GunnerBill

My mate who is a huge Jags fan (one of the few London Jags that pre-dates them playing here) is terrified about this game. Says that if the Titans bring it the Jags will crumble as they have zero ability to beat physical football teams. I haven't watched much Jags football this year to know if he is right.

Agree with everything you have said. The way I'd sum it up in a sentence is: We have been used to 'Josh Allen Experience' games in the past but this has been a 'Josh Allen Experience' season.

Agree although a healthy, but slower Tre White would be a candidate for a move to safety IMO. Achilles injury is tough. Because more so than the ACL it really affects explosiveness which for a zone corner is a possible issue. If you are getting Tre back and he is healthy but he is a tick slower because he doesn't have the same explosion I am interested in whether they'd consider him at safety. But I will caveat all of that with the only way Tre is back is if he is willing to take a pay cut. If he still wants to play football his best chance of being a good player again is on this team where he knows the scheme inside out, knows the coaches and knows his teammates. The only new guaranteed money for Tre on his current deal are the $1.5m roster bonuses which guarantee early in the league year in 2024 and 2025. So the Bills have leverage to discuss a new contract with him. They have to account for $10.3m of money that he has already been paid, but if they gave him say $6m of new guarantees in exchange for cutting in half his base salaries the next two seasons (from $8m to $4m in 2024 and from $10m to $5m in 2025)... which would mean his cap hits come down to $12m and $11m rather than $16m and the Bills would still have a pretty easy out after 2024 (probably for circa $6m rather than the $4m it is now) then I could see a route where he comes back. We'd be essentially asking him to give up $9m in possible earnings for the guarantee of $6m in new money and a chance to re-stablish himself in a place he feels comfortable.

No. Safety is more of a reaction position. You can be more of a protaganist at corner and particularly in a man scheme get away with not being as smooth in those transitions because the job is run with your guy and once he gets in stride Elam is capable of playing sticky coverage. It is true though that zone coverage rather highlights his weakness even at corner. I never felt like he was a natural scheme fit for the Bills. Still an odd pick to me.

Yea the only year I felt the Bills were running on fumes was last year. I don't feel that this year at all. In fact the defense has been flying about the past few weeks like men possessed. The issue at the moment isn't fumes. It is execution on offense.

I think this version of Alabama did extremely well to make the final four. It was one of Saban's best coaching jobs IMO.

Yea the counter balance for the $41m over the cap is 44 players under contract which is among the highest in the NFL. The maths has been done before but there are ways to get under the cap without taking any of the really hard decisions. The question is how much are they willing to take those decisions to give them the flexibility to re-make parts of the roster (secondary particularly). No. The biggest flaw in his game is his transitions (i.e go from moving backwards to moving forwards or from moving laterally to moving vertically). If you can't transition smoothly as a safety you are toast.

Ertz was my comparison too. I think Ertz with a tad more potential for putting up numbers because he has Josh throwing him the ball. But somewhere in that 800 to 1,100 yards a season for 4 or 5 years in his prime is exactly what I would expect. He has slightly exceeded my rookie projection for yards, slightly underperformed my expectation for TDs. But overall he is pretty much right where he should be at this point.

On that page look at post 1 June release on the 2024 tab.

Baltimore was the other way round. They beat the 9ers up before the power went out. When it came back on the 9ers started to come back but that was heading for a blow out until Beyonce tripped the lights.

100% this. The best teams get in position more often than not but there is so much varience that the deciding factor between which of the 6-8 teams each year with enough talent often come down to more luck than we'd like to admit I think.

He has definitely been used more in the short game and less down the seam than I would have thought. But as I said in the thread that this might get merged into, maybe we should have expected it. The immediate post draft presser Brandon Beane talked about him as being part of the solution to the loss of Cole Beasley.

@Beck Water you have been around here long enough to know that facts and research are not appreciated!

Davis will get a bigger FA deal than Samuel. Without question. He isn't a bad suggestion as your "vet floor" for WR2 though. And then hopefully you find a draft pick who ultimately makes Samuel the first guy in off the bench who had inside / outside flex.

He is a totally different tier to Daniel Jones. And he did bring them back to win with 2 minutes to go against Dallas recently, so that's something. His elite trait is his accuracy. He does throw a very accurate football, but he doesn't have a great arm and if you confuse him and take his primary read away he is prone to panic. He needs the system he is in to shine. But you have to pay him if you are the Dolphins, even accepting the injury risk. And then you have to make some difficult decisions elsewhere. You can't pay two corners and pay Phillips when he comes due as well as Chubb and pay Waddle when he comes due as well as Hill. They already have a tough decision looming on Wilkins this offseason. Franchise tag could be an option there.

I don't see that he has any trade value whatsoever. Maybe a total rebuild team would take him if we give them some picks too ha. Like the famous Brock Osweiller trade to Cleveland. But they were in full tank. I don't see a team out there in that space.

No I believe he has had some bad moments this year. He has made some mistakes. The Broncos game and the New England game I was very ciritcal of. I was critical of the Tampa game too even though we won. Don't think the Bills were particularly well coached in any of those games. But they are not screw ups like 13 seconds was a screw up. The kneel down at the end vs Philly? Sure I'd maybe have liked them to try a play and see if they could get close but the fact is his kicker had missed twice from well inside 50. His confidence in how close he needed to get was probably not super high. If you want an NFL Head coach who hasn't made a single mistake this year then I am here to tell you that you won't find one.

Yea I don't think he will be active but call it the cautious, conservative coach in me I worry a bit if Jonathan is there in big spots. Was noticeable in the New England game that in the bigger spots late Shaq was out there even in pass rush situations. I am not sure that is ideal and suggests they don't fully trust Jonathan. It is explained multiple places. They save $6.79m against the 2024 cap by cutting Von with a post 1 June designation. It would be $17m dead cap in 2024 and $15m dead cap in 2025. But it does create cap space next year.

13 seconds was a screw up. If he screws up like that again he should be fired on the spot. I'll give anyone a mulligan. I won't give them two. The problem is the people that don't like McDermott want to turn everything into a McDermott screw up. The last two weeks are proof of this. The last two weeks the Bills coaching has been better than the Bills Quarterbacking and the Bills execution in most spots. Put simply they have coached better than the players have played. And yet... two weeks of people trying to pin failure to blow out the Chargers and Patriots on McDermott. People are so convinced that McDermott is the problem they see every mistake, every missed opportunity, every poor outcome through that prism. It makes a proper conversation about the merits of the situation really difficult to achieve. Because the McDermott outers are disingenuous about the things that are actually on him.

You have to pay him. It is about structuring it as cleverly as possible to limit the length of the true commitment to 2-3 years max. The AAV is the flashy figure and that will be in the $50m range. But this contract is all about the structure and the guarantees.

It isn't about time so much as distance. Punters have a range from which they are most confident of pinning a team like kickers have a range from which they are most confident making FGs. They could have just punted straight away but once they didn't and they were in Martin's sweet spot you don't risk that with a DOG. Especially when with 2 TOs left and 1:12 on the clock you are not gonna need that TO for something else. If there was 4 minutes legt you take the DOG. But where they were that TO is otherwise likely no use to you. It made sense to take it and let Martin punt to pin them. And he executed perfectly.

WR and DL first two picks.

Beane by his own admission screwed up the QB market. The guy they wanted was Keenum. He went to Denver. Then they decided to wait it out and take whichever vet was left when the music stopped. That was AJ McCarron. It become clear quickly that was a mistake. And they loved Peterman as a person. He couldn't play football though.

That is true. And in the middle of the season the defense was bad for a period. But they have played well down the stretch, even against good teams. They played well vs Philly too, especially first half. The score is a bit inflated by OT but even in that game the play calling and the scheme were good. It was the one game where Douglas struggled which makes a difference.

They could have just punted, that is fair. But once they didn't the TO was the right call. They felt like from there the kicker could pin New England and force them to be conservative for fear if it giving it back.