BADOLBILZ

Well you've posted about your perceived phenomenon of Bills fans wanting to see players fail..........so when you post a self-stroker I think it's fair to assume you do so because you want credit for not being one of those imaginary Bills fans that want to see Chase Claypool drop a game winning TD or Kaiir Elam give one up.

To me, it comes down to whether Elam has the ability to learn it all quickly enough to make it in the league. He can work on his footwork all he wants, he needs to recognize what opponents are trying to do before the play and on the fly so that he isn't clutching/grabbing and getting burned. Rasul Douglas BARELY made it before the league gave up on him. But he also had a lot of motivation to persevere until the light bulb came on because he never got a big first round pick contract.

Thanks for sharing. Because so many Bills fans want to see a #1 draft pick fail. Important to note that you aren't one of them.

The top 5 options that we are discussing.........they put up 232 yards per game receiving in 2020. The top 5 in 2023 put up 199. That's a massive difference in explosiveness. Your revisionist history is perplexing. The 2020 OL had two stud OT performers with near 80 pff grades. 4 of the 5 starters graded considerably higher than their 2023 counterparts. Only RG's Brian Winters and OCyrus Torrence graded near evenly(both the poorest). Again, you have this weird recency bias going on that defies logic/stats/facts. Everybody with promise and efficiency in lesser roles in 2020 have now proven that they sucked. So they weren't good. But everyone who showed some promise in limited roles or as rookie starters in 2023 proved to you that they are going to be great. Doesn't work that way.

What kind of fact-free, unsupported response was that? Here is what you literally said that I responded to: "Last year was by far the best talent around Allen since being a Bill." That 2020 group was arguably the #1 WR corps in the NFL. Diggs was the best outside WR in the NFL that season.........he lead the NFL in catches and yards. Beasley was the best slot receiver in the NFL that season. I know you expect greatness from Kincaid and Shakir...........but they weren't great last year...........and like I said, people thought Davis and Knox were going to be great when given more opportunity. You gotta' judge player's by what they've done.

At the bottom are the WR/TE targets in order for the 2020 and 2023 seasons. Stefon Diggs was a first team All Pro in 2020. No comparison to his also-ran 2023 self. That's an L for 2023. Shakir was tremendous in limited exposure(like Davis 2020 or Knox 2021). But Beasley had twice as many catches and first downs(53 to 26). I don't think Beasley's second team All Pro that year was deserved like Diggs but he was incredibly productive. Another L for 2023. John Brown missed over half the 2020 snaps of the season injured.........but when he was healthy and Davis was option 4 THAT was absolutely the best group of weapons they've had because he was a proven 1,000 yard talent and playing like it. Davis was brutal in 2023. Another L for 2023. The last two sets are more complicated but still wins for 2020. Something nobody wants to acknowledge is that the gains from Kincaid in 2023 came largely from what was lost from Dawson Knox. Their passer rating when targeting the TE dropped substantially in 2023 versus 2021/2022. WR1 Diggs 2020 127 catches 1535 yards for 115.4 passer rating Diggs 2023 107 for 1183 for 94.9 Slot Beasley 2020 82 for 967 for 108.3 Shakir 2023 39 for 611 for 133.6 WR2 Brown 2020 33 for 458 for 110.9 Davis 2023 45 for 746 for 84.7 next option Davis 2020 35 for 599 for 100.1 Kincaid 2023 73 for 673 for 95.7 True TE Knox 2020 28 for 388 for 94.4 Knox 2021 49 for 587 for 127.8 Knox 2022 48 for 517 for 108.3 Knox 2023 22 for 186 for 69.9 4 players with passer ratings over 100 in the 2020 WR/TE group........versus just 1 in the 2023. Which is why Josh Allen had a 107.2 passer rating in 2020 and just 92.2 in 2023. I know that you want to focus on James Cook but RB production doesn't move the needle offensively. Sorry, but it's true. Every time you give the ball to a RB it typically decreases your yards per play as a team. That was no different in 2023 where James Cook averaged 5.6 yards per touch and the Bills averaged 5.7 as a team and a disappointing 26.5 points per game. The 2020 team averaged 6.1 yards per play and averaged 31+ points per game.

1. McBeane have pounded home the idea of not wanting Josh running the ball nearly as much as the prior season going into each season since 2020. It basically cost Ken Dorsey his job. So tell them it's "old". They know it's important they just don't want to commit to "building around the QB" as the #1 priority of their organization. When it obviously should be. And unfortunately, nobody has run the ball like JA17 has at the QB position and had a long career. Add that to the fact that he holds the ball longer than anyone(mainly because his targets suck) and you have a recipe for a premature end to a career. Those increasingly common shoulder/elbow sprains/tears gradually turn into chronic pain and weakness. It's insane to have a player with this much arm talent and not do whatever is necessary to get back to that 2020 level of talent around him where he existed much more in the pocket. That guy was going to play QB at a high level until he was 40. 3. Instead of asking Josh Allen to be Tom Brady("less careless").........give him more weapons. This offense should be historic with his arm talent.

I don't think anyone is.........that's just people lowering the bar from great to good to justify the organization's decisions. But there is a lot of buy-in to this notion that Allen is cut out to be Tom Brady 2.0.........the "point guard". Going thru his reads quickly/decisively.....choosing just the right option.....getting them the ball with pin point accuracy in tight coverage. When the reality is that is NOT his game. The season came down to Allen staring down slot receiver Khalil Shakir on 2nd and 9 and dirting a pass that needed to go almost 35 yards past the LOS to be a completion..........while Diggs ran free underneath for what would have at worst set up a short 3rd down. Tom Brady wins exactly ZERO SB's with Josh Allen's eye's and touch. JA is what he is.........and that is GREAT........if they'd just understand that they have a big play QB not an elite game manager. Since 2021 they've put less and less WR talent around Allen........setting him up for failure.

Hey, you thought Gabe Davis was going to be outstanding too and mocked the need for the Bills to upgrade on him. Davis left to a chorus of good riddance. You just don't understand context. The key aspect of their improvement under Brady was reckless abandon for Josh Allen. They ran him over 9 times per game under Brady and were basically playing desperation must-win playoff football for 7 weeks prior to the playoffs even starting. None of what Shakir, Kincaid and Cook did under Brady can be expected to project without assuming Josh Allen rushes for 19-20 rushing TD's on 150-160 carries. Because that is the pace it took just to keep the chains moving with that pop-gun cast of weapons. And that's not adding in the 20 carries and 3 rush TD Allen needed to produce in the 2 playoff games. The offense was entirely dependent on unsustainable usage of Josh Allen. And as poorly as Diggs played in that 7 game stretch, his 43 yards per game projects to 741 yards.........which is more than Curtis Samuel or anyone they have on the roster put up last season. But you don't see the fuss. 😂 They CLEARLY needed to get better around Allen.........and have instead leaned into the unsustainable by not adding quality and gambling on a bunch of vets coming off down-to-downright-awful seasons and a project rookie WR who never even put up 800 yards in college season.

Yeah, I never got where people like you formulated this opinion that fans are rooting against the team just because they are being realistic about a player who has washed out due to his own poor attitude. Literally NOBODY said they hope he fails. Dude hasn't been worth a damn in two straight NFL seasons. And shame on @NewEra for advancing that idiotic line of BS.

Yeah he was #1 on Feldman's Freaks list last season. Marvin Harrison Jr. was #2.

Yeah the downside of more slightly better scrubs is that they probably have to keep 6 and see how it sorts out. Last year they only HAD to keep 5 WR because the top 3 WR produced 2500+ yards and Harty was the starting punt returner. So they might lose 2 more roster spots out of the deal.

That's the thing about non-premium/devalued positions...........you can usually find some players who look like they can become early career starters on day 3. Time will tell if they made a mistake selecting those positions to patch holes instead of leaning into premium position players at WR, OT and pass rusher and gambling a bit for potential higher impact return. It was a super-needy looking draft. Those tend to disappoint, hopefully that's not the case.

I think the whole concept of the Bills having a "deeper" WR corps thing started when they signed Curtis Samuel and everyone assumed they would also select a WR in round 1.........and probably trade up to get one of the top 4-5. Samuel was going to be WR4......coming off another 600+ yard season. Yeah, that's good depth. But then they traded Diggs and ended up with the 8th best WR off the board(a younger player who looks like a project in Coleman). Now, the Bills just have a whole bunch of guys who have never even had a single 900 yard season in the NFL for the first time since the mid 1980's. Coleman never even hit 800 yards in college. Guys coming off 200-300 yard seasons and projecting to be your 4th and 5th WR is not notable "depth" either. What they have is a very suspect WR corps.

Jamison Crowder was coming off a notably down season with a feeble, RB-like 8.8 yards per reception.........and he'd missed 4 games entirely in each of the prior 2 seasons. The Crowder signing was akin to the signings of Mack Hollins or Chase Claypool or MVS..........the arrow was/is pointing downward on all these dudes. What's crazy is that Crowder had a better career than any of those guys to that point but so many fans act like this is totally different. McCrowder was going to replace Beasley(stop me if you've heard this before) "in aggregate" because Crowder was good against zone and McKenzie was good against man. Pffffffft. Fans keep falling for this sh!t every offseason.

Yeah c'mon @NewEra .......better reserves alone does not equal a deeper WR corps. Sure you replaced your 11 catch Trent Sherfield with an 18 catch Mack Hollins..........and your 15 catch Harty with a 21 catch MVS. But how much do these 1-a-game kinda' catch guys move the needle and make the offense "great"?

The individual quality of RB's is not particularly indicative of the quality of an offense. WR and TE positions are. In typical, deep-offseason thinking fans here are assigning an equal value to that unit. Offseason mindset. The deeper we get into it, the more delusional fans get.

You are speaking in a lot of offseason vaguery. What is a "great offense"? I'd say 29+ ppg is the floor for "great". And how do you calculate that this is the "deepest WR corps" they've had? I think depth would be calculated by the sum of the value of each player. So having a better WR5 and WR6 *could* be a thing this season..........but the most important WR by far are WR1 and WR2. It's a lot like draft capital. The first rounder and second rounders worth a mountain of day 3 picks. And last season the Bills basically ran with just 5 WR. There is value in lesser numbers with a higher average value. As I've said before, during the drought there were lot's of years when the toughest cuts in camp were the 6th or 7th WR........"In aggregate" they still sucked because it's about quality not quantity.

Browns are top 5 for sure. Got a returning 1250 yard WR in Amari Cooper.......acquired Jeudy who had like 750.......Elijah Moore had 640.......David Njoku almost 900 at TE.......plus Nick Chubb is a year removed from 1500 yards rushing. Orlovsky is just shooting from the hip without looking closely. There are clearly 5 with significantly more proven talent and higher season projections. The Bills are in a lower weight class than any of the top 7. Could they spring into it if there were unlikely events? Sure. But they are much closer to teams like Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Indy and the Jets. If one of them adds a player like Aiyuk they clearly move ahead of Buffalo.

Eisen, Scott, Berman and Jackson were sports news show anchors. That's their identity and even in the case where they grew into different roles that's still roughly what they had to be. And even what they did didn't pass as "professionalism" to the generation of news anchors before them. Eisen was seen as a bit of a punk at ESPN, actually. Stephen A and McAfee have shows dedicated to bar room level sport talk on the news topics of the day. Entirely different genre. So no, you don't know the difference.

Lil' Dummy was a good example of a player just not being effective when asked to scale up. Which is the rule more than the exception. But you didn't want to tell that to anyone on the board in spring of 2022. Just like fans routinely cited Gabe Davis 4 TD playoff game as proof that he was a stud..........they cited McKenzie's 125 yard outlier in New England in 2021 to justify their assuredness that he was ready to fill Cole Beasley's role.

Basically, it's a list of players all the media draftniks thought were going to get drafted much sooner. The real sleepers are the guys like Christian Benford that nobody thought much of(including the teams that take them) but then turn into starting caliber players pretty quickly.

I mean, really. When did pro sports become all about entertainment value? Oh yeah.........that's all it ever was.

There are so many issues with Claypool from his attitude so sloppy game and low football IQ........it's hard to know where to begin. Anyone trusting in him is just being foolish. There is no indication that he's truly changed his entitled mindset and that he won't just quit when adversity arrives like he did the last two seasons. He really needs to start from the bottom and work his way back up as a WR6. In this WR corps, it's not like that. He might not have to do much to get up to WR4 even. If he really wants a long NFL career(which I doubt) then this just seems like an opportunity for him to make more excuses for himself.

Yeah I was referencing people with irrational expectations in general.........like you with this group of injury washouts, has-been's, never-been's and the rookie 8th selected WR behind Samuel and Shakir. Where do you think the Bills WR corps ranks compared to the rest of the league? Is bottom-third good enough for you in the middle of Josh Allen's prime? It shouldn't be.