Thurman#1

Nonsense. The injuries were NOT just DL for the Bills, though we did miss probably three of our four best defenders in Von Miller, Hyde and Da'Quan. Did the Cincy offense miss three of their best players? Two? One? In fact, the Bills were in much worse condition. Poyer played but he was a shell of himself. White wasn't close to his best. And Jordan Phillips was playing with one arm. We had to give significant snaps to Jaquan Johnson, Dean Marlowe and Cam Lewis. Even Siran Neal played a few downs on D. If you think they were in as bad a shape as we were, you are absolutely kidding yourself. And speaking of kidding yourself, ignoring cap problems as a limiting factor is more of the same. As for the remainder of your post, it's not really relevant to my post which you answered, or even very understandable in paragraph 3 . But whatever. Guess I'm glad you're amusing yourself.

Me too. Not that we definitely will, but that we might. I'm becoming a Mazi fan. Seems like the obvious areas of need, such as MLB and WR, and maybe some areas of the OL, stand a decent chance of having lost the best players and/or not having good value around 27. If theBills don't trade back, DL seems one of the best alternatives to me, though certainly not the only alternative.

Nice.

That metaphor makes zero sense. The Bills D was crippled with injuries, absolutely a different defense than what they'd have been if even ordinarily healthy. And yet the defense held Cincy to their average scoring total for the year. Both sides were bad, but the problem in that game was the offense. The offense was absolutely awful, though unlike the defense they were healthy. The offense scored ten freaking points and yet nobody on here seems willing to blame anyone but the defense. Spending more premium assets on the D just makes sense. As does spending them on the offense. Comparing this D to an aging product line is ridiculous. We need help - premium help - on both sides. If you're going to ignore all of the rest of the year and go from the Cincy game, the offense was the one that played far far below the level that could have been reasonably expected of them. And it wasn't that Cincy beat up the offense because they were just not as good. The offense had an absolutely horrible day. These things happen, and unfortunately they did. This team needs to use premium assets on both sides of the LOS.

No, it's not typical coach speak. It just isn't. Typical coach speak is as vague and unspecific as possible. "He gives it 100% all the time. Tough kid. Gives it his all. We like him. The whole defense has been very very ...." That's coach speak. On the other hand, when Beane is specific and long-winded with his praise on a guy, he means it. And again, Beane is perfectly comfortable NOT supporting his guys 100% when they have a problem. Remember his thing a couple of years ago about how nobody was game-planning to stop our TE room? He's got zero problem expressing dissatisfaction. No, he's not going to say somebody is as lazy as the guard dog at a slaughterhouse, or that someone's dumb or that someone just doesn't have talent. But he's perfectly capable of expressing dis-satisfaction or that a guy still needs to improve. Does it reasonably often.

These are my two favorites. IMO they wouldn't fit into our financial plans unless they give large discounts. Which is I suppose possible but surely unlikely.

Plan should be that months ago they picked the guys they didn't want and eliminate them. Of the others, establish contract limitations that would be acceptable for the team for each guy. Then tell them we're not picking up anyone before the comp pick formula effect deadline, the Thursday or Friday of the week after the draft, if I remember correctly. Then either tell them what we'll give or keep it a bit nebulous if that provides a bargaining advantage. Wait and see what happens. A couple of these guys look really good to me. But I doubt they will be affordable under the financial plans the Bills have made to deal with the cap over the next few years.

Not saying I know you're wrong. And yeah, Sanders is a good player. But I am saying that Lawrence Taylor was not an MLB. And an MLB is what we're missing. Sanders had 10.5 sacks in his collegiate career, 5 passes defensed and three forced fumbles. Taylor had 21 sacks, 10 forced fumbles and 2 INTs. 16 sacks in his final year there, playing his second year as an LB. And Taylor hadn't played organized football until 11th grade and started at UNC as a DL until he was switched. I don't see Sanders as our LT in any way. LT was drafted second overall. Is Sanders being discussed in that range? IMO that's a huge huge stretch.

He did mention bringing in competition at RT. And now some folks seem to think that means there's no other way to address that than the draft. And that's not true. FA continues right throughout the season. They could do something in the draft. If they don't, there's still a lot they could do in FA. Or by trade. Agreed that what he said about Brown was in fact very strong. He meant it, and all those saying, "Oh, he has to say that," are just plain wrong. He does not have to say that. Or anything close. There are a ton of ways to answer these questions without giving glowing endorsements.

That's just dumb. Mediocre rosters don't go 13-3. Nor does Vegas put them as third favorites in the offseason for the next year's championship. They're an excellent roster, and even if compared to rosters without considering QBs, still very good. Yeah, they have concerns. Every team in the history of the NFL did/does. And even more so before the draft and this early in the process. Nonsense also that they have no choice to tout and commit to these guys. Of course they have other choices. It's also really questionable whether they actually have committed to these guys. If they performed poorly enough in camp, they would likely be cut/traded or whatever. Again, they have other choices. Some could still be made. But most of the other choices are visibly and obviously poorer uses of resources and talent.

They did NOT make the statement that his replacement is already on the roster. "Sometimes your answer is on your roster."

It's pure opinion, of course, but I think they'd both have roughly equal chances. If forced to choose, I'd give Mahomes/Bills a better chance, but not a ton better. Mahomes would indeed do a lot of damage with Diggs/Davis/Knox etc. As did Allen last year with a throwing arm injury through a very significant portion of the season.

Do I believe it? Yes, of course I do. There isn't a good reason to say that if it's not true, to pretend he's taking a year off if he isn't. "He should honor his contract"? That's just dumb, man, he did. It's not a contract of slavery. He's got the right to leave if he wants. Bless him.

Whatever.

The fact that he wanted to go. Him. He pushed himself out. Possibly not getting the Bears job in particular.

Every team has a harder time in the playoffs than the regular season because you play better teams. It's not the Bills. It's everyone. Offense and defense. Yeah, when Mahomes (or Allen) are playing at high level, pretty much nobody can stop them. But last year it was more about their horrible injuries, losing Miller and Da'Quan on the DL for that last game, and the whole team playing like crap, appearing emotionally hung over. The D really didn't even play that horribly. Not well, but not horribly. They held the Bengals to their season average of scoring. The problem was that our offense scored ten points. With Von and Da'Quan and Hyde, and with Poyer and Tre White and Phillips moving the way they normally did, that side of the ball might have looked totally different. Against KC, who knows, but when Von and everyone was healthy early, they strangled the KC offense last year.

While it's idiotic to think he's a league minimum player, and while he's a good soldier, there's a reason he's still available. The market is pretty good at making sure guys get fair contracts. Not perfect. But pretty damn good. Shaq was tough, he worked hard, but he didn't display much of the glamour skills at DE that get guys paid at a high level at DE. He'll get a contract somewhere, maybe even here, but it won't be for a lot, and there's a reason for that. $1.5M for a year, maybe? He's got value, but he's not much of a pass rusher and that's what everyone is looking for primarily.

"... overalll evaluation of talent if questionable at best"? Nonsense. The Bills went 13-3 last year. They're one of the best teams in the league. And while, yes, a lot of that is Allen, no, it's not all Allen, the team around him is very good. Yeah, Allen is a big part of it. But equally you can say the same thing for the Chiefs, Bengals, and on and on, really. Of course you need and excellent QB to compete. But you also need a good lineup. After some of the kvetching that goes on here, including yours, you'd swear they were a 3-13 team. Far from perfect, they're still damn good at talent evaluation, though they still need to get better (though every team in the league can and will say the same thing). We're likely to see RT competition addressed at some point, whether in the draft or in later FA. Certainly Brown wasn't good enough last year. But people who want to pretend that a guy with back surgery recovery and no real off-season before his second year was absolutely playing at his ceiling are just kidding themselves. Up till the end, reasonable. but to think they "returned zero" in Edmunds, Oliver, Groot and Elam is flagrant twaddle. Those were/are three mainstays of an excellent team and one future mainstay in Elam who was not there yet last year but shows every sign of being very good in the very near future if not immediately.

One of the most complete every year comes near the draft when Astro does his list of Bills meetings. He has serious connections. But everyone has different connections. Cover1 said that when the Bills had dinner with Bijan Robinson, that Roschon Johnson came along. That made me happy. I'd love Roschon.

That they know about. Ryan Talbot says Wright has scheduled a private visit. https://nfltraderumors.co/2023-nfl-draft-visit-tracker/ There are a lot of people trying to compile all of this kind of stuff.

Dawkins is very good. Not elite but very good. We have to figure some things out, but not at LT. The question is whether and how deeply they believe in Brown at RT. My sense is that they believe in him deeply enough that they don't want to draft a high-rounder to compete with him. But I could definitely be wrong about that. EDIT: I'm also generally a big fan of getting more picks.

Well, that would be yet another excellent reason - IMO - not to go RB in the first. We need to pass primarily, and should take the ball out of Josh's hands as little as possible. It's not as if we're wildly unusual about passing a lot. We were 11th in the league last year in pass percentage. We don't need to throw less. Kansas City was 8th. Cincy 5th. Joe Buscaglia has been talking up Roschon Johnson in the 4th. I finally looked at a bit of video. Yikes!! Me likey!!

He's the best cover guy we have at this stage. At that stage, he wasn't. That's why he didn't start. He was really good at man-to-man, which he did almost exclusively in college, but lacking at zone, which is most of what the Bills do. Not playing a guy who's not good enough to play yet isn't wasting time. It's making sense. It's what nearly every team will do, play their best guy. Especially for a team that made a high priority of getting the #1 seed last year. Made total sense. And you can learn on the bench, playing part time and getting coached through the week. Which showed as he got a bunch better at zone and near the last few games of the season started to look very good.

At #27? Neither.

Come on, Davis hasn't had poor production at all. Not great production is very different from poor production. Particularly for a 3rd year 4th rounder whose injury caused him to miss two games and play hobbled in two more. On Cover1 today, Ant pointed out that if that injury hadn't happened, he'd likely have put up a thousand yards and the narrative would be very different. Agreed adding a solid WR would be very good. I doubt Zerovoltz would disagree either with that part of your post. He is a Chiefs fan. He's not a troll. However, it was April 1st, and that's worth considering.