BADOLBILZ

Everyone but you thinks 2020 and 2021 playoffs matter in the history of Josh Allen and McBeane. 13 seconds doesn't hold any meaning anymore? That's a hot take if ever there was one "Master Strategist".😂

I'm not too worried about it. The Bills have never passed on a RB in the draft or let one go in free agency and lived to regret it. It's the nature of the position. Replaceable. You can find talented one's all over the draft and at different levels of free agency. If Cook tore his ACL on the first day of camp I'd expect Johnson, Davis and whoever else they had to be plenty good enough to win a SB with. And the fact that Cook has had to come off the field on passing downs diminishes his value to me further until he can prove more worthy of being on the field on those downs. Those are the downs that ended their season the past two years.

Why presume the numbers won't be better? He has tons of room to improve in the passing game in particular. You are giving him LeVeon Bell first-team-All-Pro cred like he has been catching 75-85 passes per year and stoning blitzers. And even then with Bell teams saw that the one RB that pulled that and got paid ended up returning rusty and unmotivated and was subsequently a mega-bust of a signing. Cook's best bet is to prove he is a team player and is improving so teams feel comfortable giving him more guarantees in free agency. Saquon did that and got paid in free agency despite a down year statistically in 2023. I'd be surprised if Cook thinks he's going to be worse this season like some of you just presume he will.

Why did he get less touches in the passing game last year? Because his mistakes in the passing game in 2023 were deemed not worth the risk in 2024. If he improves in those areas he can increase his value and be considered among the elite. Get back to 10 yards per catch(like 2023) but with less drops(like 2024). Put some good pass pro on tape etc.. I'm not saying it wouldn't be better for a team to get him now and have him for age 26-28 than age 27-29...........but his contract leverage ain't good right now. Nobody wants to trade a draft pick AND pay him top of the market. Especially before they see what they get from this draft class.......which was one of the more vaunted groups in decades. On paper there isn't anybody who doesn't have a RB that they at least have hope for. It's a well stocked position around the league.

No you are thinking about next offseason. After he has his best season and answers the questions about his value on 3rd down. That's when Cook would have the leverage to actually earn a top-of-market value contract. The kind of leverage he has now is probably only capable of yielding about 60% of open market.

Since 2020 it's the same QB's and HC's that have been leading the 4 legit SB contenders in the AFC. Obviously. Drawing some arbitrary line 3 years ago.........as if anything has significantly changed in these rounds.......is simply illogical. But let's look at those last 3 seasons in the divisional and championship round where you claim "the bottom line is the offense is good enough" but the defense requires them to score "30+ points" to win. Offense: 22.5 points scored per game Defense 27.5 allowed..........including only 1 of 4 games over 30 points allowed. We all know why McBeane loaded up on defense. Not the first time Beane has thrown a surprising amount of money at a bunch of cold-product defensive free agents and fans have just assumed they would be better than they were when their prior team released them outright or let them walk. And if Bosa and Hoecht and Ogunjobi never play a down and Hairston, Sanders and Jackson make little-to-no impact as rookies......like Bishop and Carter the year prior.....the Bills will probably be RIGHT BACK in the divisional round against one of those other 3 stud QB's. And it's still anyone's guess which side of the ball will be called upon to make a key play close out that/those game(s).

You are LITERALLY using fake numbers to create a numbers argument that is really just a bunch of "feels". The defense hasn't given up 30+ points in these divisional and AFCCG games. Use REAL numbers. In these 7 matchups against the other AFC SB contenders the Bills offense has scored just under 23 and the Bills defense has allowed just under 28.......and the defense has scored a TD of their own. Both of those scoring numbers are about a TD away from their regular season numbers. The bottom line is NOT just that the offense is good enough to win as you vaguely declare. That's simpleton's logic. The bottom line is that both sides have underachieved similarly overall and they haven't made the plays in the clutch on either side when those plays would ultimately decide the close games.

First off......we need to stop looking at him as some modest second round pick. In making the trade-backs the Bills were saying that they would have been fine picking him at 28. And the lower the bulk numbers are then how he gets those numbers will be more important. If Coleman has a Gabe-like one-off 200+ yard game against the Saints.........but otherwise averages a paltry 37 yards per game the rest of the season..........then 800 yards is likely going to be seen as a failure. They need him to be consistent and come up big against the likes of Baltimore, KC, Philly etc.. I like Coleman's ceiling more than some but at some point either in 2025 or 2026 they need him to be producing at least at WR1 level to make the pick a real success story. That said, about half of first round picks fail to be seen as worthy of a 5th year extension so the potential for failure late in round 1 or early round 2 is inherently pretty high. That doesn't really alter fan or organizational expectations much though. You are never going to presume that a near 50% hit/miss rate applies to you.

C'mon now @Einstein 2nd and 9 was simply one of the worst play calls in Buffalo Bills history. Damned if it worked and Damned if it didn't. The Chiefs offense is AVERAGING 8 yards per play at this point........and Brady wants to give them the ball back with 2 minutes left so they can casually walk down the field.....playing 4 down offense this time.......and win the game instead of running out the clock and pushing an exhausted Chiefs defense over the goal line? The Chiefs defense has been on the field for almost 40 minutes and their tongues are hanging out. There was no logical reason to go to a one-read, 30+ air yard TD throw in the middle to a downfield receiver like Diggs........let alone a small catch radius slot receiver. Your offense has gotten to this position by averaging less than 5 yards per play all game. You've even failed to connect on a long throw earlier in this drive. Why even let their defense off the hook with some low % bullsh!t? It's brutally obvious........keep taking the underneath stuff and make them tackle their way out of this dilemma. Run the clock out, take their soul and escape with a Parcells/Belichick style win. But no. Allen and Brady had other plans. Allen would have been getting lauded for leaving the field with the lead like in 13 seconds except this time he ACTUALLY left too much time on the clock. Brady would have been interviewing for HC jobs with his last play call having been a long TD pass and 40 minutes of possession against the eventual champs.

Do you actually think your vague, barstool logic works? The "main reason" the Bills season has ended without a Lombardi is LITERALLY because they haven't even reached one. It's not mainly the offense or defense. Who knows what the defense does if they reach a SB and don't have to face Mahomes, Burrow or Lamar in a big playoff game for once. If the defense makes a play in 13 seconds or the offense makes a play at the end of the last two losses then maybe we'd have found out. And yes, the Bills 29 ppg offense from 2020-2025 regularly underperforming in these games ABSOLUTELY has bearing on their season ending. How can you claim it doesn't when you watched that Bengals blowout or the Allen/Brady choke job at the end of 2023 season? Ridiculous. You guys have these vague conflations that represent the "excuses" that I am talking about. Like @MasterStrategist claiming the Bills have to score 30+ points in these divisional or AFCCG matches is another one. It's hyperbole. These underachieving Bills score just under 23 and allow just under 28 in the divisional and AFCCG rounds where they end up bowing out every year. Maybe if their offensive scoring average is 26 in those games they win 2 or 3 of those 5 losses? IF.........those scores are timely. Specifically at the end of the several very close games. Which brings us to the biggest thing your arguments lack. Context. The Chiefs allow 29+ ppg in SB's but have won 3 of 5 despite being significantly outscored overall. And no, I'm not playing both sides of the fence when I don't consider the WC round and the divisional round in the same sense. There are only 4 teams that have mattered in the AFC since 2020. We speedboated Mac Jones? Who cares? Does it really matter that the Bills were struggling offensively for 3 quarters in the WC game against the Broncos last year? The Bills were clearly the overwhelming favorite and better team in all of these games. The ONLY clutch end-of-game sequence that the offense or defense has ever had in the playoffs in the Allen era was the defensive stop at the end of that Colts WC game. But a tired Philip Rivers, Mason Rudolph, the severely out-QB's divisional opponents and rookie Bo Nix? What do we glean from parsing meaning from the Bills performances in the WC round? And again, for context........the 2020 Tom Brady SB winning Bucs won a closely contested, one-score WC game against a lousy 7-9 Washington team.

Again, in the divisional and CG rounds where they face worthy opponents with comparable QB play......both the offense and defense have underperformed by about a TD verus their regular season points scored and points allowed numbers. Calling one or the other the "biggest reason" or "main reason" implies that there is a significant gap between one area or the other. But there isn't. Claiming otherwise is just a vague perspective-free argument that harkens back to the drought era bozo's constant lamenting about the Bills having deserved better than their final record because they lost a lot of games by one score. But even if there was an actual huge discrepancy...........say the offense wasn't horrendous in the first AFCCG loss or the Bengals loss or the two Baltimore wins.......that "main/biggest reason" would STILL be trumped by the actual sequences that decided the close losses. Case in point.........Did you know that the Andy Reid Chiefs have been outscored 148-125 in their 5 Super Bowls? Those are hollow stats........because the f#cking Chiefs won 3 of those because guys like Mahomes, Hill, Kelce and Jones made big plays in the clutch to close those victories over SF and Philly out. When these Bills get in those spots they have ALWAYS choked. We don't think of them in the same way as the SB choking Bills........but there is no signature game winning drive or stop in the divisional or CG round in the Allen era. And, IMO, it's because they lack difference makers in the passing game and the pass rush. And while many of us may agree in principle on THAT..........you aren't even within kicking distance of the goal posts if you are clinging to meaning from hollow, totally perspective-less numbers like "33 ppg allowed in 5 playoff losses". That's just looking for an EXCUSE when the answer is right in front of your face. Terrible performance in the final 13 seconds of regulation is why they lost 13 seconds. Brady and Allen's stupidity on the final drive are why they lost the next Chiefs playoff matchup. And the offense turning the ball over on downs on 2 consecutive drives to end the game is why they lost the last one.

Your "feels" approach to the math is not congruent with the facts. In 7 divisional round and championship games the Josh Allen Bills offense has averaged only 22.85 points scored. So less than 23 points per game is supposed to beat Mahomes, Jackson and Burrow how often exactly? In that same span the defense has allowed 27.71 points per game. And also chipped in 7 points with the biggest postseason play in Bills history.....the 99 yard Taron Johnson pick six. So the offense scores about 6 less per game than they do in the regular season from 2020-2025 and the defense allows about 8 more than they normally do(7 net if you factor in their scoring). The reality is BOTH sides underperform by similar degrees in these huge games. BOTH. And one of those sides has the only great player the Bills have on it. So he either sucks when the chips are down or the talent around him isn't right. I fall on the "talent around him" has failed him side.

So the defense coming up big at the end last January is inconsequential because you perceive it as the only time? How many times has the Bills offense made big plays late in any of what were their elimination games in the Allen era? Once. In 6 defeats. And the only 2 games they've won in the divisional round against Baltimore were won by the defense making huge plays. In those two divisional WINS Josh Allen threw for a combined 333 yards with 1 touchdown pass in 8 quarters of football. Brutal. The equivalent of getting 40 hung on you defensively. In 4 home divisional round games they've scored a pathetic total of 71 offensive points. The people who buy this bullsh!t that the offense has been good enough and the defense has let them down have the 13 second performance on their brain and nothing else matters.

The funny thing is that Oliver and Phillips provided the pass rush to give the offense the ball back after the offense had seemingly sealed their defeat by turning the ball over on downs...........but for the second straight year the offense had the ball with a chance to finish off the Chiefs and the passing game failed miserably in the clutch. But I think it's lost on Bills fans who aren't also fans of championship organizations in other sports that the "literal" reason is more important than the perceived "main" reason. It's what we ACTUALLY know LITERALLY caused their defeat. Norwood missing that kick is more important than the perception that Levy and his staff were over matched or that the run defense wasn't stout enough etc.. Teams don't only win SB's because they have every area buttoned up. Like I mentioned earlier, the average offensive and defensive rank of SB winners in the past decade or so is around 9th in both cases. The Bills have far exceeded any rank hurdle they needed to having scored the most points and allowed the fewest in the last 5 seasons. What you are defined by is what you did that caused you to win or lose with the playoff/championship game on the line. The NFL teams of this 21st century are the Patriots and Chiefs and they aren't defined by dominant personnel........they are defined by what they did in the clutch.

You should worry about the receipts you leave around first. Remember when you started that thread guaranteeing the Bills would reach the AFCCG late in the 2023 season? Or when you started your Shakir thread and included things like extrapolating his 2023 15.7 yards per catch number as if there were any chance he was going to replicate that from the slot with a greater target share in 2024. He predictably dropped to just 10.8 yards per catch. I know that when pressed by yours truly, you put in the fine print later that a mere 900 yard season would justify your hyperbole about how great he was going to be but that's just how you roll. Aim high, shoot low and claim a bullseye. Last offseason in the "quietly better" thread those of us who expressed concern about the quality of the WR corps were near universal in expecting the Bills offense to be good in 2023. As people like @Kirby Jackson and myself said numerous times that they should still be a top 5 offense regardless. Because Josh Allen is great and they could always generate points in the regular season if they are willing to let the still prime athletic age Allen run 100+ times per year. It was proven by the results of 2023 after Brady took over. The question is do they have the playmakers in the passing game to win big road games and playoff games? Just like the issue wasn't whether the Bills Leslie Frazier top ranked and second ranked 2020-2021 defense's were good enough in the regular season. The question was did they have enough playmakers(specifically pass rushers) to win in the postseason. The people who got to flash the receipts last year were those of us who knew the WR corps wasn't going to be good enough against top competition and that Beane would be forced to make a trade to try to remedy it.

Yeah, the brain drain in the coaching staff is the primary concern. On paper, they have a better combination of physical talent and prime age skill than the 2023 team that had the lead on SF in the second half of the NFCCG. And I tend to expect that either they or Washington ultimately end up with Trey Hendrickson. It's gotta' be one of those two......right? As much as I don't like that positional value for guys like Gibbs and Campbell........Tyliek and Ratledge weren't premium position players either. But they already have a lot of high end talent at premium positions. The Bills have the greater QB and that's the most important thing........but the Lions have upgraded versions of a lot of the Bills other best players. Hutchinson > Rousseau. Lions OT's > Bills OT's. St. Brown > Shakir. I'd expect those more recent, questionable day 1/2 picks to take a few years to catch up to them. Like when they gotta' replace a Jameson Williams, for example. The Lions aren't at the Eagles personnel level of course, but I think their starting 22 is more talented than they might get credit for on a Bills board.

So you weren't interested in parsing it further.........but then you parse it further and finish with 20-0hyperbole. Only way we know @Alphadawg7 hasn't hijacked your account is there was no ✌️at the end. Like I said, a lot of non-Bills fans(and some Bills fans) thought the Bills were poised to take a step back after losing Diggs, Davis, Morse and basically all of their captains. I couldn't care less if the Lions win or not. But as a fan I'd love to have just earned the #1 seed(something the McBills have never done) despite all the adversity they had and then to have difference makers like Aidan Hutchinson coming back after a lost season and Jameson Williams playing for a contract etc.. That and arguably the most favorable schedule of any NFL contender. We will see if the coordinator losses undermine what should be an otherwise improved team by default. Not having any of the top 4 QB's in the NFL in your conference certainly helps.

They had won too many games to tank at that point though. Bills fans weren't just talking playoffs at the time of the trade but also about winning the division and maybe even home field at that point. Dareus was basically a one man run defense that season. He left and they completely fell apart defensively and the Jags went from worst to first in run D overnight after the trade. We tend to think of the Bengals as an organization that has McBeane's number but between the Dalton miracle and trading for Cordy Glenn 4 months later they really helped save the regime.

I'm not sure why people don't recall why Kincaid fell out of favor. He was HORRIBLE in the playoffs. Even the one long catch he was credit for in the Denver game was clearly a drop that they got away with.

Darby was more of a non-fit of the scheme. Obviously, in hindsight guys like Gilmore and Woods went on to be big stars for SB teams and clearly not any kind of culture problem. Darby was the same but more of a good starter than a star. Watkins and Dareus were the flakes. Really what McBeane were doing was getting rid of the young, early round talent because those are the players with contract leverage that can undermine a no-name young regime's agenda. They only wanted players that would be beholden to them. That approach works but ideally you don't have to tear it down to that extent to build it back up. KC and Reid have always been able to stay a step or two ahead, despite never drafting as highly since 2013, because Reid didn't ever need to compromise on talent.

It wasn't a print story that I am aware of. It was verbatim from Paul Hamilton. He's repeated it numerous times on-air from his sources within what was PSE. Hamilton is about as reputable as anyone in the Buffalo media. Obviously, the fact that Pegula will let this drought drag on 14 years without ever turning everything over to some proven pro's speaks to his stubbornness. Even Ralph threw up his hands and gave up full control to Tom Donahoe at one point. However, it speaks well of Pegula's character that he promised full control to McBeane and has clearly honored that. That story is equally substantiated. Nobody has ever publicly admitted it but it's understood as fact. But the other story that has been making the rounds since 2017 was that Pegula and Whaley were both all-in on drafting Patrick Mahomes but McDermott wanted to wait until he and Beane had a full season of scouting QB's. So if you were an owner and the situation goes down where the player you wanted to select has personally eliminated your otherwise SB contending over and over........you might be inclined to think you could have done just as well if allowed some input.

Well we already knew they were going to be drafting a QB in 2018 well before the Darby/Watkins trades. That's why they handed Mahomes to conference rival KC 4 months earlier. To get another 2018 first rounder. I don't think you and the other BBMB refugees had washed ashore here yet but the general consensus was that the primary "signal" of the Darby/Watkins trades was that they were tanking. It didn't go over well when I explained how getting rid of the core young talent(players with leverage) but keeping all of the old vet talent meant they were going to try to "Jauron ball" their way to the playoffs. You couldn't pay me to re-watch that brutal 2017 offense.

Torrence is not a pending free agent. He's under contract for $1.6M in 2026. If Torrence elevated his game dramatically and the Bills decided to pay him early, it would be at a discount compared to the unrestricted free agent market rate and the aav diluted by the fact that he's under contract for 2026. By contrast, Epenesa has unrestricted free agency next March. He is coming off a so-so season sorta' like Josh Sweat had in 2023. Then Josh Sweat had a better 2024, culminating with a big performance in the SB, and got 4 years $77M from AZ in UFA. That was with an 8 sack season preceded by a 6.5 sack season.

Yeah the Bills have tried to immediately fill premium positions with their top pick in the last two drafts. Didn't work out well with Coleman as a rookie. Hopefully Hairston does better but wouldn't be surprising if he struggles mightily and teams attack him as a rookie. Because you are much more on your own on those islands. It's much easier to get acclimated at center with help on both sides and a veteran QB to help with protections etc.. Especially in a league where there aren't many true nose tackles playing right over the center anymore.

Yeah we can only hope that Epenesa has refined his pass rush repertoire. If he turns into a good, right side pass rusher he could be looking at 3 years $60M+ deal next offseason. When you are a former early pick teams are just waiting for you to confirm their initial suspicion that you are good. Or he could repeat last season's play and go the way of Dawuane Smoot and become a one year deal guy on the path to league minimum salaries. Epenesa has the most to gain financially of any Bill that could be considered poised for a breakout.