BADOLBILZ

The conferences......and some of the divisions.......are heavily imbalanced. Not implausible that multiple teams with losing records make the playoffs this year while an 11 win team does not. One thing is fairly certain.......some of the divisions are going to be true battles. The AFC East perhaps the toughest. So "deserve" may be a relative term with regard to making the playoffs. 11-6 might not get it done if that includes a .500 or worse record in division or conference.

There was much anticipation about Cody Ford at LG after his first TC too. He and old man Ty Nsekhee were plowing defense's in the run game on the right side during that preseason. Then later in the season Von Miller gave Cody props for his work at RT when he got moved there after Nsekhee injury. Cody had so many fans they were defending the unnecessary PF penalty he took in the playoff loss like Cody was some hero robbed by the officials. Turned out he was just a block head who couldn't block. It's a bit too early to take a victory lap on O'Cyrus.

10 years and 6 of those years are probably going to cost upwards of $120M. Plus the cost of dumping Morse with a ton of dead cap left. The Humphrey argument for the Bills always made about as much sense as the Bills drafting Willis McGahee when they already had Travis Henry rushing for over 1,000 yards at a time when RB by committee wasn't a thing. In the league today, the center position has never been less important. Watch Creed Humphrey.........half of the time in pass pro he is blocking air. It's not a run and stuff the run league where you need a Kevin Mawae to control a Ted Washington in the middle. When the Bills get out from under the Morse deal........hopefully they have a good center for a fraction of what Humphrey will get paid.

Beane has the same issue so many Bills GM's have had in round 2, IMO. After months of focusing on getting the best player they can in round 1..........he seems to get satisfied and switch the focus to "immediate need" in round 2. Whaley did the same thing most recently. So many Bills GM's have.........that's why(AJ Epenesa not withstanding to this point) the Bills hit rate on 2nd rounders has been much higher in years where they didn't have a first rounder and don't blow their brains out in round 1. Studs like Thurman Thomas and Sam Cowart and a very effective Ronald Darby.......versus Roscoe Parrish being the only real proven miss. You can't expect to be successful reaching over quality to fill needs. That said........the people who are up in arms about Creed Humphrey forget that center hasn't been an issue for the Bills. Yes, it wasn't a good draft in general so there were a lot of bad picks after Basham too. But Mitch Morse was under a weighty contract and will likely give them another solid season and then the pressure will be on the Chiefs to make Humphrey the highest paid center EVER. That's not a formula for success either. BPA at premium positions is still the way to go.

I have hope for Beane because I think he can learn..........but he's no personnel man and he let's agents walk all over him. Those deficiencies have to end. He's not a blockhead like his mentor Gettleman so I think he can learn but the criticism of him is warranted. He's got a young QB in his prime and somehow has turned this situation into a "window". They should be in a much more advantageous cap situation and he should have found a lot more production on the cheap than he has. The draft is one thing.........teams miss on players all the time.........but his pro personnel work has been terrible. And that's where the agents come in. He really needs to hit 2-3 HR with guys like Sharty, McGovern, Sherfield, Floyd and Rapp at this point to try to gain back some ground as a personnel evaluator/negotiator.

Not even a "sack" of potatoes.......just a bag. Creed Humphrey fans be like:

I was sh!tting on Beane and I did misread the graphic. But my point is common sense. It's business 101 level. Tough negotiators get the best deals and people trying to sell things to tough negotiators HATE that. Everyone wants the success to come easy. Beane has delivered an inordinate amount of over-market deals in his years as GM. He has done stup!d ***** like giving pay cuts to players who needed to be cut........like Star and Vernon Butler........and been rewarded with sh!t effort. He has been taken advantage of by agents. Facts. His list of "steals" in UFA is one deep..........Daryl Williams in 2020. I think Beane is a great office executive(which the Pegula's needed) and tremendous at PR but he really needs to turn the corner as a personnel man and negotiator. And soon.

Well you are simply wrong about that. It's a given that GM's who keep their cards close to the vest get the better of contract negotiations. That's simple business. Not sure how one can observe Beane's handling of the salary cap to this point and not understand this. Even in the jam he's in now he gave surprisingly generous deals to Sharty and McGovern. That's why agents love the guy. As an NFL GM you're gonna' be dealing with the same people over and over........yeah.......and they have no choice but to do business with the highest bidder/most desirable team. And the latter has next to nothing to do with who the GM is unless you are Aaron Rodgers wanting roster veto control(at which level the agent involved is irrelevant). If it's not about the money it's about QB, coaching staff and chance to win. If it got out that an agent was cutting less lucrative deals or even putting his players in positions less likely to succeed for the same money because he "liked" the GM then that agent would be finished. NFLPA would not approve of such relationships between player representatives and team management.

You are correct, I misread the graphic. The same agents who gave him props for talent evaluation probably gave him modest top GM consideration. But if people read the comments in the story.........it only further re-inforces my point. Here is the positive quote on Beane: • “First off, they’re all the enemy. It’s a really hard question because there are guys that I think do a good job that I like dealing with. And then there are guys who I actually think are really good GMs but I just don’t like dealing with. Beane is honest, direct, a strong evaluator and respectful.” As a person who has to do his share of sales.........that's exactly how I play it with client corporate. I try to make the people who are easy to deal with look as good as possible so I don't have to deal with the Howie Roseman types. In fact, it's mission statement level important. Howie Roseman is the overwhelming choice for best GM but nowhere to be found on the "nice" list and the comments about him are just plain grudging respect.

Teams get 20 games per season from their players. That's not changing. The owners will cut a preseason game in exchange for an 18th game and the players will get compensated with more money..........but there is absolutely no way the owner's aren't getting those 20 games.

Glut of WR's? Diggs Davis Sherfield Sharty Shakir and a bunch of minor league talents They should be in the market.......definitely not dealing from a strength

In all seriousness.........I think if this poll took place in 2006 that Marv Levy would have been the "GM you trust the most". It speaks volumes that none of the "trusted" are on the "best overall" list. That's just business..........the easy marks are the one's that are most liked.........always the favorites to deal with..........but the shiesty one's get the best deals. Being much too accommodating to players and their agents has been a huge weakness for Beane.

I didn't see him in preseason but yeah...........he was a guy who I thought made a lot of sense as a long term backup for Allen. He has the 2 things that all low pedigree young QB's need.........he can run and take a hit like a champ.

Yeah that would be ill advised though. I think the last time I was surprised by anything in free agency it was when Sean Payton advocated the signing of CJ Spiller and was talking him up like he just found this incredible weapon. CJ was clearly a notch below a box of rocks on the intelligence meter and an actual successful NFL coach/franchise somehow had no idea of this despite access to all of his hilarious all-22 tape where he clearly had no idea where plays were designed to go.......... and were putting him into a far more complex offense than he played in with Marrone.

I think we need to make a distinction between a rookie contract "necessity" WR2 and a "chosen" second contract WR2. Because any team would be crazy to pay him open market money in UFA to be their WR2 (upwards of $15M aav). He just can't make enough basic, on-schedule, chain-moving plays to be a WR2 by choice..........he has to be one out of necessity like he was in Buffalo last season. That's why I've settled on him being a WR3. I gave him the slightest benefit of the doubt coming into camp but between the drops in the practice setting and the games it's clear that he just doesn't have the capacity to elevate his ball skills to the next level. With Gabe it's about matchups and opportunities.........he struggles against CB1 and CB2 because he can't separate from talented CB's without 3+ seconds to do so........and doesn't make anywhere near enough plays in contested situations. At WR3 he is a 100+ QB rating option for the Bills again.........which aligns with the quality of his QB. Bills need Kincaid to turn into WR2 pretty early on in this season and then hopefully that attention drawn underneath will free up Gabe for later in the season.

Peters was under a 5 year $15M contract..........which he signed to play RT.........but then got immediately moved to LT by the team and dominated and 2 years in at LT he wanted his deal re-done to reflect the change. The Bills only excuse was that they don't re-do deals. Which doesn't fly with young stars at key positions.

It wasn't a realistic option. Here's how it went down: Bills had to make a decision on his 5th year option following the 2020 season despite Edmunds seemingly regressing during that season. They picked it up in spring of 2021 at $13M guaranteed for 2022. He didn't display any notable improvement in 2021. So nobody was trading anything of value for him after the 2021 season with a $13M fully guaranteed cap hit in 2022.

McNally was a typical Bills coach and executive of the era..........collecting a paycheck with one foot in retirement...........like Tom Modrak scouting from his couch. The exaggerated credit Mouse is given for helping Peters was always kinda' laughable. In like 3 months he went from a college TE to a dominant starting RT. Peters was just an outrageous talent who was far superior to the stiffs you'd normally find at RT.

Yeah, like that was a lot. You can't be paying your stud young LT $3M per year and then sign some slightly above average guard(Derrick Dockery) to a shocking 7 year $49M contract and also a big stiff RT in Langston Walker 5 year $25M. Letting their LT Jonas Jennings leave in UFA in 2005........knowing that they were going to move Peters to LT..........and then subsequently signing those two UFA's to huge contracts after already making it clear that they would gladly accommodate any player who didn't want to be in Buffalo was like chumming the water for agent sharks. The Jauron era Bills just had no idea what they were doing.........they brought 100% of their problems with players on themselves with their mismanagement.

Yeah he elevated his game as a zone coverage defender last year significantly(finally after two brutal seasons) but he still has just never learned how to make plays. He's just a robotic, uninstinctive LB in a HOF body. He got so many fat pitches playing in the McDefense and couldn't hit one out of the park to save his life in 5 seasons. There is literally no highlight reel of the man. Maybe the sheer volume of snaps played will some day allow Edmunds to turn into an All Pro like DeMario Davis did. The light came on for Davis in year 6. But that's about the only such example though. MLB usually reach their ceiling pretty quickly. I suspect Edmunds will underwhelm in Chicago and be back in Buffalo in 2025.

That's a vast over-generalization. Teams with your fictional "typical #2" .........well, no team like that has reached the SB in the past half decade and maybe a just couple in the past 15(Seattle and Carolina). The bar is much higher for a SB team. That's the objective in Buffalo. The big issue with Davis is that he's the second worst WR at dropping catchable passes in the NFL behind only Zay Jones..........and he was like 185th out of 197 qualifying players in catch % and nobody with anywhere near as many targets was worse. And what helps underscore the impact of that is that brutal passer rating of 80 when targeted. Which defeats the argument that his big plays make it worthwhile to target him 6-7 times per game. An elite QB shouldn't be rating 80 when throwing to his second target. That's just terrible. Bottom line is that Davis is a WR3 in the NFL. He's not going to some other team with a lesser QB and putting up the numbers that playing with Josh Allen allows him to.

The "3rd" one was the first pass of the game where Allen put a slant right on his hands and he just plain dropped it. Excusing him for passes defended and interceptions ignores the fact that he doesn't play the position well enough to get open on the short and intermediate routes that move the chains. When you can't get open on most of the routes in the tree you gotta' be good at catching contested passes at least.........and he's not. That's why he can't be an efficient WR2. Last year Josh Allen's QB rating dropped a staggering 40 points when targeting Gabe(80) versus WR1 Diggs (120)..............and passes to Davis result in INT's more than any other target on the Bills. He does two things well.........run deep routes(like 9's and post routes)........ and then come back to the ball on very slow developing plays or scrambles.

Sharty has shown ZERO juice in preseason.

It's not from a decade ago..........it's still ongoing.........15 years of going out of his way to criticize a player who has graduated from elite talent to all pro to HOF'er. Your wife probably has a point complaining about you........Peters has been GREAT. The fact that Promo is still finding ways to criticize Peters rather than owning the fact that he was an idiot for buying the line of BS that Russ Brandon was selling in the first place is ridiculous(but consistent). There is holding a grudge........and then there is holding a grudge when you were dead f*cking wrong in the first place.

It would be his 19th year in the NFL and he's a coach-on-the-field level of player. He's run every play and executed every block and worked with players of all ages and experience levels. If guys like Kyle Orton and Matt Barkley can step in and play QB for a team with a week or 2 notice why would you even suggest that a HOF level offensive lineman who's played twice as long as they have/had wouldn't be able to learn the play calls with a couple nights peruse of the book?