Bleeding Bills Blue

The current state is 5-2, and even after a bye week they're still insanely banged up. Injuries make a difference and its hard to build a team when everyones in the trainers room. Oliver has basically missed the entire season now 1st round pick hairston just got his first game action in week 8 after starting the year on IR 2nd round pick TJ sanders is currently on IR DQ has missed time Carter is on IR too which kinda sucks when you factor in that like everyone at that position is hurt Strong looked like a useful late round player - also on IR Rapp has played through an injury all season likely as they got poyer back up to speed and shifted hancock to a pure safety role Every linebacker on the roster has missed time this year Offensive side of the ball, kincaids been banged up, now palmer, samuel

Yeah - stats are king in football. They won a lot of tight games though, and i think some of their season long stats are a bit affected by the week 18 game where they had less than 100 yards of offense and were shut out.

They went 15-2, started 9-0, and benched their starters in week 18. They had 2 losses - @Buffalo, and the super bowl. I'm not sure that would qualify as a "down year"

I've noticed we use our motion very conservatively as a man coverage "tell". I think teams are using this to their advantage. Other teams use motion in conjunction with their passing attack, and that is often where the confusion and mistakes happen that lead to wide open guys.

I'm sorry, what? You described blocking and said he's bad at it. WR holding is like the easiest call to make on outside runs, so you're kind of taught to let go. There is no way you lead the NFL in rushing, and the leading snap WR/TE/RB is a "lousy blocker" I think the underrated potential of re-capturing some of that chemistry with allen, who's deep balls have looked off since Gabe's departure.

I'd look at Davis as more of a depth option behind palmer and Coleman - and a replacement for Shavers. Shaheed appears to be an upgrade over Moore, so that would move Moore off the roster. Samuel seems to always be hurt so that can nudge him down the depth chart as well, but his contract is pretty bad. They've consistently utilized a rotation of sub packages for Moore and Samuel, to mostly middling results. Shavers can't seem to make much of an impact beyond his blocking, and palmer being out has definitely created more spacing issues in the passing game. It gives you more options, but I'd be shocked if that resulted in a drastic reduction in snaps from Coleman. He's leading the team in all WR/RB/TE snaps for a reason, and I'm not plugging guys into that spot who haven't practiced yet, or aren't on the team. He's a solid blocker, he lines up on the LOS, and hasn't really been utilized to his strengths. He is not the sole reason for the offenses struggles against NE and Atlanta - The amount this board sours on a player is just stunning sometimes. He's currently on pace for 65/650/5 and he hasn't been targeted much deep or in the red zone.

In preseason i couldn't stand watching him get roasted by screens and just generally looking slow and tentative. However... I'm not all doom & gloom on him. He's a rookie, he doesn't play special teams as an end of roster player should, and with Hoecht back he's 6th on the depth chart of ends.

4 of his carries were in the 4th quarter after Dawkins, Edwards, and McGovern came out of the game up 40-9. Its a 100 percent obvious run down, and those 4 carries resulted in 1 yard total. Did people actually watch the game?

The challenge with separation scores? I don't know the intension of the route (clear out routes are common) i don't know the read against the coverage (if i read 2 high i probably am not throwing the post) i don't know when they were supposed to uncover (i run a deep out, but timing is disrupted so now i'm in scramble mode) i don't know when the ball was supposed to come out (i run a fly route with an option for a back shoulder, neither is likely unless the first read is covered up). Most of the misses in this game's passing attack were just misfire's by Allen, and often they felt like timing was off - they seemed to come out a touch late as player was approaching the sideline. On the plus side, its a marathon not a sprint, and i expect allen to find his way out of his funk.

And the defense got them there when the WRs and QB were all on rookie contracts.

Really working out well for them...

It wouldn't be though. For both contracts they'd be eating cap in 2026 not 2025. Both teams would save just the small base salaries against the cap in 2025, and have dead money hits in 2026. For Wilson: The 20M option bonus for 2026 get picked up by the acquiring team as its triggered by being on a roster on the 5th league day of 2026. Thats 4M per year over 5 years. In 2027 the 10M option bonus triggers which is 2M annually over 5 years through 2031. The Jets would lessen the 2025 hit to 5.78M, and then eat 11M in 2026. Acquiring team would have a 1.25M cap hit for 2025, and 7.074M cap hit for 2026 (3M base salary, 4M of the prorated option bonus) - with 4 additional years at 4M annually as an option bonus thats basically a guaranteed mid-contract signing bonus. For Waddle: They'd eat the signing bonus and option bonus that are already slated for this year at around 6.75M, then it looks like around 20M in 2026. This is kinda up in the air as i don't know if they already lowered the 2026 salary into a bonus. The overthecap tool says they did, but it might not be. If they did, it only hits their dead cap if the money was paid to waddle, so my assumption would be... 5 years @ 3M that was spread from the 2025 salary.

Nothing would destroy the acquiring teams cap hit this year. They both have very low base salaries for 2025.

They also didn't down a ball on a kickoff and they were somehow given the ball back afterwards. The "intended to down it" is still one of the dumbest calls i've ever seen - Adonai Mitchell didn't intend to drop the ball before he ran into the end zone, why not just give him the TD?

They said this when they beat buffalo with mac jones. They said it when buffalo was 5-5 and 3 games behind miami. Seasons are long, and the hyperbole in sports media is just... broken. They have to talk about football 7 days a week, so its just constant hot takes. That bleeds into twitter, and has trickled down into the message board world. The ONLY way the bills can win is if they make 11 trades and somehow trade for 8 all-pros. Drake Maye's a future HOFer - i've never seen a player make this throw kinda crap. It's asinine. The NFL is week-to-week, things change, the team that you play in week 3 is not the same in week 6, let alone come playoff time. Hell they were 1-2 without Christian Gonzalez, and the losses were vegas and pittsburgh. He's still getting sacked on almost 10% of drop-backs, he's never brought his team back from behind in the 4th quarter, and he has won 1 game when he threw 30 passes (buffalo, exactly 30 passes). His 8 career "wins" aren't even a very accurate stat considering 2 of them he didn't finish the game. I'm sure he'll be a fine player, but the difference between Mac Jones/Tua and Justin Herbert is closer than people think. Circumstances matter, injuries matter, schedules matter, refs matter.

I mean - none of these things matter that much at the end of the day. We've had a good statistical defense by every metric, and that defense bombed in the playoffs. I'm not saying the opposite is GOING to happen, but there's a number of potential reasons for improvement - health, chemistry, rookie improvements. They haven't played that well yet, but the issues aren't necessarily unfixable. The example i always come back to is Indy and Peyton Manning. He carried his team to the playoffs every year, and his teams defense was never very good. The first super bowl they won, manning played pretty poorly. Their 20-something ranked defense had 13 takeaways, and kept 3 of 4 opponents under 300 yards. The team and its challenges can be somewhat attributed to the roster construction of beane, and coaching staff assembled by McDermott. The players also aren't playing that well.

Mis-quoted

But it is kinda like 4 free wins.. and considering you need like 10-11 to make the playoffs thats a nice leg up. Also if these players were so good, the team wouldn't suck so hard.

They've been very trait focused in the draft at times, and other times they seem to almost completely ignore traits because they like the film. I get the idea behind it because you're looking for potential growth in a faster/stronger player, but sometimes the player just isn't up to the task. I also think people are quick to judge a player both positively and negatively week-to-week. Players have bad games, it happens to all of them, even HOFers. I'm not going to come out and say Coleman sucks when the plan after palmer gets injured is to just line him up outside 1x1 with AJ Terrell in a game where the Falcons were getting most of the calls. If he's struggled all game in press man, you need to find ways to get a player involved differently just to get the juice flowing again. A successful play can often lead to additional positive plays. Somehow the team lost their way in the Falcons game and there's a number of factors - the falcons defense being better than people expect is a big one, but the failures were about on the game and not all of them can be traced back to the teams inability to shed man coverage.

John Elway won a Super bowl at like 40. Mannings best teams and statistics rarely resulted in any playoff success. I think both of his SB wins were in some of his weaker seasons in Indy and Denver. Punch a ticket, anything can and probably will happen. I still think they're well on their way to that.

It's why most good teams draft and extend. They did this with a couple of players, but they also probably did it with some of the wrong players. They also spent tons of picks to get Chubb, Hill, and Ramsey and truly none of it worked out. Wilkins (i guess they dodged a bullet here), Hunt, Holland, Van Ginkel - physical glue type players that they all let walk. Just a soft team with a bad coach.

You're challenging the ruling on the field that the player was short of the line to gain. If they are still short of the line to gain, you lose a timeout - if they gained the first down it is a successful challenge.

Because you challenged that it was a first down, which it wasn't - so you lost the challenge.

You can't just challenge the spot, you challenge that the runner missed the line to gain. Regardless of where the ball gets placed after that, you lost the challenge if it wasn't a first down. It would be the same if you challenged that the runner got a touchdown, you move the ball where it probably should have been, but if its not a TD thats a lost challenge. Correct - you cannot challenge spots unless you are saying he got a TD or a first down.

Missed tackles are missed tackles - and he leads the team. Angles are harder to measure, same with block shedding - and he's been bad at both. I'd agree on poyer unless something else uncovers via a trade. Neither are the best athletes but poyer has more of the mental make-up to make fewer mistakes. Rapp can be that 3rd safety in center field dime looks, but he's a major reason that the rush defense has been so poor. Even that henry TD where he trucked bishop, that was rapp missing his run fit and getting blocked so bishop was again sprinting over to try and save a TD.