than half of first rounders don't even pan out. Pretending that any draft pick, particularly one outside the top five or ten, to start making a difference in the first three games says more about unreasonable expectations than it does about the player's results.

This. It takes time. An unpredictable amount of time, unfortunately. There's not a thing we can do to speed up the process.

Well, that is certainly one opinion. Not a fact, though. You're right that he won't be top 20 by the end of week 3. Best guess is he will be top 30 - 40, though, which equates to, oh yeah, a borderline number one. Extended over the course of a season, his current production would have had him in last year's WR stats as 29th (yards) and 19th (receptions). In other words, a borderline number one. Has a lot to prove? Hey, yeah, no argument there. I mean, he's a second-year guy, so of course. But it's fair. Consistency isn't there for anybody, when it comes to receivers, outside a few true #1s. Numbers go up and down, but when uninjured, his aggregate performance was about borderline #1 level, I'd argue. After his first three games as a rookie, he started to find his footing. And from that point on until he got injured, he was putting up numbers that would have got him close to a thousand, and that's terrific as a rookie. Especially in an attack where the keywords are that everybody eats. Looking good again this year.

If the drives you see are the ones that have a Cook first down run for no gain, you've got a perception problem. A quick look at the box scores shows that the final first down of each failed drive looks like this. In the Baltimore game there were four drives that ended with punts. Here's what the final first down of each drive looked like: 9 yard Cook run Incomplete pass 2 yard Davis run Incomplete pass In the Jets game, there were three of those, not counting kneeldowns. Allen sacked -1 yard Davis run 4 yard Davis run In the Dolphins game there were three drives that didn't result in scores. But the first was a missed FG. I'll include it anyway. 2 yard pass 1 yard Cook run Incomplete pass So, that's a perception problem. Our stalled drives had a real mix of first down play results, specifically three incomplete passes, a completed short pass, a sack, two successful runs of nine and four yards respectively. And three unsuccessful runs of two yards or less. More attempted passes than unsuccessful runs.

"Can we win with five WR3s," you ask? The question's irrelevant. We don't have five WR3s. Keon's a borderline #1. His stats so far this year are top 20 or so. Not a "true number one," of course, but an overall #1. He seems very likely to be able to go over a thousand this year. If you don't want to accept him as a #1, fair enough but he's certainly performing this year so far like a very high end #2. Not a "true number one," of course, but an overall #1. Shakir's no #3 either. Kincaid is a weapon as well. KC is the latest to prove that you can win Lombardis without a #1, but the Pats did it for years as well. Not coincidentally with TEs being a major factor for both, and for us as well.

Tom Brady would disagree. And his teams won at a pretty high rate. You don't force the pass game just because you have a great QB.

Yes. But not because of WR issues. More because of pass rush issues. Which we finally made a serious move about this last offseason.

More, let's look at value. Here are the individual picks. You can see that the Chiefs invested significantly larger values. Chiefs 28, 54, 55, 133, 181 Bills 33, 148, 150, 203, 240 and two more in 2020, 128 (Gabe Davis), 207 (Isaiah Hodgins). The Chiefs didn't draft any that year. So the highest values relate like this. The highest pick for the Chiefs was #28 (Xavier Worthy) and for the Bills #33 (Keon Coleman) The second highest values are the Chiefs at 54 (Skyy Moore) and the Bills at #148 (Khalil Shakir) Third highest? Chiefs at #55 (Rashee Rice) and Bills at 150 Fourth? Chiefs at #133 and Bills at #203 Fifth? Chiefs at #181 and Bills at #240 In every one of those, the Chiefs invested more, and in many they invested a lot more.

We stress it's a 2nd because it's a 2nd. If it were a 1st, we'd call it a 1st. "We ain't talking long division," as Roy McAvoy said. And we don't need to imply that we "invested 'less'". We actually did invest less. No quotation marks needed. Instead of giving up the 28th pick (not the 31st), we were able to get him by giving up only the 33rd. They traded back twice, 28th to 32nd and then 32nd to 33rd. The 33rd pick is factually worth less than the 28th pick. And not one pick less. Five picks less. Allowing us to pick up Sedrick Van Pran Granger and move up two later picks to better ones (133 to 95 and 248 to 221). The main reason they traded back from 28th to 33rd was simply that they were virtually sure that Keon would still be there early in the 2nd when the pick they acquired came up.

Exactly and precisely this. Luck is a factor. But with precision and consistency over time like this, other factors are larger. Never worse than 4th in the league at takeaways five years in a row? Luck isn't a major factor. There's something in our - dare I say it? - our process.

Yeah, every team is committed to it. But things like the amount of practice time dedicated to drills on Peanut Punches, targeting the ball on tackles, confusing QBs on defense can vary wildly. Not to mention stressing (or not) throwing the ball away under pressure, hitting checkdowns and such on offense.

Um, just as much a remarkable testament to the defense's excellent skills at creating turnovers. Just sayin'. This defense has been amazingly consistent at producing turnovers at a high rate. Here's how the D has ranked at takeaways: 2024 1st 2023 3rd 2022 4th 2021 3rd 2020 3rd 2019 10th 2018 8th 2017 9th 2016 23rd 2015 12th I mean, there's a correlation there, when you look at head coach. Correlation and improvement.

Partly because he's also made some good catches. And partly because it's simply not as black and white as you're painting it. It's not "constantly." And some of those aren't real drops, they're either tough catches or contested. He has zero official drops this year. Check Pro Football Reference. Not that he doesn't need to keep working on it. He does.

IMO they already love the 1-3 formations they're running and are going to love them even more. Running those with three guys who can all block and run routes is going to leave defenses scrambling. It allows them to have eight blockers on some plays, and to force teams to defend them all with guys who can guard the pass also. These guys allow the Bills to be both really tough and really unpredictable. My guess is Knox is here till his contract ends, and maybe signs some kind of extension.

He is a good blocker, Kincaid. He's gotten quite a bit better since last year. Must've worked on it during the offseason.

They've always been good even in the postseason, against everyone except the Chiefs. I guess you could argue the Bengals that one time too but the whole team was emotionally shot. Nobody played well that game. It's the Chiefs. And mostly nobody else stopped them either, which is why they have Lombardis. The Bills need a pass rush. That was what was missing, except for early in Von's first year. So far, Bosa looks good and there are promising signs of one from the rookies and from Hoecht.

Didn't see this till now. "On the hot seat"? It would just be a dumb take. Way way way too early, not just after the Jets game but after the Ravens. It was week one. Could it eventually happen if the defense plays badly over a long period of time? Yeah, absolutely. But it's nowhere near that point now.

Nobody's asking for him to change his style. Or to eliminate all straight-arms. But yeah, when they get to you in the backfield, and it's a DL that's on you, that's not the time for him to be straight-arming. It just isn't. I'm very very sure they will coach him up on that. But it should never have happened. IMO this is partly a result of the fawning he hears when he gets a highlight play from a straight-arm. Heh heh. This. It's not nothing. It's a bad play, a mental mistake. A bad play that probably cost his team the game. Elite players make them too. And then do their best to iron out the problem. Can you point out where I used the word arrogance? I did chuckle at RochesterLifer's joke there. But I wasn't trying to imply arrogance so much as a bit of wanting to see himself on "Angry Runs" again this week, maybe allowing his excitement about the great feedback he usually gets about that tactic to twist his sense of when it's good to use it. And I would argue that "it" doesn't almost always work, if "it" refers to using the straight-arm in the backfield when already in the grip of a DL who's larger than him. I'm sure his coaches won't be telling him never to use the straight-arm again. But almost surely they've already told him there are times when it's just a bad idea, and he's got to better figure out when those times are. Still a terrific runner, though.