BADOLBILZ

Career averages: Gabe.............42 yards per game and 54% catch rate JuJu..............60 yards per game and 70% catch rate Vague criticisms of his play aren't a substitute for the fact that there is a big difference in quality of target between the two. Is Juju as good as Tee Higgins or Jaylen Waddle or DeVonta Smith? No, but he's closer to them than Gabe is to him. And in a full season his career averages are going to put him in the top 25 yardage producers(24th last year fwiw) more often than not......while also catching most of his targets. Top 25 and doing it efficiently is, in fact, good. If Kincaid puts up a Juju-like 900+ yards and a high catch rate as a rookie as option 2 to another strong Diggs season then the Bills will have closed the gap between them and other top contenders and rivals in this regard.

Yeah it's been much discussed in WNY that he has said he would like to play with his brother at some point........and the way it lines up it would most likely be with Stef Diggs on a final contract with Dallas around when his bro is in his prime. The cap hit to move him now would be pretty absurd and makes that possibility in the near future very unlikely.

In fairness........the Ravens let Lamar Jackson play out his deal and proabably saved a lot of money doing it that way. Lamar certainly didn't come out on top waiting 2 years. Not saying that's the way to go........I think Lamar basically refused to play late last season due to "lack of contrack" and the Ravens were actually pretty good and probably would have beaten the Bengals in the playoffs with him and who knows from there...........so while they got out of paying him big money for 2 years and probably won't have to re-sign him again now before his legs are spent......... it certainly didn't work out overall despite the money saved.

Yeah the "Reception Perception" guy is always pointing this very thing out. The quality of their second target has proven to be more of an indicator for teams reaching and winning the SB than the quality of their actual WR1. If you go from a top 5 receiving target like Diggs to a guy like Davis who is in the 30's or 40's yardage-wise but even lower when you factor in the terrible catch % and top of the league type drop #'s. That's a relatively HUGE obstacle for a team that expects to be elite to overcome.

1. Kelce 2. Juju 3. Valdes-Scantling (their Gabe Davis) 4. McKinnon (512 yards receiving) 5. Justin Watson 6. Noah Gray 7. Mecole Hardman 8. Moore (2022 second rounder) 9. Toney (2021 first rounder) You are obviously a pretty casual NFL fan and probably don't know who half of those players are but their receiving options were a lot stronger than the Bills. Mahomes didn't throw for 5250 yards(4th all time) without people who were making plays when the ball was thrown to them. Noah Gray caught over 80% of his targets and looks like a terrific pass catching TE in his own right. Their 8th and 9th options caught TD passes in the SB and as very talented, high picks they are expected to step into key roles in 2023. By contrast, the Bills REALLY need their high pick to hit the ground running as a rookie. Of course, Bills fans like yourself were presuming that James Cook would do so in the pass game as a rookie too. He was called a receiver playing RB. He was a rookie and played and produced like a rookie in the pass game. Just 180 yards.

My worst take ever I've shared here many times. It was that the Bills didn't need to worry about scouting or maybe even trading back into round 1 for Aaron Rodgers because they already had a good prospect to develop in JP Losman. Didn't seem like a big take at the time, and Rodgers had plenty of doubters but my take on the matter was just lazy. Rodgers is a top 10 all-time kinda' passer. But I didn't spend any real time evaluating him and mostly just lumped him in as just another Jeff Tedford product. I don't have many bad takes because I don't weigh in on that many topics. It's easy to make statements about everything you have a first impression about but I don't do that. If I have a strong opinion on it........it's probably because I have seen things that make that point pretty definitive. I've told @GunnerBill many times that if he wants to be right more he needs to adopt that philosophy and say a lot less about peripheral topics.........but he's about where I was as a fan in the late 90's where I was following everything in both college and pro football all the time. Totally engaged in it. I still follow it very closely and more than a lot of people who consider themselves experts......but definitely not the same. Example being the salary cap. I don't bother knowing everyone's cap figures for the next 3 years because I feel the cap is a lot more malleable now. There are just topics that I have come to realize where the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

I believe it could be the reason. He knows Gabe just a WR3. He knows they want to make the offense more structured and on schedule to get the ball out of Allen's hands. Not having a more talented second WR spells coverages rolled to Diggs again........which in the scenario @HappyDays posted makes Gabe the primary read very often in an offense where Diggs isn't allowed to adjust his route based on the leverage of the CB to become the primary. That means more passes to Gabe and barring huge, unreasonable-to-expect improvement from Gabe that subsequently means more passes on the turf and interceptions. Except this would be for the entire season rather than just roughly half of it......like last year. I could see him thinking his re-structure got used on defense instead of to help the passing game and really not liking the combination of him being the primary even less while the offense still doesn't have a satisfactory 2nd option. A lot riding on Kincaid being a game changer.

Before people get too far down the "Diggs just wants the ball and it isn't about winning" line of thinking...........consider that Diggs caught his targets about 70% of the time last season and Davis only about 50%. That's a huge gotdam difference. That can most definitely be the difference between winning games and losing them. So yeah, if you want to win there isn't any doubt that you want to get the ball to the guy that catches it instead of the guy who does not. I understand that they want Allen to get the ball out on time and take less punishment and structure can certainly play into that...........but they need to close the gap between Diggs and the other targets if they can't find a way to make getting him the ball a priority over guys who don't catch their targets.

I hope you are right but the two definitions of "journeyman" in sports are: 1."technically competent but having been unable to excel" 2. "has bounced around a lot of teams" Those both apply heavily to Sherfield. He'd be a dictionary-quality definition. This is his 4th organization going into year 6.......and age 27 is not young.......it's about the same age and similar circumstances to Jake Kumerow when they acquired him. We should hope that he will be a lot better than Jake........but of course we all thought there was more there with Jake as well. He flashed with Green Bay, scored a TD in the NFCCG for them, looked to be emerging and Rodgers didn't want to lose him.........but he never amounted to much in Buffalo. Harty is more of the "unable to excel" definition of journeyman. His solid 2021 is a complete outlier for him. I doubt he can remain healthy but he is intriguing if they can get him on the field and he can return to his form of 2021........but needing both of those two things decreases the chance that he turns into a better player than he's proven to be so far. But he is intriguing. And younger, at age 25. I didn't see the same things with Shakir. I wanted him to be that try-hard, unfairly evaluated, chip-on-shoulder guy who didn't make mental errors and didn't let the ball hit the turf........which is what we expected........but he wasn't. He isn't explosive or a threat to outrun coverage so he really can't be a 50% catch rate guy. You want to see him in the slot and catching 70%+ or bust. I do think he'll start camp behind Sherfield and Harty on the depth chart because of what they bring to the table that he does not. And if he doesn't do a better job of being where he is supposed to be and coming down with the football in camp/preseason I could even see Beane trading him to one of the teams that had hoped to get him in round 6 in the 2022 draft.

The only one I have expectations for is Kincaid. Shakir didn't catch the ball well last year in his limited opportunities.........the drop in the playoff game against Miami when he was open alone deep stands out but also his 50% catch rate and 10% drop rate in the regular season were just more of the same inconsistency that they were getting from Gabe and Lil' Dummy. Shakir kinda' reminds me of Knox in that he seems to focus well on difficult catch opportunities and instead his drops are the inexcusable, easy, wide-open types. The journeyman that they signed we'll just have to wait and see.........they have averaged less than 200 yards per season each in their careers. Could one or both of them break out? Yeah but OJ Howard could have been TE2 and Jamison Crowder could have played like he had 2 years prior to joining the Bills.............and of course, neither did. Hopefully these very modest investements in weapons yield more than it's fair to expect but especially with veteran players like that.......players are who they are until otherwise proven.

Having a reliable second target option for Allen is huge. Davis and McKenzie are chronic ball droppers who started out the season as the #2 and #3 receiving weapons for Allen and both finished with 9%+ drop rates........which is brutal. And Dawson Knox of course was a notorious ball dropper before and still tends to fight routine throws. So it shouldn't be very surprising that if Diggs wasn't open Allen was wanting to push the ball downfield more and try to score quick. Gotta' remember though that while that style yielded results in that Patriots playoff win........opposing defenses WANT the Bills to try to execute 10-12 play drives. So they gotta' be very good at it. Hopefully Kincaid makes a huge impact in the quick game with his sure hands. A lot to ask of a rookie to become a go-to guy immediately and sustain it for a full season and SB run though. Also, if they somehow manage to get Hopkins he's like a 1% drop rate guy so that would further address the big problem with dropsies from Bills weapons and encourage Allen to get the ball out quick/on-time.

He's been "fine" he just clearly hasn't been as good as the second best offensive weapon of the Chiefs, Bengals or Dolphins........the Bills top 3 concerns in the AFC.......or the NFC's best in Philadelphia and San Francisco. Fine doesn't win shootouts with those teams and the 3 playoff losses to KC and Cinci all had to be shootout wins. Maybe they get lucky and all of those teams defense's are very banged up in the secondary in the playoffs next year or they miss them altogether........but it's hard to envision not having to win 2 or 3 games against those teams while playing with the lesser offensive talent.

I think this will be Gabe's best season of his career, one way or another because walk years generally create a "me against the world" motivational scenario. But I don't think he can be the Bills long term solution as WR2. I think as a boundary-exclusive WR2....4 targets per game kinda' guy, yes........but as clearly the 3rd or 4th option. In that scenario I think the slot guy or TE needs to be amazing to draw 80-120 targets or that guy needs to be a true all-around WR who can play the slot or move outside and threaten CB's on almost every route. Like Emmanuel Sanders was when he was younger. Gabe's comp is Marquez Valdes-Scantling.......their games(and stats) are remarkably similar. Nobody would look at MVS from an outside fan perspective and say that guy is a long term solution at WR2 in KC. He has a clearly defined role and that's the same role Gabe should have, IMO. Our expectations for Gabe got way too high. He's long legged and stiff without natural hands and often exhibits inexplicably poor technique for an NFL WR. His always-injured ankle doesn't help matters but he's not breaking opposing DB's off on short routes either way, that's not his game. He's a long strider and with great size who can eat up nickel and dime DB's who aren't built to mirror him on his longer routes. JA17 brings out the best in Gabe because his huge arm creates tons of extra real estate for Gabe to use. He's basically playing on a bigger field than most WR because of it. And also because the time that Allen buys allows Davis to get open in ways he'd never have time to with a quick release pocket statue QB. It's reasons like this that I've also compared Gabe to a modern day Alvin Harper. Harper just got to do the things he did well in Dallas because the running game and their other receiving options made it so. His stats said he was a WR1 and he got paid like that by Tampa and then asked to play against better corners and with much less room to work and he became one of the all-time worst free agent signings of the 1990's.

Again.......Gabe Davis was 186th in catch % in the NFL......the lowest of any heavily targeted receiver(Jets bust Corey Davis was a lower % but on almost 50% less targets). And Gabe had the league's highest drop % for a WR at almost 10%. That's horrible and it wasn't just the outright drops.........he's generally bad when contested.......which is the even larger issue now that he is facing better CB's. And enough with the ankle injury talk..........like Harmon said he's been largely the same player for all of his career........and that should not surprising because he first injured it in his rookie season and played the Indy playoff game where he had the 4 catches with the bad foot and the injury has just kept recurring each season.

Some fans don't realize how much of a curve they graded Gabe on because he was a rookie. After that 4 catch game against Indy he had 0 catches on 7 targets in the next 2 games. He's never been particularly sure handed and as the receiving corps has diminished Gabe has become a more featured target and he has had to play against CB's who are higher on their teams depth charts. And that's exposed weaknesses that were always there. The way to make Gabe a feel good story again is to knock him down to being receiving option 3 or 4 on the chart again.

Alphadiva off in the distance........

Does Allen ever rank the receivers he's played with that way? No, because he has the emotional intelligence to understand that nothing good can come of that. If Beasley wasn't such an all-around complete f#cking idiot he would know to just keep these guys names out of his sparsely toothed mouth. He even does it FOR FREE on twitter. At least get paid for it if you are going to alienate former teammates. It's not very hard to just say "I played with no better leader than Dak". Then nobody else is thrown under the bus. (Never mind that he b!tched about Dak only throwing him the ball on 3rd downs on his way out of Dallas.)

Well, maybe just substitute your lack of amusement for me making fun of your weakness for the fact that Diggs absence from mandatory OTA's was the top national sports story less than 24 hours after the NBA champion was crowned. Literally. It wasn't "But first.......the NBA has a new champion" it was "But first.......trouble in Buffalo....". Acting like Bills fans were being absurd for discussing the topic........let alone CREATING the drama........was a massive leap into bitchyness by our disappointed diva. #Alphadiva

I think Harty just runs faster when chased. Diggs runs faster when chaste........which is why he will never be a burner.

Nah, you definitely need the sleep. Fatigue makes cowards, as the saying goes. We'll make a man out of you on TSW the right way........in between your nappy times. Or you'll quit like a real quitty quitter. I'm just alerting you to your irrational level of concern about what fans deem discussion worthy. Have a snickers while you're at it.

I don't think McDermott is a "great" HC but there is nothing wrong with his ability on the sideline that more talent around Josh Allen couldn't have resolved. I just get the feeling that he and Beane have felt that the formula is to ave difference makers all over the field on defense and a stud QB carrying a considerably less invested-in group of offensive players. Which was the formula in Philly and then in Carolina where had McD worked(people forget how the Eagles often left their McNabb offense poorly stocked) and it was also actually sorta' the formula that beat McD's defense in the SB in Carolina(Manning was lousy that year but the Broncos D was great).

FIFY

You're gonna' burn yourself out getting exercised about people being more interested in a possible rift between the teams two best players than they are the possibility of Tavon Austin winning the slot receiver battle with his amazing minicamp and winning attitude. Oh wait, that was last year. When things were exciting around here. I predict you flame-out of TSW well before the new stadium gets completed. Much too sensitive and overly critical of the fans, who btw, OBVIOUSLY had nothing to do with "sewing discontent" between Allen and Diggs. When people start going out of their way to blame fans for things they have had absolutely nothing to do with it's a sign that they can't handle the stress of being a fan of a team with expectations.

I don't disagree necessarily but they didn't get to a last splash before all of the other moves they made the past 2 offseasons. Coming to terms with their moves doesn't seem necessary. We can enjoy the season while not being very satisfied by the personnel choices they've made. Coming to terms with it is almost like agreeing to agree with said choices. I don't need to go there, personally. They just need to show us the baby after all that laboring to stack the roster how they felt was best.