BADOLBILZ

Yeah it remains to be seen. People are comparing expectations of players on August 1 2023 against the reality of 2022. At this time last year there was anticipation that Jamison Crowder would get healthy and return to his past dynamic form. Or that McKenzie was ready to build on that huge game he had against the Patriots in Foxboro now that Beasley was gone. Shakir was seen as this steal of s draft pick. Expectations were very high........just a lot of people with short memories and recency bias. We will see if Sharty and Sherfield pan out. They have averaged 189 yards receiving per season over their combined 9 years. And not far from their career average.........combined for just 430 total even just this last season. This far into careers.......players tend to be who they have been........there is just a lot of best-case-scenario optimism projection going on. Also, I'd say Shakir's star has definitely fallen now that we've all seen that he probably isn't the second coming of Hines Ward or whatever people expected he'd be. It likely all comes down to Kincaid when it comes to receivers/TE's who are most likely to make a big impact.

Travis will be heading into his age 28 season when he is hitting unrestricted free agency...........not sure a RB who hung around and ran his miles up on the NCAA level should be offering advice on how to get a good second contract.

Yeah I believe soft tissue injuries can be significantly reduced by good training. We've seen it first hand. When Wade Phillips took over the Bills in 1998 with his hands-off player-coach approach the team immediately started pulling hammies left and right. It's fluctuated from coach to coach since, depending on their attention to detail. The McDermott Bills have very few such injuries compared to the Rex Ryan Bills. My concern is that Harty has just had so many that he might not be able to get back to a good baseline. The player also really has to want to. Fans think these guys eat great, stretch extensively and sleep in a hyperbaric chamber every night to avoid injuries but I know from knowing that the players who go to great lengths to make sure they stay on the field every day are actually the minority. And a turf toe bad enough to require season ending surgery is a fairly significant injury and considerable risk for re-injury that can take some mph off of a speed player. It was a curious decision by Beane to pay that price for him. He surely seemed like a $1.7M flyer type given his lack of success and injury history.

He's quickly falling from "I had a 2nd round grade on him" to "just a 5th round pick, whaddya' expect?".

The injury concern with Sharty is everything. He's basically always been hurt. Even the 1 year he had some measurable receiving yardage he missed games injured. He's had like a dozen inury/re-injury situations with his hammies. He was re-injuring them in the offseasons even. Missing almost all of last season with turf toe was only the latest concern for a 5'6" guy who needs to be lightning quick/fast to be of any use in the NFL. If he stays healthy he is a nice player to have. It just seems unlikely.

2 out of 20 3 out of 27(counting playoffs) Being noted for drops in camp. You NOT being a numbers guy........perhaps don't have perspective on how few passes NFL receivers really drop.

I think what's lost on the people who insist you are over-reacting to Shakir dropping passes is that he was a ball dropper last year and he needs to be a guy who drops maybe 1 pass in 20 targets. He's getting just a handful of targets daily so it's notable when he's being noted for dropping some of those few targets. He won't make it dropping 2 out of every 20 targets.......that's approaching a league worst kinda' drop rate.

He was credited with 2 dropped passes and caught just 10 of 20 targets last regular season for a 10% drop rate........which is a very bad %. Gabe had a 9.7% drop rate and finished second in the league in total drops among WR. But where Shakir's dropsies really hurt was the long bomb he dropped near the end of the second quarter in the WC game. He was wide open, bobbled it, lost his balance and tumbled to the ground and was originally credited with a catch.......but upon further review he clearly spilled it on the turf. Brutal error. Punt instead of 7 points (or at least 3). Momentum of game changed entirely on that play.

He played on a bad foot all season in 2021. He originally injured the foot in the 2020 season and was severely hobbled in the last two playoff games where he disappeared. He's had a bad foot all 3 seasons.........so yeah, it's an excuse at that point. I agree he is critical to their SB chances. They need to find a way to get back to Gabe running wide open deep because he overwhelmed some teams 3rd or 4th CB. Yeah I think it's largely about Kincaid. If he's ready to become the second target and he makes plays like we think he could............then that would allow the offense to stay on schedule and possibly change how teams defend the Bills outside receivers.

The thing about Sanders is that he could play inside or out at a high level. Even to some extent when he was out of gas in his final season, with Buffalo. That's why he was a WR1 for most of his career(even if he was on SB teams with other WR1's). Gabe and Cole Beasley have pretty specific skillets and limitations and aren't/weren't capable of being the same quality of player playing inside or out.

Yeah I think they have proven they need a player to fit in between Diggs and Davis as the #2 option. I think people are unrealistic thinking that Gabe is just going to fix his bad hands overnight and get a tick faster. He could become more consistent but I think he is who he is at this point. Which is fine if he's the CLEAR 3rd option. But when teams can put their CB1 on Gabe and the Bills can't take advantage of that by throwing at the nickel and dime coverage players......the players that Gabe used to face......and making them pay with big plays.........it's proven to make them more prone to mistakes on offense.

I'm sorry Mrs. Shakir.......it's just an honest assessment of a player who many fans felt was a 2nd round talent stolen in the 5th round that should have taken over the starting slot role after he had 3 for 75 versus Pittsburgh. He's very short armed and lacks long speed so he is not a good bet to win battles on the outside, where free releases can't be schemed as easily and where that lack of speed encourages long armed boundary CB's to press him without fear of being beaten deep. Inside, he's not a twitchy athlete, has reportedly not been good at finding his way against zone coverage and there has to be legit concern about putting the ball on him in traffic in the quick game with what we've seen of his hands. It remains to be seen what Shakir is actually good at that will make him "valid" WR depth.

Yeah, he's a taint. Guys like that gotta' have some extraordinary intangibles or unusual skill to crack a lineup and there isn't any indication that is the case with Shakir. When it became clear last season that he didn't have reliable hands my already modest expectations were significantly lowered.

I just keep hoping that Beane gets better. I remind myself that Howie Roseman wasn't as good early in his GM career as he is now. We can hope that Allen is buying McBeane time to learn from their mistakes and for their "growth mindset" to get them to a point where they make more successful/efficient/wise decisions.

It's not difficult to understand. But you don't. Those players with the top passer ratings is a pretty good list of the very most dynamic receivers in the league.........it's not because they catch a lot of short passes. They just make a big impact when the ball is thrown to them. The people who complain about Davis' depth of target negatively impacting him statistically never seem to want to consider why the Bills seem to only target him intermediate or deep. It's been because he needs to get way down field just to get open. He isn't going to catch a screen pass and produce some YAC........he's not going to slant and YAC.........and he's not going to make contested, tight window catches anywhere on the field. He needs to find soft spots that are in his capacity to reach. He's very good at eating up ground and pressure CB's on 9's and posts with his long strides. And then he can come back into vacated areas.......which are ultimately still long throws. That's basically his game right there. There are worse skills than being a HR hitter on a team where you get a lot of fat pitches to hit. But those limitations and his drops are basically why Josh Allen's passer rating drops a staggering 40 points when targeting Gabe instead of Diggs. That number is unacceptable and illustrates why teams now just double Diggs and take their chances.

We can only hope that somehow history doesn't repeat itself with regard to those "depth" and flyer type free agent moves. The track record has been really bad. Long gone are the days of Lorax/Zach Brown/Hyde/Poyer types who were signed to very modest contracts and greatly outplayed them. There has been just 1 such hit so far since 2017. Daryl Williams. Who they cut to make room for Rodger Saffold. Their low and mid-level pro personnel work has been ghastly and they've thrown SO MANY $4M-$7M type deals out there for other teams UFA's and failed at basically ALL of those so far........it has really added up on their salary cap.

I am still giving them the benefit of the doubt organizationally because of Josh Allen. I don't think any player has a greater impact on their team with the exception of Mahomes. But they have not had success getting seemingly "high ceiling" young players to take the next step once they've hit a plateau. And they've put a lot of eggs in the baskets of players like Edmunds, Oliver and Gabe.........these guys have all produced as rookies but none of them has approached their perceived ceilings despite the insistence by some around the organization that they were almost there. I don't necessarily blame that on the coaching.........I think they have likely just over-estimated some of their own young players capacity for improvement. But either way, it's not a great look. Now on the flip side.......I am actually a bit more optimistic about a guy like AJ Epenesa improving........because he has actually(gradually) been improving and he doesn't have underlying injury concerns or a clear lack of instincts etc.. And I fully expect Rousseau to become a top 10-20 NFL DE this season. But I don't know these things will happen for sure though so I am not going to argue with people who question that based on their camp performances.

A high passer rating isn't a function of catching shorter passes. The top passer ratings of the players who had 100+ targets: 1) Stefon Diggs 120.3 2) Jaylen Waddle 119.5 3) Travis Kelce 117.2 4) Brandon Aiyuk 115.9 5) Tee Higgins 115.6 6) AJ Brown 112.3 7) Devonta Smith 111 16) Juju Smith-Schuster And on either side of juju it's OTHER big play guys...........because it's weighted for impact. I guess you don't get it and apparently don't want to know.........so I am basically arguing with the ignorant.

That's good to hear that he's got some positive reviews. In other news journeymen Trent Sherfield and Deonte Harty have been getting even more adoration. Reminder: Jake Kumerow was unreal in camp 2 years ago.

Yeah and last year at TC we were supposed to be encouraged because he worked hard and put on muscle.........this time we are supposed to be encouraged because he worked hard and shed all that unnecessary extra muscle. 😐

Passer ratings when targeted in 2022: Juju 102.5 Gabe 80.8 Every time Allen threw the ball to Gabriel Davis it made him look like a drastically worse passer than he is. He really dragged Allen down almost singlehandedly. Do I really need to say much more? These players were not comparably effective.

Right.......like I said, those targets are what @HappyDays post was about. That he finally got some targets and half of them were incomplete. Which is not inconsistent with the Gabe we know.

Right. We are going in a circle here. As @HappyDays said Davis caught 50% of his targets yesterday..........which is a small sample size but entirely consistent with who he's always been.

I think that what @HappyDays is saying is that the only place where he's looked like a changed man is in perception drummed up by an article. He hasn't stood out in practice.......where a vet like Stef Diggs has.........and that's all we have to go on. The reports have been that he hasn't been targeted much and that Allen hasn't even been looking his way.......which would make sense because Allen struggled when targeting Davis last season.

Horrible example? Juju was 24th in the NFL in receiving yards and had a 77% catch rate. He was firmly in the top 32 receiving weapons in the NFL last year. It's pretty simple math, really. The idea that you just need "mulitiple guys who are reliable" is what's horrible. As is the notion among some ignorant Bills fans have that the Chiefs didn't invest much in their WR corps. They had $34M aav tied up in their top 3 receivers last year(Kelce $14M+ Juju $9.2M and MVS $10M). Obviously the only team in the NFL where all 3 of the top 3 WR options were over $9M aav. They also had their 2019 2nd rounder(Hardman) a 2022 2nd rounder(Moore) and a 2021 1st(Toney) playing in reserve for chrissake. It was not a bunch of try hards that were just elevated by Mahomes.