billsfan89

Knox is really close with Josh, I think people underestimate this when thinking Knox is gone next year. Yes the Bills won't be able to keep Knox at a 17 million dollar cap number and his dead cap charge is only 7 million. But given the relationship I think as long as Knox is willing to be reasonable with his deal he will be back for one more year. I think they probably could knock his cap number down to the 10ish million range and basically bring him back for one more year at around 3 million because they would already be sinking in 7 million on the dead cap charge. Just seems like if this 3 TE rotation is working and one of the guys is Josh's friend and a pretty good player but overpaid they could probably work out the overpaid part.

I don't think Beane has invested much at WR since 2020, that I will agree. I don't think he's done bad at WR from 2021-2024 given the relative lack of resources put into the position But I also don't think he's done well there either. I was glad to see them invest their top two picks in 2023 and 2024 into pass catchers for Josh and I am glad to see the early returns on Palmer looking solid. If Kincaid returns to his rookie year form, Keon develops, and Palmer is a solid complementary outside vet WR I think they will have assembled a good WR room esp with Shakir already being a quality slot WR and I think they will get some pop out of Moore and or Samuel here or there. But I do think the Bills should eye drafting another WR in the first three rounds in 2026. Assuming Moore and Samuel are gone they will need to keep putting in talent there.

Going to my first game at Highmark to see the old stadium off. Looing for one ticket in the $300 range (willing to go up to $350 if the value is there). PM me with any details. Go Bills.

Hard to say what he's gonna do because the way the rest of this season plays out is going to shift the priorities of the team. Assuming there's no McGovern extension (Which is unlikely) the Bills could have two spots on the offensive line open with Edwards and McGovern being free agents. Also WR still remains a possible sore spot if Palmer/Keon aren't panning out the rest of the way.

They haven't since 2019 when they acquired Brown/Beasley made many moves at WR via free agency. 2020 they acquired Diggs via trade a home run in my opinion. In 2021 they signed Emmanuel Sanders for a rental and that was solid. 2022 they added Jamison Crowder and he got hurt. 2023 they signed Trent Sherfield a special teams signing and a cheap one at that. In 2024 they whiffed on Samuel but found a decent low end find in Mack Hollins. In 2025 the early returns on Palmer have been solid. Given that none of these deals were for any significant amount of money and more than 1 year deals other than Samuel and Palmer I don't think that's a bad track record. Not great but not bad at all given the circumstances.

2023 his injury was a fluky broken leg in that completely bull#### London game. 2024 was the torn pec in training camp which also seemed kind of fluky. Other than that he's been mostly durable.

To me this is going to be another game where the RB's have a lot of carries and they try to control the clock and grind this game out. If that's the case I suspect the TE's will get a lot of targets as they look to get "easy" first downs in more manageable down and distances. The Jets game will likely be the blueprint once again for what they will try to do against the Fins. Of course Josh is there in a "break glass in case of needed" event. But I think this looks to be a big James Cook game.

The Bills defense in 2023-2024 had this pattern where it tends to "beat up" on bad offense well while also capably handling mid-level offenses. Above average offenses the success rate is 50/50 where they can give up big points or hold them in check and top 10 caliber offenses most of the time give them indigestion and usually can spot upper 20's or more points. Of course this year the Bills through 2 games have the same exact pattern. I think that for now the Bills simply just have to handle the bad to mid-level offense well and "get fat" while they can. We will see later in the season when they face better offenses just where this defense is at (although if Burrow is hurt for the Dec 7th game the Bills may only face Philly and Tampa as elite offenses the rest of this season).

Bosa in 2024 with the Chargers played 66% of the teams snaps roughly in the mid 30's in terms of raw snap counts per game. Bosa managed to play 14 games last year. In week 1 Bosa played 35 snaps accounting for 66% of the teams snaps. So very heavy use similar to his last year in San Diego where he missed a few games. In week 2 Bosa played 26 snaps accounting for 55% of the teams defensive snaps. I think the Bills are going to have to try to keep Bosa much closer to his week 2 snap count and percentage if they want to keep him healthy. What worries me is that unless the game is a garbage time Q4 game like against the Jets the Bills don't have much at DE to rotate him out until Hoecht gets back from suspension. Groot is playing as heavy a snap count, AJE and Solomon rotate in but both guys are better suited in rotational roles. I would bite the bullet so to speak and play AJE more with Groot and have AJE hit a higher snap count even if he's less impactful than Bosa. When Hoecht gets back they can have Hoecht take most of Solomon's snaps and eat into Bosa's snaps too. But that's 4 games from now. Hopefully the Bills can just blowout the Fins and Bosa just gets pulled in the last quarter of the game and this is a non-issue.

I remembered thinking don't trade up you need to build a complete team around any QB you draft and if you have to take Lamar at pick 12 just take him and use all those other picks to grab some O-line and WR's for him. But then when they traded up I thought I was a "wrong Josh" guy. But then I looked at what I wrote and I seemed to like the pick and not mention anything about Rosen. I think I was worried about the accuracy issues but understood that the accuracy issues with Josh may have been overblown in college. It wouldn't have been terrible to have Lamar and merely get the second best QB in the draft and a top 2-4 QB in the league but I'm super glad we got Josh Allen. I guess my memory was faulty and I wasn't as off on Allen as I thought...

The Bills are just not going to be able to trade for a proven guy like Parsons. The Bills don't have the cap space to do it. The picks the Bills would be willing to part with but the Bills can't pay 40 million for a pass rusher. The Bills are going to have to draft D-line players and hope to find a hit or take on older injury prone or flawed vets like Bosa. Hopefully Bosa can stay healthy this year and the Bills get that "war daddy" pass rusher for this year while they develop the 3 D-line they drafted (Walker looks like he could be a complete stud if he stays healthy and builds out his lower body). Groot and Ed are very good and you need those D-line players. But the Bills outside of that brief time with Von in 2022 never had that one guy that defenses had to account for week in and week out. The Bills path to finding that is gonna be through the draft which is hard or through lower end free agency which means taking on injury risks.

Josh wasn't the only issue certainly. But he was the driver of a lot of turnovers from 2021 to 2023, he would just make a few throws a game where it was like what were you thinking? Then he would make a few "force it" throws too. I think Josh's maturation as a QB has helped him avoid the obvious bad throws and the scheme putting less pressure on Josh by developing a ground game and making things easier on him and protecting him better so there's less need to "force" the issue. I think if I had to pinpoint the issues of the turnovers in 2021-2023 I would say Josh was the primary but not only driver of them. He cleaned that up a lot in 2023 when Brady took over and in 2024 he vastly improved even further. Of course the RB's fumbling less and WR's and other players being better in their roles have helped. There's some variance in turnovers year to year that are luck based but largely if you are a smart well coached team with a good QB you are going to be in the top 10 in turnover percentage each year. Now some years you might be top 5 others you might be 10 because of the variance with luck. But coaching and QB play always kept the Pats well above average in turnover margin.

I actually thought I was a "wrong Josh" guy for years. I don't know why I remember liking Rosen in the draft process more than Josh (I actually liked Lamar with no trade up better than trading up for either) but my posts at the time weren't thinking "wrong Josh". I recently looked back at the initial thread of when Josh was drafted back in 2018 and I saw that I actually liked the pick at the time. I was concerned about his accuracy issues but thought he could work it out. I also liked the Bills staying put at 12 and drafting Lamar as I thought his ceiling was Eagles Mike Vick which is a good comp even if he has exceeded that a touch. I'm super glad to have Josh here, I hope we could at least get one Super Bowl with him here, because teams rarely get a good QB to come around let alone a great one...

I know turnovers has some variance with luck (DB's dropping passes, fumbles being recovered by your own team, and just some fluky bounces on special teams and other circumstances) but Josh has fixed a lot of his turnover issues and that's reflecting on the Bills positive turnover ratio.

I am nervous that Williams will get picked on by McDaniels but I also think that McD also knows how to hide LB's if needed by simplifying the game and reads for them. So overall I think Milano getting a week off and the "mini-bye" is fine. Williams can get the start Shaq and Buffalo Joe plus a PS call up will be there for depth.