BADOLBILZ

He still might have said no to the Bills. He was a free agent. I find it unlikely because they literally still have all the CB's that they dealt him for peanuts in favor of on the roster.......but they may have offered him a PS spot.

Yeah the narrative that he is an assh0le came from the fact that he got traded a lot. He had a long career as a mid-league level WR1 so I think teams were always just making business decisions about his contract. That's certainly why the Saints traded him the first time. By all accounts he's always been a very professional player and good teammate. I am not sure what impact he will have on the room arriving at the end of the season like this but the Bills have not had someone like him and with his credibility in the WR room since they drafted Coleman. Certainly can't hurt, IMO. Cooper was a great player but not a particularly positive influence.

Succinctly put. Whether you call it football intelligence or instinct.......there are always some players who just can't translate their gifts because of a lack of it. And it's hard for fans to identify. Lil' Dummy McKenzie was a good example. The negative impact he had was significant. CJ Spiller is an all-timer kinda' example of unrealizable talent. Big red flags for "dumb" players always pop up though. For Moore it was as simple as following his brutal career passer rating when targeted and INT numbers. He's literally NEVER been a positive for any offense he'd played in. In an era with less statistical info available you might get a nugget like when Tasker let it slip on air that CJ Spiller wasn't getting more reps late in his rookie year because he still didn't understand the play calls(after playing in a flash card signal system at Clemson). Then the emergence of the all-22 footage where he clearly had no clue where his blocking was going and was just running to daylight. Even then, Sean Payton couldn't see it and thought he'd struck gold in FA. Moore just seems to have the spatial awareness of a pinball compared to an average NFL WR. If the Bills do decide to incorporate more choice routes back into their system that would just further diminish his potential value in their offense.

Blaming Rousseau for the defensive struggles is just such a particularly bad take that it's easy for media to point out.

I got a string of like 5 of the lower bowl seats for $15 when they replaced those like 20 years ago or so. Those seats saw teams win AFCCG at home 3 times. There were just piles and piles of them. But they WERE being sold even then. Hammer had a bunch of them in the junk area behind his garage too.

"Wayyy better than stanazolol and won't show up in a pi$$ test"

In fairness........McDermott's "complementary football" phase won 24 of the next 27 meaningful regular season games. As you said, the problem was assuming that efficiency was sustainable with modest to bad passing game personnel despite seeing it fail with ball-in-hand at the end of the two Brady playoff losses. And a sh!tty offensive performance against Baltimore in a narrow home win. They drew the wrong conclusions. As did most of the fans who have pounded their fist relentlessly about the defense costing the Bills SB trips for years. Both sides of the ball have underperformed their regular season numbers by a exactly a touchdown in the elite 8 level of the playoffs since 2020 yet some fans think the offense has been on point and the defense is down -14 per game. Not the case. When your strength is the #1 difference making player in football......lean into THAT.

The 8 interceptions and the 40 something passer rating when targeted in 2024 basically made him toxic to the rest of the league. I said it when they signed him.........he's just not trustworthy. I'm sure the Bills thought a simple passing system would elevate him and maybe he'd be an asset in scramble drills but they were wrong.

One of those turkey's didn't quite reach temp so it rode home(unbeknownst to me driving) on the top of our Dodge Ram van. It was pretty well suctioned on there after 70 miles.

Thumbs up for enthusiasm. I think he's out of juice to contribute as a deep ball option but as I've said in other threads I think you can plug him in and trust him to run some of the option routes they abandoned when Dorsey was fired. He has spent a lot of time in EP systems.......most of his best years. That addresses this big "mesh" complaint about not having quicker developing options.

I would have been until this season. I think it's reached a point where he has to relinquish control defensively. He is baby sitting Babich. Babich may one day be a great DC but that position is the one that favors the wiser man. Offense can still be about innovation so young minds can still find an advantage.

I can't envision a scenario where McDermott gets fired for this mess that Beane has made. But I do think the big offseason move is likely for proven coordinators to open the new stadium with. It's all a shot in the dark with so many candidates still employed but Mike McDaniel and Jim Schwartz is my very BOLD prediction.

They did well with their picks........but they literally drafted 24 players in 2023 and 2024. Nacua was their fourth 5th round pick in 2023. It's so frustrating during draft season listen to Bills fans yack that nonsense about the Bills not having space for all these picks and how they should trade up because somebody might not make the roster. But they are taking their lead from Beane on it. He is the one leading that charge and he's been getting ball washed on TSW for most of that time. Fans ALWAYS turn on management when it occurs to the fans that they don't share the same opinions as management. Volume is a cheat code. The Rams basically risked being a little too young for a couple years and in the middle of year 3 they had been totally rebuilt from a cap strapped, aging team into a SB contender. Since 2017 when they stopped having 1st round picks they have averaged 9.3 picks per class. They have lost a number of solid players in free agency that are still contributing in the league. Like David Edwards. So what? It shouldn't matter. Not everybody needs to be re-signed.

We knew they had 9 home games. Then, when the schedule actually came out and we saw there was no international "home" game..........I mean, that looked like a best case scenario schedule for a reigning division champ. They've blown it for want of a WR1. And hell, if Kincaid stayed healthy they are probably the 1 seed.

Where I think you are wrong is that the Bills can't afford to have poorly coached games. Most games look poorly coached from both sides because styles make fights and everyone is tryna do the same thing. Houston didn't coach their way to victory. They damn near got beat despite 8 sacks and 3 turnovers. And the Bills needed a Khalil Shakir facemask penalty to finish off that Tampa game that people thought was some kind of offensive "formula". It's not really a coaches league right now. Teams have never been more alike in their approaches offensively and defensively. Most games look like an intrasquad scrimmage compared to even 5 years ago. It's not an interesting look for the league, it's more fun when you have those contrasting styles........but the league has moved the game in this direction and if you are a fan of parity you can't be upset with the results. On the plus side........it's not the NBA. The NBA got homogenized years ago but being able to trade 5 years worth of picks has created a super team in OKC that is toying with the rest of the league and still has half the league's first round picks in the near future. They should probably win the next 3-4 titles.

Yep, Beane got him a 1,000 yard receiver from 4 years ago off waivers in late November.........what's Brady's excuse going to be NOW!

https://www.audacy.com/podcast/take-the-north-a-chicago-bears-podcast-f67e3/episodes/tremaine-edmunds-has-thrived-since-moving-to-outside-linebacker-2fcf9 Who'd have EVER thought that moving Edmunds to OLB would elevate his game?

But Cooper was a player who had just put up a 1200+ yard season full of big plays......including a game in that 2023 season where he put up 265 yards. NOTHING gets DC's fired like getting beaten over the top. And Cooper(4) only ranks behind Calvin Johnson(5) and Lance Alworth(5) in career 200+ yard receiving games. His commitment to the game was always in question everywhere he went but at the same time he was a great deep threat. The people on here who act like he wasn't having a significant impact after his arrival just don't understand the psychology of the game. Injuries diminished his skills and along with few months of less than dynamic tape that changed that perception come playoff time. But for a while his presence elevated the passing game A LOT.

I've just always believed that Cooks was just viewed as a middle of the pack WR1 so teams weren't really inclined to pay him WR1 money for that. There seemed to be a pretty endless supply of playmaking WR's in the draft and defense's really didn't go all-in on capping passing games until after they watched the 13 seconds game in horror realizing that you weren't stopping the likes of Allen/Mahomes without putting a cap on big plays. Cooks production started to dry up after that. 2017 was arguably Brady's second best year in NE statistically. With Cooks there. The Patriots were notorious for not valuing WR talent. Brady's efficiency fell off considerably the next two seasons after the Cooks trade. Perhaps if they had kept Cooks that divorce never happens. By the time Brady left they had a WR room that was about bottom-of-league like Josh has now.

I think you've steered us into the infamous Cam Newton malaphor that describes the Carolina Way that Beane can't seem to outgrow:

No I was just at a loss for words regarding you taking the hot button term "force feed" that was used to defend "everybody eats" and attempting to turn it against "everybody eats". We get it........you were convinced it was sustainable. But force feeding does not describe what's happening. Too few options are open to feed. You don't take 8 sacks because you are force feeding covered receivers. The only element of force feeding going on is when Allen is choosing the more risky options on the occasion when he actually has more than one.......and then when normally ball-safe guys like Cook and Shakir are coughing up the ball trying to do too much. All errors accumulated trying to make up for the fact that "everybody eats" has real limitations in a MATCHUP league like the NFL.

Maybe next year, for better or worse, when Mike McDaniel is the OC. I don't blame Brady to the degree that some here do. They've built a WR corps where the two most talented players are intellectually challenged at football and the rest are juiceless if not useless. But I think him being a dead scapegoat walking is one thing McDermott and Beane may still agree on.

Brandin Cooks hasn't been a difference maker in 3-4 years he was once one of the better EP choice-route runners in the game. I might be giving them too much credit but if they had any intention of mixing some Dorsey/Daboll passing concepts back in then they had to get guys in who could do that. Coleman obviously hasn't played in a system where he was being asked to read coverage and make wholesale adjustments like the Bills did in the Diggs days. He can't even be trusted to make the right adjustment later in his route now. Elijah Moore has Cooks-esque physical talent from 5 years ago but he is here because he is notorious for being in the wrong place. The Bills could roll the dice on him because he wasn't being asked to think much in this system.

Yeah and not being positioned to take a giant first step is largely why. When he came out there were 3 things that made him such a productive pass rusher at Miami: 1. A very long first stride that caused OT's to have to make a big leverage choice(see the first play in that clip) 2. His ability to never lose sight of the QB 3. His sure tackling due to the Wilt Chamberlin sized hands He has never really been able to use that long stride to cut OT's from the herd because he is needed to play in tighter alignments and move horizontally so much. In order to do that the Bills needed to be stouter inside and have an "over" rusher to complement his "under". When he's had his moments it's usually when they are getting that from the opposite side. I get that Bills fans want him to be an edge bender but that was never likely to happen. Just not that body type. Now maybe you are right and he'd be better off bulking up but he's really good right now. He's just not GREAT like Josh Allen so shining despite a poor supporting cast isn't nearly as easy.