BADOLBILZ

Yeah someone would always say "I have it in" for Wade because I said he was an idiot for not wearing a headset so that he knew what plays his coordinators were calling...........or when I said that "coach of the year candidate" Dick Jauron would always be 7-9 because he coaches not to lose..........or that it didn't make sense for Buddy and Chan to use their entire first season to "evaluate personnel" before making any roster changes.........or citing that the only reason you would hire that many coaches is if you didn't want to do any work when Rex was trying to have a 1:1 coach/player ratio. The pattern is quite the opposite........I call it like it IS.......others like yourself in this case(for some reason) let totally unsupported personal feelings get in the way of good analysis. I get that some people were dumb enough to believe that Daboll made Josh Allen into a star QB. That's because they didn't believe in his talent/ability from the get-go. But you should know better than that. Terrible takes by you in this thread, dave. Need a nose-pinch emoji.

Yeah but MVS is washed up, IMO. He put up a paltry 300 yards last season with a HOF QB in his prime and lot's of opportunity. They probably have to keep him because they don't have options outside.......but his presence isn't going to draw extra attention unless he and Allen prove they can make teams pay over the top. He hadn't really been doing that in KC so not sure why it will be different now.

My concern is that the lack of imposing intermediate AND deep receiving targets will allow defense's to compress the field and make all the units look worse on offense. They badly need a playmaker outside to make big plays and command extra attention. I doubt they have that guy in house. Without it, expect DC's to be able to throw the kitchen sink at Allen and this offense for the first time since before his breakout season in 2020. Allen is great but this is going to be a step up in degree of difficulty if they can't make defense's defend every "blade of grass". I think I was accurate in predicting they are going to try to get by with a lot of tight formations on offense but I don't think that tactic is likely to work for long if they can't win lining up outside the numbers as well. It is a crazy situation to be in when you have a QB who can make throws to parts of the field that are uncharted for most defense's. Defensively, my biggest concern is LB depth. Both the Bills starters are durability concerns, IMO so the depth is important there. Dorian Williams is key, IMO. I hoped he would step up big this year, but that's more of a question mark now, IMO. Still could happen though, hopefully the light comes on. Spector and Ulofoshio are nice talents too but also brittle. If they could stay healthy Bernard and Milano should be about the same as they were early last year(which was excellent) but I doubt that they will stay healthy. DL: should be slightly improved. Contract year for Groot and maybe an extension year for Epenesa so could see big things from them. Von should be improved. CB: should be improved. Love that group. S: I expect to be near the same........I know that's considered a hot take but I don't think the safety play has been that good the last 2 seasons so the bar isn't like it was back when Hyde and Poyer were excellent. I think they can slap together a decent pairing with what they have.

Just correcting a clearly incorrect take by a fellow poster. Kendrick Bourne is also proven. He's on PUP but they expect him to be ready early in the season and be their top veteran WR. Last I checked he was still ahead of Osborn their depth chart. I just jumped into the thread at that point so I have no idea what you are trying to prove talking about another bottom tier WR corps but your information is false.

Yeah and your lack of a strong point is probably because you don't have the conviction to actually analyze his work. He's NOT a "decent-enough" coach. He's either excellent or awful. Nobody has made Daniel Jones look as good OR as awful. His work with Josh Allen in 2020 and in the playoffs in 2021 looked great. His work in the second half of the 2021 regular season with Allen was terrible and he probably would have been fired if that continued in the playoffs. That's who he is. His offense's are all about HIM........and he's not as smart as he thinks he is. It was interesting to hear Joe Brady say the offense was Josh's........Daboll would never say that.

KJ Osborn has averaged over 600 yards receiving the last 3 years. More than any receiver currently on the Bills in that span. You should know that, he's not some unknown. They got a slapped together corps of WR2's and WR3's and a second round rookie that some think will be a WR1. Same formula as the Bills.

Well some coaches can actually create synergy. Daboll is not one of them. Counting last season with NY his offenses have finished 29th or worst in scoring 5 times in 10 seasons. And those offenses have finished in the top half of the league in yardage only TWICE. Two for Ten. And he needed a HOF quality talent at QB in Josh Allen to do that. He's just not that good, dave. His failures are not a small sample size, his successes are.

I think it's probably time for a thread about who the Bills might be looking to trade for or poach from other teams cuts to deepen this roster. They are a little short of 53 NFL players that you can resonably expect to make it thru a season. That's where they are at. WR5 and LB4 are positions that look like they should be able to upgrade relatively easily.

No, you don't seem to see how it is. How are they going to create more value than a near capacity paid crowd of a broadcast NFL game? Every other sports league would like to know how to make one of their regular season games as profitable as an NFL preseason game. And if it doesn't involve putting hard mileage on the players.......why wouldn't they just do that additionally? Yeah, there are lot's of ways for the NFL to make money now and I am sure they will create many more but this one is like found money even if it annoys some fans.

What would they change? Part of the reason they get away with charging full price for the games is that they could tell a court that they are technically the same product as the regular season. 60 minutes of competitive football. There are no guarantees that any particular player will play in ANY game. Sometimes late season games turn into preseason quality games too. So the idea of playing differently formatted games, for instance, might undermine their racket.

Oh Trubisky truly sucks too. He truly sucks a bit less........but he's not only awful........he is also durable enough to lose 17 straight games for you.

They've made a lot of changes to the kicking game in the name of player safety over the years. But they haven't changed the 20 game season. Someone in ownership or the NFLPA would actually have to benefit from eliminating them. Once they get down to 2 games they could conceivably play the preseason without needing any snaps from players likely to make the 53 except kicker/punter/LS. With practice squads up to 17(?) the NFLPA may want some of these guys to get some actual game reps before the season.

I believe the gaming sites are projecting between 3700-3800 yards passing for Allen. As I've said all offseason my opinion is based on likelihoods.......and the players are likely to produce at levels near where the professional handicappers believe. My PREDICTION remains that they won't be satisfied with their WR corps as they approach midseason and that Beane will be in the trade market for a WR1 in October.

No, you were wrong. You were trying to refute my point that players and owners both profit from the preseason games and that's why they exist. You clearly hadn't thought it thru. If you make a roster you benefit financially from preseason AND postseason games. Whether you play in them or not. Because the cap is based on gross revenue not just regular season revenue. When you get the paycheck is irrelevant. If you work at a company that issues checks every other week did you not get paid for the other week where you didn't receive a "check"? My point is fact and stands. And the Bills sold approximately 64,000 tickets for that game yesterday and the game was nationally televised live on NFLN. These games draw big ratings. It's 8 figures into the shared revenue pool for each game no matter how you slice it. Spread that over 49 preseason games. It's very significant and the easiest money the owners and players earn.

Oh I think it's very likely that there will be.......because there were so many talented one's that went after the Bills slotted pick in round 1. Coleman was one of the younger and more raw of the top WR prospects. But they went into the offseason needing at least a WR1 "B" quality player to help re-open up their increasingly lower-flying offense. Then promptly traded away their 1100+ yard WR1 and replaced their sub-900 yard ceiling quality starting X/WR2 Gabe Davis with a guy in Samuel that the OC/HC have said they see as more of a gadget guy than a starting X or Z. And then they went with one of the rawer day 1/day 2 prospects in the draft and even decided not to hedge that bet and select another WR on day 2. This has all been hashed out. On paper they didn't do enough and aren't better at WR in 2024 than they were heading into 2023.

Me too. It's not likely but I think it's his ceiling. But also, if it takes until 2026 or 2027 for him to become a difference maker like it took Adams 3-4 years........then they may have compromised some of Josh Allen's prime.

I don't see that at all. Higgins is not very athletic but is a super long athlete with 34" plus arms. He's open when he's not open because of that. I don't really understand where the comp comes from. To say Keon is a "more athletic" version is kinda' like saying Josh Allen is a more athletic Joe Burrow. Keon is an 8 RAS and Higgins is a 4. Just a different skill set. Coleman is a more compact and explosive WR. My comp is a "more athletic" Davante Adams (6 RAS). Which is why I don't expect immediate WR1 results from Coleman. Took Adams several years to turn his body control, leaping ability, athletic nuance(intelligence) and capacity to operate with incredibly late hands into a WR1. And then another season or so to become a superstar. I hope the learning curve is shorter with Coleman but unlike a lot of these young receivers he didn't live on the 7-on-7 circuit all thru HS. The immediate ascension of some WR prospects is often attributed to those reps. Coleman instead was trying to become a basketball player first. I hoped the learning curve would be shorter for Elam too. Both had a lot of "project" potential in any objective evaluation of their outlook so I've never given up on Elam like some. I still expect Beane to be shopping for WR1 in October and that acquisition could eventually lead to a situation like we see with Benford/Elam now.........except that WR1 will be under contract for many subsequent years when guys like Shakir and Coleman are jockeying for the other potential extension.

Exactly. Training camp and preseason games don't often tell you anything that wasn't already known. What tells you THE MOST is past performance. As usual, we already had about 90% of the information we needed about these players before OTA's even began. The negative variance(injuries, player decline) account for much of what we didn't know. The the positive variance is RARELY proven washouts, injury busts and wash-ups flipping the script........it's mostly a few rookies and second year players stepping up. Some people just don't like admitting this in the spring so they point to camp and demand that the roster isn't judged until the season is in process etc.. Basically there are two good times to evaluate: 1) What the roster you take to camp looks like. 2) The autopsy.

Incorrect. The salary cap is based on a revenue split between owners and the NFLPA that INCLUDES preseason revenues. Which is SIGNIFICANT money. If you were a season ticket holder you would know that we have to pay for those games whether attended or not. 20 games played is a fundamental aspect of the CBA. That is unlikely to EVER change. When they go to 18 there will still be 2 preseason games. If the preseason was played with 53 man rosters they would HAVE TO issue game checks. They don't because there is an understanding that the owners and actual players don't want to split revenues with those who aren't good enough to make teams. Once you make the roster, that preseason tv and ticket revenue is included in the basis for the salary cap which is in turn the basis the contract was negotiated and the game checks the players receive.

Why do people still ask this? It's MONEY. Revenue. They have been selling tickets for and now broadcasting all of 20 game seasons for 60 some years now. Being preseason allows the owners and players to make money and use mostly camp fodder to do so in 6 of those games until 1978 and then 4 of those games........and now 3 of those games and soon 2 of those games.

I keep mentioning it because being one and fired THREE TIMES as a coordinator is absolutely incredible regardless of any perceived context. But we got the context when we saw his offense in the first half of the 2018 season. THE WORST scoring offense thru half of an NFL season since the AFL/NFL merger. 50 years of NFL football, dave. I love that all the Daboll apologists act like the teams that fired Daboll were oblivious to the lack of talent he had to work with and THAT is why he got fired. It's not at all possible that they watched him work in person for a season and realized that his offensive philosophy, design, play calling and leadership didn't promise enough synergy to warrant a second chance.

He treated them like men alright........he instilled zero discipline, they had no curfews, his camp was the softest in the league etc... The egos managed themselves. As I said, they were united in their desire to not have a hard nosed, disciplinarian installed. It was a unique circumstance and they were a uniquely talented team. He looked the other way when they partied away Super Bowls and in return they pretended that Marv was their fearless leader. McD is a real NFL HC. He's got his issues that limit him but he's the real deal. And he knows what he's looking for when hiring coaches. Marv was really just a puppet for Polian. If the bickering 1989 Bills didn't get their sh!t together Polian was reportedly going to hire Bobby Ross with all his anger and discipline.........and that would have been martial law compared to what they had with Marv's country club.

He didn't even do THAT much. He just organized the practice schedule and gave corny speeches. The players did the rest. They called training camp "Club Marv".

Dickerson was just one of many, many bad football coaches Marv hired. What Dickerson did on the radio is irrelevant to whether Marv could pick and develop coaches. He couldn't and didn't. The SB era Bills were coached by the players. Marv was just their enabler. They pretended to listen to his corny old a$$ because they were all united in not wanting to have to play for a serious, detail oriented NFL head coach. They just did whatever they wanted whenever they wanted and then later asked Marv for forgiveness with fingers crossed behind their backs and just did it again. It was an experiment. It ultimately failed at the end 4 times because they would always run up against a talented enough team with a FAR superior coaching staff who they just couldn't overwhelm by force of talent.

Yeah Marv was terrible at hiring and developing coaches. If they hadn't already been a HC in the NFL then Marv seemed to hire someone who couldn't coach his way out of a wet paper bag. And that's because Marv wasn't an X and O coach. Marv ran the wing-T in Kansas City. True story. He was a relic from a simpler time by the time he became the Bills HC and then was basically along for the ride. Substitute teacher/head coach.