BADOLBILZ

Anyone seen @eball lately?

That was like a 10 minute long, 75% rpm, banjo version of Yakkity Sax. Brutal.

It's actually not impossible.......or even that complicated. Every team can afford to have a QB1 and WR1 on big second contracts...........and then you need one WR1A on a rookie contract. It's literally where the Bills should be right now..........and hopefully will be next season.

The way the game was being called there was shaping up to be an abundance of players capable of being very productive WR in the NFL. That should serve to lower costs.........but given the success of what the Bills did in 2020........it did not. So I believe that the NFL owners decided last offseason to legislatively reign in the passing game to create financial separation between the WR1 and the pack of other receivers to stop the Gabe Davis types of the world from getting $20M Mike Williams deals. It's turned into an absolute mugging in the secondary all game this season. It's been the year of the handsy CB........as evidenced by rookie mugger Sauce Gardner being the highest rated CB in the NFL by some metrics. Meanwhile, the amount of RB's with 1500 scrimmage yards or more will likely double this season.

The mistake Beane has been making is drafting increasingly more for need because the roster has few holes, IMO. That's a recipe for disappointment. But I will say that......in general.........it's much easier to nail a draft when you have needs everywhere. Joe Douglas had a great draft but it might look a lot different if he didn't need everything and therefore have no conflict between need and BPA.

I thought their former starting guard from last season Hakeem Adeniji was starting at RT for Collins? He was pretty bad at guard but he's been active all season, not a PS player. Did he get injured too?

Charging up the WR room in 2020 was arguably the key step in the Bills rise from Bills being a scrappy WC contender to a legit SB contender. Sometimes it seems like Beane is the only one who doesn't understand what they'd actually done by building what at the time was a top 3 WR corps in the NFL around their young QB. Teams have been trying to build top 5 WR corps to elevate their young or underperforming QB's ever since and it's working. They need to get back there but they are chasing it now.........demand is up league-wide, UFA market is thin and there are less sure-thing types in the upcoming draft.........it won't be as easy to put it back together as it would have been to simply maintain it.

No, DE is a more premium position than C in the NFL..........this is reality. Good centers play a vital role but it's about supply and demand. A lot of OL can be good centers..........and just being good is plenty for that position. HOW good your edge and island players are is really how games are broken open so that's why they get paid the big bucks. Basham just wasn't a very good edge rushing prospect though, IMO. He was more of a mid-round base DE type prospect to me........and at that point I'd almost rather wait and take a late round flyer on a more athletic type.

Yeah he was exceptionally bad in that Miami game a couple weeks ago. Then he suddenly wasn't practicing..........which seems to imply he was hurt and maybe that was why he was so atrocious. The other day McD said he wasn't going to practice........and then he did practice.........I really don't know what the deal is but the last time he was on the field he was the Bills worst player on D and he was replaced by a practice squad player and the defense then dominated the best rushing team in the league.

I definitely agree in principle that an edge rusher is a premium position that is harder to fill than center............and that early picks should be expended on high ceiling players at premium positions. But I didn't think Basham qualified as one. Seemed like an over-aged JAG of a prospect to me. Humphrey was a generational type C prospect IMO..........I've seen lesser ones go in round 1 in certain years(like Eric Wood, for instance). Not sure if he will pan out but Humphrey was A LOT more likely to succeed than Basham. Even though I had reverence for Humphrey I wasn't broken up about not taking him because, as you said, centers are pretty easy to find and having a good one might actually be better for your cap situation long term than having the highest paid one. My focus as the Bills pick approached was LSU WR Terrace Marshall.........he almost made it to the Bills pick. I would have loved that pick. I loved the Spencer Brown pick too. Neither has been as good as I would have hoped thru 2 seasons but they both have more promise than Boogie, IMO. Hopefully he proves me wrong and finds some intangible way of improving because I just don't think he has the physical talent to live up to the hope.

He signed during UFA but it's fair to call him a street free agent..........he was released on January 8 and despite being able to negotiate with teams for 2+ months before UFA he was unable to secure a contract of any sort in that time. I tend to see street free agents as more of an in-season pickup but Nord is right............he was on the street for months and anyone could have signed him and they chose not to.........so the Bills picked him up for vet league minimum.

There is a part of you that misses the drought, isn't there? On SB Sunday nobody cares if a team won road playoff games to get there. Always best to be able to celebrate a SB march in your home stadium.

With 2:16 left Frank Gore caught a pass from Darnold and pedaled backwards to convert a 3rd and 6 and preserve a narrow 23-20 victory for the Jets.

We tend to view all knee issues as random but the vulnerabilities can be hereditary. Given how the injuries set back his bro you can't blame them for having him sit out. But a team can be cautious about it. If he clears medical concerns and tests thru the roof he could very well be a top 10 pick regardless. Not a great WR class.

Like Zach Wilson, Phil and Chris Simms didn't see the field well/quickly or have great pocket presence coming out of college. Chris never panned out. Phil developed into a very good QB but he was much less than the sum of his parts for a number of years and by the time he turned into an elite game manager people had forgotten that he entered the NFL as an elite prospect(#7 overall like Allen).

I like the way that receiving the pass is so easy for him. With the Bills band of ball battling receivers......having another like Diggs who has great ball skills is very appealing. The two big questions are the medical evaluation after missing this season and whether drafting a slot-only type in round 1 is good value. His brother Canaan is a 1st baseman the Yankees drafted in 4th round in 2017 and knee injuries slowed his progress in the Yankees system before he was dealt to Pittsburgh, so I wonder about the medicals. I know people will argue about whether he's slot only........but it's a distinct possibility, IMO.

I think we are only 5-10 years away from the NFL playing some games where teams wear their rivals colors for a game.........and young Bills fans happily wearing the Bills logo around town in teal and orange.........much to the disdain of the generation now that loves the terrible color rush uni's.

You've described what the Bills are.........but I don't blame it on Josh Allen just wanting to throw deep. If they were worst in YAC and Allen was at the top of air yards per attempt that would be more supportive of it being an Allen problem. He's not. Allen is 9th in air yards per attempt. Lot's of QB's with much higher YAC production and higher AYA. The Bills receiving targets are the dynamic Stef Diggs........and 3 athletes with hard hands........Davis, Knox and McKenzie. Think back to the opener against the Rams.........Allen was getting back quick and getting the ball out in rhythm........I think that's what Dorsey would like to be able to do. But you can't make a living throwing bullets over the middle to ham handed double-catchers, clap-catchers or tiny trampoline padded body catchers as receiving options.........the risk isn't worth the gain. IMO that's the primary reason why they throw the ball where they do. My question is have defense's caught on and are baiting Allen into taking the cheese what look like the easy windows they try to live in? There has been an absolute RASH of situations lately where a defender has oh-so-headily drifted from his position into what looks to Allen to be a wide open passing window. Seems to be happening every game now.

So let me get this straight.........you did this exact thing for a decade+ here on TSW during the drought and now you are being critical of your own technique?

It's a combination of factors........most already mentioned in the thread. But the receiving corps is definitely part of the issue..........Diggs is great before the catch but just good after he's received the ball............and Knox and Davis both struggle to catch the football......so as with all receivers with poor ball skills do they often have to stop or leave their feet in order to concentrate on the catch.......which leaves them dead for YAC. I've mentioned it before but when you build your receiving corps with middle round talents you generally don't get targets with the whole package.

What else did you think is insinuated when his primetime numbers are brought up? It's hard to draw a different conclusion than he is clearly more focused in those higher profile matchups. He needs to be like Brady and many other great QB's of the past and try to generate intensity/disdain for each opponent. I think we saw Allen do that when the Bills played Denver in 2020 and he was determined to show John Elway(who had put in a good deal of time evaluating Allen as a prospect) how dumb he was for picking Bradley Chubb instead of him. For all the talk about how amazing Allen's transformation to a great QB was.........the reality is that he went 7th overall in the draft.........it's not like every team passed on him multiple times in the draft like GOAT and former GOAT Tom Brady and Joe Montana.

I do too. And I think both decisions could be regretted immediately...........and the results could be very different next season........in a bad way. You don't want to be built around an expensive and oft-injured RB and a middling QB.

Every new regime has an initial advantage with none of their work with their new team being on tape............see McDermott's defense early in 2017. The Giants have had a similar fall back to earth after midseason. There is a lot of potential there for Daboll and Schoen to look as stupid in year 2 and they look smart now............they have a contract decision due on a star RB..........same with their serviceable starting QB..........if they screw those things up they could pull a Ben McAdoo in year 2.