Thurman#1

Yup. There is literally always good reason to complain. Putting together a schedule is a task with unlimited complexity, just millions of factors to be considered. There are also always reasons to be happy. They do their best. From what I remember they put in their requirements and then they generate possible schedules and there are millions of them. They throw out the ones with obvious problems, and they can quickly eliminate a huge number but they are left with thousands and thousands of options, each of which comes with many strong advantages and many strong disadvantages. And they just do their best to balance everything and pick their best option with all things considered. But you will absolutely have things to complain about, always. And things to celebrate. For every single team. Here's Peter King on a shortened version of how they put together the 2021 season: https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2021/05/16/nfl-schedule-release-fmia-peter-king/

Nothing out of the slot? McKenzie and Crowder have totalled 213 yards, 3 TDs and 13 1st downs. On 34 targets. Those are solid numbers for slot.

Yeah, I believe they did. https://nfltraderumors.co/bills-make-six-moves-including-placing-wr-jamison-crowder-on-ir/

I really do love Shakir. But McKenzie and Crowder are plenty good also. I want to see him more consistently, but I don't have any particular urge to see him ahead of the other two, especially early in the year. And for people criticizing McKenzie's hands, I just don't see it. The guy had 30 catches on 34 targets in 2020, 20 catches on 26 targets in 2021 and has 15 catches on 21 targets this year, including the one Josh bounced to him at the goal line. Are some of those easy one foot throws on jet sweeps? Yeah. But not all and I don't think most. He doesn't miss a lot. Shakir has 5 catches on 9 targets. Not saying that's bad. He has good hands, but so does McKenzie.

They really did measure 120 and 123 on the field, two sources at different times.

You want to see sensitive, watch the Edmunds "truthers." They're nutty sensitive.

Romo and Nantz? If that's who you were listening to, I'd argue you're really over-sensitive. I didn't notice a thing.

He absolutely did not have sole possession. I don't think he ever had full possession. Looked to me that Fitzpatrick wasn't holding Gabe's arm, only pressed against him trapping it by keeping his arm and body between the arm and the ball. Defenders are coached to do that and refs allow it. I think you're right that Minkah had gotten primary possession but never full or complete possession. Great play by Davis.

Yeah. Keenam is a top 5 to 10 backup. Probably closer to top 5. Not that you'd want him to play much. But that's true of every backup. If there were a backup that weren't true of, he'd be a starter. Look at Frank Reich, one of the better backups in team history. His QBREC (Team Record in Games Started by this QB (Regular Season) was 5-15. His career passer rating was 72.9. 40 TDs and 36 INTS. A 54.5% completion percentage. And he was a damn good backup.

Yup. Wildly obvious to anybody, with the exception of himself and a very few others. Every once in a while he says something that makes total sense and isn't apparently a product of deep anxiety and depression issues. Always shocks me.

Well, half a thought, anyway.

If any of these games were this week, everyone would be picking the Bills, yes. Equally, though, if you find a bet for the Bills going 11-1 the rest of the way, you'll get excellent odds. And very very likely lose. Teams have bad games. Opponents have good games. Players have injuries and get sick. Balls bounce strange. Receivers slap good passes up in the air to be interceptions. Fantastic QBs bounce short game-winning passes to short quick funny WRs in Miami. Fantastic QBs slip running game-winning quarterback sneaks. Stuff happens. Certainly not impossible. But yeah, quite unlikely. Which ain't rocket science. Just look into the odds if you want to make that bet. But who cares? That's not the question. The question is can they win enough games to be the #1 seed in the AFC. IMO the odds are higher for that and it's way more important.

Ragland was a 2nd rounder. And they got a 4th for him. Since then that has turned out to be decent value. At the time it was a bit controversial. Yeah, this'n.

Nice. Thanks, as usual.

It's not the QBs. It's the teams.

Don't know McCann well enough to have an opinion on him, but the type of deal you're talking about here would make me happy,

Yeah, depending on availability and price, I'd like to see them address the OL. I doubt there'll be any big moves, but wouldn't mind seeing something.

Yup, and the decision would be no.

If there's a pattern, it's generally that a few here blame anything that went wrong on the coaches (which is a fan tendency, I mean, who turns in to these games to watch the coaching?) Nobody is burying their head on that play. Wallace literally said that they'd called the right play for the situation and that he'd screwed up on-field communication with the safety by not looking back at him. Laugh it up, Scott, but yes, we do. Levi Wallace: "That last play we had a good play called. But we were all on different pages on how we thought it looked, right? ... I put a lot of the blame on myself, thinking that I was going to know where Jordan and Matt were going to be, so I never looked. I think that's where we took it for granted, seeing where they were at. Because we had to defend outside and we had to defend that little in-route that he ran too. And I never looked at Poyer or Matt to see their lineups. And Poyer, usually he's near me and usually that (unclear word) route is usually a pick, and looking back at the play now I'm like, 'dang, he was that far back , like if I had just looked back I would have scooted in." https://www.reddit.com/r/buffalobills/comments/uibn9g/levi_wallace_explains_what_happened_in_the_last/

Well, yeah, they're not official or anything, but there's nothing that's official. Having said that, Joe watches every snap for every guy and he's smart. His stuff is generally on target.

It's not poor planning. It's just something you disagree with. He might have dropped more than the other people did. Fact is, this is how McDermott and the FO develop rookies. You look at Singletary and you see that in his first nine weeks he had 49 runs and 22 targets. One game with more than 8 runs. Moss in his first nine games had 52 runs and 10 targets. Didn't really see much of him till Week 13. Cook really doesn't need to be productive this early. The Bills are doing fine with him doing what he's doing now. There's no particular hurry.

Plenty of guys improve without getting any or many game reps. That's what practice is for. I'm with you that 10 games seems like a good guess at when we start to see some results.

Um, 6:20 in the 3rd quarter of the Ravens game. That's actually very recent. Singletary lines up in the backfield and the play goes for 14. More, Orlovsky didn't say the Bills were one of the best "regular RB screen" teams. He said they were one of the best screen teams. And with three screens in the 2nd half alone of the Ravens game (the one above, the one where Singletary lined up outside and the one to Shakir), each going for 14 yards, it would appear that Orlovsky is right just based on very recent evidence. I mean, the Bills threw 36 passes in this game, and in three screen passes from the 2nd half, they got 42 yards out of their total of 213 yards. That's 20% of their passing yardage on three plays, and I didn't even look at the 1st half to see if there were more screens there. (I apologize, Turk, for that little dig. I have edited it out. I thought you were being sarcastic and see that you were serious. Sorry about that. Even more stupid there than I usually am.)

Think we couldn't find some bad teams that run a lot too? The Giants, Browns, Bears, Falcons and Eagles are the #1 to #5 teams this year at running yards. The Eagles have showed success so far, but that top five is not exactly Murderer's Row. The top five in YPC is equally unimposing: The Lions, Giants, Ravens, Bears and Seahawks. The fact that one team runs a lot doesn't show much beyond the fact that that one team runs a lot. IMO the Eagles are a good team that won't compete for a championship this year. I could definitely be wrong about that, but we'll see. The Rams last year won the SB while averaging 4.0 YPC, much worse than the Bills. 25th ranked in terms of run yards and also 25th best in terms of YPC. The year before that, the championship Bucs were 28th in run yards and 26th in YPC. That doesn't mean that a run game won't help. But those two data points absolutely and without doubt show you don't need a great or even a good run game to win a championship. Anyway, the OP is right that the problem in our run game is mostly OL problems.

A good running game doesn't require 25 - 30 attempts. Where is that written? That's just something you're making up. A good running game requires a good running game. That's it. A good running game would help. It's not absolutely necessary, but there will absolutely be times and situations where it would help. IMO as the line gels, our run game will get better, as it did last year near the end of the season. There's no guarantee, though.