BADOLBILZ

3 drops last season, actually. The horrible drop on that wide open bomb in the WC game versus Miami was a very big negative momentum swing for the Bills. And his hands sucked this preseason too, which I think you want to dismiss but Davis dropped a couple in preseason too. Drops in preseason are probably a good predictor of drops going forward, just saying. Also the 1 target that went incomplete to Shakir this season was probably Josh Allen's best throw of the season on that go route versus the Raiders..........put it right on him but he flailed at it and it fell to the turf........not scored a drop but it was very catchable. But in general Shakir seems to have soft enough hands(unlike Gabe and Knox who struggle with hand placement and technique) but Shakir hasn't impressed as a route runner and he seems to not be able to track the ball well on longer throws.

His 2024 salary is unguaranteed so Byard is owed nothing by the Eagles after this season...........surprised you don't know this. Costs them like $2M total to get him. If you think that move is going to help put them "in cap Hell in 1-2 seasons" you must REALLY hate all the work Brandon Beane has done in the past 2 offseasons.

Yeah the Bills offense played well enough to win the game but the first play INT throw to Knox and the 4th down drop by Knox were two turnovers that really hurt. Good article in The Athletic today..........Bills actually improved their season EPA offensively in the Pats game but the defense and special teams were just really bad.

Yeah and the Pats got 3 on their first drive. The interception on the next play is what really hurt. And it was a play the Pats had anticipated. Allen just showed a lack of polish by staring Knox down.

Hyde was talking about scripted offensive plays hurting them.

I don't think some slot only inside guy is any kind of answer. I know they had a good run with peak Beasley in 2020 but they also had John Brown opposite Diggs early in that season when they were REALLY explosive. In 2021 with Beasley they were inconsistent on offense, subsequently 6-5 thru 11 games like they probably will be this season........it just wasn't good enough. What they need is a WR1B.......like many of the top teams have. Diggs and Kincaid can be great slot options.

I think they are more likely to be all-in now than they were at 3-1 with false confidence in their offensive personnel after a couple blowout wins. A lot of the key players on this roster are older..........so sitting on draft picks isn't necessarily going to fully replenish those losses. I think they will still be all-in this season and that would require some trade activity. I think the approach could be to trade earlier picks for players and later picks so that they still have some draft pick numbers........that's a fairly common approach........and then hoping they find guys like Milano and Johnson and Benford with those later choices.

Knox is not tradeable due to vast amounts of immediate dead money required to move him. Whether people are prisoners of the moment is only relevant in a world where he could actually be dealt.

The first one? Dawson Knox.......and he had it with both arms against his chest but dropped it after subsequent contact. Turnover.

If they can get that 7th seed I can see a fairly winnable road path thru Jacksonville/KC/Miami to a SB...........which is doable if they can add a WR1B soon.

you forgot to ad "forever" after "suggesting". But the reality is that they need to play with a lot more urgency on offense to get in front of teams and "allow the defense to pin it's ears back on the DL and cover"........to paraphrase McD postgame today. The issues with playing faster: 1) They don't have to the playmaking personnel that they can just leave on the field in all down and distance situations. They've added a bunch of spare parts to "hopefully" be better situationally but they don't have enough playmakers that they can just leave on the field for 8-12 plays and trap a defense into favorable looks. This allows defense's to substitute and match up better and execute their game plan. Which typically includes slowing/shortening the game and subsequently limiting the Bills scoring opportunities in the process. 2) With the injuries on defense they lack the depth they once had to play 15-18 minute defensive halves if the uptempo style isn't speedboating the opponent.

Well I'm glad you've declared Kincaid the Bills "feature TE" because Knox got 2 targets downfield and both resulted in turnovers(INT/Downs). Kincaid needs to be running those routes and not the underneath nickel and dime stuff.

That's always his biggest problem but they are also at a confluence of having to scheme around a lack of playmakers and subsequently allowing defenses to match up. If they had the talent to keep the same 11 players on the field on all downs and distances they could run tempo and negate much of what teams are doing schematically to limit Buffalo offensively/shorten games. Instead they play into the hands of opponents, running slow developing clock grinding drives that allow lesser offense's to remain two dimensional all game.......which stresses the Bills vulnerability against the run and screen games.

Kincaid got more passes but I'm not sure you can say he's "the featured" TE. They literally came out on the first play with the intention of completing a long pass to Knox.......probably because the last offensive play against NYG was a drop of a catchable ball by Knox. The result this time was an INT and points that would provide the difference in the game. Allen should have looked the defender off but why is the guy with the bad hands running the longer route there? Peppers peeled off of Kincaid in the flat to intercept that ball. That should not be happening.........Kincaid is the much bigger threat downfield.

If you think the player grades are "completely" subjective.........yes, you have a vendetta. I can assure you that in most cases the player grade passes the eyeball test for performance in the systems/circumstance those players are in. The narrative that nobody can possibly understand a players responsibilities in a given system and therefore can have only an uninformed opinion on them is based on this idea that there is infinite nuance in how teams teach and play the game. Which would make it a little difficult to implement but you are welcome to keep thinking that because that kind of nonsensical belief at least drives discussion on TSW.

Yeah that looks unwatchable.

Yeah they are just so caught up with their vendetta against player grades that they are denying that even the other data you mentioned is being used.

I'm speaking to the fact that those offenses rely on quick hitting throws to players who can get open quick and create yards after the catch...........and Gabe can't do those things. Also his hands are hard and he REALLY struggles to make contested catches so he's not a guy you want running those crossers and slants even if he was quicker and a better route runner. He's very limited. He's a system fit as a 3rd option with a QB like Josh Allen who can buy time and make ridiculous deep and out throws but he'd be useless for guys like Tua and Purdy.

Wow, that was a lot of yakking to say that Beane forced an early pick(plus 2 4th's) for perceived immediate need at a non-premium position..........which is the perfect formula for failure, btw. We know now that having two very good WR's is much more important than the quality of your RT wrt to reaching and winning SB's. And btw, "Ford showed flashes at RT his rookie season" is both very subjective and of questionable consequence. Brandon Spoon showed flashes at LB his rookie year. I could give a long, long list of washouts who were graded on a curve by fans in their rookie year so they seemed to be on some kind of positive trajectory when, in fact, they just sucked. Ford has always been a 40's-low 50's PFF grade OL from 2019 on. He sucked in 2019 and he still sucks.

I think you are mistaken if they don't pay attention to grades or anything but vague "metadata". You are giving the teams way too much credit. Teams have about 24 hours to put together gameplans on Monday morning. It's abundantly clear that there isn't a great deal of "metadata" being analyzed for some of this scouting and self-scouting. Like most things NFL, fans tend to give the team and players far too much credit for work they are doing individually.

The problem didn't really dissipate until the late 1990's when law enforcement realized they had no choice but to keep a much closer eye out for creeps that fit your profile. My guess is your mom was a young adult when Arthur Shawcross was carving up women in the late 1980's and early 1990's. I'm just telling you having known police from Rochester from that era that there was a concerted effort to let people know that Rochester wasn't going to be treated like a hunting ground of vulnerable women and children. I could give you a long list of my individual complaints with individual cops which dwarf your complaints but you have to first understand that policing means "preserving" law and order and in that context what happened to you hardly seems "extra-legal".

Well he's a pending free agent if next year is the objective and will be coming off two bad seasons so probably be a Taylor Rapp type.

Agree........his biggest problem is absolutely himself. Second biggest problem is that there are A LOT of other good QB's in the league now. It's not the dark ages where you had 6-7 QB's or less in the entire NFL who you could win a SB with without some kind of miracle happening in your favor...........and now you have more than that in the AFC alone. Third.........he lacks the weapons that some of his competition have at their disposal. This Bills team is a lot like the Chargers of Schottenheimer/Norv Turner in their combination of regular season dominance and playoff failure........and it was often said, and taken for granted even, that Philip Rivers would just win a SB at some point because those Chargers had such deep and talented rosters for a fairly long time. Never materialized.

Not sure that changes @FireChans point. It was pretty even......they had the ball the same amount of times at that point. KC had missed a makable FG in their final possession of the first half. So overall it was really even but offensively it wasn't a broadly impressive offensive performance by the Bills.........Allen just played out of his head and Davis was running wide open against blown/poor coverage in a disheveled KC secondary that was instead determined to keep Diggs from doing anything at all.

You have it quite backwards. The Pats have one of the most punchless WR corps for sure but Gabe would probably have to split time on the boundary with DeVante Parker if Davis was with the Pats. Gabe is more of a deep threat but Parker is much better at catching contested throws so they would probably rotate depending on down/distance/circumstance as the 3rd/4th option behind Juju and Kendrick Bourne in terms of target share. Gabe couldn't even make the rosters in Miami or SF. Just doesn't get open quick, run routes well enough or catch contested passes well enough to fit in those offenses and since he doesn't contribute on ST's he isn't roster-able if he's not in the top 3. He is in the best possible situation for him to produce.........a team with a big armed QB who can buy 4-5 seconds for Gabe to actually get open and then make the throws in places where CB's usually don't have to cover. He is just too high up the target list in Buffalo and that leads to way to many mistakes and inefficiencies.