Thurman#1

Not buying that. "You just don't see any contested catch with Gabe Davis"? Simply not true. He had that terrific contested catch on the 2nd TD against Pittsburgh, the 62 yard TD. Fitzpatrick was in great position and actually pins Davis' arm to his side. Davis has a step and a half on the CB but Fitz is running straight vertical while Davis has to go a bit sideways. Minkah pins his arm to his side so Davis catches it one-handed and then Fitzpatrick gets two hands on it and starts to rip it away ... and Davis will have absolutely none of it and simply muscles it away from him. That was as contested as *****. A beautiful TD. Or the TD with 0:23 left in the second quarter in the 2021 Pittsburgh game. The guy is leaning right on him, but Allen throws it to him anyway, and Davis just muscles his way to the ball for the TD. Or the one at 6:20 in the 3rd quarter of the first Jets game in 2021. Or the 2021 Monday night game against the Pats at 2:03 in the first quarter. Just a slant over the middle and a sweet pass from Allen, the CB gets a hand in and almost knocks it out, contesting it, and Davis just holds on and brings it in. He will not let it be ripped out. I'm just going through a highlights film and finding them, ah, another one with a guy right on him and Davis coming back to the ball, reaching out and just using his length to get to it and hold it as the guy tries to rake it out against the Panthers at 7:58 in the 1st. Oh, yeah, that Chargers catch in 2020 at 10:10 in the 4th. Just simply out-leaps the CB. Last game of the season in his rookie year, against the Fins, at 14:26 in the 4th. Davis has like four yards on the CB, but Allen's throw forces him to slow way up, the CB catches up to him but Davis simply gets in his way out-reaches him. Look, it simply isn't true, and I didn't even get halfway through that 2021 highlights film. If anything it says more about what you're choosing to remember. You're right that he's open a lot. But that's not a bad thing. It's quite good, in fact.

If so, that says more about the expectations than about performance. That game against the Chiefs in 2021 got people's expectations unreasonably high. Me too. He had a good year.

Nah, his hips are stiff and he's not as good laterally as vertically. And guys who are consistently thrown so many longer routes do have lower catch percentages. Long passes are simply harder to connect on, for QBs and receivers both. It's a big risk / big reward deal.

They didn't spend $120M on Von. The 6th year of that contract, has him getting a salary of $29.645M. Anyone think he's getting that in 2027 at 38 years old? That contract is a 3 year deal ($17.47M AAV) with reasonable ways to make it a 4 year ($17.475M) or 5 year deal ($17.982) if he's still producing at a high level. Still not cheap. But Von's loss was a huge blow to our title hopes. Beane has shown no tendencies to do big FA deals every year. But once every four or five years is a reasonably common blueprint and fits what he did with Miller.

Those teams that got scored on in the playoffs all have one thing in common. None of them had Von Miller in the lineup. That was a key factor in how the game went this last year. We don't need more at WR,, though I think they will bring in some, and it would make sense. Not a need, but a logical place for improvement, IMO. We need OL improvement. And safety. And if we create any holes as the OL posited, we'll have new needs there too.

No RB in the 3rd, please. Wouldn't mind later, though. We've already gone 3rd, 3rd and 2nd the last three years. Don't need to spend more there, especially if they can get Hines to agree to take a bit less, which seems a reasonable ask. I expect them to bring in a cheap FA instead. If they really see a major BPA RB at some point, they might indeed take it, but trading back would make better sense that early..

Yes, this. And in fairness, receivers who mostly are targeted for long passes are going to have a lower catch rate. Nature of the beast. But still, Gabe could work on his hands a bit more.

Very true. Of course, back then most teams were not using nickel as their base defense. AJ Klein was a 5th rounder. And he played the third LB spot, next to Davis and Kuechly. And in fairness, they used a first round pick on Shaq Thompson when Davis was 32. See any LBs who are 32 on this Bills team?

Yeah, did he get abused by Mahomes this year? When we had a bit of a pass rush hurrying him? You know who gets abused by Mahomes's eyes in the middle of the field in zone coverage when he has time to throw? Absolutely everyone. And he doesn't get driven back all that much. He gets driven back 7 - 10 yards? Fine, name 10 plays where that happened. Should be easy since it happens so often. In the run defense, Milano is the guy given the go-ahead to go forward and freelance a bit at times. They have different roles. Tremaine is the guy who's generally supposed to stay back, fill the hole and get him if he turns the corner if necessary. This decision will be made by money, as the Bills are really tightly strictured right now, but they'll do their best to get him back. This Bills D has shown that they're a ton worse without him than with him.

Dude, please. This says more about you than about Edmunds. On the first play he was covering for in-cuts and on the second he was on the other side of the field. I see that, but the fact is that's their scheme and their habit. They sunk a ton of cap dollars into those exact two spots in Carolina with Kuechly and Davis.

It doesn't sound like that at all, Hap. "I'm gonna let the process take shape," sounds to you like we've seen the end of his career as a Bill? He's not saying anything like that there. It only means he's not willing to commit to a return as of now. Which only makes sense, even if he'd rather return than not. Sorry to bring back what I now see is an old post, though. It was new to me.

Dude, this is flat-out ridiculous. It's just dumb. You're talking about a 3-loss team that starts more draftees than guys who got there other ways. They draft well. Far from perfectly, but well. The established pattern here is to have a team with legitimate Super Bowl aspirations for several years in a row now, and it'll likely be so next year as well.

His first round picks have been plenty good. Two bad 2nd round picks and the rest are OK or not sure yet. I get that this was a feeble attempt at humor, but keep your mitts off the first round. It doesn't make sense. Out of six first round picks, two have been terrific, Allen and Tre, Edmunds has been good, Rousseau is still a bit early but looks like a good deal. Oliver is a very good player, though not a great bargain where we drafted him. Elam started to look really good in the playoffs, he show every sign of starting to really get it. Not to mention getting Diggs for his other pick. And their latest 2nd, Cook, also looks like he was really picking things up near the end. I don't blame you for not wanting to put money on winning the division this coming year. I mean, who wants to win money? It's such filthy corrupting stuff.

Great post. Careful and thorough. Gave me a lot to think about. Good luck on that. 😄 I don't think our GM ranks it a high enough priority to put that many resources into it. I'd like to see significantly above average. Allen runs and moves well enough to make that kind of a line really really effective.

The OL wasn't good. It also wasn't as bad as you're implying. Dawkins and Morse played very well. Bates played well the last half of the season after taking a while switching left to right, a really hard switch since it reverses your footwork. After that, things get questionable. Spencer Brown was recovering from back surgery. That often takes a long time to recover from. A longer time than people want to deal with. He could easily be much better next year. Or not. Some back injuries never really get better. They should bring in someone, probably an FA, to compete in case he doesn't get back to his 2021 form and beyond. Saffold needs to be replaced, obviously. Very much worth remembering. Doesn't look like Morse will let what has happened so far stop him. But he does need to strongly consider his future and we need to do something in case he ends up with another serious concussion at some point. Everyone's all over this, but a guard who can play center should be a high draft priority, if nothing else to provide competition for Bates at center and possibly keep him at guard down the road.

That's deeply wrong. The problem wasn't thinking a closer would make the difference. It did. The D with a healthy Von was terrific. Including strangling the life out of the Chiefs this year by holding them to 20 points. "Nobody is stopping Mahomes"? We did this year. The problem was Von's injury, along with the many others on the defense, of course. That, Josh's arm injury and Saffold not being the right guy.

Not true. KC is in fact always looking around to see what they can learn from other teams. Always. As has been reported elsewhere, that play that - I believe - they scored two touchdowns on with the outside WR motioning in and then reversing behind the other WR, the one that totally confused the Bengals, Reid said he got that from the Bills, who ran it in 2020 or 2021. The Chiefs are always trying to learn from good teams. So should we. Yeah, absolutely. Take any ideas that would fit us. Find things about them that you can model successfully. Allen wasn't saying copy them in every facet.

It really is not. It's how he operates. It's not absolutely pure BPA, that doesn't exist, but BPA at a position of need is the dominant draft strategy, though certainly not unanimous.

At the right price, vanilla is terrific as long as it's getting you 4.6 YPC and is a very good pass blocker as Devin is. Agreed, basically. It wouldn't do nothing, but the improvement it would provide would NOT be worth anywhere near that high a pick.

Remember how he was going to make our defense vicious, and then he had to bring in new players to do it? They need a guy who can adapt to their already excellent players, not a guy who needs the GM to bring in guys to fit his system. Has the knowledge to be good, IMO, but is he too lazy at this point? And seems like a bad fit for a defense that's already really good.

Probably I'm with you. But the same answer is boring, so I would fix the slot receiver position for the foreseeable future. That's a lot of the reason our shortish pass game wasn't effective. Once Crowder was injured their plan there pretty much went to hell. Draft someone early or bring in a medium-priced FA (good slots can be had for less than top WR money.) I'd love to get Hunter Renfrow. Josh needs a good slot as a safety blanket.

It's not an "indictment" if we didn't use it this year. Whether you use something is based on situation, game plan, what the other team looks like ... Bottom line is that Dorsey was a rookie. He absolutely needs to improve, but he did improve during the year and should continue to do so. Josh loves him, and the offense was very very good this year despite limitations at OL and WR.

That call was fine. The pull on the shirt prevented the play from being made. Agree about the field.

This.

Yeah, people never say bad things on the internet.