Thurman#1

Not easily, he's not replaceable. He had a very good year, and he's a very good player. We all hope he gets even better, but OP is right that he's worth a lot beyond the stats.

Yeah, plenty of players make those claims. That's because plenty of players have those feelings. There really is not much doubt he's one of them. You asked "Does he even want to resign?" I guess you meant "re-sign," and we know he does want to. The question will be how much less than market value will he take? Tremaine is young but these guys don't generally get a lot of contracts. The second one is important. It'll be interesting to watch. My guess is he's back with a lucrative but not market-topping contract. We'll see.

He hasn't gotten a lot of sacks. A lot of that is that he isn't rushed much. He hasn't gotten a lot of TFLs. A lot of that is that Milano is the guy who shoots gaps and Edmunds the guy who goes side to side and fills holes. It's not a mistake Milano line up a step or so forward of Edmunds. People want him to play a role that he isn't playing for this defense. That's correct, not indispensable. Probably not a guy without whom success hasn't been possible, but we can't say because he's tough as nails and has played nearly every game and the Bills D has been very successful and the few games he's missed they've been considerably less so. But again, you can't say for sure because he's missed so few games the numbers are pretty close to statistically insignificant. But when out, they've played much worse. He's only a very good linebacker who plays his role well, who they want back, who they've made a captain year after year, and who is far better than most here appreciate, particularly against the pass. And Tremaine is a ton better than Preston Brown ever was against the pass. Teams didn't avoid throwing to the middle against Preston Brown.

The Pats D isn't any better than ours. Ever so slightly ahead of ours in DVOA, 3rd vs. 4th, and they were pretty healthy compared to our huge amounts of defensive injuries. The Pats were 11thin points allowed and we were 2nd. Pats were 9th in yards allowed and we were 1st. I'm less worried about the Pats and Fins than I am the Jets. It'll depend on the QB but I think they could be good. Like you, I like Saleh a lot. IMO we stand a really good chance to win it next year, but a lot of the reason for that is that it doesn't look good as a division except for us, I think.

Yeah, I guess it's possible Beane doesn't know what he's doing. But nearly all the evidence points the other way. This team has both units near the top of DVOA and the whole team was #1. If he didn't know what he was doing, that simply wouldn't have happened. Doesn't mean he's perfect, of course. But good? That appears very clear. As for their rounds, one of the problems the Bills now have is that they're drafting in the mid to late twenties consistently. The blue-chippers are gone by then. His first round picks have been good. The two first rounders you mentioned, Oliver and Rousseau, are solid value. The two second rounders you mentioned are young and may get better. Or not. So far neither has lived up to their spot, but we'll have to see. And the "business/performance aspect of the enterprise" is doing really really well. Could be better, of course. Only one team really goes home happy at the end of the year and let's face it, we aren't that team. But they put a really good product on the field. Most teams would trade for McDermott/Beane/Allen in a second. "Recency bias from this last game, I know everyone’s gonna lose their minds, but we did a lot of good things this year." - Josh Allen Yup.

Yeah, I wish that instead of the guys who were there in the meetings watching the actual coaching and talking to the players making the call there, instead of the fans who have very little first-hand knowledge. Oh, wait ...

Yeah, we didn't handle their O-line when they had 3/5 of their starters out. But nobody wants to mention that we had 2/5 of the D-Line across from that O-line out, and the ones who were out were probably the two best guys, the two who consistently drew doubles, Von Miller and DaQuan Jones. Nobody seems to want to remember that. This team has had a horrific season, with problems for the ages. And yet again, nobody wants to mention this when talking about how they played. They simply didn't look like the same team. For whatever reason they had a really bad day. If they'd had a good day and a few less injuries, this could easily have been a very different game. Hard to say, of course, but very possible.

They've got three NFL running backs. There really are a few other guys they need or we're in trouble. Von Miller, for one. Daquan Jones for another. And the offense looked significantly worse when Gabe Davis was fighting through his injury. And it's just not true that if we lose only one of those guys it's a disaster. At one point we had six out of our eleven defensive starters not playing. A few came back, but a few more went out. This was a horrible year for injuries. Also disagree that our roster was so far below all those other teams. Generally people have said that our lineup, when healthy, which it rarely was, was one of the top two or three in the league. A bunch of injuries and some OL regression left that a thing of the past. But I agree with the rest of your post.

Not Saffold. But your point stands, I think. For a short while in the early middle of the season things seemed to come together and be improving and it looked a bit the way the 2021 line came together. Then they seemed to regress, particularly at RT. Is it an injury? Who knows, but they didn't improve this year. Kromer has a great reputation, but something resulted in the line not getting much better. And Saffold was apparently a Kromer guy and he was not a good pickup. It's always harder to tell whether the problem is players or coaches than fans want to admit. From outside the building a lot of times it's very hard indeed. But something was wrong there. Hope they'll get serious about drafting some young talent fairly high this year at OL. Sure, there's probably a 1% chance that it all happens like that. But kid yourself you can tell the future if you want.

You will always have injuries. Except when you pretty much don't. The last two years we had injuries, but few and mostly at spots that weren't crucial. This year we didn't just have injuries, we had far more injuries than usual and injuries at absolutely key positions. Hyde, White, DaQuan and Von are probably four of our five best players and three of them didn't play and the other didn't play like himself. And Poyer, another of our best, was just hobbling. That's probably our three best DBs. Of course the Bengals had all the space in the world. I said it last post, but it's worth remembering, because it had a huge effect. We played Marlowe on 41 defensive snaps, a guy who wasn't even on the team most of the season, Jaquan Johnson on 34, Cam Lewis on 13, Siran Neal on defense not STs for 5. Why would anyone expect good performance from this ragtag group? Really good teams having seasons destroyed by important injuries is a very common occurrence. It's real. Teams can recover if there are not too many and especially if they are not at key positions. And the defense with all those injuries held the Bengal offense to about their season average, while the Bills offense scored 10 points less than the Bengals usually allow. Am I trying to say that therefore everything is peachy and no changes are needed? No, not at all. They need to improve. I'm confident they will. Enough? We'll see.

Oh, nonsense, as usual. The D weren't even bad this postseason, much less your continuing on with your other untrue generalization. The offense was a lot worse than the defense against these Bengals. Not that the defense was good enough, they weren't. But this group was devastated by injuries, many of them to key players. When you have to play Jaquan Johnson most of the game and Cam Lewis a bunch as well, things are not looking good for you. The D was not good against the Bengals this year (again, with major injuries to important players), but they were very good against the Fins. In the Fins game they allowed 24 points (one TD was 100% on the offense, a Buffalo fumble the Fins picked up and ran into the end zone). Miami also had three drives start in Buffalo territory, resulting in 13 of their 24 points . Miami's offense managed 231 yards total. The D was damn good, though the offense put them in awful positions the whole game through. Last year they weren't good against the Chiefs but were just dominant against the Pats. And how many defenses shut down the Chiefs? The year before they were good though not great against the Colts (finished off the game shutting them down on that last Colts drive that began with 2:30 left on the clock and gasped to a conclusion on the Buffalo 47 yard line trying a Hail Mary) and excellent against the Ravens. Then their worst game, once more against the Chiefs. So yeah, they haven't been good enough against the Chiefs and not especially good against the Bengals with far more injuries than would be expected this year. Other than that, good in the postseason, despite what you're claiming. Wouldn't expect little things like facts to hold back a juicy narrative that fits your preferred conclusion, though.

Guess we'll have to disagree on Von, then. But Burrow absolutely did not get rid of the ball in two seconds every play. He just didn't. A lot, but not every play. He was flushed by one guy a bunch of times. https://www.bengals.com/video/joe-burrow-highlights-top-plays-bengals-bills In this video alone you see, what, five plays where the ball came out late or not at all but only one guy was pressuring. Von in there on those plays and odds are decent we'd have had different outcomes on one or several. And yeah, the Bengals had a bunch of injuries but not at key positions the way we did, and not nearly as many overall. Also don't remember any cataclysmic snowstorms or good friends having their hearts stopped. This was a mismatch for the players too. It just was. The coaches were NOT blameless. Very true. But the players played badly. I mentioned three particular players that really hurt us. If Tre was playing like he was before the injury, whichever WR they put him on in that case would have had a much harder game. Which would have forced Burrow to go through more reads and take more time to allow Von to do his thing. And I can see we both think losing DaQuan hurt a lot. Now what if Poyer's not limping, Hyde is in there ... this team was in bad shape. Hell, they had to put Jaquan Johnson in for 34 snaps on defense, on top of Cam Lewis for 13 more.

Sorry, man, but that's demonstrable bull####. Unless you're willing to seriously argue that "every decent QB not named Lamar Jackson" doesn't include Mahomes. 85.2. That was Mahomes' passer rating against us. Who's the best offense in the league? The Chiefs. The Chiefs scored 20 points against us this year when we were a bunch healthier. I'm sure you'll come up with a million justifications, that's how it works when someone so obviously gets shown as wrong. But it's a fact. When healthy early, we looked really good. One team held the Chiefs to less than 20. So, obvious crap.

The defense this year had massive injury problems, massive. And still were really good. The same defense with a healthy Tre, DaQuan and Von puts up a whole different kind of result, IMO. Do they need more of a pass rush, particularly with Von out? Yeah. They do. For the rest, when they're of average healthiness they are very good. And can we please acknowledge that every team in the world has bad games sometimes. This was one. With the season they've had, and the injuries, it's not surprising. Not that that means that because it was a bad game that makes everything hunky-dory. It doesn't. The coaches deserve their share of the blame. So do the players. Massive team loss.

I don't do polls. But the answer is that of course he can. Without a doubt.

Yup, it's annual. But not because knowledgeable fans see it. Because there's a group of nutty fans, yourself obviously included, who are just obsessed with the idea no matter how many teams win SBs without a guy like that.

Pretending that you know what a guy is after on ... again, completely nuts. Whatever your definition of bust is, it's totally wrong. Thinking that a guy is a bust after one year only shows you just simply don't get it. Unless the guy has been cut from the team calling a guy a bust after a year says far far more about your lack of a clue about how to judge busts than it does about the player. We really don't, Ja. It'd be nice, but it's absolutely not a need. Did L.A. have a guy like that when they won the SB? Did Brady ever play with a guy like that? Not even close to a need. Nice complimentary pieces at RB are how most (certainly not all, but many to most) SB teams look.

Possibly. My guess is they draft someone at some point. But IMO Morse could retire at any point because of the concussions, including this offseason. Thing is, it hasn't failed. Outside your mind, anyway. Both RBs were solid this year. Pretending that Cook and Singletary are wearing out Josh Allen ... that's what's nuts here.

Well, what Joe actually was saying about Allen and Burrow was two things, neither of which was that Burrow was a better QB than Allen. The first was that Burrow in this game passed Allen by. Can anyone argue with that? Seems obviously true to me. The second was that Burrow has usurped Allen's spot as the adversary to Mahomes. That also seems obviously true to me.

Doubtless.

Yup. This. And DL, S and WR probably.

I get the anger after this game. But that is a wild overreaction. They are the #4 defensive team in DVOA, they're 2nd in points allowed and 6th in yards. They're a damn good defense that suffered a ton of injuries all year and drastically missed Miller and DaQuan and Hyde and a healthy Tre this game. They're a damn good defense. And they have drafted well. Not superbly, but very solidly, especially for a team that has consistently drafted in the 20s. Did they still suck yesterday? Yeah. But that doesn't validate your hot takes here.

Politely disagree. I understand the frustration and anger, but it's leading you to be too negative. When DaQuan and Von played, this was a very good DL. Singletary is a good runner, edging on very good. But money will be a major consideration on whether he will be kept. Your evaluation is far far too negative. He has excellent evasiveness, excellent. He is top ten in broken tackles every year for just that reason. He has burst, explosiveness and speed, he wouldn't have averaged 4.6 YPC behind a line that is not among the best in the league if he didn't No, he'll never be a lightning bolt. But he has a lot of runs of over 10 yards, and it's for a reason. Gabe was injured and it clearly affected him. He's good. I'd hoped for more. Hard to say how much the injury Our LBs are really really good, they absolutely are playmakers. This system (and any system, really) requires good DL play in front of them. This system requires a space eater in front of them, a good one. With DaQuan out yesterday, they weren't as good, but that's the way it is with big DTs in front of LBs. Playing well and with fewer defensive injuries, they can play with any team in the league. No question whatsoever, though, that this was not their day. They were not good on the day. As always, they will need a lot of work in the offseason. The problem is that when they brought in Von, they ensured they won't be able to throw around a lot of FA money the next couple of years, and we'll be drafting again the late twenties.

Diggs is essentially a 1st round pick.

Dion isn't bad. He's very good. We don't need to replace him or even think about it. Having said that, he had a bad game. No question. Morse is really good too. But he has to be thinking about when to hang it up. We need to be addressing this. Bates was acceptable. Not better than that. He was better at the end of last year. What happened? Replacing him is not an immediate need, but upgrading there has to be under consideration, now and for the future. RT just was not good enough. But why? Last year he was better than this year and was trending up. He's not been good most of this year. Is that an injury? Has he reached his ceiling? Does he need a different style of coaching? Dunno. But this coaching staff has to be looking very hard at this situation, very hard. Saffold just wasn't good enough. Don't know why, but it was pretty clear that even though he had a few good performances that we need some kind of upgrade. I'd like to see them address the line pretty early in the draft, myself. It's not clear if Beane thinks this is a good idea. I do. God, this was depressing.