GunnerBill

Team I'm in on: Green Bay... all above the Love Train. I am increasingly of the view that the Bears are going to be good though too. NFC North to arguably be the best division in football and send three teams to the playoffs. Team I'm out on: Take your pick between Chargers and Colts. Chargers receivers suck and the Colts only top level player remains a left guard.

Sure, you can split Cook out on the outside and a linebacker will go with him and you have a mismatch. If you do it 10 plays in a row the linebacker will not follow him they will treat him like a wide receiver and then the cornerback opposite him has the advantage in his favour. Eventually you have to have guys who can win outside against corners. No amount of scheme can hide that deficit, if it exists, over a prolonged period.

So what's the "whatever?" The whole point about playing "outside" in the NFL is it is where it comes down to player vs player. And sure, scheme can help, but the reason wide receivers, corners, edge rushers and offensive tackles are the four best paid positions after Quarterback is that in anything other than the smallest of sample sizes any weaknesses that exist are hard to hide with scheme. Your guys have to win their assignments more often than not. I worry about what the Bills have out there. To me leaving yourself in a position where your top two guys leave in a single offseason and you have no realistic in house options to play outside is just poor planning. And despite the fact I think Kincaid can be great and Shakir can be really good, I suspect their lack of true boundary guys who can win outside caps the potential of the offense.

I don't believe I have had the pleasure of any of the three.....

I don't know how anyone can watch that and not find it butt clenchingly cringey.

This group is not giving up on a season. No way. They didn't give up on 2017 despite the fact that the moves they made before that year were really all about getting a Quarterback in '18 and they ended up sneaking into the play-offs. Agree that there were reasons to move on from players. I'd have kept White personally and released Douglas but we did that to death in the spring, otherwise I would have moved on from all those guys too. But you can support the decisions and still believe this year is a re-set year. It's not a rebuild, it's not a tear down, it's not a give up season but it's a re-set to allow next year to be a re-load.

Where did I say anything about it being just about "raw speed"?

Is it? I'm not sure I agree. A year where they stripped out 3 key every down starters on offense (Diggs, Davis, Morse) and 4 starters on defense (White, Poyer, Hyde and Floyd - appreciate White missed a fair amount of time in recent seasons) and have a quarter of their salary cap taken up by dead money. That feels like a re-set to me. Doesn't mean they can't still make the playoffs, I'm a little more optimistic than @ProcessImproverMan - probably because I'm not as high as others on the rest of our divisional rivals. But I do think this is still a re-set year. I don't think they have anything more than a punchers chance of winning the Superbowl. Like if Josh has a 2012 Joe Flacco style playoff run and they get a bounce or two sure. But I think short of that they are a playoff team not a Championship contender in 2024 while they re-set the table for the fully fledged version of Josh Allen Bills 2.0 launching in 2025.

Or to have not ignored the position beyond two 5th round lottery tickets (one looks like it's worked, one is cut by year 2) in the two prior drafts. My knock on them is less about what they have done at receiver in 2024 given where they found themselves. It is more that they could have been better prepared had they taken different decisions in 2022 and 2023.

I like the Kincaid pick. I think he is potentially a top 3 tight end in football. But guys who win outside are harder to find and more valuable. If they knew their two outside receivers were going I'd have liked to see them come out of that draft with an outside receiver. Could they have got up another 2 or 3 picks to get Jordan Addison (who they loved)? Maybe. They chose not to. And they did have a serviceable tight end, although I don't deny Kincaid is a clear upgrade as a receiving threat. I just think that winning outside matters to playing good offense in the NFL and to spend two years punting on the receiver position in the draft and then find both of your outside guys leaving at the same time to the extent you are now considering whether you might have to start Mack Hollins or a guy who has been 70% a slot receiver for the past two seasons as one of their primary outside guys for 2024. Basically Kincaid could be great this year, be the #1 tight end in football and I still think if our outside receivers can't win their assignments with some consistency it will limit the ceiling of the offense.

They should have drafted a receiver last year knowing it was a strong possibility that both of their guys might walk after the 2023 season.

But to say "well we have given him a few dollars it will all be fine" when they knew their other outside receiver was likely walking as a FA after the season... it is a failure to prepare. Beane gambled. And he lost.

I don't necessarily dispute that. But to not even be thinking that there was a possibility and planning accordingly? Yea I think that was foolish. Beane clearly thought they could make it work. His mistake was he went all in on that hope.

If the Bills thought that they were foolish. This didn't blow up in March. When you have have 14 or 15 months of tension between your QB and star WR it is foolish not to be planning for the possibility that you fail to keep things together.

Yep. I think everything that has happened since that article pretty much confirms to me that its content was accurate. This is just another brick in the wall. From things McDermott has said about it being Josh's team, to the report about Brady getting him to chair and report back on offensive players only meetings, to making him the only offensive captain (when Dion is arguably the second most qualified captain candidate on the entire roster). It says to me that there is a feeling inside the building, right or wrong, that they are not getting everything they would like from Allen as a leader.

McCarthy, Tucker and Feeley. Crikey. That is a drought level crew.

Nah I'm sorry. We know not just from what I have heard from sources within the Bills but what others have said too that the Diggs issue has its roots in the middle of the 2022 season and was fundamentally a breakdown in his relationship with Josh (I liken it to that romantic relationship we have all had that was always testy and vibrant and the sex was amazing but that we deep down knew was burning too bright and would burn out quickly). If the Bills were not at least planning for the possibility a year hence that Diggs could be done here after 2023 then they were foolish in the extreme.

The best look

Eh? Wtf are you on about?

He has got better each year. Had a very good 2023. Three years $30.75m is exactly what the Bills gave Taron Johnson earlier this year. I think Carter has a slight edge as a pure coverage guy but Taron is a better all around player.

I'd take him after Brown, and indeed have in a league. He'd be after CeeDee, Tyreek, AJ Brown and JJ for sure at receiver. And I'd take at least Bijan, Saquon and Taylor ahead of him. I guess that means if I was at 9 I'd consider Chase. I think I'd take him ahead of Wilson. St Brown and Chase would be a toss up for me.

There is some merit to that but when they are an established redzone target I tend to overlook it. While Kmet will lose targets in the rest of the field he was their main redzone guy and I think he will continue to feature heavily there and with a better QB.

Yea Hughes fits. I think the practice squad point only really applies to guys the last 4 or 5 years. The practice squad rules before made putting a guy like Cine there pretty impossible. But I agree in the modern world the fact he had so little interest is a bad sign. Did you hear Matthew Collyer on WGR with Schopp last week? His review of Cine was bruuuuuuutal.

I'm still pretty optimistic on Brady. I think he is a really smart guy, I think he has a sharp mind and he is much closer to the cutting edge than Dorsey in terms of the concepts he incorporated when he took over last year. He has to go and prove it, sure, but I think he has the potential to be really good. But I still worry that even if he is good this year the Bills offensive potential remains capped by the weapons. We are hoping Kincaid goes from a top ten tight end to a top 3 or 4 guy capable of being in the 900-1,000 yards territory. We are hoping Shakir continues to be a really efficient producer as a featured piece of the offense rather than as a complimentary piece. We are hoping that Curtis Samuel overcomes his turf toe and recreates his 2020 career year reunited with Joe Brady. We are hoping that Keon Coleman can contribute meaningfully as a rookie. That's a lot of things to be hoping on. The two "knowns" that we have, aside from Josh obviously, are: 1. James Cook is going to get yards if you give him the opportunities running the ball; and 2. Dawson Knox if healthy is a redzone weapon. Everything else, from Brady to Kincaid to the receivers we are having to make a projection.

And he gets a major upgrade at Quarterback. I suppose the counter point is last year only he and DJ Moore were weapons, now he has Odunze and Allen to compete for targets but Allen has definitely lost a step and has had issues staying healthy, Moore doesn't get a lot of redzone targets (although I think will remain the #1 guy elsewhere on the field) and so Kmet's ceiling really depends on the impact of Odunze I think.