BADOLBILZ

Not to hijack the thread but while I can see missing Jaquan..........the new OC is a Hurricanes great. Others have come and gone under McD as well. What I like is that the Canes stadium has a little bit of the old Orange Bowl tied into all of it with the open end and the palms. Always thought the Bills new stadium should have a water fall feature in one of the end zones..........a lot of fans hate the Niagara Falls shots every time the Bills play a home game(especially versus and NFC opponent) but they are one of the wonders of the world and its right here.

The Mahomes/Reid Chiefs have been to 2 Super Bowls and won one of them. They have knocked the Bills out of the playoffs each of the past two seasons. They get the benefit of the doubt over McBeane because of that...............that's how victory works. But they also have built arguably the most talented offensive line in football over the course of the last 16 months or so. The Bills are choosing to add that kind of talent to their defense instead of their offense..............and then instead add a lot of spare parts and value draft picks to their offense. The investment on the defensive side of the ball has been lopsided. There is no arguing against this........dollars and high draft picks are the big chips in the NFL personnel biz.

Ford did in fact play A LOT of guard in the preseason..........you claimed he did not..........that's a fact and you are quoted in my response to your "this is a horsesh*t" take" post to @Coach Tuesday. Now you are lying about it. The original plan coming into camp, of course, was for Ford to be the RT and for Nsekhe to be a swing tackle. But Ford struggled at tackle in camp and Nsekhe played very well........Nsekhe was going to win the RT job handily..........so not wanting to leave their highly invested pick on the bench Ford was moved to guard and that was going to be the starting right side of the Bills OL. They actually looked good as a tandem. With Nsekhe not available as the swing tackle any longer they felt they had to keep the more position versatile options..........and all of the other "guard" options that were kept were those guys. Ryan Bates technically became the swing tackle. But Nsekhe started coming apart at the seams physically before the opener and the two ended up having to job share the snaps at RT for much of the season(until Nsekhe went out long term) and Jon Feliciano went from being the backup to Cody Ford at guard to playing almost every snap of every game.

AND YET........ the character conscious Bills organization is full of Hurricanes.......with basically nobody from the Axis of pee-pee touchers...... Penn State, Ohio State, Notre Dame.

Do you ever tire of creating ridiculous takes like that? It's literally a thread about the player going out the door..........if ever there is a time for that discussion it's clearly now. Your problem is that you built your identity as a fan very unnecessarily on the foundation that you would show your loyalty by not being critical of ownership or management.......even to the point of making up nonsense to defend them. And then you being the smooth customer you are..............you finally chose to draw the line at the hiring of McDermott and Beane. Rather than just admitting you were wrong and adopting the higher standards and growth mindset of the HC and GM like a sane sports fan...........you are trying to go back to being the pointlessly relentless apologist. Once you've been a skeptic........you can't fit back into that role without being a phony.

I'm a big Aaron Kromer believer..........but while he has proven he can make a big difference in the running game.........let's not forget the he coached Jordan Mills in Buffalo........who was a horrendous pass blocker despite playing on a run first team with an elusive QB. There is only so much you can do in pass pro with limited talent like Mills or Bobby Hart. I am more optimistic about him working with athletes like Spencer Brown and Tommy Doyle but the flip side of that is first they need to show that they can even hold up in the pro game. They need to string together a lot of games and snaps before we know if they have the most basic and important ability. Avail-ability is exactly why guys like Mills and now Hart keep getting jobs and stacking years of service in the league.

What is the point you are trying to make with your handwringing about the Cody Ford departure? You made up a lie about him not playing guard in camp or preseason as a rookie to try to shoutdown the FACT that Wyatt Teller was traded because Ford having to play guard created a glut at the position. Someone had to go. Now you are theorizing that there is a direct comparison between trading the unproven second year Teller.........who had shown a lot of promise as a rookie.........and the well established fourth year bust Cody Ford. Read Brandon Beane's press conference transcript..........like I said........Beane admitted that he dropped the ball.......questioned his process, that we all were able to view on Bills Embedded...........and is taking responsibility for it rather than pretending he just did everything right and it didn't work out. I think maybe some of you rush to defend every move Beane makes because you are people who are used to making excuses for yourself and not being accountable as a method of self preservation. Beane is not like you..........he is a professional. But the reality is that he came into the job as a first time GM and also VERY raw as a personnel man........he had spent more time fetching coffee in his early years in Carolina than he eventually did evaluating players with the team scouts. He may have gotten the job because of Sean McDermott but the reason why it works so well is that he has the mental makeup to be a top executive. A very different skillset than his Bills predecessors Whaley and Nix who were road scouts. As an executive you need to know that the first rule of management is that it's always your fault. He gets that. Instead of making up ridiculous lies and scenarios about why Beane wasn't wrong for doing something..........maybe you folks who rush in to excuse even the most obvious of errors should listen to him for a change when he tells you he WAS wrong about making a pick like Cody Ford.

Cody Ford was the worst player on the field in that day in Jacksonville.........which took some doing with the Jags being the worst team in the league.

Yeah........IMO that @Miami game being in the first month sticks out as a day when they really want all hands on deck in the secondary. It's important to keep Miami down and avoid a tight divisional race like the one they played themselves into last year by treating the middle of the season with a lack of urgency..........and also to not let the "Tyreek effect" become a thing in that rivalry.

Who has Blackshear even outplayed though? All the backs have looked good. The solution to your concern is for the team to not use so many high picks on RB's..........but that toothpaste is out of the tube and it's not like Blackshear has blown away the competition anyway. And much like Antonio Williams before him, any production Blackshear has had needs to be weighed against the fact that he was pretty much "just a guy" over a 5 year college career.

You are really on the crazy train lately Skrewball. Like booze + bipolar meds kinda' nutty.🤪

We all know that productive RB's can be found anywhere (though Beane has expended early draft picks on 3 of them). Are you predicting that Blackshear is another Austin Ekeler? Ekeler earned his job on a lesser roster than the one the Bills have now but more importantly he excelled both at RB and on special teams. The route to making this opening week 53 man roster for Blackshear and Duke Johnson is to not only produce at RB but to push Taiwan Jones off the roster with their special teams play.

More totally made up sh!t from Skrewball. It's not like Miller didn't take every opportunity in the weeks following his signing to point out that the Rams didn't offer as much but that he still almost pulled out of his deal with the Bills to re-sign with LA and that he would have liked to finish his career in Dallas but they showed little interest at his price point. The Bills offered him the most money of the teams he was willing to go to.

You were done when you insisted in @Coach Tuesday thread about Dion dishing on Ford that it was no big deal for Dawkins to criticize his teammate like that and insisting that Ford would absolutely agree that his attitude had been sh!t. The leap on the latter was a fact-free attempt to shout down the fact that his teammate called him out. A day later, he's dealt. Another L for ol' Skrewball.

Getting a 5th for the mess that is Cody Ford is a win.............but man, the paltry production from second round picks by Beane is a thing. It's been a thing with some other Bills GM's too............and I actually think there is an explanation for it. IMO, there is probably something of a letting down of the guard after spending months focused on that first round pick..........and a bit of "we're playing with house money" in round 2 undertone. I've seen it with people at big auctions.........their focus is to buy the property..........and then after they get the property they get a bit euphoric and make a bunch of bad decisions regarding the next round of assets and it takes them a while to regain their bearings. It's often a good time to steal something that the primary bidder shouldn't have let get away. The way Beane treats the second round is very, very needily. And that approach is not the best way to get the BPA. People can talk about how moving around the board with trades makes it all work out just like BPA...........but if you know you are willing to use round 2 of the draft to fill immediate needs I believe that impacts how you stack your board in the first place. It becomes corrupted by need. I think when the pressure to find someone who can start immediately comes off.........you start seeing more sound decisions and good value.........even if they aren't all HR's. I've liked Beane's work in round 1 more than any Bills GM ever.........but round 2 has been a dead zone production-wise for Beane so far.

No.....RT was not "in fact" "the position Ford played during OTA's, training camp, and preseason" Ford got shifted to guard in preseason. That is the fact. Ford wasn't doing well at RT. Nsekhe at RT and Ford at RG looked like it was going to be the starting combo...........don't try to horsesh!t your fellow posters........the games are still available on NFL+. With Ford at G........they suddenly had a logjam and someone had to go. It was Teller or Boettger...........and Boettger had worked hard to cross train at every position on the OL(whether he was any good at them or not)..........so he was kept and Teller was dealt. So yes.......Cody Ford failing to seize the RT job is why Teller was traded.

Is this a good time to point out that you quit your 26 year season tickets because the Bills made a coaching change after the 2016 season? You just can't grasp the nuance of following a pro football team...........it's all or nothing with you. No amount of ridiculous takes like the one I'm responding to above are going to be enough contrition for that utter disloyalty...........you know that but you are trying to sell the rest of us on it and some of us know better. It's always going to eat at you that you didn't believe in the McBeane regime........at least we can hope.

I agree..........but one of the aspects of this is that for the first time we actually got to see a GM using bad process to make a draft pick when Beane selected Cody Ford........thanks to "Bills Embedded". Beane said he couldn't sleep the night before that second round because he was so desperate to move up for Cody Ford. There was nothing about Cody Ford that should have screamed "must have". He was a guard with RT flexibility. Those are very different than an offensive tackle who could possibly play the left side. His RAS was terrible and his tape was "meh". It was Beane's "Reggie Ragland" "off the bus starter" moment. I think he learned from it. If nothing else.......not to be so candid on Embedded. In retrospect the funniest part about that episode was Beane saying Bobby Johnson was doing backflips about getting Cody Ford. Gold!

Moved him at the top of his market. One more Dawkins interview about him and it might have been a conditional 7th. 😉

A lot of the rag weed is maturing and seeding out right now, which could be the problem. Or it could be related to people cutting it and making it airborne. Farms have to cut it down before the seeds mature so it doesn't turn into a bigger problem next year........so there is a lot of chopping going on in fields just for that reason. Dry years like this really allow ragweed and other very drought-resistant weeds to overtake grasses and clover..........and some areas of WNY have been absolutely bone dry past few months.

There were some people who were pretty cross about those of us with any common sense who could see that Austin isn't a rosterable NFL player anymore. He's a guy who maybe comes off the PS and gives you a few weeks of playing out the string before you and your regime get fired. Like he did in Jax last year. Nice guy but he's toast as a player. Definite validity in the pad aspect. Young players struggle when the pads come on because their lack of skill/technique gets exposed.........old one's just get physically diminished by the contact. But anyone looking for a decent PR or KOR is SOL going with Austin. He's been bad at both for almost all of his career and done next to none of it since 2016.

Well obviously they've been below average in the screen game under Daboll. Some of that is the RB and some of that was the OL and probably more of it was the scheme. Playing a lot of spread let's defense's keep extra pass game athletes on the field. That makes it harder to generate impressive gains in the screen game. With Cook and/or Duke they are improved in the receiving aspect over Singletary and Moss(who has the advantage over Cook of being an outstanding pass pro RB). But I think people are having visions of the AFCCG in January 1993 with the Bills running screen after screen to Thurman Thomas and the Dolphins not being able to stop it. Doesn't work that way anymore. The athletes at LB and in the secondary are much too fast now........and the OL's of today are much too disjointed........for the screen game to be much more than an occasional "gotcha'". What I love to see is more play action. That is what has the potential to make this offense so much more difficult to stop.........not the occasional 5-8 yard dump off to Cook. In fact spreading defense's out with Cook as a receiver sounds like one of those on-paper ideas that doesn't translate nearly as well in reality. Spread offense's are by nature inclined to be dink-and-dunk operations. DL pin their ears back, less time to throw = short throws. That's hard on the receiving talent taking all those hits for small gains and exposes you to more potential for turnover etc..

Yeah those numbers are about right..........but average ones are super easy to find.......it's not like there are only two options. Where the rubber meets the road is in the receiving aspect and throwing the ball to a slot receiver is almost always MUCH more productive than tossing it to even the best receiving RB. It's not a fraction of yard difference.......it's multiple yards. That's why the 3rd down back is basically extinct and it really limits the potential impact of a guy like James Cook as well. As for Blackshear......Duke Johnson would be a great ceiling for him........but it might be a lot to ask given his very modest college career production. Duke has been an above average runner(4.3 when league average carry in general is 4.2) and he has actually been one of the more productive receivers you will see from RB position..........his career 9.2 yp reception is notably higher than either of the receiving "fantasy RB Gods" named Kamara and McCaffrey. Duke is the perfect example of how easy that kind of talent is to find at RB though.........and the fact that teams eventually come to the realization that it's better to just throw the ball to the slot receiver and get the extra yardage.......so they tend to usually end up in good supply in free agency even if they are notably above average.

He looks more active but it's the mental side of the game that he has still sucked at. He whiffed on a block after an assignment error in the opener that lead to James Cook getting tackled for little gain on what was an otherwise well blocked play with big potential..........and then it appeared they ran the same play Saturday and he did it again and got away with an egregious hold grabbing a rusher he allowed to come free on a long Cook run. Later got a stupid hands to face penalty. He's been a sh*t show since he got to Buffalo and it will be quite the feat if he overcomes all of it.........his poor attitude and lack of accountability(see Dawkins comments), his lack of athleticism(see his woeful RAS) AND his propensity for mental errors. The latter will be the hardest to overcome because it's not just one thing.......he is both slow to recognize the action in front of him AND he has a bad temper which costs him as well.

I'd also add..........if you are ever going to take a chance at cutting the wrong guy then RB is the position to do it. They aren't truly a dime a dozen any longer because you rarely see the best athletes play the position anymore........it's just the undersized guys who can't play any other position or the bigger guys without the hips to play in the secondary or hands to be a receiver........but the supply still FAR exceeds the demand because there just is not a lot that RB's are able to do under the rules of the game today to alter the impact of games.