Thurman#1

Andre was the 86th pick. Shakir 148th. Andre was 6' 2", with long arms. But yeah, both had a smoothness to their movements. Still, Shakir has a long way to go before he should be compared to Andre. Andre had 637 yards in his first year, under another coach who tended to bring young guys in slower than many liked, though the Bills were bad enough at that point, that Levy wasn't as slow as he became when the lineup was really good.

And it wasn't always comp picks. They got a 1st rounder for Richard Seymour before the last year of his contract. That got them Nate Solder and probably let them feel they had the freedom to take their original 1st rounder that year and trade it for a 1st and a 2nd the next year. Always more picks. https://www.nbcsports.com/boston/new-england-patriots/patriots-still-reaping-rewards-seymour-deal

Both lineups healthy? Bills by a significant margin. But less than would be comfortable. And less than had been true in the recent past.

There is no surprise. It's just pointing out that the vast lahars of pessimism we've seen here are wild overreactions. We certainly do need to do a good job with personnel acquisition this year. But so does every team every year, really. I strongly disagree that injuries had little to do with the loss to the Bengals. IMO with Hyde, Von and Da'Quan on the field, not to mention with Poyer healthy rather than limping around like a golem, there's a very decent possibility that game looks a whole lot different.

Tied him up and hid him in the basement. People would have forgotten about him.

We didn't miss the opportunity with Hodgins. He's about the best guy on the Giants, but he's probably the 5th best here. Why cry about 351 yards in Jersey on 417 snaps and 48 targets. He's a replacement level guy with the possibility of getting better. But he doesn't get much separation, which is what they look for for WRs for Allen. As for Daboll, there were disagreements there, but it happens. Wasn't a big deal. He left because he wanted to be a head coach. He's never made a secret of that. Good luck to both, as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah. Things can change, of course. But that's generally how he's thought of right now. A smart guy who looks like he might go a long way.

It's a lateral move, but onto a staff that has a better path upwards if he does well there. Also, if someone does well in two places it looks better on his resume than doing well in one place for the same total length of time. WR development was OK last year. Shakir got significantly better as the season went along, Davis got better, though not as much as we'd have liked. This isn't good for the Bills, but it's how the world works. They'll adjust and deal.

Wasn't so much that they made a priority of OL. It was more that they had Scarnecchia who was an absolutely exceptional OL coach who did not want to go higher and Peter Principle himself. Also, Belichick really was a very good drafter up till the last four years or so. He also had a smart system, acquiring more picks rather than trading up, generally. They were drafting late 20s most years and still drafted quite well. Belichick was brilliant with trading for more picks and getting more picks through the comp picks system. Belichick was ruthless with the cap, cutting guys early, You mentioned this but it was crucial. They built through the draft, filling in gaps with low- and mid-priced FAs. They also did all the little tiny unimportant things well, including cheating and going right up to the edge. Who was that dark lord figure behind the scenes that Belichick relied on so much? I always forget his name but he had a lot to do with it.

Morse might indeed retire, but if he doesn't they can not let him go. Last thing we need right now, the very last thing, is to go creating new holes on this OL. I'm with you that I think Bates stays also.

I totally disagree with this. He gives up? Just the opposite. One of his absolute strengths is that when Allen is scrambling for extra time Davis is terrific at keeping the play going and finding space. He's terrific at it. He's got his limitations, certainly, but he fights for contested balls and keeps going when he's covered. Both strengths for him. He's got a tight lower body, hips and legs. I hadn't thought it was all that big a deal, but according to Joe Marino the other day, this is a physical limitation for him. And it means he's mostly going to be doing more vertical routes. This means he's not as good at hard horizontal cuts.

Yes. Must ... blame ... coaches ... and ... GM. (The Enterprise is rocked by an explosion. Kirk is thrown across the bridge, and catches himself against a console.) Got to ... throw ... shade on ... anyone ... but ... players.

Again, that play was on the players. We know it because Levi Wallace has specifically said that the coaches called the right play and that it comes down to the communication between Poyer and Wallace. That Poyer was playing deep to stop the Hail Mary and Wallace assumed that he'd be playing shorter to stop the shorter pass allowing a field goal to tie and so their communication was awful. This is a good example of confirmation bias. If you're focused on the coaches, you won't listen to the players specifically telling you what happened and whose fault it was. Oh, and how many points did our offense score against the Bengals? The teams was emotionally drained. We've heard the same thing from about a half a dozen of the Bills.

Oh, no. I'll pray for her.

Not true at all. Josh being terrific is certainly one of the reasons we won 13 games. There are plenty of others, though. The defense was 5th in the league in points allowed, 19.1 points per game despite losing Hyde, Von Miller and many many others for an awful lot of the season. Anyone not seeing that was a major part of the picture just doesn't get it. I certainly would like to see them upgrade the line. But that's not all. They need S, WR and probably DL as well, unfortunately.

Allen is #1 in jersey sales in the NFL. https://buffalonews.com/business/local/with-nfl-s-top-selling-jersey-josh-allen-s-popularity-reaches-next-level/article_63dbcf2c-a0cb-11ed-98fd-57bad9134ddb.html Remember all those times Philip Rivers was #1 in jersey sales? Yeah, me neither. OP just listens to the wrong people. Wait, who was #1? Josh Allen. You mean Joe Burrow? Josh Allen. You mean Pat Mahomes? Josh Allen. There'll be recency bias. But people love Allen, and Bills fans alone wouldn't buy enough to make him #1.

One year don't make an era. Old guys won the last two SBs.

Nope.

Don't do polls. This is a good example of why.

Not me. Burrow was a #1 pick for a reason. He was a ton more NFL-ready than Josh. Josh was always going to take time. Burrows stood a great chance of being really good really fast.

Of course you won't respond. Why would you? You said it cost the same thing, and you were wrong, and there's no way out of it. If I were trapped into such an awful position as your OP put you in, I personally wouldn't spend ten seconds trying to defend it. Totally understand why you'd stay away, makes total sense. Your plan would cost $7M+ extra in 2022, $8 - $12M extra in 2023, and yet more in 2024. You're in a crappy spot here. It's why you keep moving the goal posts in every post you make on this. Now you're saying it's an O-line at reasonable cost. Even that doesn't make complete sense. For a team with a lot of cap space, yeah, the cost is a bit high, but not outrageous. For a team that as tight against the cap as we are, adding a bunch of costs here is not reasonable at all. On top of taking Von Miller, an absolute difference-maker, out of the mix. You said it was the same cost as Von Miller. You didn't say that you could have an O-line at reasonable cost. You're the one who created that $4M player out of thin air and then added it into the total to make your argument look better. Not me. You. Don't want people to bother you about $4M? Don't create them out of mid-air. $4M matters plenty to the Bills. Again, they were only $1.9M over the cap last year, and your plan here would've added about $9M to that year's cap before we even consider the 2023 cap and your imaginary $4M. Again, $7M+ extra in 2022, $8 - $12M extra in 2023, and yet more in 2024.

Rivers was terrific. Screwed by being on teams that weren't good enough. Allen is quite a bit better. Whoever you spoke with didn't get it. Not to mention that they were suffering with severe recency bias.

Except, no. They wouldn't have gotten rid of Morse for a rookie at center. If we've discovered anything about this group it's that they tend to feed rookies in slowly, and that they greatly value experience particularly at center. Which makes sense. Morse didn't just play center well, he's improved everyone around him and got them working together well. When he was out, even though the fill-ins did his physical job in an OK fashion though less athletically, but there was an immediate regression of line play across the whole group. If McDermott had let Morse go in that situation, I'd have called the police and asked that they check his bedroom for one of those bodysnatcher pods. If they'd have drafted Humphrey, first, I'd have cheered, but second, they'd almost certainly have put him at guard for a year, if not more, but at least a year. That would have saved them the money of one of those expensive FAs he's saying with hindsight that they should have brought in. Not to mention his casual invention of a $4M player in 2023 who doesn't exist to bolster his argument. Someone will have to fill that spot, but it could easily be a 2nd round pick costing a mill or so on the cap. Or Ryan Bates who is already on the roster and would require zero extra spending. I'm all for improving the line. Don't mistake me. But his way was unrealistic, was developed only with hindsight, and would have cost quite a bit extra in all three of the years those FAs were signed for, in years when we're already in bad cap shape. I screwed up originally and didn't account for the Bills guys who would have been cut to make room for his additions. But it still would have cost quite a bit extra on the cap all three years. But Von was the missing piece that made this defense better than the sum of its parts. IMO if we'd had him we'd have won both those playoff games at KC. Maybe even this one too, though the whole team played like crap. Mahomes just stepped around our rush and hung in there. Burrow did much the same. Von was greatly missed.

Please. Very very fudgy numbers there. You were the one who implied it was a one-for-four swap that would have cost the same. It would not have. It was you who compared Von Miller to those five guys. You who said "Would you trade Von for a brand new OL?" Again, those don't line up. Now you're trying to pretend that if they'd drafted Humphrey then they would not have extended or kept Morse, which is nonsense. They would at least have kept him for competing with and mentoring Humphrey for 2022. When does McDermott draft a rookie and not plan to feed him in slowly? Most coaches do it that way, and for good reason. But at center? No way they would have done that on a year that looked so good looking forward. Morse would have been here and he would have cost about $9M against the cap in 2022. That's about what he'd have cost even without signing the extension. And they absolutely would have kept Morse even if they didn't extend him. In 2023, you throw in $4M in savings in your scheme for a completely theoretical person, whoever they'd have replaced Saffold with. Nonsense. You don't know who that would have been or more particularly how much he'd have cost. Could easily have been a draft choice from this year costing much less, or a cheaper FA. Or a more expensive one, for that matter. But you take a pure wild-ass guess of money and throw it in as if it were a fact. Pure crap adding that in. Would have been at the least $7M extra money in 2022, when we were only about $1.9M over the cap. In 2023, somewhere around $8 to $12M in a year when we now $20.511M over the cap. But you spent $7M extra in 2022 so the situation in 2023 would now have been even worse if we'd spent that extra money last year and had to somehow kick cans down the road. And plenty more in 2024, though assuming they hadn't extended Morse. And more to the point, all that extra money would have resulted in Von not being there. We saw what Von being injured did to the pass rush this year. Nearly destroyed it. You do all of this with the extreme benefit of hindsight, picking four OLs who you saw in 2022 before you proposed this. Real moves don't have the benefit of hindsight. Would've loved to have drafted Creed. At the time I was campaigning for OL in the first two or so rounds. The FAs, particularly together, were just too expensive for this team at that time and into the future, particularly when you include not having Von, who was a huge difference-maker in this defense.

Not surprising. Confirmation bias makes great arguments sound - to the people who will not be persuaded - like excuse making. Plenty of weird trends form in small sample sizes which then straighten out as the sample sizes increase. It's a fact. That's how statistics work. In those Chiefs games they simply couldn't pressure Mahomes. Then they bring in Von Miller. And Von gets injured. And they can't pressure Burrow. The game might have been quite different with Von and DaQuan in there. It's not guaranteed but there's a good chance of it. If Miller is healthy next year and Rousseau has continued improving and we can pressure the way we did early in the season, things could look very different.