Utah John

Harrison has been working out under the watchful eyes of the Bills' medical staff and coaches. If his recovery process wasn't going well, the Bills would certainly have taken action to draft other 1T players. The fact that they didn't do so tells me they are confident in Harrison's ability to contribute this year. BTW he started last year pretty tentatively, but by the last month was playing more snaps and was being effective and disruptive. I think good things are ahead for him.

When Taron Johnson did his amazing pick six against the Ravens, it was early in the second half, and the Ravens had just marched down the field. They were trailing 10-3 and were in position to tie the game. Johnson's play broke the game open. Our defense did a great job containing Lamar Jackson. But, our offense was not operating at normal efficiency. Take away Johnson's heads-up move to fill a passing lane, and the Ravens score on that play instead of the Bills, and who knows where things would go after that. And against the Colts, again, the offense looked like a car that needs high octane gas, trying to run on regular. It just wasn't really clicking. Maybe it's the play calling, where Daboll and McD chose to get conservative to avoid the Big Mistake, maybe it was Josh Allen not playing like he normally does. But this is what I'm talking about. The Bills didn't look like the Bills in those games.

Looking at that 1996 list is just amazing. Clearly the best year ever. We've often had great receivers. Andre Reed, Wagon Wheels Dubenion (after he got old), Jerry Butler, Moulds, Watkins, Marlin Briscoe, Lee Evans, James Lofton, Don Beebe, Bobby Chandler, not to mention newcomers / short-timers like Diggs, Cole Beasley, Terrell Owens, and Ahmad Rashad, and pretty good players like Stevie Johnson, Robert Woods and Peerless Price (sorry if I forgot someone who deserves to be included). The Bills spent almost as much time kvetching about getting a true #1 receiver as they did about getting a franchise QB. We all had in mind someone like Julio Jones or Megatron, huge body, great speed, great patterns, great hands. Turns out our #1 is a pretty short guy who nevertheless is a fantastic receiver. Maybe we were looking in the wrong places.

I'll feel better after the Bills win a playoff game in a convincing fashion. Both the playoff wins last year were close, tight games, and Josh Allen didn't play his best. And of course the year before that, Houston. There is no reason the Bills can't dominate a playoff game, but I really want to see that happen before I'm convinced they're SB-win caliber.

Each player's team built their offense around their skills and both played great last year. Here's why I would take Mahomes over dearly beloved Josh Allen: performance in the playoffs. Allen played poorly in the loss to the Texans. He didn't play particularly well in the playoff wins over the Colts and Ravens, and he looked bad in the loss to the Chiefs. The only time I've seen Mahomes not play really well in a playoff game is last year's Super Bowl, when the Bucs pass rush against a team with a banged up O line dominated, and created a very un-Mahomes type game. When Allen shows he can consistently play great in playoff games, I'll change my vote. Which direction will Allen go in? Toward Mahomes' level? Or to Carson Wentz's level? A couple of years ago people were saying about Wentz what they said about Allen last year. Then the bottom fell out. I do NOT think that will happen with Allen, who has worked too hard to fall apart now. But the point is, predictions are hard, particularly about the future. (Thanks Yogi.)

If playing in the NFL is your dream, you do everything you can to make it a reality. These players have been working almost every day for years to get this chance. Of course all those guys attended.

What team has a spare $15M laying around at this point in the offseason?

He's a poor man's Ryan Fitzpatrick, a guy who can come in and make things interesting for a team, but not a guy you can win with. Ironic that the Bills had both these guys in the lineup while our quest for a real starter was underway. But really there are a lot of equally sort-of-competent QBs out there, being paid pretty well to be available.

Check your math. 213 days ago was a lot longer ago than the playoffs.

It's hard enough for Bills fans to know much about the Bills' salary cap, let alone what's going on with another team. Big picture, though, the Texans were a playoff team that was good but not competitive with the Chiefs. Instead of trying to get better they seem to have decided to crash the roster, purging all the talented players, so they can now tank and then rebuild. The Sabres can show any other sport how badly that can work out.

Who'd give their kid a name that sounds like what vultures eat? (carrion)

No team plays an entire season without some injuries. The extent of injuries to key players will reshuffle the order of dominance. Any team that loses its starting QB for more than a few games is just not going to be competitive. Any team that loses more than two players at the same position is going to struggle. We're just going to have to wait and watch.

And if he gets beat and tries to catch up, we'll have...do I need to type it?...a Wildgoose chase.

I think this is pretty much the nail in the coffin for Cody Ford at tackle. It's looked all along he was better suited to play guard anyway. There's gonna be a problem with roster spots for O and D linemen. Beane wanted to draft guys who could mostly watch for a year, but how many roster spots can e set aside for watchers?

Keep in mind that 37.7% of statistics are just made up on the spot. As for the UDFAs, if that's the situation you were in, would you sign with the Bills? Trying to break into a deep, strong roster -- that's not playing the odds. They would have much better odds signing with a poor team where the depth chart isn't so intimidating. It's the opposite with veteran FAs, who are likely to want to sign with the Bills if the Bills come calling. These veterans figure the Bills are going places, plus the Bills know what they're doing, and if the Bills think the guy can probably help the team, it's worth the shot.

Honestly I was thinking the same thing. Well, not the DE in the second round part. But it would all depend on his quickness and agility, to see whether he could run good routes. OTOH the coaches keep praising up Dawson Knox's skill set. Maybe this is the year Knox gets it all figured out.

Smaller, quicker (except for Star) is fine until it's not. We need more beef.

I've been saying for a month that the Bills are drafting for the future. That's what Beane said in an interview just now. He's figured out what holes he'll have to address in 2022 and 2023, not in 2021 when he's got starters he likes all across the board already. My personal choice, one that I see no one else mentioning, is a safety, to learn from Hyde and Poyer and to be prepared to step in when either of them loses the step that we all know they will lose eventually.

Thanks for adding Tomlin to the list. I think that with him, the list is complete. The thing is those guys are all much more experienced. McDermott sometimes fails at game management, but much less now that he used to. If he can keep improving himself, that will get sorted. The overlooked factor in our McBeane love is the contributions of veteran players like Lorax and Kyle Williams. Once the cancers had been removed, these guys really stepped up and taught the younger guys how to win. They both deserve to be on the Bills' Wall for what they did at the end of their careers

That was their thinking a year ago. Maybe after a year watching Love, they realized he isn't what they hoped. And so, with a team last year that almost made it to the SB, the Packers have to decide whether to ride Rodgers another season and hope for the best, or step back a bit and let the future come to them. It's a tough choice, but the key factor is the Packers understanding what they've got with Love.

He knew where McKenzie was and where McKenzie was going, but before he threw the pass he looked away for long enough that he fooled the DB completely. And he did not look back at McKenzie before throwing. That counts as a no-look pass. Also an I-can't-believe-he's-our-QB pass.

Beane isn't just managing the salary cap. He's also managing the roster not only for this year but for the future. As I've been saying for weeks, I think Beane is drafting the BPA in one of the positions where he expects to have a need in 2-3 years. There won't be a lot of roster spots for many rookies, and there are very few spots in the starting lineup where a rookie will be better than the veteran incumbent. Maybe EDGE is the exception. So if he can't get an EDGE rusher he thinks is worth the pick, my personal best guess is that Beane will draft a safety who will be ready to go when either Hyde or Poyer loses a step in a couple of years. It went without much notice, but the Bills let Dean Marlowe, a good reserve safety, leave during the offseason. I think Marlowe's roster spot goes to a rookie.

I have no idea how good Chuck Bednarik was so I have no opinion on ranking him there. But Bradshaw ahead of Simpson? NO WAY. As the article mentions, it was the tremendous Steelers defense that won all those championships. Bradshaw (the original TB12) was a good QB, but there is NO WAY he surpassed what Simpson did. There's far too much emphasis on winning championships in ranking individual players. You can make the case that OJ was the first victim of cancel culture. His football achievements were conspicuously ignored due to the fact that he was a vicious, brutal knife murderer. There is even talk that his name should come off the Bills' ring of honor. Not recognizing his achievements -- the only RB to get 2000 yards in a 14 game season, dominating the league for three or four years as the obvious MVP -- can only be due to people not wanting to honor a killer that way. But that's not what this list was about.

Beane did the same thing a couple of years ago. He loaded up on good O line players, then winnowed down by trading some of them during training camp to teams desperate for help at the position. He used a lot of that draft capital quite well. Unfortunately one of the guys he traded away was Wyatt Teller, who's become an all-pro with the Browns. It would sure be nice to have him back. I think the odds are that Cody Ford gets traded away this summer. He just isn't dominating the way he was expected to.

Hey, why not. Everyone on this board has the chance to win the lottery. Well, they do if they buy at least one ticket. It's just not likely. The league is built to let teams rise up and then struggle to maintain their edge, and finally slip back into the pack. A team that uses a year or two to learn how to win, after years of struggles, will find it has only a few years left before key players depart to get more money or a better chance to start, or retire, or get injured. It's just a very rare occurrence.