BADOLBILZ

We now have people denying that Jake Kumerow is the 3rd man on the boundary receiver depth chart going into camp. And we apparently have an offense where it doesn't matter if the X or Z receiver is 5'7"(McKenzie) or has 29" arms(Shakir)..........because.........I guess the Bills boundary receivers don't have to get off of press coverage by the long limbed athletes that occupy the boundary CB positions in the NFL? Do the motion rules no longer apply to the Bills? Maybe due to their proximity to the Canadian border the Bills have a special exemption to run a CFL style offense where all receivers can be at motion at the snap? With each passing day we get deeper into the reaches of the offseason when people start believing in fairy tales. When the pads start popping the facts start dropping...........can't get here soon enough.

Crowder has had two 800+ yard seasons and is a career 48 yard per game receiver. That projects to 816 yards per 17 games. That figure was 58 yards per game in 2020.......which projects out to just shy of 1,000 yards in a 17 game season. A breakout season would have to begin at 50% above career average production, IMO...........it implies a very sudden, dramatic improvement above prior levels. I can't see him putting up 1200+ yards..........but I suppose it's a possibility. More likely that he would be a "bounce back" candidate where he stays healthy and puts up around 50 yards per game again. That's not a given, he showed little to no explosiveness last year and his YAC subsequently fell off a cliff, but it's certainly a possibility if the nagging leg injuries subside. 50 ypg would be excellent but doesn't sound as good as hyperbolizing by mischaracterizing it as a "breakout", though.

"He's a retread." "They hired a retread." In which of those sentences about an NFL coach is retread a verb? Here is the last part of the definition that you omitted: noun /ˈrēˌtred/ a tire that has been given a new tread.

Did he say something like that? I haven't heard him say he would be willing to come back if needed............he told Allen he wasn't up for it physically when Allen suggested he should play again. At 2.0 yards after catch he narrowly edged out "sack of potatoes" in the NFL Next Gen stats explosiveness index. The lack of juice and the 35 years of age part..........I think it's fair to assume he's toast.

It's funny that this retread analogy has become so hard and fast...........the highways in summer are strewn with blown re-caps from tractor trailers. You can't have those things on the front of your expensive equipment if you have any concern about keeping it between the lines. It's most definitely an insult to call a national championship winner who jumps back to the NFL a year or two later a retread.

OBJ will not even be ready to play again until December or more likely January, IMO. No way he's coming back after 9 months like he did last year with the result he got. So that would give Davis nearly a full season of runway to develop..........if he can't land the plane it wouldn't be because of some subversion of his development. But even if they signed another WR who could play right away..........like Julio Jones.........it wouldn't necessitate Davis getting less snaps. The more likely players to be impacted are the Bills sketchier slot receiver options in McKenzie, Crowder and Shakir. OBJ or Julio paired with Davis on the outside and Diggs in the slot.........forcing defenses to put one of their top 2 CB's in the slot and stretch their boundary CB depth thin.........that creates matchup problems for opponents. It's a matchup league. I think that needs to be the understanding at OBD. They need receivers who are going to create mismatches. To this point of the offseason it seems to me that there has been a little too much focus on hoping to create playmaking synergy by adding a bit more receiving talent at the thinner RB and TE spots rather than focusing on being better at the higher impact boundary receiver positions.

A retread is a tire that's tread has worn out but is then re-capped with a new tread, almost always to serve the purpose of being a non-steer tire because re-treads are structurally compromised. Leslie Frazier is a re-tread right now....in his role as a DC. He once was a steer tire........now he's on the trailer with a bunch of other assistant tires so the vehicle doesn't wreck if one of them fails. That would be the correct use of the analogy. I don't think it's really accurate to call Reid, Carroll and Belichick re-treads..........when they were fired it was still obvious that they had a lot of tread left and would be guiding a team again. So "retread" is accepted but not the correct adjective, IMO. Lumps in people in one group who clearly belong in different groups, IMO. When Leslie got fired in Minnesota he appeared to be a dud and he certainly didn't have the past track record as a SB winning genius DC to get him a second chance like Belichick had. And it is insulting, to an extent because retreads are considered clearly inferior to the original.

But the assertion is still that Davis has put on 17 pounds in the past two offseasons...........which is a lot for a WR either way. If he hadn't been limited by a nagging foot injury for the first 10 games or so last season(per Bills shill Sal Capaccio).........or if he'd proven he can be a star at that weight like DK Metcalf has......... it would be easier to totally dismiss the impact of adding 10 pounds one offseason and 7 the next. Getting heavier generally doesn't make you quicker or faster. That's the reality. Veterans with mileage on them, like LeSean McCoy when he was in Buffalo, will cut weight to try to maintain those attributes. My biggest concern with Davis is not physical though..........just whether he can handle the mental jump to being a #2 WR...........which is essentially being a 1B option in a league with this much WR talent and CB depth spread around the league compared to a decade ago. Davis has had some inconsistent stretches and subsequently modest production. Not as serious as Knox with regard to catching targets, but still things like inopportune drops that make you wonder if he is susceptible to the yips/slumps. Diggs, for example, doesn't have a 3 catch on 14 targets day against a lowly Jets team that has one foot on the bus. Can Davis handle the pressure of being a focal point of the defense (and fans and media)..........and can he also bring his "A" game to low spotlight games like last seasons Jets and Jags game(critical drop late in that one). Whenever dealing with athletes who might be inclined to get in their own head too much.......I think it's always the best policy to have ACTUAL COMPETITION in house to move the focus outward.

I don't think Bates is underrated......the money he got as a RFA with 6 career starts says that at least 2 NFL teams think he's going to be really good. McDermott and staff keeping him on the bench with the Bills interior OL having Josh Allen running for his life most of the season was criminally negligent. We'd barely seen Bates play and at our tailgates people were asking how we'd consistently heard the stories about how promising the Bills thought Ryan Bates was........but he wasn't good enough to outplay the trash they were playing at guard between Ford, Feliciano and Boettger?

They ascended in 2019 and 2020 by stacking speed, quickness and skill at the position..........they seemed to know the role it played in their ascent, calling it their "fastball"............and since have allowed themselves to get more ordinary at the position. It's a matchup league. Kumerow might be the worst #2 WR in the league if given the chance.

That's exactly what I tell people to do when they make persistent idiotic arguments to try to pander to homers in the main forum..........but in the cold light of a PM they have to face the fact that they are just making illogical or outright false or unsupported claims. The fun is over for them when the attention is gone. The bottom line on this is the same kinda' people who insist there is no cause for pause whatsoever about a receiver getting too big are the people who spent 2019 mocking the Bills receivers of 2017-2018 in hindsight for not being quick or fast enough compared to Beasley and Brown. Hopefully it goes smoothly for Davis.

Adding muscle mass = adding weight Simply turning your existing pounds into leaner muscle without gaining weight is not "adding mass"............it's just adding muscle while subtracting less lean body weight. You are trying to run with the misconception at the time that Singletary may have bulked up signficantly.....and again......he did not. Getting heavier to get quicker and faster would not have been sensible..........and this is common sense, after all. As for the real man stuff............I always thought you were more of a mama's boy type.

Nah, you are just acting a fool. The people you cited to make your asinine argument were concerned about Singletary adding weight to his frame by getting more muscular. He didn't add weight. It's a different situation than Davis adding 17 pounds to his body over the past two seasons by muscling up. Every season there are players who bulked up in the offseason and find that the added weight slows them down........whether it's lean muscle or otherwise. Just like some players, like Jon Feliciano and AJ Epenesa last offseason, find out that losing weight has reduced their power. It's a founded concern. The organizations stated key to turning this receiver corps from unproductive in 2018 to dynamic in 2019 was replacing bigger receivers with smaller, quicker players who could get open FAST.

The implication in that thread was that Motor inevitably got heavier by putting on muscle........hence the "his frame needs to be abe to support". It's about weight. Now if the argument is that you can reach a point where you are more susceptible to soft tissue injuries by over building muscles at the expense of body fat.........again.......a different argument than the scarecrow you are trying to build.

Not only does he have a ring..........he basically ended the productive portion of future HOF'er Richard Sherman's career in that SB win. Sherman was named All Pro that season. Watkins torched him and "Sherm" was never a good CB again. He had a big game and his big catch late at Sherman's expense sealed that SB win. Watkins is a disappointment and an enigma but he's been a stud in a couple AFC Championship games and a SB. He's not intelligent or perceptive and he's ultimately responsible for his own career stalling but the Bills were very stupid to not have a veteran in the room his rookie year. Bob Woods and Chris Hogan weren't anyone he was going to listen to. Anquan Boldin was the perfect guy to mentor Watkins........it just should have happened 3 years sooner.

There were a bunch of articles written about Singletary after the one that I linked..........but they were all a derivative of the same story. His claims of getting faster thru focused training were much talked about. But he didn't add any notable weight. Read the story you posted......his trainer literally said that Singletary played at 203 in 2020 and was 205 coming to training camp..........basically the same body weight. There is a big difference between just converting some fat to muscle without adding weight for your legs to carry and adding on 17 more pounds to your frame like Davis has reportedly done. Nobody was saying that the same weight in muscle makes you slower than that weight in fat..........it's an absurd notion.........you are conflating two different things. Now if someone said "Singletary looks like he put on 17 pounds" when he did not...........that doesn't support your claim either........we don't know if Singetary would have played as well with 17 more pounds of weight.........because he didn't. Do you understand or are you determined to push this lie?

I don't see seasons as an opportunity to avenge a prior season...........but if I did, it certainly wouldn't have been some team like the 2012 Bills that weren't expected to be much better than a late season in-the-hunt wildcard graphic team. The game at SF and in Toronto versus Seattle were arguably the most disgusting performances during the drought though. Giving up a franchise record worst 600+ yards to the Alex Smith Niners was sickening........and somehow the Toronto performance was even more embarrassing. What that season really represented was the reminder that you have to actively address a losing culture...........you can't just hire an x and o HC like Chan Gailey and add a handful of defensive play makers and expect to undo the kind of damage that 4 years of playing Jauron Ball inflicts.

That would be a cool story comparing two players bulking up.......and the first one getting quicker/faster demonstrating that's how you do it. If it were true. The only Devin Singletary story of the offseason was how he had spent the entire offseason trying to get faster. https://www.golongtd.com/p/what-fuels-motor-devin-singletary It was very quiet on the Motor front before this article came out in April and there was no talk last offseason about him adding weight.......certainly not like Davis adding 17 pounds.

Davis is eligible for a contract extension for the first time after this season..........so on the one hand it's a good sign that he is treating it like a contract year given the fact that the Bills have no backup plan whatsoever if he doesn't play up to the promise he showed in the playoffs last season. But putting another 17 pounds on his frame after struggling with boo-boo foot both at the end of 2020 and the first 3 months of the 2021 season............we would assume he knows what's best for his body.........but if he ends up with the fascitis or joint issues that slow him that will be a "what was he thinking" decision. My biggest concern for him is catching the football consistently in an expanded role. He's shown signs of being susceptible to the yips at times in his first two seasons.

I agree about two bye weeks..........but people need to let go of the idea that the owners are going to give away a preseason game. There will be 20 games played by each team..........one way or another...........that's been the format for the past 50-60 years(they played 6 preseason games during the 14 game format).........the owners aren't giving up a week worth of ticket sales and the local broadcast rights. The 3rd preseason game will eventually be converted to a regular season game and there will be 18 games with 2 bye weeks and the season will end late in February. At some point you'd assume the government would coincide President's Days with the Monday after the SB.

Gabe has always had a good plan to practice........even the retired Brandon Marshall was blown away by how advanced the training that Davis was involved in during the work he did with Davis pre-draft.........so the fact that a veteran like Watkins would be interested in some of that is no more damning of him than it was Marshall. And the notion that Sammy was lazy is incorrect. He was handed the keys to the Bills WR room as a rookie. He was immature and spoiled and got carried away with that autonomy. It's important to remember though..........for as polished as Gabe Davis has been..........last season was the first time in his career that Watkins averaged less receiving yards per game in a season than Davis has the past two years. Davis is an offseason training All Pro but on the field he's been inconsistent and hasn't seized his opportunities in the regular season. He's certainly had his flashes but he's ultimately still averaged just 36 yards per game in his career. No excuses this year. If he fails to turn that reputation into production........many of the same people who can't stand my objective viewpoint on his play will be calling him out for his inability to transfer his training to the field week-in and week-out. Then they will point to his foibles.........like spending 10 hours a day playing video games in the dark.........and yes, his social choices, like being one of a small handful of players who put the Bills 2021 season in jeopardy by refusing to be vaxed.

Gabe and Sammy are both big conspiracy theorists.........Sammy thinks dinosaurs didn't exist and Gabe thinks they did but vaccines killed them.

Yes, McBean was distraught. @GunnerBill didn't like the Allen pick but there were some people who were just beside themselves. McBeane set that stage by basically implying that they were all-in on the 2018 QB class by McD passing on a QB in 2017 and then trading core prime-aged players for picks that summer to get ammo for the 2018 draft. It was the most prolonged build-up to a QB selection in Bills history so there were some people ready to emote by the time draft day arrived.

The context of your astonishment is that nobody on TSW had less optimism than you about the Josh Allen draft selection. You were REALLY upset about that pick. I think we are all surprised.........not even the biggest Josh Allen fan saw him turning into a GREAT running QB in addition to his arm talent...........but the people who hated the choice to select Allen gotta' be questioning their reality.