Kirby Jackson

I like the format now. I liked the tweak to the teams hosting too. This feels like the right number to me. Once you get beyond 12, it would be difficult to see any team below that running the table against that competition. I think that’s the underrated part. Teams that have 3 losses (or even 2 in some cases) that would be ranked like 14 are inconsistent. They likely lost at least 2 of those games to good teams. They probably play like 3 good teams a year. (I’m considering top 15 teams good). Are we supposed to believe that those teams would, go on the road, and then to neutral sites and be 3-0 vs. those quality of teams? It feels like a stretch. As an Ohio State fan, I apply the Wisconsin/Iowa eye test to it. Those are the type of teams over the last 15 years that would have qualified for an expanded playoff like this. Was it possible that 2014 Wisconsin or 2023 Iowa to win 3 games against the best teams in the country? Of course not!! Those teams would have been murdered. 12 is a good number and we still enter the playoff with a few teams that have zero chance at a title (Boise, Indiana, ASU, SMU).

All fair and it’s not denigrating Kelly in anyway (at least it isn’t intended to). He is a HOFer and he belongs there. He just a HOFer in the same way that Mike Mussina is a HOFer not in the way that Willie Mays is a HOFer. I’d argue, that he was the Jalen Hurts of his era. Hurts has been a Pro Bowler. Hurts has been an all pro. Hurts has led an elite roster to the Super Bowl multiple times. Hurts has consistently been one of the better QBs in the league but never considered at the top. The biggest difference is that Hurts has been elite in the Super Bowl. They are a lot more alike than people want to admit. If Hurts wins another, which he may, we are in for some tough conversations around here. Kelly in retrospect is much better than Kelly in actuality. The nostalgia of those teams have clouded the reality that Kelly was a very good QB and Marv a pretty good coach. Bruce was the guy. Thurman was next. Andre and Kelly were similar. The role players were outstanding and they were really good at the LOS. Those teams were so good. Much in the way though that Eagles fans want Hurts in the conversation with Burrow/Allen/Lamar/Mahomes, Bills fans want Kelly in the conversation with Marino/Elway/Montana and then Young/Favre.

There’s not one thing Kelly did better than Allen. In fact, Kelly was bad in the playoffs. Frank Reich was 2-0 in that span. Don’t confuse winning with a good QB for winning because of a good QB. The early 90’s Bills were the 2025 Eagles. The difference is Jalen Hurts is a better playoff performer than Kelly. There’s not a single thing that Jim Kelly was better at than Josh Allen. I used the Jalen Hurts argument earlier in the offseason. Jim Kelly was the Jalen Hurts of his day. He was a top 5ish QB that won a lot. Josh Allen is the MVP of the league. It’s not comparable. EDIT: I’m not sure what anyone is disagreeing with? What is there to disagree with? We can Google their statistics in the playoffs. I’m not sure that a reasonable argument can be made, skill wise as to anything Kelly did better than Allen. Toughness was Kelly’s best quality. Allen has that in spades as well. I’m not sure why the topic of Allen being better than Kelly bothers Bills fans? Honestly, it’s not very close.

Lol, I threw out $500k and thought people would think it was crazy. The more I think, and read y’all, it’s higher. It would have to be a number that changed the way I lived. $500K would lower my mortgage payments and add some nice vacations. It would allievate some financial stress and shave a couple of years off the back end of my career if invested well. It wouldn’t change my day-to-day. If I’m going to commit to the Bills never winning a Super Bowl in my lifetime, my life would need to improve significantly with the amount of money I’d be getting.

Lifetime You’re either guaranteed the Super Bowl this year or guaranteed the money and zero Super Bowls in your lifetime.

The list is clearly made by outsiders. No knowledgable Bills fan has Kelly over Allen. The top 3 are: Bruce, OJ and Josh (in whatever order). Thurman is next. Andre and Kelly are the next 2. Joe D follows them. From there, it’s a little subjective.

Sorry. It’s a guaranteed victory or they never win one in your lifetime.

This post got me thinking, “what’s the right number that it would take in exchange for a Bills Super Bowl?” Obviously, $500 isn’t the answer. The champagne I’d pop after a Super Bowl would exceed that. What’s your number? I’m thinking like $500K would be my number. That might be insane and it might not be high enough. That number is big enough to matter but not big enough to stop working or drastically change the day-to-day. I figure that this is an interesting place for this discussion because the people spending time here, in June, REALLY care about the Bills. EDIT: To be clear, you either get _____ dollars and the Bills do not win one in your lifetime OR they are guaranteed a championship this year.

That’s more than fair and I agree. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to say, “if league average QB were inserted ______ play would have looked different.” There’s no perfect method and style of play certainly comes into play. I’m just not sure that there’s a great way to account for that. That’s especially true because a bunch of teams would have been built differently with a different style of QB. Geno is a different player than Kyler but they both are around the middle of the league. The only way that I can think of is that, “Geno Smith method.” Basically, zoom out and say, “if the guy back there was perfectly average, how good would they be?” There’s different skill sets within the average guys but as soon as we start applying the best fitting skill set we are kind of taking away the point of perfectly average. Another way to look at it is if QB play across the league was EXACTLY the same, who would win? The Bills would be picking in the top 5-10 in this scenario, IMO.

They were projected to be pretty bad. This Bills team, sans Allen, plus prime Tyrod, would be projected to be pretty bad. I don’t think that the records would be much different. I did the comparison of position groups above. Feel free to disagree with any of them…

Are they? I’m not saying that they definitely are or aren’t but they are pretty close IMO. I’d say both teams had good OLs (slight advantage to present), 2017 better at RB, both teams are bad at WR (advantage to present), 2017 better on DL & DB, present better at TE & LB. Present is better at OC & 2017 was better at DC. 2017 had more “elite” players (guys that are top 5-10 at their position). Josh Allen is the difference.

You see things all of the time that are like, “what would _______ record be if you took (insert QB here) off the roster?” The answer is, “it depends.” Are you replacing ______ with the current backup? Jameis? Peterman? Mason Rudolph? The Geno Smith scale basically assumes that you would be giving that team as mediocre QB play as possible. Again, that’s not meant to be insulting. It’s basically saying that the QB isn’t necessarily elevating or hurting your team. He’s just kind of there as a net neutral. I feel like it’s the fairest way to tell how good a roster actually is. If you replaced Josh Allen with Peterman, for example, the Bills might win 2 games. If you replaced him with Geno, they may win 7. If you replaced him with Lamar, they still win 13.

That’s fair. I do it simply through the quality of the roster. It’s a hypothetical. If you were to go through each game, it would look different. I don’t have the bandwidth to look at every NFL game and decide what the outcome would have been for each team if Geno played. The Chiefs were 12-0 in one score games last year. I think that their roster, outside of OL, is better than the Bills. They wouldn’t have won many games last year, despite Mahomes not being himself, with Geno instead.

You’ll be able to tell who overrates the Bills roster the most by applying “wins without Allen.” This isn’t a very good football team, lacking playmakers, without Allen. I have this metric that I apply to teams to determine quality of roster outside of QB. It’s the Geno Smith scale. Basically, you pull off the starting QB of each team and replace him with Geno Smith. I think Geno is about the most average QB in football. That’s not meant as in insult. It means that he’s right around the middle. If you replaced Lamar, for example, with Geno, I think that the Ravens still win 10ish games. He might win 11 or 12 on Philly. The Bills would win maybe 7.

The Cook situation is an interesting one. Josh excluded, he’s clearly the best playmaker on the offense. He’s been really good in big games. He is a big play waiting to happen and a quality receiver. He’s young and has low mileage. I looked at it either before or after this season (think it was after) and he only has 70 more touches than Ray Davis through college & the NFL!! Cook is still ascending. The flip side is he’s a RB. He can’t pass block limiting his snaps. RBs are found all the time. It’s the one position that you can throw a body at and it’ll work. The Bills have 2 other capable options on the roster already. Are these options as good as Cook? No; they certainly aren’t. Is Cook at $12.5M (where I think it will be) a better option than the current stable plus a draft pick (or JK Dobbins if Cook actually holds out this year)? That is the question.

That’s where I’m at. I never thought about the ROI on it. I thought, “what is a better use of money while living in Buffalo?” The Bills are something that I spend my money on, and never regret it. My brother and I each have 2. I have a little boy on the way just after Thanksgiving and he had one born 4 weeks ago. We will be able to bring these little boys up like we were.

That’s fair and Legends definitely knows what they’re doing. They are the best at this. I’m suggesting that they’ve likely, already, tweaked pricing from their original plan to get to where they are. It may be minor. It may be major. It may not have happened. They monitor trends, close percentage, demand, the WNY markst, etc… You have to be nimble IMO with a whole stadium to sell. From my own experience going through the process, it felt like the pricing was a little reactionary. We held off after the trip through because it was more than we wanted to pay. We were told that’s what they have available now. Less than a week later, we were called, moved across the aisle, and saved 25%. That could be coincidental but it didn’t feel like it. It felt a little like a car negotiation. Basically they knew we were going to be in and paying a big number. It felt a little bit like, “a bird in the hand” from them. Again, it’s a little anectodal but it felt like they left $20k on the table between my brother and I. We ultimately would have paid it but it became a matter of who will blink first. It COULD be coincidental but I doubt it. It seemed like they did what they needed to get the deal done and they slid us across the aisle (literally the seats next to the ones we looked at) to get it done. They save face by moving us 4 seats further from midfield. They get 4 club seats sold and we save 25% a piece.

It depends. That’s pretty much been the point all along. They don’t release other pricing tiers until they need to. That’s why they were always going to sell out. They’ll make sure it happens. What was the revenue target and how close to it are they? That’s the real question and the only one that matters. We will never know that answer. The PSLs were always going to sell out. That’s easy to do. Doing it for a number that you wanted, or even higher, is the challenge. I doubt that they hit their revenue goal.

Such a good post!! Maybe it won’t matter but they are trying to zig while others zag. It hasn’t worked to this point.

This is correct. It hasn’t been this or that. It has been this AND that. Maybe correcting one of the two will be enough to get a Super Bowl? Maybe it won’t. Either way, the pass rush hasn’t been good enough NOR have the WRs been good enough.

https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-cornerback-rankings-top-32-ahead-of-2025-nfl-season

I don’t care if he’s here this week or not. In fact, I kind of hope that he isn’t. That’ll speak more to the culture IMO. Take this week and focus on family. Come back next week and go from there. Josh missing this week doesn’t impact the results of the team one iota.