BADOLBILZ

"It's bring your synthetic life partner to work day at OBD"

After they lost to the Chiefs they said they needed to get bigger, were lacking at the TE position and needed more team speed. The only one of those weaknesses they even addressed with a blue chip pick or above minimum FA deal was getting bigger at the LOS. Basham is much bigger DE than a Jerry Hughes and more stout than Daryl Johnson........he is a Shaq-type build that they now can use on early downs and *hopefully* not sacrifice much in pass rush. And Rousseau and Obada are giant sized DE's. What they haven't addressed even once since Star opted out is a non-pass rush capable 1 tech type like Lotulelei. So yes there is plenty of evidence that they aren't putting much stock into the position. There have been plenty of big bodies available but they have rarely even tried any out let alone signed one to the PS or otherwise.

Could be. Hal Steinbrenner has gotten kinda' spoiled with his team making 10x the profit that George-lead teams made annually when the team was winning WS titles regularly 20-25 years ago. Despite a decade of half-billion $ annual gross profits he used the pandemic as an excuse to double down on dodging the luxury tax and got extra tight with the wallet this offseason tryna pinch pennies at a time when they really should have been taking advantage of the market. Their payroll is less than it was in 2004 and in 2019 their revenues had tripled since then. Their inactivity in the free agent market the past few years (aside from Cole) has taken it's toll. If you don't actively try to get better you will eventually cycle out and have down years. Their farm system is very deep but the talent is all a couple years away from reaching the majors and maybe longer from having a big impact. And even then they will still need to be adding stars because you don't get as many of those drafting in the late 20's and with new restrictions on international free agent spending. One thing baseball has that football does not though is that you can follow the minor league progress every day. One click takes you to all the live box scores in the system on one page........including the GSL and Dominican Summer League's when they are active. It's almost like being able to follow college football while knowing what players will end up with the Bills. Keeps it entertaining even when the big team is meh-diocre like this season.

He was drafted as a QB not a TE so the "7 years" thing isn't particularly relevant to his TE history........which essentially started with the Bills as a pro(though he was on the Lions practice squad for 1 day after agreeing to convert to TE late in 2016). He played sparingly for a Bills offense for two years that was, at times, compared to the very worst in the history of the NFL. They simply mis-evaluated him. Same thing happened with their evaluation of 2018 Wyatt Teller. It was a challenging time to evaluate offensive talent because they had bankrupted an OL and WR corps that had been pretty talented prior to their arrival. They weren't up to that challenge in identifying the potential of either player in the chaos they had created on offense. Lesson is that bottoming out one side of the ball during a re-build can cause THESE kind of mistakes. Fortunately, you gotta' be making mistakes constantly to not be competitive in the NFL. They got a QB so they can afford to have a good deal of strikeouts and still be competitive.

They've had 27 straight winning seasons and won 5 titles in that span.........between rooting FOR the drought riddled Bills and against the Yanks you haven't been getting much joy for a generation or so.😂

You said he was a HOF receiver if he had better QB play. I disagreed. First, he wasted his first two seasons being an idiot.......as I mentioned that ended up being a difference in 1800 yards between he and Torey Holt to start their careers. That's 6 years of 300 extra yards he would have had to make up........the bad start cost him any chance of getting in as an accumulator even though the Bills QB's fed him the ball relentlessly for the rest of his prime. He put in the work in year 3 but then worked harder than smarter after that and got too bulked up and stiff and slowed. A great QB wouldn't have wanted him as their #1 target. His increasing inability to get open consistently between 2000-2005 meant he had to be thrown a lot of 50/50 balls. So middling QB's on desperate, bad teams were his perfect fit to get fed the ball 150 times per season. Sometimes players are just better fits on bad teams where they can be the focal point. SJ13 is another example.

Great thread. It really illustrates an important point..........aside from Josh Allen, Stef Diggs and Cole Beasley nobody else on the Bills had a "career" year kinda' season in 2020.......and still the team went 13-3 and reached the AFCCG. There are MANY breakout(and bounce back) candidates returning.........and free agents like Hollister, Lamp and Obada all offer a lot of promise

Carl f*ckin nailed it!

Here's Noah Spence then getting released after getting zero sacks that season! https://www.bucsnation.com/2019/8/31/20842517/buccaneers-waive-noah-spence-2019

Targets also don't mean he was open. Meh on Aaron Brooks. Career passer rating in the mid-70's........like Flutie and Bledsoe...and less than the oft-injured Rob Johnson. All were decent enough passers to throw jump balls to Moulds whose skills steadily eroded after a brief peak in 1998. Far too much is made about the lack of quality QB that Moulds had in his prime. People remember who Jim Kelly, Doug Flutie and Drew Bledsoe were because they were all at least pretty good and Rojo could really light it up at times. By the time Moulds got to JP Losman level QB play he was running in cement. A lot of Bills fans were tuned out of the league during the Seahawks run but you couldn't write the history of the NFL in that period without Lynch. From the "Beastquake" to the huge rushing seasons and playoff dominance to Seattle not giving the ball to him at the goal line against the Pats in the SB.........he was a pivotal player.

Nah, beef is too lean for the job. Pretty sure the Bar-Bill wings with blue cheese are about 300 calories apiece though.

Yep, makes sense. It's well known that summer and training camp is the best time to put on weight.

The people who have been selling Star as an impact returnee to the team......and have been upset by the assumptions that he won't be at least "the same" quality......are desperate for anything to latch onto. Big Star is now Little Star. We will see how that goes.

Disagree on Moulds being a HOF talent or that he didn't get enough chances to produce because of the Bills QB play. If anything the Bills QB's fed him the ball a bit too much at times. He had 3rd, 4th and 10th NFL rankings in targets during the lamented 2000-2004 years when he was still good.......including 180 in 2002. He was given a ton of opportunities. The player he is most comparable too in style and production is Joe Horn. Horn got a later start than Moulds but caught more TD's and had a higher ypc. Their primes are similar. Also similar style, but Horn is more memorable because of his TD celebrations and now having a son in the league. Horn didn't have great QB play either. The best players from the drought actually ended up on different teams. Jason Peters is a HOF'er. And Marshawn Lynch has a much better chance at the HOF than any drought era Bill other than Peters.

Another Star Ukulele thread?

Yeah if you were an adult at the time you should probably have remembered that he kept the Bills team attorney very busy early in his career and the talk going into camp in 1998 wasn't if Moulds would break out it was if the Bills were going to cut him. A lot of the Moulds worshippers on here were a little too young at the time to know about what a low-life he was off the field. The incident with the assault on the female........he reportedly had her lifted off her feet by the neck. IMO his 1998 season was the most dominant performance by a Bills WR ever though........IMO even more dominant than Diggs last season........he was big, fast, quick and powerful. But he wasn't smart about training either........he kept putting on muscle and his legs got heavy and he lost speed, quickness and flexibility.

Morrissey sees Bills reporters noting that the backup QB looks good. What Morrissey doesn't see is that the reporters frame of reference for backup QB for the past 2.5 seasons has been Matt Barkley. Unless he saw Bills reporters claiming Trubisky could carry the Bills to the SB if Josh Allen went down........and nobody should reasonably think that..........then there was actually nothing for him to see here. But Bills fans will no doubt barrage him with emails.........which is wise because it's well known that the more you ignore Morrissey the closer he gets.

Important to note that Moulds was on 3 playoff teams in his first 4 seasons.......he just didn't show up to play until year 3. The lamented years of 2000-2004.....after which Moulds fell off a cliff..........he actually had more passes thrown to him than Tory Holt. Holt came into the league ready to go. He put 1800 more yards in his first two seasons than Moulds did in his. Just a better player, WR, teammate and person. There is no comparison with Marvin Harrison in terms of talent.........he was an elite route runner with great speed. Moulds was a hack by comparison. Johnson and Bledsoe actually played perfectly into Moulds game as a guy who just liked to run deep routes but also required a QB who would just throw it up for grabs because Moulds often could not separate. A guy like Peyton Manning would not have appreciated having to throw passes into harms way to cater to Moulds. I don't think any of the players during "the drought" were very personally harmed by being on a bad team. Aaron Schobel probably would have put up more sacks and gotten more press on a good team.........but he called it quits 2-3 years too soon so it shouldn't be a big lament of fans.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High The Beastmaster Just One of the Guys They were seemingly always on HBO or Cinemax in the 80's so whether you were home or at someone's house these movies were always on tv on the weekends. Haven't seen the last two on TV in years but Fast Times is still on a lot. I don't multi-watch movies much anymore but Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is on non-stop now on Show or Starz and it is a great movie so I've seen that quite a few times.

2010 was one of Williams best years statistically but when you watched the line play he was just not getting the job done. The holes in the run game were enormous. 8 times opponents ran for 200 or more yards against that defense. They were obviously the worst rush defense in the league. The infamous Steelers game(Stevie Johnson and the birth of "Bills Mafia") was the signature performance for Williams that year........he was constantly plowed out of the way in the run game and yet had a career day statistically.

No question that Nix and Whaley weren't as QB-fortunate as McDermott and Beane. For McDermott to not pick a QB in his first draft in 2017............using the fundamentally flawed logic that they didn't have time to evaluate them()..........and literally trade away the chance to select Mahomes or Watson and then STILL get a chance at Josh Allen or Lamar Jackson the very next draft was incredibly fortuitous. Effectively trading Mahomes to a conference rival was probably the most regrettable and worst player transaction that the organization has ever or will ever make. But as you said..........Buddy had A chance with Wilson........he missed. You could also argue that Kaepernick was a missed chance. Ultimately it doesn't matter if you get two good chances or only one.........you gotta' get a QB or your body of work is going to look bad.

Phillips did line up at NT some at Stanford but the function of a NT is usually to draw a double and if not to push the center back into the QB. Phillips was always working to get off blocks. He was really quite dominant at Stanford. His last season he had almost 100 tackles. A guy who can anchor and also make those plays fills the bill. And a third round pick on that type of player is definitely a sign that you see that guy as a very good starter down the line, IMO. Playmaking NT's like Damon Harrison are rare........I never saw Phillips as capable of being an NFL NT. The 1 tech is literally positioned to be a 1 gap player. He doesn't have run responsibility on both sides(2 gap) like a single blocked NT would so when he is single blocked he needs to fill that gap and get in the backfield. Dareus was great at the job.....All Pro under Schwartz and was doing excellent work for McDermott. If you singled him he would blow thru the center/guard gap and blow up the play......if you doubled him he could anchor and still actually get off a block and impact the run game. Cover 1 also had some good stuff on Dareus as a 1 tech for McD early in the 2017 season. As for KW.........he was horrendous as a NT. Edwards might have tilted him to 1 or 2 tech at times but he just wasn't physically capable of absorbing doubles and he would get pushed one way or another and once out of position he would then just revert to shooting gaps rather than do nothing. Sometimes he would make a tackle but most of the time he left huge gaping holes. That whole transition to the 3-4 was ridiculous after years of Jauron drafting to stock a Tampa-2 system. They didn't have a body who could play NT or even 1 tech well.

Getting the QB as soon as possible should have been common sense. Watching them march Edwards back out there and hearing the excuse that they were going to use "that season" to evaluate the roster was disheartening. That roster had been evaluated for 3 years prior. All they needed to do was watch the tape. But there are always fans who want to draft a RB in round 1 or nod in agreement when a Marv Levy says that he plans to draft for need.

I've given Beane plenty of props but the fact remains that he had a VERY poor start in pro personnel. The money they wasted then is costing them now. They have their QB on a rookie contract and yet they are in a much tighter cap spot than they should be. This has prevented them from making big moves this offseason. They are going to have to bridge the gap with KC and try to stay ahead of the rest of the pack with what they have and the modest additions they've made. It can be done. New England did it that way for most of Brady's last dozen years with the team.