Utah John

McGovern thinks center is his natural position but the Cowboys tried him there and he was terrible. All the hoopla about him taking that job and holding it sounds great and I hope it's all accurate because that would solidify the line, but I would not be surprised if the rookie with too many names takes the center job by early November, and McGovern slides back to LG.

"VPN is basically a service where you are routed through a server to affect you geocache for area blocked streaming" OK, so most of those words are in English dictionaries, but strung together like that they make a somewhat foreign language. Is there a link to a page with instructions for us CSL people (Computers as a Second Language)?

The Bills will certainly miss Morse. They will of course miss Floyd. Those are two players you neglected to mention. They will also miss the experience of Poyer and Hyde, even if they were both a little too slow to be all the team needs. You sound like a very hopeful and optimistic fan, and I hope you're right, but I expect the team to remain good but to take a step back this year. It's now 2025 when I think all the pieces will fall into place.

Not gonna happen. The Bills will be good this year but not quite as good as they've been the past few years. Would Bosa make the 2024 Bills better? Sure. Would Bosa put the 2024 Bills into the Super Bowl? Nope. Beane is attempting to get through the end of the core group that nearly got the Bills to the Super Bowl (13 seconds away) without the team falling apart, and positioning it to improve substantially in 2025. Tying up huge money in an aging player is what burned Beane a couple of years ago, and he's not making the same mistake again.

Who cares? Two consenting adults.

We all think he SHOULD be but when voters consider him five years after his retirement they'll see no Lombardis (boy I hope I'm wrong about that, but that's how it is now), no All-Pros, no Pro Bowls, no MVPs. His stats will be very good but by then who knows how the league will have evolved, and maybe there will be a dozen QBs who have better stats. People remember Cam Newton (the closes comparison QB I can think of) but not nearly as impressively as people regarded Newton while he was playing. Hope for the best but prepare for disappointment.

I could do without knowing his favorite Japanese snack choices. Too much time was spent on all that. As for the workouts, it's interesting that he got together with Moulds, who would be in the HOF if he'd had a decent QB throwing to him. I always thought Moulds was a dedicated, talented professional, and it's fine that Shakir is being guided by him. And anyone who thinks they could step on a football field and do what Shakir does, should ask if they could match those workouts for agility, speed, strength, quickness, and balance. Josh Allen started out with the Bills with terrible mechanics, and he spent offseason time for at least two summers working with Jordan Palmer, and the results were of course incredible. I don't think Shakir was deficient when he got to the Bills, but if he can improve even a fraction of the amount that Allen did, he's going to be great.

My biggest complaints at Sunday Ticket are first that so many games are being played on days other than Sunday so they're not included, and that means contracts with other streamers -- and second that YouTube sucks compared to DirecTV's system. The NFL cash-grabbers are breaking the golden goose they've built for themselves, just out of greed.

Running backs are like the IT guys at most businesses. Good ones are a dime a dozen, while really special ones get paid. They have a wide range of duties and they're expected to be good at all of them. And most IT guys move to another job in a few years (although they leave because they developed skills, while RBs leave because they're used up).

OK, April and not March, you're right. It's still chilly and gray in Buffalo, when every where else has flowers and sun and spring, and Buffalo is still 40 degrees. It's right next to an ice cube the size of Ohio so it's not that surprising, but April in Buffalo (when I lived there) was always the most frustrating month.

There's a theory that there's no such thing as bad publicity, but come on, don't any of us know what Buffalo looks like in March? If the draft were held in June, when Buffalo's weather and appearance are glorious, that would be great. But do you really want hundreds of thousands of people to come to Buffalo and see piles of dirty snow, cloudy skies, mud where there will soon be vegetation, and cold rain or snow? I know that Detroit just did this, and that Detroit's weather is similar to Buffalo's. So how many of those people who visited Detroit asked themself if they'd ever want to go there again, let alone live there. Detroit is very nice in the summer but that's not what those people saw.

The Bills are all-in on going against the grain of what other teams are doing on offense. Most teams are focusing on QB/WR pairs and paying a fortune for them, and so most defenses are focused on stopping the pass. The Bills are building a huge set of TEs and WRs, and look to me like a team that's going to balance passing and running, trying to wear out smaller defenses. For this purpose, the Bills are not putting a huge pile of cash in anyone's pocket except Josh Allen's, and that makes perfect sense to me. Beane had a personal rule of not buying expensive FAs, instead building through the draft and smart trades. He broke that rule with the Von Miller signing, which was a direct response to the 13 second game's failure to get to Mahomes. That looked good until Miller got hurt (the Bills beat the Chiefs in the regular season when Miller pressured Mahomes and he threw an INT to Taron Johnson) but it's since blown up in their faces. Now it's back to Beane following his own rule. He's building a roster with a clear plan in mind, not the same plan as other teams are following, and that's probably going to work out well.

I'm sorry but I view this as a distraction from the task at hand. Steveson is clearly a powerful man with good awareness of leverage and positioning, but there are a thousand things to know about playing any position in the NFL, and he doesn't know any of them. Maybe this is just a squirrel for reporters to chase, instead of asking endless repetitive questions about experience at WR or whether McDermott or Babich will call defensive plays.

I have no idea what that really means. He's been on three different teams -- did none of them play the way he thought they should? And if not, what did he try to do about it?

Works every time.

The Bills look like they're going to continue to have good O line play. Brown has turned the corner at RT, Torrence looks really good at RG, the new center with too many names could turn out good, McGovern should go back to LG where he played well (his experience at center with Dallas was a disaster), and LT Dawkins remains really good. This year could be a down year, if the new center doesn't take the job right away and we have to keep McGovern at center with a backup at LG. The down year would impact not only the O line but the entire offense. Cook doesn't make holes on his own. Here's hoping the new center turns out to be they guy they needed. The next need will be to draft a strong LT to replace Dawkins as he ages out.

The problem isn't the chains, it's where the ball is spotted. If the ref gets the spot wrong by an inch or two (which isn't hard to do -- I'm not blaming the refs) and the chain measurement comes down to a sliver, what difference will the electronic system make? (And there are times when the spot is quite wrong, not that often but usually critical when it happens.) The only electronic system change I'd really like to see is to have a horn go off when the play clock expires. The current system, where the ref sees the clock go to zero and then looks to see if the ball is snapped, is inconsistent and subject to error. Too many times the ball is snapped when the clock had clearly already run out, and the offense gets to make a big play when it should have been penalized five yards. This should be the easiest system of all to implement. Ask the NBA how to do it if the NFL can't figure it out.

Well, so do I. I think the Bills got a little out over their skis on their safety reboot. Another year of Poyer, even a guy who's noticeably slower, would have helped transition into the Bishop +? years. I just don't think Beane wanted to keep paying Poyer what he'd been getting, and Poyer didn't want to take a pay cut. Fine, let Miami cut him, and then bring him back to the Bills on a vet minimum contract. Any intel on Miami's offense and Tua would be appreciated.

Nope, just curious. As others have said the Bills seem to find excellent FO personnel.

No one seems to pay attention to the scouting staff but they're one of the most important parts of the team's front office. The Bills' web site mentions the moves on the staff and who's been added, but not who's been dropped. I think it would be very interesting to see which scouts found, and contributed to the Bills drafting or signing as UFAs, which players. Are the ones that Beane listened to, the ones he kept on board? This might be a little too hard for reporters to uncover, but it would be a whole lot better than endless articles about the WR situation or where the team will hold training camp (of COURSE it's back in Rochester).

Why on earth would a school pick a football player, particularly a kicker, to be the commencement speaker?

I've been thinking that Beane is ahead of the curve in this. His approach is to flood the field with 4-5 really big, reasonably fast receivers, and let Josh Allen find the open guy. A lot of offenses are being built with really fast receivers and so most defenses are being built to stop them. The Bills can field at least four receivers at 6'3" or more (some combination of Kincaid, Knox, Coleman, MVS and some of the others, with a smaller and quicker receiver in the slot) and one of them is going to be single covered by someone a lot smaller and lighter. I think size, strength, and agility will become the new speed in the NFL. Until defenses adjust again, hit em where they aint. Shakir didn't get as many targets or catches largely because Diggs and Davis were on the field as the primary receivers on most plays. I am not saying Shakir is as physically gifted as ASB but he does seem to be getting better each year.

I see you're catching on.

For anyone else still struggling with The Athletic, you can call the NY Times help desk at 855-698-1150. I did this and now am back with access. Apparently they switched their servers or something and that caused the problem.

Tyrod Taylor is 34 and will turn 35 before the season starts. Not as old as Rodgers, but no spring chicken either. I wonder if this won't be the oldest starter and backup QB in league history.