transient

Pretty good receiver out of the backfield, both as an outlet and as a downfield option. Brady should be able to have fun scheming up some misdirection with the combination of him and Cook. Throw in the hybrid Curtis Samuel and they might even rediscover how to run a screen.

No TEs or RBs? Dude better stop playing favorites before he loses the locker room... I'm curious if he only invited the WR half of Curtis Samuel. 🤔

It depends... how many stepbrothers does she have in Depew?

My point was more that it's a bit hyperbolic to say it's inexcusable to ask your elite QB in his prime to throw to an inferior cast of WR talent around him. It's not ideal, but once the axe started to fall on the roster after the end of the season with the Bills in cap jail, it is what it is. 2024 was destined to be a reset regardless of what we wanted to believe. Drafting a WR in the later rounds of this draft wasn't likely to change it for next season. Bringing in has-been headcases would only make it worse. Like it or not, it appears that the Bills are going to be asking Allen to make the offense in 2024 greater than the sum of its parts. If the guys they brought in can at least catch, outside of Shakir and Kincaid, that would be a nice change of pace from last season.

1. The Chiefs did a similar thing to Mahomes’ WR corp the last 2 seasons… was that inexcusable? 2. If this offseason has been bad, adding 2024 OBJ or Michael Thomas, both washed up headcases, would make it that much worse.

Kincaid was targeted 91 times last season as a rookie TE, second on the team only to Diggs... he already has a major role in the game plan and he did fine with it. No reason to think he couldn't be up for more in year 2.

That's the concerning thing. We've seen this FO do this before with Davis, overestimating what the player had to give based on promising results in a limited role the season before. Regarding the point about where do the remaining targets come from, for comparisons sake I took a look at KC's target distribution from 2023; they had a pretty middling WR corp but obviously still won the SB. 599 targets, with 319 going to 8 different WRs, and only Rice with more than 100 targets with 102. That left 108 targets to the RBs and 171 to the TEs. Kelce led the team with 121 targets. I suspect we'll see something along the same lines next season, likely with a similar drop in offensive production. If the room stays as it is or similar to where it is I don't think they're going to replace all of the WR production lost with WR production. I think it's going to have to be spread around with increased production from the backs and TEs as well as redistributed within the WRs, and I think they're going to have to hope Kincaid plays a big role in that.

So out of curiosity, I went back to last season's stats to look. Here are the targets: Diggs 160 Davis 81 Shakir 45 Sherfield 22 Harty 21 Among WRs that's 329 targets. I think you can make up 329 targets between Samuel, Shakir, and Coleman with a combination of Hamler, Hollins, and whomever else they bring in added in. Among TEs it was: Kincaid 91 Knox 36 Morris 3 Gilliam 1 Among TEs that's 131 targets. Kincaid was already shouldering a pretty big load, and there's no reason to think he couldn't hit 120+ targets in season 2 IMO. Among backs: Cook 54 Murray 22 Johnson 7 Harris 2 So for the backs that's 85 targets. I could see Cook's workload going up out of the backfield if he learns to concentrate on catching easy TD's, and R Davis was a weapon out of the backfield in college. I'm not saying it's going to work. My biggest concern is who's going to draw the coverage that Diggs did and can these guys step up. My point is that from a purely numbers standpoint the WR targets are not insurmountable with this group.

Not fundamentally disagreeing, but even as a hybrid player, in that season in Carolina with Brady as his OC he saw ~100 targets (I don’t know the breakdown of targets lined up as WR vs out of the backfield). I don’t think he sees Diggs 160 targets, but I’m also anticipating they want to spread those targets around more. For better or worse, I think they’re taking the approach that KC has since trading Hill, rolling without a true WR1 and hoping to make up the production with a cast of WRs. There was a lot made of the depth of the WR class in the draft, but it seems to me a lot of teams passed over a number of “highly touted” players a number of times before they finally came off the board. Suggests to me it was a bit overhyped, and with all of the recent holes created on the roster Beane decided he could get more value selecting other positions and addressing the WR room this season with lower tier FAs. It’s hard to imagine a WR drafted in the 3th rd and beyond generating much production this season anyway.

Leading up to the awesome quote by Booger McFarland - "He's a Popeye's biscuit away from being a tight end".

Given that I posted it before the pick was even made, I would have assumed it would have been recognized that this was a joke based on mrags response to every other pick that has been made after the after the Coleman pick...

He's faster than Coleman... @mrags, saved you the trouble.

Shakir 4.43, Cook 4.42, Kincaide 4.48… I think you’re wrong.

Curtis Samuel ran a 4.3 40.

Didn’t like when he did it. I mean, why the hell did I stay up to watch? But, in the light of day, he managed to add early picks in a draft where talent is expected to fall off sharply due to the lack of underclassmen, and get relative value at the draft selection position, something the team sorely needed given the exodus of the old vets. Not sexy, but functional.

If you look at him as a Davis replacement and not a Diggs replacement, he should be a definite upgrade. I think those wailing and gnashing their teeth are sleeping on Curtis Samuel a bit. Do we have a true WR1 right now? Probably not. But when you look at Diggs production the way they ran offense the last half of last season and then consider Samuel in his role (4.3s 40, physical player) and Coleman in Davis’s role (big target, better hands, better with contested catches, similarly good blocker) with year 2 Kincaid, a rising Shakir and a dual threat Cook it’s not as bad as some here are making it seem. The individual talent may not be as high with Samuel vs Diggs, but collectively, if Coleman turns out to be a Davis upgrade, it’s probably better rounded than any WR room since the 2021 season. They presumably won’t need to give Samuel 100+ catches per year to keep him from being a problem child, and they shouldn’t need to count on replacement level players like off-the-street Cole Beasley and the ghost of John Brown, McKenzie and his inability to focus, Harty, or Sherfield for meaningful production. Looking at it from the perspective of next season, if this doesn’t pan out, they have cap space and draft capital (Vikes 2nd rd expected to be a high second) to actually move up to select a WR in the top of the first or bring in a FA if needed.

So we're done then? After the first round of the 2024 draft? These are the guys that they're taking to camp?

Hey Kirk, what do you think of the draft pick?

Yes, but let's say Butler had moved up and taken a player he really coveted and the Bills were better for it. If the team was better, Wade Phillips may not have been fired (although he may still have fallen on the sword for Ronnie "the mullet" Jones). As a result, the subsequent timeline of coaching hiring and firing may have been very different. Wrex Ryan may have never walked through the door in 2015, so Russ Brandon would never have had the chance to ply him with wine so that he wouldn't leave the buiding. In that case, Doug Whaley may not have been a dead man walking in 2017, and Brandon Beane may not have been there to select Josh Allen in 2018. This whole butterfly effect from trading up would have ruined the most entertaining Bills football since the Kelly era!! I think the moral of this story is that you should NEVER trade up for good players. The peril of trading up for players that you covet just might be that you kill your future unicorn!! You're an awful, awful man for even suggesting such a thing, @dave mcbride!! For those wondering, I am well aware that Brandon Beane, in fact, traded up to select Josh Allen. I'm hoping the absurdity of the post will result in the masses overlooking this obvious flaw in this otherwise ever-so-well-thought-out post.

And a Putney.

The best part of that movie is Tom Telesco’s review of it…

I’m not going to do the work, but I’d be interested in seeing this list relative to QB they played with and staff they were coached by. WR production really depends on the team they have around them.

You do realize that Denver cut RW, right? The only thing remaining of RW in Denver is a giant cap hit...

Technically Nolan wasn’t fired, Regier upon his hiring, opted not to retain him and offered him an underwhelming 1 yr contract. Given the ongoing headache between Muckler, Hasek, and Nolan during the preceding season, one could hardly blame Regier for being wary, and in hindsight Ruff over Nolan was obviously the right call.

Well, it’s better than re-hiring Ted Nolan… time will tell how much. I’m hoping that Adams made the decision to fire Granato some time ago and gauged the interest of other currently unemployed coaches. I suspect, however, that Adams knows his job is on the line and Ruff is a desperate panic hire given their familiarity with one another with Adams having previously been on Ruff’s staff. Hoping it works, but certainly tempering my enthusiasm (despite being a big fan of Ruff during his first stint). To those citing his lack of a Cup, he got them there and came close with a much less talented team than the Stars, and their best chance was derailed by a freakish run of defensive injuries against Carolina. It was certainly not a coaching issue in either of those seasons. Can’t speak to his time outside of Buffalo.