hondo in seattle

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?

I think Beane and McD are good enough to give us a 10% chance to win the SB in any given year. I'm just hoping it happens sooner rather than later. And/or I underestimate them.

I think the potency of the 2024 Bills depends more on Brady than it does on Diggs' replacement. I don't think this receiving corps is great, but I don't think it's impotent either. Shakir's okay - not elite. Samuel is a multipurpose tool with some speed. Kincaid and Knox are an excellent TE duo. Cook can be a good threat out of the backfield if learns to hang on to the ball. Somewhere I saw a chart that showed that both Davis and Diggs were below average in separation last year. I wondered how much of that was their fault and how much was the fault of the OC (i.e. scheme and play-calling). I think both were to blame. So I'm going to be very interested to what Brady does this year with an offseason to implement his own offense. I expect he'll follow KC's lead. With so many teams playing 2-high against strong-armed QBs (and with Cheetah gone), the Chiefs started throwing more quick-hitting, underneath stuff. I get the impression that Brady is the kind of OC who wants to take what the D gives him. Hopefully, he does a better job scheming guys open than Dorsey did. I still think we need another quality wideout. But as Beane said more than once in his presser, it's not September yet.

At the presser, Beane said, "Certain things need to be kept in-house." That leads me to believe Brooke Kromer (Aaron's daughter) knows what she's talking about when she tweets: "Good riddance. There's always a reason & always a plan." There's some behind-the-scenes drama with Diggs we may never learn about.

"Certain things need to be kept in-house."

I'm hoping Beane already has a deal in place to move up and get a good wideout who we can enjoy on a rookie contract for a while.

I'm surprised by how binary this conversation is. Most folks are either applauding the move or criticizing it. Pro or Con. I'm ambivalent. I don't like the cap ramifications. And I want Josh to have better weapons this year than last, not worse. With both Gabe and Diggs departing - whatever their shortcomings - we've lost a lot of receptions & yards. I'm sure Beane has a plan to replace the lost production with Samuels being part of that plan but we can't see the whole plan yet which makes me wonder how solid it is. On the other hand, Diggs had attitude problems, wasn't much of a deep threat anymore, didn't thrive under Brady, and, given his age, the clock was ticking on his Buffalo career anyway. Neither happy nor sad, I'm just curious. What's Beane going to do with limited resources to get Josh the targets he deserves?

How many have Josh Allen throwing to them?

Weird career trajectory. Played mostly soccer in college. Scored 4 goals in his career. Played some football too but as a kickoff specialist. Obviously has a strong leg. Tried out for the Texans last year but didn't make the cut.