BADOLBILZ

Yeah he's not a 1:1 match with Shaq physically but he falls in that range of guys whose sum of parts just don't add up to be effective pass rushers. Also I am taking these pro day times with two grains this year........I'm thinking there was some truly excessive fudgery with a lot of these #'s.....and if your school wasn't cheating for you in this environment they probably weren't trying. The NFL ain't complaining.........there is a huge amount of interest in a draft where the injury brigade already projects to start coming off the board in the middle of round 1.

There isn't a RB in the league or the draft that is "lifting" this team to a SB. The Bills were perfectly middling running the ball last year despite poor run blocking........they need to block their run plays better and to become even more explosive in the passing game to improve on an offense that struggled in the playoffs. I know fans prefer to ignore the math......they love shiny RB's.......when the Bills acquired Shady McCoy he had just lead the NFL in fewest yards per touch at 4.3 and yet there were people deducing that he was going to put up 2,000 yards from scrimmage. SMH. The best RB in the league is only going to give you around 6 yards per touch. Every Josh Allen pass attempt averaged about 8 yards last year. And there is room to grow that. Making the Bills offense more play choice balanced does not necessarily make them more dangerous...........throwing more screens to RB's into the teeth of defenses already squatting on short and intermediate routes is not a formula for stretching the field and making it easier to move the ball. Even if you have the league's best receiving backs like Kamara, McCaffrey or Aaron Jones you are just averaging 8 yards per completion to those guys.......Isaiah McKenzie netted 9.4 catching mostly shovel passes and he couldn't find a job this offseason. Having a big time RB is not actually a "force multiplier".

You gotta' be kidding me. There is no good reason for anyone to ever go in there.......the first time is as bad of a decision as drafting a RB in round 1. Agree on Basham, IMO he projects closer to a Courtney Upshaw impact than a Melvin Ingram ceiling on the Shaq-ometer of limited pass rushers.

Because Etienne most certainly IS just a RB. Even if he became a great receiving RB he would average just around 8 yards per reception.......far from comparable to a good receiver. A playmaking receiver will give you 12-18 yards per reception in the passing game. The equivalent argument would be handing the ball off to Cole Beasley 70 times per year and him producing 3.2 yards per carry and calling him a weapon in the run game.

I tend to agree with the draft network guys who see him as duplicitous with the other seemingly limited ceiling pass rushers Addison and Epenesa that they already have. At DE in a 4-3........if you're juice-less you're useless.

Dareus played a lot of 1 tech in the wide 9 front Schwartz ran and nobody saw that as a limiting role for him. It's really not against the rules for a 1 tech to make plays but for the Bills it's difficult to let their 1 tech be aggressive because Edmunds needs so much protection in the run game. The wide 9 funneled the run into the middle.......Edmunds needs it funneled into a much narrower gap and then we have to hope he finds a nut.

When you rotate the DL as heavily as this regime does in Buffalo they rightfully expect full effort all the time. It's not overstated.......the Bills snap leading DT Ed Oliver only plays 54% of the snaps. When the Bills had the best pass rushing DL in football under Jim Schwartz the objective was to get the starters 80%-90% of the snaps. Little easier to understand taking a down off occasionally when you are playing 400 more snaps per year.

Allen is great but also one of those "guys who have it all" types that might not have as broad appeal as advertisers want. It's easier for the common folk to relate to the undersized Mayfield or the goofy, unathletiyc looking Rodgers(yes he's goofy looking, he looks like every 1980's Detroit Lions QB). Plus there are two more incoming with Levor and Zach 5th Avenue.........if they do really well it could be a tossup which one of them LeBron allows to do commercials.

How much would a slightly less used first rounder Clyde Edwards Helaire yield in trade? A pick about where Moss was selected in round 3 maybe? Nah, with one year expired on his relative high priced rookie salary probably not even that. RB's lose a ton of value the minute you drive them off the lot.......even if they play well. Christian McCaffrey is a superstar and his value + 3 more future #1's might get you back up to the spot where he was drafted.

Yep and Diggs was a big net positive.....but again that doesn't make it better than any of Jones' seasons. With 3 yards more per catch Diggs best season would have been the second highest yardage season of all time right between Calvin and Julio. Not that being just behind Victor Cruz for top single season yardage years isn't nice but it's a big difference in the class of company.

We will have to agree to disagree about him being in the class of Tyreek Hill or Mecole Hardman as far as speed and big play threat after the ball is in his hands. The larger point is that he is the best the Bills have and his value is greater as a short to intermediate receiver so it's a moot point.........he's not going to be taking screen passes 20-30 yards or being used as the deep option on 50% of his routes.

You have it backward. Bulk catch stats mean little. Yards per play are more important to team success. Again, not to take away from Diggs but if a receiver can put up just 90 less yards on like 40 less catches.......that's a win because the very best offenses average 6 yards per play or more.

Dropped from a helicopter I'm neither assuming the football was entirely free falling or the exact distance traveled. Doesn't sound like the event was set up to meet those specifications.

Jones is a big play receiver averaging 15 yards per catch over that span and Diggs was a high volume receiver who put up 12 yards per reception last year. Not trying to disparage Diggs but none of Jones' seasons were lesser than what Diggs did last year. Jones is a first ballot HOF'er, top 15 ever kinda' WR who averages 1300 yards per year. Over his first 5 seasons Diggs averaged about 900.......he is going to have to string together 4-5 more years like last year to get in that big of a conversation.

If they ever wanted to trade him, yes. For 6 seasons 2014 to 2019 every year Julio Jones had was as good or better than even the season Diggs had last year.........and better than ANY season a Bills WR had before that. And even last year his stats projected over 16 games were going to be massive. If they are seriously considering drafting Pitts at #4 and keeping their 36 year old QB they should be trying to outscore teams next year not hoping against logic that Pitts can just replace a guy in Jones who averages 15.2 yards per reception for his career. But they are the Falcons.

I've seen you cite that stat from 5 seasons ago(2016) before........it was the 4th fastest clocked top speed on a run in 2016 not "the fastest"..........but per Next Gen stats it's the only time he's shown up on the top 20 high mph runs in his career. He's since had two 100 catch seasons and a 2019 season where he was used a ton on deep routes. Lot's of chances to get back on there. But nope. Top speed measured in a certain nano-second over a long run does not necessarily tell you how fast a guy covers a lot of ground. If it takes Diggs 6 strides to reach an mph that Hill and Hardman reach in 4........that's probably the difference between 4.3 and 4.46 over 40 yards........and the difference between getting tackled in the open field and getting the edge on the defense. And that's what the eyeball test should be telling you........because quite clearly he is not as explosive as those guys.

Yeah he is fast enough to get over the top but you gotta' scheme for it with an under-center QB play action system like Minnesota did in 2019. The Bills aren't going to go to a Minnesota or Tennessee style play-action offense. In the open field Diggs isn't scaring anyone with his RAC ability. Much, much more difficult to stay with before he catches the ball. Speed is much more important at the WR position than at the RB position.

Etienne is a much better fit in outside zone though, IMO. And.......ya' know.......c'mon.......what are they going to switch backs out for every down based on what they all do well? Both RB's would be a terrible idea......but remember.........Beane is Gettleman's first born........can't rule it out til you can rule it out.

Tyreek Hill ran a 4.29 and has averaged 14.5 yards per reception for his career and Mecole Hardman runs a 4.33 and averages 16.7 ypc. Both tore up the Bills in the AFCCG. They don't track the deep ball too badly either. Those are big play threats with the speed to back up the fear. Stefon Diggs is a great receiver.........he's now the "burner" of their starting corps..........but speed-wise his 4.46 is the same as the Chiefs 5th WR option in 2020 Byron Pringle. It's pretty obvious that the Bills WR corps lacks speed. Etienne isn't in the class of Hill or Hardman in terms of speed........I doubt he could outrun Diggs or Pringle in the open field. The talent and speed plays WR nowadays. RB's barely move the needle and expecting Etienne to be the exception is

The Chiefs are a truly elite offense.......they have dominated the AFC for 3 years without a good pass catching RB. The reason they are elite is that they can pass for a score on you from anywhere on the field. As far as a missing piece in the playmaking equation goes.......what the Bills need is some more diversity in their receiving corps.........they need a big deep threat option and/or a guy who can stretch the seam. Adding a dump-down option at RB to an offense that throws tons of short passes already does not equate to what the Chiefs do to defenses.........which is stretch them vertically and expose them underneath.

- Taking the ball out of Allen's hands more often is ill advised. For perspective........Allen averages about 8 yards per pass attempt. If Etienne were to become the league's premier RB he'd average 20-25% less production than that in those extra touches. It's a recipe for less points and more punts. - More balance does not equal better.........they were second in the league in scoring playing a very tough schedule. They could regress but the area where they should be focused on improving is big passing plays. Their short-intermediate passing dominant game actually aids defenses in defending their run game. -Singletary has 4.8 ypc on over 300 career carries........that's A LOT.........Moss was perhaps the best pass blocking RB in the league as just a rookie and averaged more ypc than Leonard Fournette last season...........sure they could use a water bug option but the guys they have have been very good at what they do well. Etienne has flaws too. Contrary to popular belief, the bar to cross to be more useful than Moss and Singletary is not actually "meh". -Nick Chubb would probably be a good example of a bell cow back......big and runs the ball for 5 yards per carry. Etienne is not that. He does come with big mileage though........over 800 career touches at Clemson though. -Protecting Josh Allen is job #1 for the organization.......and you aren't a great weapon in the pass game if you can't pass block and everyone knows it. -Not sure how adding Etienne means that Josh Allen doesn't get tackled in the open field.

In fairness to who you are responding too.......nobody loved picking RB's early more than Promo.........he and Ralph were on the same page about most things and that was one of them. He was literally talking up a potential 2,000 yard season and HOF for Spiller after his lone 1,000 yard season..............my infamous "CJ Spiller and the march to 2000 yards" thread was greatly inspired by his exuberance for the RB.

So they spent the money on a helicopter but didn't get a radar gun to measure the velocity of the ball when it got near the ground?

Making it even less justifiable now. That was a big part of the grossly flawed rationale for the Bills selecting them when they did. This first round pick shouldn't be treated as a luxury.........Beane paid a TON of cap dollars to build the roster depth the past few seasons.........it was a good decision, slow builds like you used to promote usually fail and GM's and coaches get fired..............but the reality is that they need these drafts to replenish one of the oldest rosters in the league.........the edge and island players.......the lines...........RB is probably the last place they should be looking.

Two years too late for the Bills.