BADOLBILZ

Anytime you are nearly the very worst in your category........as Gabe was in % of targets dropped.......it's not overblown. As I said.......he was a top 50 targeted WR because he was blessed to have JA17 as his QB and Stef Diggs as WR1 (and no competition for snaps). Among those receivers only the notoriously unsure-handed Zay Jones was worse at securing catchable passes. 9 drops can be 9 drives killed. That's why it's a lot. There is also the issue of not being a good contested catch receiver. Those are the "forgiven" drops. He's very poor at those as well and just because those don't qualify as "drops" doesn't mean a WR2 shouldn't be catching a lot of those. All in all.......Gabe ranked 186th of 197 qualifying players in the NFL in catch %(51.6%). Just a tick behind his speedier doppelgänger Marquez Valdes-Scantling (51.9%).

Yeah of course anyone who dropped 50% of the passes thrown to them would be absurd.......like a QB completing only 25% of his passes over the course of a season..........you aren't saying anything remotely cogent with your attempt to make a point.........it's not really possible for an NFL player to be that bad over the course of many hundreds of snaps. What matters is his production relative to his peers and his near 10% drop rate was abysmal. Among the 50 most targeted WR in the NFL last season.......only Zay "Drop Zone" Jones had a higher drop %.

Gabe wasn't a top half WR2 last year, IMO. What his counting stats giveth his terrible underlying metrics taketh away. He hasn't even proven that he's cut out for WR2 at this point. He's a specialist like Marquez Valdes-Scantling.......... and when you go from a star in Diggs to a top-end specialist WR3 and then there is no WR4 at all.........that's two big holes in the middle of your WR corps. With the abundance of talent added to the league by many strong recent WR drafts there aren't many teams with 2 holes like that in the top 4. I am sure the Bills are counting on Allen elevating low pedigree nobodies like Shakir, Harty and Sherfield........and he might.........but for the purposes of ranking groups on sheer talent I think they rank in the 20's at this point. I thought they had already fallen to that 12-15 range in 2021 when they still had Covid Beasley and Ol'manuel Sanders and that group was much more established than this one. They had Gabe in that 3-4 range where he gets good matchups. 2020 they were a top 3 unit.

I disagree that his ankle was fine. His gait was not right after plays even late in the season. What I KNOW wasn't hindered was his hearing. He really did not like the "catch the damn ball Gabe" attitude of the rightfully disillusioned crowd behind the home bench. It really pissed him off and he gave it back. Hopefully he takes that experience to heart and works on closing the deal on the football this offseason.

Diggs........a top end #3 in Gabe..........and a bunch of dudes WE like because we expect the upside........but in reality.......extremely low floors and even lower pedigrees. Their ranking is fair, IMO.........they certainly wouldn't be in a top 20. McBeane have let their fastball go to hell the past couple seasons. Hopefully Kincaid becomes good enough to make the actual "WR" room much less important.

Tough act following Fleezoid....... But hopefully Boo-boo foot Gabe is just keeping his perma-sprained ankle elevated and on ice all offseason

Yeah maybe Purdy is the real deal but he really caught the league by surprise. It would seem to me that if you are an opponent you want to force Purdy to make more big time throws this season.

@Thurman#1 is one of the most consistently wrong posters I've ever seen on TSW.........he just defends what he thinks is the company line at the moment and opens every other response with a declaration of "nonsense" as if that adds gravity to his woeful takes. It was simply a juice/squeeze decision. They clearly could have backloaded his deal with no problem........and they would have if he had Logan Wilson level instincts and adaptability. Hell they would have picked up his option if he did. Tremaine is a mediocre processor in a Brian Urlacher-like body and the modest improvements he's made in that regard over time didn't justify the investment.

Correct. The type of player that the Bills COULD afford to sign to a big contract was someone with 5-6 years of career left in front of him like Tremaine Edmunds. But retaining him meant an investment in both cap space AND a style of defense that has been dissected with alarming ease in the playoffs 3 straight seasons. We talk about how the team has reacted to playoff losses with personnel changes directly related to what went wrong in those games..........well I think that becoming a defense that is less predictable and reacts more to specific opponents was a NEED. The latter has helped Cinci over-perform two straight seasons in the playoffs. Retaining Edmunds didn't totally preclude them from being more multiple and he was excellent against inferior opponents.............but it would be hard to take him off the field making that much money and at this point he was an absolute liability in "money" games against elite passers because of his lack of instincts.

Steam shovel today

I looked into him as part of a Hopkins trade earlier and it seems that the Cardinals were pleased with how he played as more of a weak side LB and slot defender late in the year. So they apparently aren't in dump mode on him. Murray I think would be more likely to be available.

Yeah I've heard Marino and others saying that Latavius Murray is a roster lock but I think the way the contract is constructed they basically guaranteed him a sum ($800k) that will put him on par with the lowest values that will count against the cap if they cut him. Which would seem to be structured to allow them to cut him and keep him on the practice squad for compensation that is not far from league minimum for an on-roster player. Perhaps I am wrong on how that would have to be accounted for but that was the impression I got when I saw the contract details.

Nah the guy in SoCal where SoFi stadium ended up costing twice as much as budgeted and was a year late being finished assures us that public works construction is not loaded with inefficiencies that probably should have been worked out in the past 50 years.

Yeah you might be right at this moment. That might be something that will only show up after the Bills sell a cap-hell situation to the base. I remember being on this board in 1998 talking about the pending tear down and urgency to "win now" and 99% of the board thought I was dead wrong and that nothing was going to change whatsoever. It was inevitable if you understood the math. AFTER the tear down it was the exact opposite for about 15 years. Irrational fear of all things salary cap. Which the McBeane regime used to manipulate the fan base and had Bills fans nodding their heads that being $30M+ over the salary cap and almost zero committments by 2019 was just a disaster laid at Beane's feet.

Greg Mancz reading this thread

And hopefully that's where Kincaid really comes in.

Yeah but you know if the crowd got that aware of his incentives they will not be cheering when Poona gets a sack. It will be like losing a comp pick to them. Once he gets to 3 we might even get a thread on TSW about shutting Poona down.

He suffered the turf toe injury running against Tampa. I like him running to avoid being hit in the pocket because those are truly more likely to be where he gets injured but more concerned about the cumulative impact of lot's of violent collisions downfield. Running needs to be part of his game but taking the punishing hits in the process needs to effectively end if there is hope of him playing another 10+ years at a high level.

It's only innovative if it gets bought and used for jobs. It only gets bought for the jobs if using it makes the buyer more money per minute in the grand scheme. It's not really questionable business practice to do what makes you more money........that's kinda' the point of business. Real innovation forces the change. Like digital imaging largely turning Kodak from what would have otherwise been a company worth trillions today into a company that is instead worth a fraction of the soon-to-be labor cost on the new Bills stadium.

Is it? Diesel excavators have been around for 100 years. I expect the Bills stadium to be constructed with lot's of seemingly modest sized equipment that will take tons of time to do the job and subsequently make the production cost much more difficult to calculate. And of course, thousands and thousands of tiny 1/4 full loads of excavated material trucked to remote locations to be dumped. All that small bite construction is how you drain the budget and line your pockets in that biz.

I had to look up what a steam shovel was. I'm pretty certain there wasn't one of those out there.

I think that is his nature, he was a pocket passer without much run ability and though he has a good arm he wasn't able to excel without getting the ball out and throwing with anticipation. But he also has the best WR corps in the NFL...........so we will see if they have some mis-steps at the position like the Bills have after the 2020 season.

That would be great but Rousseau was by far the better player in 2022 and Ed has never approached that level of play over any significant period of time. Ed has a couple big games every year where he looks like an All Pro but otherwise he's never been much more than average in any season(and was bad in 2020). That has to change and SHOULD change. He's much too talented to continue to be JAG. My personal opinion is that he doesn't have the desire to be great and has been coasting on natural talent for the duration of his rookie deal waiting to get motivated by a contract year. I'm not saying he dogs it but he doesn't prepare well enough to be able to play well without extra motivation(like Thanksgiving in front of the entire country). They might have gotten a better prepared Oliver if they hadn't picked up the option.

Another early season matchup would be tiresome. Hope they position that matchup in December, myself.

And if I were in the owner's position, I wouldn't change that. Having a salary hierarchy is to management's advantage. The NFL doesn't want an NBA or MLB system where any position can be your superstars. That inflates costs. And by gently "punishing" teams for not using 1st round picks on premium positions it re-inforces the value of that hierarchy of positions that they've created. I think the NFLPA would strongly prefer that the 5th year option be more reflective of the positional value so those options get picked up..........but the owners aren't just going to give that to them. Some think these guys all just want a shot at free agency but in the big picture guaranteeing big year 5 salaries after year 3 is a big win for players on the whole and a bargaining chip.