BADOLBILZ

It was a good documentary. He was a complicated figure. Incredibly accomplished man who got the most out of his ability and then experienced a lot of tragedy. But also a prickly personality and the face of the tobacco industry in the 1980's.

It was him. Think his wife or GF stabbed him with a kitchen knife if I remember correctly.

McVay screwed up the playoffs the year before as well...............he took what the defense gave him all season.......didn't bother to get Watkins the ball......and then in the playoffs the Falcons squatted on Woods and Kupp's specialty routes and Goff and Watkins looked like they hadn't played together before. Watkins ran routes that game I hadn't seen him run all season. McVay got picked off like a greenhorn. McVay is a young guy with a lot of innovative ideas but he is so devoid of experience that he sometimes can't anticipate what would be obvious to a seasoned veteran coach.

Hilarious thread. Beane created the most dead cap money in one season in the history of the NFL salary cap last year........he even freshly murdered a bunch of it dispatching his own bad moves like extending Eric Wood, trading for Corey Coleman and trading away AJ McCarron. OF COURSE he has gotten that down to below average this year.............I mean goddamn that's an absurd thing to try to give credit for. That's like "well the neighborhood burned to the ground but on the plus side the Fire Department hasn't had a single call there since!".

I just don't see Beasley being an answer to what I am talking about at all. He will be addressed with a nickel CB and LB help. He's still an underneath receiver. The vacated area is most likely going to be deep middle...........and that's not really what Beasley does. If you have a basic WR corps like the Bills that's where you want a top TE to take advantage of deep middle. It looks simple on TV but it's a very risky, tough throw and that's why defense's permit it and offenses prefer a big target to minimize the risk of turnover by overthrow or collision. The Bills obviously don't have one of those tight ends. It's going to be up to Daboll to be creative and hopefully the OL and run game can force safeties into the box but on paper this team isn't well positioned to throw the football when they are forced to. Unless Allen makes an incredible leap forward and/or Robert Foster really turns into a beast they just don't have the personnel to dictate terms to opposing pass defense's, IMO. I know folks don't want to hear that but I guarantee you that McDermott and Frazier wouldn't be losing any sleep at the thought of making a Josh Allen "be a quarterback" and throw short to intermediate passes to the likes of John Brown and Cole Beasley.........that's what their defense WANTS to force teams to do.

This is the problem. The reason teams that have been successful with young QB's of late have wanted elite talent at WR for their young QB is to create big matchup advantages for them to prevent defenses from forcing them to play the game at it's most cerebral and mistake-free level. Unless Foster really busts out the Bills WR group is very standard fare.........Bob Foster and John Brown are exactly the kinda' X&Z combo that the Steelers created the now basic "cover 2" in the 70's to stop.............fast guys best suited to vertical routes who will be challenged catching a lot of short to intermediate passes underneath.........and Allen is the big armed QB that's probably not best suited to nickel and dime defenses with accurate short passes for 10-12 play drives. We can hope that Allen re-invents himself I guess.

I know fans mean well but you gotta' leave players and their families alone when they are out in a restaurant or shopping etc.. Even if they seem cool with it they might not be. And unlike in the old days they can't just brush off fans in public because the story ends up on twitter, instagram and twobillsdrive.

Maybe he can one day team up with the "German Randy Moss" Moritz Boehringer?

I don't really look at it on a game to game prediction basis..........but the overall schedule is about as easy as they could have hoped for.............that usually ends up working out accordingly........like the last two seasons where the Bills had soft finishes to their schedule and they took advantage of that. There will be games that they win that everyone assumes right now that they will lose............much like @Minnesota last year. I do agree that sweeping the Jets and Dolphins has been expected before under even more favorable circumstances and didn't happen. Go back to 2007.......the Bills finished second in the AFC East and the Jets and Fish finished 4-12 and 1-15. Bills fans almost universally assumed the rising Bills would sweep them both in 2008..........and the Bills ended up going 0-6 in the division and the Fish won the division at 11-5 and the Jets went 9-7. To me what it comes down to is that there are no excuses anymore............I don't care if certain teams look better on paper now..........we shouldn't have to rationalize why it's reasonable to lose games.........if you want to be a contender you have to take care of business. It's McBeane's job to put a contender on the field that we don't have to make excuses for. If they get off to a good start......and some of the teams on the schedule do not......then the narrative about which games they should win will change quickly.

I don't see the Bills keeping a WR just because he's big and they don't otherwise have one of those. I think he needs to prove he is more than a WR with TE speed and quickness as his measurables and past NFL chance indicated. Williams isn't a "high ceiling developmental prospect" or interchangeable part.......which is usually what your inactives are made up of. He probably makes the roster as an active player......the #4 WR........ or is not on the roster at all........I don't see him making the roster as the "6th" WR...........he's gotta' knock it out of the park as a receiver or on special teams or both, IMO. I think he's gotta' be a guy they won't feel shy about lining up in 3 WR sets. With Roberts basically assured the 5th WR spot it's probably #4 WR or bust for Duke. So I don't have Duke making the roster but maybe we get lucky and he blows us away in camp and preseason. Hope he makes it interesting.

What I can tell you is that Gilmore was a 1st team All Pro last year..........and Bob Woods had over 1200 yards receiving...........Watkins lined up across from Gilmore in the AFC Championship game. He is a proven difference maker when healthy. If they weren't going to do that here under McDermott and Beane then that's an indictment of them not a defense. Those players are all good and cost the Bills a bunch of draft capital to draft. Re-sign them all..........2 out of 3 stay healthy......you won that deal. And Star Lotulelei was a terrible signing..........it was a favorite as THE WORST signing by NFL observers that offseason and it only worsened when he somehow had by far the least productive season of his career. It's almost unfathomable that they ate Dareus dead money and then guaranteed $25M to a traffic cone. All this said..........you have to be making bad decisions all the time to become or stay bad in the NFL. It's set up to help even bad organizations remain competitive. We shouldn't have to pretend that what McBeane have done is some kind of slam dunk. All they've done is maintain their mediocre status...........it can still go either way but the mistakes are mounting. They need their draft picks to step up past the stage where they needed to be graded on a curve and their UFA's to actually start panning out. The team and staff is practically entirely hand picked. The excuses stop here in 2019.

These things always work themselves out...........in the offseason even the chronicaly gimp are healthy and all the talk is about size and speed and what that COULD mean...........but once the pads go on and balls start getting dropped and separation isn't made as the defense throttles the offense in practices..........then we usually have to come to grips with the fact that the Bills offensive weaponry isn't where it needs to be in a matchup league. Duke is where Greg Little was at this stage in 2016............he's gotta' prove that he can do it..........Little proved without a doubt that he could not.

I like Hughes but you know if he was an unrestricted free agent the same people would be citing that as "easily replaceable".............it's the old "team control-ability" curve.

Moran made the stupid remark but he was telling the truth about Merriman. He was cuffed by a Bills fan I've known for decades and his viles were seized the whole nine. Sometimes "the juice" isn't worth the squeeze of prosecution though. Bills fans just didn't want to hear it. The juice was the only thing keeping his body glued together at that point.

1) The bolded is all you need to say. It was a choice. They had well over $100M in uncommitted salary cap space for 2019 heading into the 2017 offseason. They could have pushed and adjusted anything they needed to to keep long term contract guys like Gilmore and Woods and whoever. If you need me to explain how then you haven't been paying much attention to the NFL. Signing bonuses and amortization are nice tools but guaranteed dollars come in many malleable forms. They CHOSE not to spend then. It was a choice. They didn't have to stand pat in UFA or trade their existing prime young talent........but they did. Just like they didn't have to sign Wood to an ill-fated extension or guarantee Star Lotulelei $25M+ or give Corey Coleman $3.5M for a 10 day try-out. 2) The UFA's they lost were mostly prime aged players as I've said. You think losing defensive players like Gilmore or Brown was entirely moot because the defense isn't bad............well they have since spent 3 of their 4 first round picks on defense now haven't they? One was a boundary CB the other was a MLB. Hmmm. I guess you don't value draft picks but I'll take Gilmore(1st team All Pro) and Mahomes(50 TD passes 2nd most all time) over Tre White and Tre Edmunds. So would every non-Bills NFL fan or observer. Choices were made not forced upon them. 3) UFA's aren't in the pro personnel tally..........they are part of your draft work. And as much as I like a lot of the players they have drafted it's not uncommon for drafts to look promising in the first 2-3 seasons and then fall apart. Tre White and Matt Milano are pretty much the only McDermott draft picks we aren't still grading on a curve right now. Zay Jones and Dion Dawkins and Tre Edmunds and Josh Allen's 2018 play won't be too appealing if repeated this year.........it will be grounds for necessary replacement. I hope Gaines and Johnson pan out but there were talent evaluators that thought those two contracts the Bills gave two busted up vets were very generous under the circumstance...........so it could just end up being more of the same as the 2018 UFA class. That class was 0-9. All duds for the dollars. Trent Murphy is the only hope for that group.

In the 2017 offseason I was promoting the fact that they had a lot of older players on soon-expiring contracts and few large commitments down the road and would be able to retain anyone of their young core that they needed to. It's not hard.......the cap is malleable if you have lot's of space down the road.........which they ALWAYS had. They chose to play "cash to the cap" because it suited the narrative that the roster needed to be dissected. Donahoe did something similar...........he took advantage of the cap chaos to unnecessarily cut Ted Washington because he didn't fit GW's defense. Then *miraculously* he had saved the Bills from their cap crisis and was back shopping in free agency the following offseason. If their jobs were on the line you could rest assured they would have been front loading deals to keep the roster from being depleted as it transitioned and the core of prime age players was getting paid. They inherited a talented but poorly coached roster that was ready to be a 10-11 win team by sheer force of talent.........they CHOSE to reset and clear the decks of the prime age talent so that they would have 3-5 years instead of being judged in 1-2 years like any coach/GM combo would be in a situation where they inherited talent and expectations. You could argue that they didn't have the QB to lead them to a SB but having a perennial "divisional round ceiling" didn't stop KC and Houston from getting their franchise QB's of the future. And btw...........the dead money from Wood was due to an unnecessary extension that Beane gave him. His deal was set to expire. That was poorly played. He wasn't going anywhere in FA. And the Dareus dead money PLUS the "walking dead" money that they gave Star Lotulelei only massively compounded the stupid money spent on the DT1T position. But the thing was that they were going to have TONS of cap room in 2019 and beyond all along. Even if they kept Gilmore and Woods and Dareus and picked up Watkins option etc.. And the way they've spent their money to this point is very dubious. 18 UFA's this offseason........many with concerning past health issues. Hopefully it works out but the 2018 UFA class was basically an 0-9 in terms of return on investment. There have been no Tyrod from Ravens or Lorax or Zach Brown type value signings since Beane arrived.

He got to the receiver so early he could have turned around and boxed him out for the throw. It wasn't a bang-bang play. He clearly ran thru the receiver on purpose......I mean no sh*t Sherlock........ but only because he horribly misjudged his opportunity to intercept the throw. That is still misplaying it. His intent is a moot point. Nobody is arguing that it WASN'T a blown call. Incidentally, when NRC was a Bill he intercepted a throw to the right on a sideline breaking route for a pick six against the Rams in the Coliseum in October of 2016. Not exactly the same play but an example of the guys ball skills. I mean sh*t if they throw the flag there and the Rams lose........ NRC might be getting the Ronnie Harmon treatment in LA...........people wondering if he had an interest in losing that game........because it was SUCH an egregious AND out of character level of misplay for him. Really? Never heard of that.

It was just a terrible football play, IMO. Terrible decision to throw that ball there by Brees.........should have been a pick six.........and almost bailed out by a surreal bonehead misplay by NRC And instead all players responsible taken off the hook by the awful mis-call. You may get the feel that the official intentionally didn't throw the flag..............my take was that NRC so terribly misplayed that ball that the official was stunned and doubted his eyes and held the flag. We just assume these officials are prepared for everything but in what situation does a CB in that position just run thru a receiver a full second or more before the ball gets there? This wasn't 40 yards downfield with a CB in hopeless pursuit.......this play was happening in front of NRC eyes.........he was the one with the quickest path to that football and the moment it was thrown I was thinking pick six. It should never have happened and I think the degree of misplay surprised officials who in truth are rapidly narrowing down the possibile outcomes in their head as plays transpire in order to make decisive calls. You could even factor in the surprise of Brees throwing such a dangerous pass there. IMO....it was just a shitztorm of bad, ugly football at a time when you are hoping and expecting to see greatness..........that disgusted me, not the perceived injustice.

If there are stats in it and @Royale with Cheese referenced it then you can rest assured there are inaccuracies and/or misinterpreted data.

It also wasn't a scoring play though. That one play didn't entirely decide the outcome of the game like the MCM did. Personally I think this is all a joke and the Saints had like 80+ other offensive plays in that game to distance themselves from a Rams team that they had a massive homefield advantage over. Should a Rams fan have brought a lawsuit against the Saints for pumping in crowd noise if they lost? The NFL has all manner of gray areas and officiating is just one of them. When people start realizing that the objective of the game is to provide a clear and obvious winner they will start understanding that you can't blame officiating for deciding who the better team is by virtue of one or two plays. When I let that "this call cost us the game" nonsense go I stopped getting mad about officiating. EVER. Win the game outright. If you don't then you are leaving yourself subject to bad breaks and human error.

"This roster needs to be seriously overhauled"...........said no one when Rex was fired. McBeane created that narrative from scratch..........much to the delight of SB contending teams all around the NFL. Same with the salary cap nonsense..........Beane in an interview the other day said that he "warned" The Pegs it would take "2-3 years" to clean up the salary cap "mess".........and then patted himself on the back for getting it done in just 2.? The guy created the LARGEST AMOUNT OF DEAD MONEY by one team in one offseason in NFL history!...........OF COURSE he totally re-set the Bills cap in 2 offseasons. Hilarious. The Bills salary cap issues were relatively minor........they still had average money to spend in FA and they always figured to have plenty of extra cap space in 2019-2020 when the old men McCoy/Wood/Clay type contracts would surely all be off the books. But somehow ended up having to replace all of Nix and Whaley's remaining top picks(except Shaq!) AND doubled down on Wood and McCoy and lost. I hope these guys make it but if not expect a lot more of that kind of manipulating of the truth from McBeane as they try to buy more time to learn from their mistakes.

I managed to tune in to WGR today just as Bills employee Sal Cappaccio was saying he expected the team to be not just "in the hunt" in November but also possibly in control of their own destiny in week 15 or 16. So even those professionally inclined to be reserved with their predictions think this team should win with the free reign McBeane have had over this organization. 6-10 *could* get them fired if it happens in a certain way that reflects very poorly on them. But there is so much room for improvement after having a -100+ point differential ...........there should be a ton of areas that the team improves in that McBeane could point to in their defense...........even if they go 6-10.........because they played more like a 4-5 win team last year.

Last season was garbage.

Just wising up it must be. Stanford is a tremendous athlete. Doesn't mean he's up to being a regular MLB'er but he came to the Bills with a rep as a guy who just needed a chance and he looked good when he got it. Also at some point you need to find bargain producers. Not going to be able to go out in FA and spend $4M-$10M on every position of need.........gotta' find some veteran producers on the cheap to stay ahead of the salary cap game.

Oh I know Keuchly is getting busted up but when healthy you know for a fact that he is really good in a McDefense. I think he's probably got a couple very good years left but with all the concussions who knows. This season his cap number jumps up greatly and the thing with MLB's is that if they aren't GREAT and the team isn't winning those cap hits will draw attention. It's one of those positions where it's easy for a team to think they could get by with less for a fraction of the cost. I wouldn't be shocked to see Julian Stanford start a lot of games for the Bills at MLB either........he is a great athlete and in the physical mold of what a lot of teams are looking for in a MLB or ILB now himself and was fine as a sub for Edmunds when he was out concussed last season. If Edmunds gets hurt or struggles I'd rather see 2-3 games of Stanford at the position before making a trade. The Panthers have the potential to be a mess this year though so combined with the uncertainty about Edmunds at the position it bears consideration.