BADOLBILZ

We've seen horrible performances in certain games from Allen the past two seasons. The passing game talent is so poor that it is always hovering around the critical mass line where it could turn ugly.........not having a healthy Shakir or Kincaid or Palmer is enough to require Allen to play off schedule all day to succeed. We saw it against Tampa last weekend. The Bucs pass defense was decimated and couldn't muster a pass rush to save their lives but Allen STILL had to live off schedule to get his passing production. That doesn't fly in some situations........like on the road against the league's best defense.

Diggs was getting fed at the expense of the team. Personally, I thought Dorsey got scapegoated for giving the world what it wants.......Josh Allen throwing the ball all over the field. But Diggs was getting doubled and that allowed teams to put CB1 on Gabe Davis and make throwing to him extremely unproductive. The personnel wasn't there to make that the right approach and I thought Dorsey had already begun the changes a couple weeks prior that Brady would further lean into. They lost that Denver game because of a substitution error by McDermott at the end of the game. Dorsey got scapegoated but as I said at the time it wasn't a big dropoff and a shot in the arm couldn't hurt. Brady was capable. They went from 5-5 at the time and then won 23 of their next 27 meaningful regular season games under Brady. The issue here isn't the OC. Does he have some ineffective calls we hate every week? Yes, but that only seems like a HUGE problem because the margin for error has diminished as the available talent has. As impotent as they've looked on the road they might have won those Atlanta and Houston games just having Glass Kincaid healthy.

I know that is the popular perception but I think the coaching is the same level as ever. The talent drop on the team from last season to this season has been SIGNIFICANT. Taron Johnson, Milano and Bernard were very good when healthy last year. This year they are HORRIBLE. That's basically their 3 man LB corps.....all sh!t. The D-Line rotation is also FAR worse than last year. I can't believe my eyes seeing Jones and Sanders playing significant DE snaps. That makes having Dawuane Smoot in the rotation last year look like having an All Star in rotation. And Jordan Phillips playing big snaps at DT after sitting on the couch all offseason. That DT rotation has been garbage. I can't remember a time when they've been more impotent on the DL in my lifetime as a Bills fan. CB play has been far worse overall because of the vast decline of TJ and the astonishing decline of Benford. Bishop has rounded into excellent form of late but overall the S position was more reliable with Rapp and Hamlin last year than it had been in Sept-Oct. I haven't even gotten to the WR corps! I don't know how you coach up having to play 3-5 guys on defense regularly that probably belong on practice squads at this point of their career(Phillips, Tre, Poyer, TJ and Milano).

No, what happened was under Dorsey and Brady the available passing game talent around Allen declined significantly. The Bills have essentially gone from not having short and intermediate talent in 2021-2022 to only having short and intermediate talent in 2024-2025. And when you lean into TE and slot WR talent like they have with Shakir and Kincaid being their best pass game weapons........you are leaning into the area of the field where players get hurt more often. Not a coincidence that Shakir and Kincaid are banged up all the time. Consistent, durable TE's are a rarity and slot WR's get used up and thrown away like RB's. The axiom about building inside out does not apply to passing game weapons.

You didn't answer the question. And you won't because you don't have any answers. Even Brady's biggest detractors don't. How do you get traditionally middling to bad NFL WR's to perform like WR1 and WR2? I think what confuses you is this idea that the passing offense has to be ever changing to avoid patterns. The design has to be repeatable to avoid mistakes. That is why teams value talent on the outside. With rare exception the Josh's and Joe's beat the X's and O's. Daboll's offense didn't decline in 2021 because he got figured out, it declined because they lost the threat of a short pass being turned into a big play. It allowed defense's to play off and that played into Allen's tendencies to push the ball downfield regardless of the amount of traffic. John Brown was incredibly important prior to that. He could beat you over the top or take a WR screen to the house in 2019-2020. In replacing him with Sanders instead of someone electric they had left themselves with no WR speed and no RB threat from the backfield. Lil' Dummy was basically left wide open for two years and when Daboll and Dorsey tried to lean into that the result was volatility. Not having the proper talent in place in the passing game has been a recurring issue with the Bills WR corps since that 2020 season.

Ehhh........the injury of note came before the extension. We can't just write it off as "since". It looked like a car-accident level concussion event he suffered. I don't remember the last time I saw a player look like that being taken off after a concussion and we knew it was the second one in 2 weeks. You definitely can't extend a small man position with a year left on his deal sight-unseen after that, IMO. And while he played very well at times prior to that series of events....... IMO I am not sure that it was as high of a level as some think. He gave up 8 TD passes in 2023-2024. It's not like you are getting into the redzone and he was going to smother a Jamar Chase or Tee Higgins with his athleticism. And you could also make the argument that we'd seen very high level play from Rousseau with his tremendous run defense and excellent pressure rates or when Bernard had the most splash plays in a season by an NFL LB since Brian Urlacher 20 seasons prior. Truth is, none of them should have been extended IMO. Just Beane doing his best Art Modell impersonation trying to make everyone like him at the eventual expense of the team as a whole and it's fan base.

I'm not sure what stat you are referencing but if it's a bulk stat he typically plays about 25% less of his teams snaps than Myles Garrett does( 60% v 80% over career). And even so Rousseau tied for the NFL lead in run stops by a DL as a rookie with 32. He's legit ELITE against the run. Let's not try to downplay it as "10 best sure". One of the funnier attempts to discredit Rousseau I saw was that his poor play meant Joey Bosa had to play more snaps. Do they not play two DE's simultaneously anymore? I must have missed that.😂

He's the best edge run defender in the NFL. I don't think he needs to bulk up. I'd like to see more wider alignments in the Bills front. I think we've seen that their tighter spacing hurts their individual sack numbers. For Rousseau it doesn't allow him to use that huge first stride and find open lanes to make plays horizontally. But when you have a couple limited, undersized LB's you can't really roll wide 9. Regardless, he needs an edge bender opposite him. Instead the Bills have drafted guys like Boogie, Epenesa and Landon Jackson who lack that ability.

Yeah I think you and @HappyDays are kinda' holding onto your opinion from when they signed him. I was against the extension after the horrific concussion in the AFCCG. The juice wasn't worth the squeeze. The reality is that he is playing like a guy who was going to get low-balled in free agency this winter and would be signing a one year deal after the compensation formula period in May. Zero picks, Zero passes defensed and a 110 passer rating when targeted is not getting you paid.

Well we will see what Rousseau looks like when his extension and those $20M hits actually begin next year. With the cap around $300M this offseason and very few producing DE's available I bet he would still have gotten at least the same deal in UFA. Benford coming off this season might be looking at a one year prove it deal and if Strong and Hairston finished well the Bills might have let him walk. Rousseau's career so far is very comparable to Calais Campbell.........who didn't start his run of All Pro years until age 28........and is IMO a future HoF'er.

Fortunately all concussions aren't the same. Benfords concussion in the AFCCG was one of the most concerning I've ever seen in an NFL game. Extending him a month after seeing THAT was just Beane being Beane. He is far too concerned about his perception. He's got some Art Modell in him that way. He wants everyone to love him and eventually that does a lot more harm than good.

Yeah I was thinking he might be an NFLDPOY candidate after that opener. But then he gets mysteriously injured in the next practice on a play nobody associated with the team seems to be able to remember.

I think the disconnect here is your opinion is about your "feels" about whether they should have extended him. That's irrelevant at this point. I was OK with extending him too and loved the timing because I knew he had already prepared his body for a contract run. But he was a big disappointment last year. He got pushed around and was one of the worst starting DT's against the run in the entire NFL in 2024. Hence the criticism. This year he looked like he had responded to that bad first year of his extension........but ultimately he's probably only going to play around 8% of the Bills defensive snaps this season. So, thus far his extension consists of a bad year and a lost year. Thus far it has objectively NOT been a good contract.

I haven't re-watched the debacle but Coleman did appear to be in Adam Henry's ear on the sideline after one of many failed attempts to feed Shakir. Henry appeared less than pleased with his input. Shakir ended up piling up some yards but he's been a net negative the last couple weeks.

That could be but he's been simply awful overall. Like I said, the way he is playing and Strong was trending Strong might have been playing instead by now. He's not played like a starting NFL CB this year let alone a good one. In some ways it was like the Tre extension because neither had a lot of room for physical decline before it was going to knock them far down the list.