BADOLBILZ

Better yet, release Hines.........and ultimately employ Diggs in the slot. Flip the script from patching a hole to making the position the strength of your passing game. The last two SB winners put their best receiving talent in the slot..........that isn't a long trend but it makes a lot of sense........there are more free releases inside and a quick option for your QB who is also elite is great for keeping that QB on schedule, efficient and healthy.

Yeah I gotta' disagree with @C.Biscuit97 that KC receiving corps sucks. Kelce is great, obviously, and the position he plays is basically a slot receiver which makes for tons of what amounts to "easy pitch and catch" for Mahomes. Then Juju is a solid #2......and a high end slot receiver. Basically their corps is built from the inside out which is a philosophy the Bills should be using, IMO, rather than trying to patch up the slot with modest talent again. Outside MVS and Gabe Davis are the closest equivalents of two WR's types of production as you will see in the NFL. MVS clocks much faster but they make the same kind of plays and failures. And KC knew that all wasn't quite enough so they went out and grabbed the big play talent in Toney. Their WR corps doesn't have that 1A + 1B that it had in years past but it's deep, with 3 players who should be on $10M+ aav deals after Juju re-signs and recent 1st and 2nd round picks in Toney and Moore.

Bills......needy: https://www.nfl.com/news/2023-nfl-offseason-all-32-teams-wr-situations-ahead-of-free-agency-draft

Oh that's one of the colder attempted slaps on Gabe Davis I've seen. Robert Woods 2022 was what Cole Beasley 2022 would have been had he actually made a roster.........a clear step back from the 2021 Beasley that wasn't good enough. Maybe Woods had injuries that he can bounce back from but 9.9 yards per reception? 58% targets caught for a short/intermediate receiver? Passer rating in the 60's when thrown too? Woods was BAD last year.

2 years.......$14.5M......$7.7M gtd. Beane was paying backups $6M plus and getting patted on the back for it for the most part. I understand that the Bills weren't much of a destination after they gutted the roster of all recent 1st and 2nd round picks in the name of culture and passed on addressing their QB problem in year 1..........but he paid double for everything in subsequent seasons and really struck out big time in pro personnel.

.......Nsekhe, Klein, Saffold.......all guys who somehow got $6M aav or more as well. It's really a combination of big wastes AND a high volume of nickel and dime mistakes that added up on the pro side. Even things like the $15M they wasted trading for Kelvin Benjamin and Corey Coleman(for a 2 week tryout) was real cap space that would go a long way toward getting the Bills back to the cap today. The Bills pro personnel department has been pretty ineffective under Beane.

Beane has really struggled to find value in UFA........that is why they are cap strapped. Their drafts have been better than average and he's gotten good value on his own re-signs..........in a league where you can roll over cap the sheer volume of dollars thrown away on bad UFA decisions has put them into creative accounting mode a couple years earlier than they should be.

Initially hating the pick could have meant anything..........it was certainly not proof that you were a rational thinker. It's a QB driven league.........it was a very rational decision to take a swing at the player with the highest upside. As I said at the time.......Allen would have been the #1 overall pick in more drafts than not in the 2000's just based on his skillset and what is typically available at QB..........so at #7 he was a worthwhile risk. The attitude around here at the time was very much like it is around the Jets fandom now..........."if we just had a competent QB everything would fall into place"...........well, it turns out it takes more than that from the position and most fans don't realize that until they actually have a team in SB contention. The reality is that a team should have a draft process and they should adhere to it..........that is rational thinking. Since it's a thread about him........I will note that Yolo really hated the Josh Allen pick.........he went so far as to post lamentations about Dwayne Haskins being better than Josh Allen multiple times during the 2018 season.

Beasley and Brown were good signings at market rates. Williams was a bargain for one year. They got a solid season out of Kevin Johnson at CB in 2019. That's the beginning and end of the value he's acquired in UFA. Less than 1 good value per offseason for a team that has been very aggressive in UFA. Daquon Jones is a solid starter but the market for his services is more like what he got in Carolina in 2021, $4M per year. $14M for 2 was a big number. Yeah, he was a lot better than Star Lotulelei and the drop-off in that outlier game against Cinci to another failed UFA, tweener 1-tech/3-tech Tim Settle, was significant. But that is definitely not a reflection that Jones is an elite player. There wasn't actually a big elevation in his play last season, he's always been a very solid block absorber. Beane was once again extremely generous with the contracts to guys with questionable tread remaining like Saffold, OJ Howard and Jordan Phillips.........that latter two had limped their way down to what should have been league minimum offerings. His track record in UFA is undeniably terrible.

new articles added in OP

My theory is that his employer assigned him to a high risk account that will involve an extended period of time at sea.

It wasn't the X's and O's it was the Jimmy's and Joe's. Teams adapted to limit what the Bills had..........but the Bills didn't have the personnel to make the changes and be better for it. Add in the Allen injury and they never got all the way back but were still the league's second highest scoring team. I think there are just a lot of disillusioned fans who felt certain that Gabe Davis was going to be a stud and that Isaiah McKenzie was going to break out from the shadow of Cole Beasley and still can't accept that they were wrong about the talent. Organizationally, the Bills put too much stock in Davis and Dawson Knox raising their games and Jamison Crowder bouncing back. Instead they got very similar iterations of those players that had been seen in the prior year..........but instead of Davis and Knox being the 3rd/4th or 5th options in the passing game they became the clear cut 2 and 3. And they were good enough to score a lot of points that way but not good enough to be among the final 4 teams..........all who were loaded with playmakers.

That's really all that matters. This is a SB contending team and they just don't match up with the best at WR2. As much as we talk about offensive line........there has been a greater correlation in the quality of receiving targets in teams reaching the championship games and SB's in recent years than even the quality of the offensive lines. The Bills need to address both areas but anyone who thinks that WR2 isn't the most important individual player they can add isn't paying attention.

Interesting follow thru on swing from top prospect Volpe.

Did @BringBackFergy leave with Yolo?

Moments later........in private

Green Bastard........parts unknown

Oh no question that the presumption of success is leading to some of the overreaction.........but he actually DID get worse with more reps. And maybe he does get better if there is less physical play permitted in the secondary in 2022 and it have been more officiated more like 2020-2021. He got exposed at the catch point. I was with you on the expectations...........I said last spring that he'd have to put up over 1,000 yards to justify being given sole ownership of all of those targets.........and I didn't see where his past production and injury history warranted that trust. But I actually think his failure to excel was more than just Gabe 2022 being Gabe of the past. Things changed. We found out, he's not a contested catch guy because suddenly he was being contested because more obstruction was permitted. I think you see that change........ based on your assessment of Rashee Rice being a good fit for the Bills. A couple years ago........I think maybe he's covered a bit too much for your liking. Now, there is added value in excelling at the catch point.

Gabe got more opportunity..........and he did less with it. His yards per snap dropped from around .96 to .90 from 2021-2022..........which isn't a HUGE drop in itself but it's very notable because the assumption was that he'd get more productive on a per play basis and that would lead to him becoming a 1,000+ yard receiver ........like a Tee Higgins(1.36). Instead he's more of a Marquez Valdes Scantling(.88). The range between top end and low end WR2 options in the NFL is pretty significant.

The chart is just for getting open against man coverage..........but the Bills aren't really going to face a lot of man coverage. Shakir has some size/length limitations outside that I think teams would really be able to exploit if he were to assume Gabe Davis' WR2 role. So ideally he'd be a slot receiver but you gotta' be very good against zone to be the slot for the Bills and he was not. McKenzie is oft-noted as not good when it comes to attacking zone defenses either..........which is why Beasley had to be brought back. It's not a given that Shakir will now be excellent against zone after a year in the league.........so I think you address WR with a good UFA(not a $2M flyer) and an early draft pick..........and then if Shakir rises and you actually have 4-5 good receivers you are back closer to where you were in 2020.

Man McCarron looks terrible. Perfect example of a QB who is looking at the pass rush instead of downfield. Can't play QB like that. Takeaway from first 3 games is that hiring these former players with little head coaching experience seems to yield terrible results. Wade Phillips just overwhelmed TBucks' team and Wade got caught on the sideline mic calling TBuck "not a coach" because of his choice to keep throwing the ball late in the game. Stoops kickedass too. This Hines Ward/Anthony Becht matchup is unwatchable. I know the pro football establishment wants ways to fast track retired players into coaching gigs but perhaps maybe people who become professional coaches at 22-24 years of age and work their way up the ladder can be good enough. Maybe understanding what it's like to not be an All American and NFL Pro Bowl player better prepares you to coach teams full of jabroni's.

I was skeptical of McDermott's ceiling as well but I have to admit he has improved in a lot of areas. He has become one of the best at deciding when to go for it on 4th down or when to kick the ball.........which I thought he was Jauronian at early in his career. He has mostly embraced being a pass first offense. I agree that he seems pretty stubborn about his defense but from an analytics viewpoint I suspect that ranking at the top of the league the past two years reflects favorably on that obstinance. What I am MOST disappointed in McD is his inability to make broad adjustments to certain opponents the way Lou Anarumo does with Cinci. The biggest argument for keeping an expensive back 7 intact for all these years should be that they should become great at adapting and confusing opponents. Instead, against the best QB'd opponents in the playoffs they've been fish in a barrel over and over.

Yeah he didn't last long after he left the game. Evans and Jackson not only had similar skillsets but they actually both had 1,000 yard seasons playing across from each other in Tampa in 2014.