hondo in seattle

I'm a Purdue alum so I watched a bunch of March Madness games this year and enjoyed Purdue's run. And for me the answer is still an emphatic no. Even if the Boilermakers had won the championship last night, it wouldn't have moved me nearly as much as a SB win. My rooting energy is divided something like this: Purdue football: 1%; Purdue basketball: 1%; Buffalo Sabres: 1%; Buffalo Bills: 97%. After the game last night, I've accepted that I'm just not destined to ever experience a championship. The Bills lost in four championship game attempts. The Sabres had two tries and came up short both times. This will probably be Purdue's only national championship game in either football or basketball in my lifetime and they failed. I'm 0-7 in championship games/series.

I'm not bemoaning the trade. I'm convinced that it would be a mistake to keep Diggs for four more years on a cap-killing contract. I also tend to think that there's more behind-the-scenes going on with Diggs and his attitude than we know. On the other hand, Diggs counts something like $30 million against our cap this year - and he'll be playing for an opponent. It's screwed up - not Beane's best moment.

It's an interesting trade because you could argue that everyone loses... The Bills lose their best receiver with only a 2nd round draft pick to show for it. The Texans rent a declining wideout for $22.5 million for one year of service. Diggs has 3 years cut from a lucrative contract at a time in his career when big money offers may never happen again.

I'm not disappointed Beane and McD moved on from Diggs. But I don't see that Brady got the offense 'back on track.' Brady's offense last season neither scored a ton of points nor moved a lot of yards.

Logically, these are all good points. It's just odd to me that Diggs was an effective receiver (at least in the regular season) under both Daboll and Dorsey but not under Brady. It doesn't seem probable he suddenly became slower or forgot how to run routes in the middle of the season when Brady took over as OC. It seems more likely Brady was misusing him in some way. Which may have contributed to Diggs wanting out of Buffalo.

I agree that we won't miss most of the dearly departed. But I'll comment on a couple of positions where we have worries. Diggs. The OP wrote: "He [Diggs] also was clearly no longer a fit in a Joe Brady offense." This is clearly true but maybe because Brady didn't know how to utilize Diggs's talents. Diggs was far more effective under Daboll and Dorsey than Brady. Brady spread the ball around better than Dorsey but he didn't statistically spike yards or points. Schematically, Brady didn't seem any better at creating downfield separation. The misfit between Brady and Diggs is as much a Brady problem as a Diggs problem. Maybe more. It's the OC's job to maximize the production of his players. I'm curious to see what Brady can do with a full offseason but I don't see a lot of objective reasons to be optimistic. Brady is not (yet) a proven commodity as an OC. Secondary. We won't miss Hyde, Poyer, and White a whole lot because they were hampered by age and injuries last year. But I'm not looking for a secondary that equals last year's disappointing performance. I'm hoping for a secondary that can get us to the Super Bowl. I won't miss last year's versions of Hyde, Poyer and White but I will miss the versions of Hyde, Poyer, and White that once anchored perhaps the best secondary in the league.

Maybe. But this is from a woman whose son-in-law is a coach who know Austin Proehl (who spent a few months in two stints with the Bills - not a few years as she asserts) who vaguely knows Brandon Beane who supposedly disclosed a confidential conversation to him, something Brandon does all the time. Not so sure.

I agree with most of what you're saying. But humans are complicated. Diggs was talented, gave us a lot of good memories, came to practice every day, said nice things about Buffalo, and worked his butt off. So did OJ. Then, years later, we learned OJ had some horrible character flaws. I'm thankful for Diggs's contributions and appreciate his classy goodbye. At the same time, I think Aaron Kromer's daughter and Maddy Glab both had reasons to say the things they did. I think Tim Graham is telling the truth about the interaction between Diggs and Josh after the Jets game. And I suspect all that stuff is just the tip of the iceberg. Like a lot of people, Diggs has good angels on his right should and little devils on his left.

I hope you're right about Brady. I loved him during the Dallas game. So fun to see us roll up yards without depending on Josh's heroics. But neither scoring nor yards spiked under Brady. The TDs and yards were just distributed differently. I'm curious to see what he can do with a full offseason to install his own offense. I see no objective reason to believe he'll do better in 2024 than he did the second half of 2023. But I'm a fan so I live in hope.

What you say makes sense... in theory. I really hope you're right - in fact!

The whole zone-versus-man may be an oversimplification. Sometimes one side is in man while the other is in zone. Sometimes it's more complicated than that. Depending on where the receiver breaks, the defender might stick with man or switch to zone (or vice-versa). I'd like to hear an OC or DC break it down: how much is pure man... how much is pure zone... how much is some kind of hybrid.

All GMs swing and miss sometimes. All of them. But I don't know if anyone is giving him a pass. I don't see any Bills fans naming him "GM of the Century" or something like that. If you look at his whole body of work, you have to say he's an above-average GM. I'm too lazy to look it up but I think we've won the 2nd most games of any team in the NFL since 2020. Beane's doing better than most GMs. And, yet, we have no Lombardi's to show for all his work. The mistakes you mention are part of the reason why. I've been a Beane critic for years. I don't think he's a bum by any means. I do believe, however, that he needs to up his game for us to win a trophy.

Neither Allen nor Diggs made the trade so I don't think they're the only ones who know why the trade went down. The trade was made by the respective GMs. They're the only ones who totally know why they made the trade. But, yeah, you're right in that we'll probably never know the whole story.

I was beat up for this post and ended up regretting it. Yet things are now coming out. For example, Tim Graham's story about the end of the Jets game. Josh is sitting in the locker room feeling dejected. Dion Dawkins, being the awesome dude that he is, tells Josh, "17 for life. I mean that." Seveal other players come by to console Josh. But Diggs says something that Graham can't hear but apparently it's not something positive. Allen lashed out, "It's one f***ing game!" Kyle Brandt, who may or may not have inside information, recently said Diggs's relationships with the Bills and Allen were "mercurial at best."

Was Joe Brady the end of Diggs? Even before Brady took over as OC, Diggs had issues. But once Brady became OC, Diggs's production fell off considerably. Was this the final straw for Diggs? Did Diggs then ask to be traded? I think it's obvious that some people within the Bills organization weren't happy with Diggs. But maybe their discontent wasn't enough to trade him - at least not yet, not this year. But then Diggs demanded a trade because he didn't like his role in Brady's offense.

And he's well-worth 6.25M if he does all that!

Fair or unfair, I'll remember Davis as a guy who contributed 2 monster playoff games and, besides that, a lot of nothing. Davis and Diggs combined for 1900 yards last year. That's a lot of production to replace. Then again, someone is always going to get yards when Josh throws. Davis's and Diggs's 240 targets will now go to other receivers. We'll see if the other guys can get as many yards on those targets. Right now, I worry the answer just might be no. Davis is not a huge loss but, as a player, Diggs is. I think we need at least one more quality wideout. But I think the biggest wildcard is Joe Brady. What kind of passing game can he scheme up?

Aaron Kromer's daughter, commenting on Diggs trade, said this: "Good riddance. There's always a reason & always a plan. #trusttheprocess" Since I saw that, I've wondered what the plan was. I think it's very possible Beane already has a deal in place to trade up.

I think Beane likes to fill as many holes before the draft as he can to reduce his draft needs and simplify his draft strategy.

During the drought years... Eric Moulds, Fred Jackson, Kyle Williams. All of them would have been better known & appreciated around the NFL had they played on better teams. I was disappointed they didn't have an opportunity to play on better Bills squads.

With a strong OL and an OC who knows how to scheme guys open, you don't need receivers better than the ones we have right now. The problems are: (1) we have maybe an okay line, not a strong one, and (2) I'm not convinced Brady knows how to scheme guys open.

I think McD is a solid HC though not elite. I'm not sure about Brady as an OC. With 32 teams in the NFL, the average team has about a 3% of winning the SB. McD and his staff get us to 5 or 6%. Josh gets us to 10%. As I see it, not many teams get above 10%. KC is the current unicorn.

Andre Reed, Eric Moulds, Bobby Chandler, Lee Evans, Elbert "Golden Wheels" Dubinion... Minus that, I'm good with Kirby. But being in Cap Hell sucks. We have too many holes to fill, including at WR, and not enough money/picks to do everything we need to do. It's hard to imagine how Beane will fix all this. He's the one who got us to this dire point. Let's see if he can get us someplace better by September as he says.

Beane said publicly that he informed Allen that teams were inquiring about Diggs. But Beane also said that there are certain things that need to remain in-house. I wonder if one of the in-house things is that there were more blunt conversations about Diggs between Allen, McD, and Beane. Maybe Allen was unhappy with Diggs' attitude. Or maybe Beane told Allen that they intended to unload Diggs and Beane wanted to know how Josh felt about that. We'll probably never know the full truth.

I am just pondering here... We know Diggs is an excellent route-runner. Yet we all saw that he didn't get separation with consistency last year. Somewhere I saw a chart showing Diggs as below the NFL average in separation yards in 2023. And Josh's passer rating when throwing to Diggs (or Davis) wasn't good. Were teams defending Diggs differently last year than they did in the past? Did he lose a step? Was it poor play design and calling? When we first got Diggs, he was a deep threat. Yet last year Josh didn't connect deep a lot with Diggs. Because of 2-high zones? Or is the anonymous NFL coach who said Diggs is not a deep threat any more accurate? Too often last season Josh had nowhere to throw the ball. Either our receivers sucked, or our OC sucked, or both. I tended to blame our OCs, but - with the Bills jettisoning both Davis and Diggs - I'm wondering how much Beane and the coaches blame them instead?