BADOLBILZ

It will be the first time they haven't taken a WR into the season who had put up at least a single 900 yard receiving season in their career since the period in the 1980's right after the 2-14 teams. They've almost always had someone whose been a 1,000 yard receiver in their career and 800's is pretty far from that. Including 2017. Jordan Matthews had recently been a 1,000 yard receiver. Then they picked up Benjamin and had 2 recent 1,000 yard receivers on the team.

Yeah Samuel is an 8th year journeyman who will be 28 next week. -Diggs was a little over a year younger when he came to Buffalo. - Diggs only had 5 years of NFL mileage versus 7 for Samuel. - Diggs had missed a much smaller % of games. -And the biggest difference.......Diggs averaged an excellent 925 yards per season in his career while Samuel has averaged a pedestrian 480. Is it possible for a WR to break out in his 8th or 9th season in the NFL? I guess? It's probably happened. Quinn Early did it in his NFL year 7 back in 1994 when he put up the first of four 800-1,000 yard seasons. But it's very rare to break out that late.

They drafted Davis because they needed a second RB to rotate with and compete with Cook. They went into last season with Damien Harris. They didn't run Allen hard in the second half because they didn't have enough RB's.........they did it because it's a huge advantage to run your QB.

Like I said, Curtis Samuel is a good journeyman WR. As you noted, he has also missed a lot of games injured......27 games.....in his career. That's why Samuel has averaged just 480 yards per season in 7 long years in the NFL. What you perceived that he was 8 years ago in college is a lot less important than what he's done since then. I'm no Gabe Davis fan but Davis has averaged 683 yards per season in HIS career. So yeah, they haven't been comparable producers and that's why Davis got paid a lot more.

After Gabe Davis 4 TD playoff game did you presume that he would just become a superstar with more targets? That's what @HappyDays is talking about. Giving Gabe more targets lead to diminishing returns in 2022. His catch % dropped, his passer rating plummeted 20 points and 50% more targets tripled the amount of interceptions thrown his direction. Samuel is a good, journeyman WR. A really good WR3. 7 years of film and stats to prove what he can and can't do. His best season in the NFL(under Joe Brady) he was WR3 getting WR3 CB matchups. Part of the reason "the extrapolaters" were wrong about Gabe Davis was that his skillset didn't allow him to get open against CB1's and CB2's. So when he got elevated, he got worse.

If the answer for your impossible math in your projections is "I'm hoping, because I'm a fan" then why are you aiming so low? How about hoping for 7,000 yards passing and 75 TD passes for Allen? If you are going to be unrealistic go big or go home. What's your annual salary in this fantasy?

You pretend to be curious if there are "any other".......... but then the fact that A LOT of WR put up excellent numbers with bad QB play leaves you unconvinced. As @FireChans says, not knowing this fact really illustrates that you don't follow the league. It's common knowledge. I gave you a literal All Pro example like you asked for. How bad was Houston's QB situation in 2015? Hopkins put up 1521 yards receiving with Brian Hoyer, Ryan Mallet, TJ Yates and Brandon Weeden splitting the QB duties.

DeAndre Hopkins before Watson arrived was a prime recent example. Really good WR's will get their numbers. It's why the hand wringing about what Eric Moulds or Lee Evans would have done with a better QB has always been an eye roller.

Again.........the issue you aren't addressing is how do all of these low per-play producing receivers put up all of this yardage? It doesn't matter that you aren't projecting their "career" highs. Those were attained when they had more opportunity. What matters is that you are anticipating guys who produce significantly less YPRR or yards per target than their predecessors to produce GREATER numbers in aggregate. That likely requires A LOT more snaps offensively than guys like Diggs and Davis needed. At the same time the TE's are setting team records. So presumably a lot more 12 personnel and less WR snaps to go around. Do you follow me? Because you haven't addressed the issue of how they are pulling this off. And that's having not even addressed whether MVS, Claypool and Mack Hollins are finished as players..........which is on the table given their performances last season. That's why they were available for so little. Dumpster dives. So yeah, we don't know who the starters are..........but we apparently know who all of the candidates are. Other than Coleman, who has a modest track record of production even in college, we have a lot of NFL data on these players. As @Kirby Jackson has said and I agree.......on paper it's a bottom 3 WR group in the NFL.

Are you seriously arguing that drives that only end in FG's should be considered "defensive stops"? For chrissakes. Once again arguing just for the sake of being contrary.

Again, 2020 offensive football isn't coming back. And also like I said, you can expect Samuel to produce about 1/2 yard per route run less than Diggs and that was the case in 2020 as well. So you aren't making any point trying to play mix and match with different seasons. And 2020 is the only season in 7 where Samuel has produced more than 656 yards receiving. His career average is like 480 and if you remove his top and bottom seasons it's still only 500. He's a good, journeyman WR. I like Samuel as a role player. As a clear cut WR3 behind two other stud WR's. But he enters this season as boundary WR1 for the Bills. Not what you want.

271 yards is not context it's just an uneducated guess. Hence, make believe. 2020 is not coming back, hondo. Wake up. Offensive production is way down around the league the past 2 seasons. https://www.sharpfootballanalysis.com/analysis/nfl-offense-scoring-penalties-efficiency-2023/ Last year Allen passed for just 253 yards per game despite having 2 boundary WR averaging 8.5 and 9 yards per target over their careers and his slot receiver having incredible efficiency leading the league in catch %. That passing yardage number is only likely to come DOWN being replaced by journeymen in Samuel, MVS and Claypool who've averaged around 7 to 7.5 for their careers. And you are predicting almost 20 MORE passing yards per game and trying to defend that with context without using any.

I'll help you out. Pretty sure 12 personnel was the most effective passing formation in the NFL last year. I know it was in 2022. With the most investment in the league at the TE position(a first rounder AND also a top contract) I would expect the Bills to be in 12 personnel a lot............presuming that Kincaid and Knox are both healthy this time around. So it's probably going to be a lot of 2 receiver formations. Which would make "any combination of Claypool/MVS/Hamler/Hollins" mostly irrelevant if Shakir/Samuel stay healthy and if the raw rookie Coleman can avoid being a weekly inactive. The Bills used to be great passing out of 11 personnel. Because the top of their WR corps was star quality. Unless you are running 5 wide or have a ton of injuries it doesn't matter much who WR 4-7 are.

I'd say that Beane will be on the horn trying to swing a trade for WR help in that not-so-unlikely scenario. Won't be the first time he's over-estimated his WR talent and been left wanting at mid-season.

I think your contention that the WR are going to produce like that while the TE room is going to set Bills all-time single season records is what's lacking context. So, incredibly unlikely. I am glad you started this thread because it gives us the chance to be real about the numbers. And yeah I heard the "Josh Allen tide raises all ships" argument last spring about Sherfield and Harty. Beane was going to show me and the doubters. How'd that work out? As I accurately predicted using simple statistical analysis.........they produced like they had normally produced in their careers. Their single outlier seasons remained outliers. This is because in most cases receivers play to their typical statistics. Curtis is likely to fall around 1.5 YPRR. He's been in the high 1's as a low mileage guy early in his career and also sub-1 a couple times. 1.38 in 2022 and 1.5 in 2023......sounds about right. Not every modest producer is just limited by the ball distributor. One of the reasons the people who make money on statistical analysis like YPRR is because context is overrated with regard to that stat. There are extremes, sure. Josh Gordon produced a top 5 All-time WR season with one of the worst QB'd teams in recent NFL history. Then he disappeared from sight even with Brady and Mahomes throwing to him. It can go either way but that's not the norm. If you want to cling to the hope that Chase Claypool will choose violence for one season(in hopes of scoring a new deal) that's a very long shot with some Josh-Gordonesque merit. But expecting a lot from these receivers while also expecting record production from Bills TE's? C'mon bro. Where's the context? How are you getting these guys all these snaps? It's make believe.

Which is what they did in the second half of last season. Which resulted in a much less effective Josh Allen as a passer. But they won more. This is why McDermott is going that route. I think they have come to a bad conclusion and that the REAL reason they won was because they used Allen like Cam Newton in the mid-2010's.

Agree about Brady. They didn't turn to ground and pound. They were throwing more underneath and gaining some more YAC. But they had already begun that process with Dorsey in the Tampa game. Brady didn't re-invent anything. He continued the adaptation Dorsey had started. What changed was that McDermott took the reigns off of the OC by allowing Brady to use Allen with reckless abandon in the run game. Prior to hiring Brady they were trying HARD to avoid those hard miles. But what you are projecting would be the most efficient passing season in NFL history.......78%.....obliterating Drew Brees single season record of 74%. completions. Josh Allen is a 63% career passer, fwiw. The point I've been trying to make is that the current cast of receivers the Bills have are traditionally much less snap/route production efficient compared to their predecessors. Curtis Samuel produced 1.5 yards per route run last season. Stef Diggs produced 2 yards per route run(which was down from 2.87 in 2022) You can find these and other enlightening efficiency numbers at: https://www.playerprofiler.com/nfl/stefon-diggs/ Even going from 2 to 1.5 is a huge difference in bulk production over the course of a season worth of targets. If Samuel could even hold up to or maintain his productivity at that volume, which is unknown. Assuming more work won't be less efficient........in order for the Bills to match last year's bulk production in the passing game they would likely have to run A LOT more plays. So start off with 383 completions. At 63% complete that would require 608 targets.......not 535. Now factor in that these guys are likely to be 20% to 40% less efficient per route run..........and the amount of targets needed gets insane. Hence, the simple conclusion is that we should expect a big drop in bulk passing game numbers. The alternative would look like throwing 50 times per game to try to put up what Allen could do with Diggs/Brown/Beasley in 35 pass attempts. That won't work. Obviously. Expect a greater emphasis on running the ball.......burning the clock.......and shortening games. The numbers tell us to expect Allen to have his least impressive passing season since either 2019 or maybe even since 2018.

Are you expecting Ken Dorsey to return so Allen can throw for 250+ yards 60% of the time? Under Joe Brady.......Allen had 250 yards passing just 3 times in 9 games(7 regular 2 post). Including only once in the last 7 games. And it wasn't just for a lack of attempts.........he threw the ball 42 times in KC for just 233 yards and then finished the season with 39 attempts for just 186 yards against KC. Unless a true All Pro WR emerges from their group they will almost certainly HAVE TO run the ball more than they did overall last season to achieve similar results. This means more clock control.......less possessions.......less yards per play........less yards passing.........and less yards per game and probably less points per game. It's pretty easy to see that this is what McDermott has in mind. You aren't going to add together two lesser players to share a position and have them match the efficiency of Diggs. It's not like a left/right platoon in baseball. Just look at Mahomes last season.......his passing yardage dropped by 1,000 yards from 2022 due to early season uncertainty and down years from Kelce and MVS. McDermott wants "complementary" football. An offense that burns clock and scores 20+ and keeps his defense fresh so it can allow less than 20.

Yeah that's the "in aggregate" "stop the run with numbers" mindset. The reality is that the reason that "difference makers" make-a-difference is because they produce both volume AND do it more efficiently(less snaps or routes run needed). It's easy to just say "Curtis Samuel and Chase Claypool will produce this many yards". The problem is........Diggs is a career 8.5 yards per target guy. Samuel and Claypool are around 7.1 yards per target in their career. That's why they aren't stars. So to produce the same combined yardage they gotta' run more routes and play more snaps than Diggs did to do so. Same problem with replacing Gabe Davis with Coleman and MVS. MVS is less efficient than Gabe over his career and coming off a real downer that actually indicates he may be washed altogether. Coleman had a horrible 1.74 yards per route run in college last season. Guys like Malik Nabers and Marvin Harrison averaged more than TWICE that. To further put that in perspective, Tyreek Hill averaged 3.87 yards per route run in the actual NFL last year. At the same time as expecting miraculous efficiency from WR's who haven't proven that ability..........you have the Buffalo Bills setting team reception and yardage records at the TE position...........with 2 different players. Which likely would require more 12 personnel..........and subsequently LESS 3 WR sets. Nod if you guys are understanding the reason for skepticism yet. You are predicting 17 game numbers that would probably take THESE guys 21-22 games to produce.

Most people's first exposure to "statistics" in education is learning about "probabilities". That's what we are talking about this time of season. What's probable. Could Samuel blow out a knee and produce zero yards? Sure. Could Samuel exceed his career averages? Sure. But he's MOST LIKELY to produce near his career norms. This gets lost on people, like the OP, who instead presume the unlikely outcome.

Well Allen wasn't very efficient as a passer in 2023. In great part because his weapons weren't up to the task. What stat claims to tell you anything that doesn't take into account surrounding talent? In 2020 Allen was 4th in passer rating because he had better receiving talent. So there. There also are other stats that take into account more of the things that Allen does. Josh Allen was 3rd in NFL QBR in 2020 and 2023. Second in 2022. I mean just because you don't know enough statistics and cherry pick a more narrow statistic doesn't mean that there aren't those out there which illustrate what a player means to their team/league. In 2023 Purdy and Prescott were only ahead of Allen because those teams had better skill around them. Having WR's who had seasons like Aiyuk and Ceedee Lamb will do that.

Yep.

Give us your projected receiving numbers for this dynamic new group if you are so confident.

And my counterpoint is that jerseys are often "more than free" because they are paid for jersey sales. Which never occurred to you when you were hand-wringing about out-of-pocket as if it were like you swapping workwear with someone. You are just like @UConn James and lot's of other fans who don't realize how much money some of these guys generate by these zero-effort needed licensings. Even the rank and file whose jerseys aren't sold get a small cut of total jersey sales. Has nothing to do with memorabilia. The public jersey trades are just lame and often in poor taste after one player just took an L. If it's not for show, do it in private. You disagree? That's fine. Love it all you want. But don't tell me it's some noteworthy financial outlay. That's just being absurd for the sake of being contrary.

So we will pretend that his then $10M salary for playing wasn't enough to render such potential cost irrelevant. I'm sure Henry's "can't swap jersey because it costs $300 so I gotta wear this one to threads" excuse comes off rather lame to his fellow players who know he makes 6 figures(or even 7 figures some seasons) in NFLPA licensing annually (much of that from his personal jersey sales). He's getting paid for his jerseys........Henry might see a nice spike there this year with his team change. Dude just doesn't want to swap jerseys. It's a good excuse. Good for him, it's lame. In Tom Brady's last season he made almost $10M in NFLPA licensing money. Fans don't hear about those earnings. They aren't part of their "salary".