BADOLBILZ

No. No he did not. They just mentioned that Stevie looked good in OTA's back in the day and then made it. They spent a lot more time talking about false reads like Dez Lewis and Felton Huggins who looked very good in OTA's and didn't pan out. And how perhaps no other position is as different once the pads are on as the WR position. I remember last year's OTA's when Andre Holmes was impressing everyone. When they put the pads he reverted back to the old Andre Holmes.

Yep. WR needy CFL teams are certainly keeping a real close eye on the Bills WR situation. The hardest part of recruiting for the CFL is getting guys to let go of NFL pipe-dreams. Not being able to make the Buffalo Bills.......the NFL's worst WR corps.........should absolutely remove all doubt about your prospects of becoming an NFL WR.

I never liked Bucky's work but man what a disgusting **** show the last 15 years......and truthfully MOST of Ralph's ownership was. Some things needed to be said.

You are literally describing yourself.

The weight off all those haters sleepin' on him was more than his knee could take.

I expected what we saw. Boring Jauron Ball with a few games decided very late. I don't believe in jinxes or any of that garbage. They didn't miss the playoffs at 9-7 the other two times they got there during the drought because of bad luck.......9-7 isn't a number you can EXPECT to get you into the playoffs. So backing into the playoffs at 9-7 doesn't reach miracle status for me. But yes I am definitely less optimistic about this year's team right now than I was about last year's at this time. I explained why earlier.

I was fairly high on the team going into preseason and felt with health that 10-6 was very much within reach without having to play not to lose(aka Jauron Ball). With the exception of losing Gillislee and Bob Woods it was mostly the same group of regulars/starters on offense that were 7th in the NFL in scoring and had the fewest turnovers in a season since the merger thru 15 games under Tyrod Taylor in 2016.......except they had a healthy Watkins returning. The defense had a few question marks but at the very least you had to be optimistic about a front of double digit sacker Lorax plus KW/Dareus and Hughes going back to an attacking 4-3 lead by a defensive HC and bolstered by some new Doug Whaley value defensive signings(see Z.Brown and Lorax previous offseason). In particular I loved the Micah Hyde signing.......I was pushing him as the top safety on the market when others here were focused on the bigger names. And I was also the only one on TSW with Tre White as the top CB in the draft. So yeah..........I felt pretty alright about their chances. Their depth was the biggest concern. Front line talent appeared fine. But when they traded Watkins and dog-housed Dareus I knew EXACTLY what the plan was.........simplify and synergize........play not to lose........bend and hope for turnovers. I posted that opinion here and got flamed by the optimists and the tanksters as well.😀 It was no miracle.

Those teams were talented for 2009. Wasn't a league high point for talent........seems like every decade or so there is a couple year period where the best teams aren't all that great but there weren't 8 more talented rosters than those two in 2009.

1. Jauron Ball is not a miracle.........it's a style that ultimately brings you near the 8-8 median whether your roster is talented, mediocre or bad. 2. I accurately predicted here on TSW that Jauron Ball was coming so yeah I saw it coming. You can't write off Jauron Ball in a given season.........but you can count on it ultimately failing over time. You need to be building toward something. As for this year.........I will withhold a prediction until we see what they look like as a unit but the on paper product is not promising. Hard to envision them trying to do anything other than muck it up again but maybe Daboll channels his inner Chip Kelly and creates something scheme-wise to cover up the mismatched talent. On paper every unit looked better at this time last year than this years does now with the exception of safety(with 2 pro bowl type seasons) and LB. Watkins and Dareus were dealt and Zay Jones and Shaq had terribly disappointing seasons.........but at this point last year optimism was sky high for all of those dudes.

And that's kinda' the point...........BB is as good of an all-sides-of -the-ball HC as we may ever see..........but even he knew he had to cheat and was willing to do whatever it took to take a middling roster deep into the playoffs. Marv Levy literally thought he could replicate BB's success with Dick Jauron. Bottom line is that the best you can hope for playing it straight with a middling to poor roster is Jauron Ball results. Aside from those cheating Pats teams nobody has won a SB without a top 10 roster since the inception of the thing. Perhaps not even a team less than top 5 roster. On paper this Bills team doesn't win many matchups........they are bottom 5 for sure. Only good news is that the Dolphins and Jets are also clearly bottom half of league rosters as well.

If these offensive players belonged to the Dolphins and Daboll was starting his second stint as OC in Miami how would we feel about that?😀 I'd definitely be chalking up two wins versus any AJ McCarron lead team. Fair or not track record and pedigree are all you can reasonably go on. Yeah sure some could exceed expectation but.........expecting more from Andre Holmes or Streater because they had one decent season 5 years ago.........we are effectively hoping for an early 2000's Bill Belichick kinda' coaching job here. It's a matchup league and on-paper the players on this offense look like it's not going to be favored against the man across from them. I am not down on McDermott but I've seen enough(hiring Dennison, starting Peterman) to make me think he's a bit more of a traditional one-side-of-the-ball HC than a full-on puppet master like BB.

On paper the Bills have: The WORST offensive line in the NFL The WORST WR corps in the NFL The OLDEST and shallowest RB corps in the NFL The most UNPROVEN QB situation in the NFL We will learn a lot more about this team in camp. Great coaching/strategy can transform an OL and/or cover up for weak WR corps but if you can't play decent offense your defense needs to be absolutely physically dominating to remain competitive...........and this defense is really built more to be bend-no-break and opportunistic than they are physically overwhelming. Try to remember that this team gave up 46 points per game over one 3 game stretch last year.........they aren't a stand-alone unit they need an offense that keeps them in position to succeed and a special teams that takes advantage of all opportunities......adding Star Lotulelei and Harrison Phillps and a rookie LB isn't going to transform them into the legion of Boom or the 2000 Ravens.

Last year he took a lot of jarring hits......which is something that almost never used to happen. He's always been a guy who turtled and left his feet on contact which deadened the impact of hits. But they used and abused him last year and with that workload at this stage of his career he couldn't avoid it. Should have been sub-200 carries to extend him and get more production per touch........but instead they didn't have even a decent second RB option and gave him nearly 300 carries and were fortunate that he was able to gut it out in the playoff game. If the end game is a deep playoff run you gotta' conserve him. He finished both 2015 AND 2016 being carted off the field and it nearly happened again last year. If you have a back who can make big plays like that but is getting long in the tooth use him more carefully. Marcus Allen once carried the rock 380 times in a season and it took a toll on him but he was able to make important plays for another dozen years when they kept him between 100-210 carries.

Yeah Smith could not catch a football to save his life. Nate Odomes was a good cover corner and had very good ball skills but Smith was an elite cover man. There was one season where teams just wouldn't throw at him. It was Deion-like treatment. But once the book got out teams would throw at him some because they didn't fear the interception................but they still had little success. Nate Clements had both higher end coverage and ball skills than Odomes. Clements couldn't cover like Smith but they haven't had a guy who could cover like Thomas Smith in his prime since maybe Robert James. Not Gilmore or Winfield or anyone. And as you and I both know they spent a lot of high draft picks on DB's back when they weren't as important.

McCoy has been gradually losing a bit off his fastball since his last big year in Philly but he's combatted that by getting lighter to recoup any natural loss of quickness and the light came on in 2016 wrt following his blocking instead of trying to outrun the NFL's new breed of increasingly smaller/faster LB's to the edge on every play like he did in 2014 and 2015 when he greatly underachieved in RB friendly Kelly/Roman schemes. His huge dropoff last year was mostly due to the scheme and the lack of WR talent to keep defenses honest.......but physically he's definitely not Shady 2013 anymore........he's smaller and he took a lot more direct hits than ever-before last year. A return to more RPO is what he needs more than anything. Gotta' cause at least a bit of hesitation for defenses so he can get started and use his short area elusiveness.