BADOLBILZ

19 years in a row where the team hasn't been in contention? Say all you want about the management not being the same or whatever...........but it starts at the top and the Pegula's have owned the Sabres and Bills for a combined 12 full seasons and have 1 skin-of-teeth playoff appearance to show for it. It's definitely warranted to be skeptical of an anemic track record like that.

Yeah good point about the 2019 draft implications of not making the deal earlier. The Pelicans getting Zion was just a stroke of luck but I think LA getting the #4 pick worked out better for LA too because then they didn't have to give up Kuzma. Can't see that deal getting done without Kuzma without the Lakers getting that very high #1 pick in the lottery.

New Orleans could've got that deal back in February.......so much for the new GM doing better..........not having to give up Kyle Kuzma makes it a great deal for the Lakers, IMO. Lakers now the very early Vegas favorite to win it all in 2019.

Terry Pegula and Whaley being in on Mahomes..........and McD(and presumably Beane from his office in Carolina) wanting to buy a vowel instead......... is one of those stories that becomes more important if "the process" goes off course in 2019. After the early success of Mahomes and Watson it's going to be hard to accept more mediocrity or losing in exchange for just modest improvement from Allen in year 2...........he's not going to throw 50 TD passes but he needs to look VERY GOOD.........which likely isn't made easier by the modest assembly of weapons.

Season actually started Thursday night with a Hamilton Ti-Cats 23-17 victory over Saskatchewan. ESPN just saw fit to put the game on ***** ESPN+..........hoping to get some football desperate fans to sign up.

Actually Dareus has played mostly nose tackle(0-tech) for Buffalo and Jax since he signed that Bills contract. In the 1-technique for his entire career Lotulelei has been better positioned to make tackles and plays in the backfield than Dareus has been since Rex moved him to NT. Dareus was tremendous in his partial season at the 1-tech for Buffalo in 2017 and of course the impact of his loss was massive in the subsequent two months. Star just fell off a cliff last year. He wasn't that good in 2017 which is why the signing was almost universally panned as one of the worst if not the worst value of the 2018 crop.......but he was BAD on the field in 2018. I've heard excuses about Edmunds...........but if Edmunds struggles would have lead to anything it would have been more attempts by Lotulelei to make plays. It was the exact opposite.......he simply couldn't impact OL and disengage.......he was running in quick sand all season. I entirely expected some physical excuses but apparently he just sucked. As for Dareus..........it's my understanding that he will return to starting at the 3T position this year for the first time since his 2014 first team all pro season. Contrary to what Bills fans want to think Dareus has been playing well in Jacksonville and his base salaries weren't prohibitive the first couple seasons...........he had to re-do his deal because the backloaded base salary portion of his Bills contract came up.

What I brought up was Lotulelei's anemic production and untenable contract..........that's not a hypothetical........it happened. And btw.........yet again you stumble over statistics in this thread...........Phillips played 39% of his teams defensive snaps in 2018(versus Star's 47% and Phillips 38%). You literally pointed out that he didn't start playing for Buffalo until week 5 then cited the % of snaps he played out of Buffalo's 16 games? I'm not even sure what your point was bringing it up but........again you just don't seem to understand how stats work and what they mean. My take is this.........Lotulelei is the most one dimensional and least productive of the Bills top 3 veteran DT's......and the other two aren't that good. The only thing he does well at this point is not miss games to injury..........but barring significant injuries if he doesn't play a lot better he could start missing games due to lack of impact. Which would be an absurdly poor result for a 2018 free agent pickup with a fully guaranteed $11.5M cap hit in 2019.

It's too Billsy to not be true. But.......on the plus side....... at least Danny Batten picked up the phone.?

You make such compelling arguments.

There are still $18.5M guaranteed reasons.....above McPridefulness.......that Star's roster spot is safe. But why would they need to sign or draft a replacement this offseason? They already have 2018 3rd round pick Harrison Phillips at the position........he who made twice as many tackles as Star and SIX plays behind the line of scrimmage vs. just ONE by Lotulelei (seriously, Star had just ONE TFL and ZERO QB hits). And Harrison Phillips was no world beater..........Star was just world beaten. At 340# Jordan Phillips is another possibility to get some snaps there. The Bills gotta' play Bell and Barkley the first two weeks of the season and if Star doesn't make a significant impact in those games he might even start seeing some healthy scratches.

Star Lotulelei had by far his worst season in the NFL last year. At this stage of his career.....and still at the beginning of his Bills contract......he couldn't get 8 sacks in 4 seasons if the NCAA re-instated his eligibility. Dareus also had his worst year as a pro but significantly outproduced Lotulelei........and Dareus played at about the same level as 2017 Star Lotulelei......a level that got Star $26M+ guaranteed from the Bills. McBeane's Lotulelei contract is one of the worst in Bills history.

The "core" of the "corps" certainly isn't impressive. Beasley and Brown are supposed to turn this unit around and in their 12 NFL seasons they've combined for just 3 where they've surpassed the very modest 700 yards receiving level. You don't need to see the future............just look at their careers............it's not like they've been even remotely consistent or reliable producers. Foster was the key to the Bills WR corps being functional in the second half and the burden........for better or worse..........is likely on him to elevate this group into respectability.

Jones was more important to the Bills offense, no doubt. I hope he raises his game and turns into a poor mans Keenan Allen.........greater than the sum of his talents.......... INSTEAD of that version Jordan Matthews. But he's gotta' start by catching all the easy stuff and a lot of the very difficult ones as well. Plays like that back shoulder ball he dropped on the last drive in Miami..........unless he turns into a big play X or Z those kinda' passes can't hit the ground. Especially in the clutch. It's easy to excuse not making those catches but that's what a possession WR has to do to avoid becoming a journeyman in the NFL. The big concern should be him continuing to be a modern day Josh Reed.............a guy who looked like a freaky pass catcher who got the yips and then never got back to being that sure-handed guy.

Didn't McD say this same thing about culture/strategy?

Yeah I was anti-Tyrell Williams as well but Zay Jones isn't a comp..............Williams averaged 4.3 yards more per catch...........that's why he has so much more value than Zay Jones. At the same stage in their careers Zay is more like a poor man's version of Jordan Matthews.............who the Eagles couldn't give away for a 6th rounder before Beane took him off their hands. That extra production per catch ability is the difference between $10M per plus FA deal and being a journeyman.

A lot has changed. That 3 year rule pre-dates even free agency and goes back to a time when 1st rounders signed 6-7 year deals. Nowadays teams want to start young players asap and are less disadvantaged than ever by doing so. With less roster continuity and with less practicing and more teams than ever trying to spend to cap minimums it's a lot harder for vets to keep rookies on the bench............and when those draft picks play more and earlier...........more is expected earlier. And the fact that half of 1st rounders are being allowed to hit free agency after just 4 seasons means that decisions gotta' be made quickly.

Oh I see a lot less of it now that I have most of the the house mums on block............but there is a very vocal group that keeps pushing the goal line back because they are afraid of being disappointed. Yeah if they are less than 8-8 then something went VERY wrong with either the coaching/decisions of McDermott or the personnel work of Beane or both. In both men there is already plenty of reason for skepticism. With other HC/GM combos turning around worse teams in 1-2 offseasons it seems that 3 offseasons to sculpt a roster into a contender is more than fair measure. My biggest concern is the organization short-changing Allen for weapons.............they've basically just given him what looks like a very pedestrian offensive cast and are expecting him to meet them halfway when and that's not really been the formula that's been working wrt young QB's. They are by no means propping him up with this group of WR's, TE's and RB's.

That was a "thing" you could apply to some critics of the team when the last fair weather fan died about a decade ago. But it's been 19 years since the team was in contention.............THAT is why there are skeptics. That's not to say we don't have a pile of those "negative outcome investors"........you just have it backwards........we have a ton of folks who are already making excuses for another non-contending season.

The only NBA coach that even compares to an NFL coach is Popovich and it took him a long time in a different era to build up that credibility...............and despite that he lost the first "modern" superstar that he got because his my-way approach is a hard sell now.

There is no comparison between Kerr and McDermott. Or any NBA coach and McDermott for that matter. The players run the show in the NBA. But at the base level as coaches......Kerr was clutch, big game player in the NBA with a bunch of rings who brought a lot of instant respect and credibility along with a laid back style that suited a team with a lot of prime aged star players. McDermott never played in the NFL and has never won anything and immediately had to clear the deck of prime-aged star players because he didn't think he could earn their respect and buy-in.

More big plays from DL against Brady in that video than the Bills have had in the last decade. Also a lot of examples of his impact coming from between the tackles........imagine a 3rd down pass rush group with Clowney and Oliver in the middle.

Right and we already covered that.......it's about the scoring..........the Lions and Pats limited the Bills to 14 and 12...........so a TD less per game. YOU were going on about some other stats..............which I addressed. It was a dumb tact for you to take considering you were using the Bills OVERALL stats for the year as a basis and those were ridiculously poor because of the unbelievably bad offense for most of the first two months. But blame Allen all you want I still say they played A LOT better offensively after his return from injury.

I don't think most Bills fans would agree with that assessment of the Bills after Allen's return........they had averaged nearly 400 yards of offense in the prior two games........they were on a roll and there was a good deal of excitement about the offense at that point. Hey!.........it's MY job to trash Royale's takes!

Oy vey. It's NOT ABOUT ALLEN. I'm a huge supporter of Allen and have had nothing but praise for the kid and the pick since he was drafted. What we are talking about here is the fact that the Bills struggled offensively against Patricia and his mentor relative to how they played in the the other portion of Allen's return.

I don't assume that at all..............we were discussing scenarios where a repeat of a 6-10 season might lead to The Pegs deciding to cut bait on McDermott and Beane and you and a few others jumped in looking for an argument. I assume that they will have a winning season in 2019.............just as I did at this point in 2017 when I said they were taking a 10 win team to training camp while others were making excuses and predicting tanks etc.. This idea that I am just constantly negative is laughable. Some of you just seek out things to be mad at other fans about. Displacing frustration or anger about the teams lack of success I suppose.