BADOLBILZ

1) The Rams traded a first round pick for Brandin Cooks to replace Watkins and Tyreek Hill emerged as a superstar finishing 4th in the NFL in receiving yards and ypa and 3rd in receiving TD's among all WR's.........so those teams fared fine but not because they didn't have an elite talent at WR for their young QB. 2) Since you are declaring it so......can you actually rank the CB groups around the league? Just the top 10 is fine since those would certainly be "among the best". You don't follow the league very closely but you always argue like you do so guessing you won't be interested in backing up that yap.

Ok so what's the process here? Do you start subscribing to the Gazette so you can then contact them and threaten to cancel if they don't dump Sully?

As I said...........Foster is the hope...........but his actual track record is astonishingly poor. That's why people like you were dumping hard on SkyDiver for hyping him last fall. The same people are penciling him in to be great. Realistically it's putting too many eggs in that basket if you subscribe to the theory that most teams that have been successful with young QB's in recent years do............that you need to put BIG TIME receiving talent around that QB. Also if you think the Bills are even close to the only team with a solid looking group of CB's you aren't paying attention. More than any other position the past two decades the CB position has gotten deeper with talent around the league. Nobody is starting a "punt catcher" or a Kirby Jackson at CB anymore..........the quality of CB talent is high and especially recently there have been A LOT more good CB's enter the league since 2014 than there have been good WR's.........there has actually been a dearth of WR talent in most of those drafts.

Like the Rams and Chiefs did.............who played in the SB and AFC championship game, respectively. The formula works. Put elite talent around your inexpensive young QB.............I like John Brown and Beasley but those are not elite players. Not close.

If the Bills defense was playing a receiving corps with Brown and Beasley...........would you be sweating the ability of Wallace and Johnson to cover those guys? The answer should be no. As mentioned........John Brown has averaged 500 yards receiving the past 3 seasons........and since Beasley became a regular target 6 years ago he's been good for about 50 grabs and 500 yards per season. These aren't dominant players folks..........that's 30 yards receiving each per game. Allen needs more help than that...........he's not a 35 year old veteran passer who sees the entire field and can be expected to dissect defenses with tight window throws all day.

This is what is lost on eball and Doc, IMO. Josh Allen is not Tom Brady........"well the Patriots don't have a #1 WR" just isn't a useful argument when comparing a raw, big armed QB with a tendency to take the high risk/high reward throw versus the surgically precise decision maker and passer that Brady is.

I think Dawkins was graded on a rookie curve at LT in 2017. He was OK but I didn't really see him as comparable to Glenn and really didn't like the idea of moving Glenn to hand him the job knowing that a rookie QB would likely be starting by midseason.. Having weak guard and center play didn't help but it seemed like he just wasn't up to the task.

I like John Brown but let's be realistic here.......c'mon now.........has he ever been doubled? Dude averaged 500 yards receiving the past 3 seasons...........he ain't anyone's idea of a #1. As for Foster.........if he can keep up the pace he was on in the second half of last year he might be that guy that opens up the field for everyone else............but that literally came out of nowhere..........this is a guy who was nagged by injuries and only played in 19 games and caught 35 passes total in 4 years at Alabama. I like his skillset and defended the much maligned SkyDiver on here when most of you were dousing him with gasoline for his Foster takes.......... but you probably shouldn't build your passing offense around the idea that he will become a 1400 yard receiver just yet.

The schedule also got considerably easier when he returned. In the key matchup against a Patriots team that had been struggling........... they were shut down and nearly shut out. That was more consistent with the performance in games in the early portion of their schedule...........good teams could have their way with the Bills offense..... which is why it was historically bad for most of the year. Improved OL and running game goes a long way toward being better on a consistent basis.........and adding Beasley and Brown helps too but you can't expect Allen to be a guy to turn "solid" WR's into a top passing game at this stage of his career. They really need a guy to demand constant double teams in the passing game........hopefully that's Foster but his history is far too murky to count on that..........they badly need another big time playmaking/matchup-winning option to help make it work against better defenses while Allen is learning how to play the position.

That's an excellent analysis..........everything we have seen as a pro. The presumption here is that with experience and hard work he can get significantly better at LT.........and maybe so.......but at what point in college or the pros has he shown the exceptional skill at LT that this is being based upon? I see him in that "just good enough to leave in free agency" category at LT.............but I see him in the All Pro conversation as a guard..........in limited opps he came off the ball in the inside run game a bit like Jason Peters has done in his career at LT. Difference is Peters is a lot more athletic so he can do it against edge players as well.

Shaq still has one foot in Clemson. Flies out after Bills home games to spend Sunday nights and Mondays there during a season that's only 4 months long. Just hasn't become a real pro yet. He will either grow up and become a focused professional with free agency looming or he will probably be tryna' sign with Carolina so he can continue the Wooderson act.

eball is showing some adaptability too............remember he was the guy that went OFF on the poster with unnamed sources that told us about Cordy Glenn getting a kidney removed when we were all in the dark about what the mystery issue with Glenn was? Now eebs is dealing conjecture with his own unnamed source. So proud that he is understanding this is a message board and not the AP wire.

My guess is that he and Zay are both up for auction if someone wants to give up a pick in that range. They would be good values for teams that already have high quality and just want some good depth that still has some upside...........but teams clutch those draft picks pretty tight.

That. We are giving them credit for pursuing a high volume of "modestly" regarded OL in UFA this offseason...........but they could have been a lot more aggressive in the same manner last year. It may not have yielded great results.......nor may it this time......we don't know....... but going into the season with the least money in the league dedicated to the OL when you are pretty certain to be breaking in a rookie QB was a fundmentally flawed decision. They really dodged a bullet with that OL last year...........after seeing Allen get his head dribbled off the turf on a hit in that Cinci preseason game it was pretty reasonable to wonder how a QB would survive under the pending duress..........but he proved a better scrambler than I think ANY of us could have imagined.

Yes I do think that he believes he can be better than that.......confidence hasn't appeared to be lacking with Shaq. But Shaq was not very dedicated to his craft his first couple of years in the NFL............he basically admitted that last offseason and perhaps the Bills hurrying out to sign a LDE to a big contract provided enough push to get him to work a bit harder...........but knowing that he isn't inherently self-motivated I don't think you want to take away that free agency carrot. There is a chance that going balls-out to justify a new contract will lead to Shaq maturing and turning into a much better player. I think picking up his option or offering to extend him sends the wrong message at this point.