sven233

Never said it was insignificant. Even said it would be a setback in the race for home field. Of course we don't want to lose it, but if there is any positive to take out of a loss is that it is just Week 1 and there is the entire rest of the season to try and get that win back. Of course it isn't insignificant.

I've said this in other threads since the schedule was announced and I will say it again here. Week 1 is just an unpredictable wild card and no matter what happens in the game, it is not going to affect my outlook on the season at all (well, outside of any injuries that may happen). Win by 40, lose by 40.....won't matter much in the end because these teams are likely on a collision course one way or another come January and both teams will be a lot different by then. If I had a lean, I think I would have it on the Ravens only because, for whatever reason, sometimes it takes us a while to get going in Week 1. I mean we win our share of games in Week 1, but sometimes it is a struggle, even against worse teams. Even last year we played a terrible first half before finally turning things up late against the Cardinals. We won't probably have that luxury of a slow start against the Ravens because their defense is so good. So, unless we come out cooking and keep the game within striking distance, I don't feel great about the game, especially with the questions we have in the secondary right now. All that said, though, win, lose, blowout, etc.......I don't think it is going to set back either team drastically in the long run. Obviously a loss hurts us in the race for home field, but we have 16 more to play catch up if needed.

I think the longer Dane Jackson plays, the better I feel about Tre being ready for Week 1. If there is any chance Jackson was going to have to be CB2 opening night, I have a hard time believing he would still be playing into the 4th quarter of the last preseason game. Not that I am overly confident in Tre being able to do the job, but until Hairston is healthy, he's probably the best answer we have on the roster for that spot. Even when he is healthy, it still may be a while before he can ramp up to take meaningful reps at that spot. Going to have some pains at that position I'm afraid no matter what way we end up going there.

Who knew pelvic soreness was all it would take to fix Bass...... Should have had it a long time ago!

Yeah..... He does some things well but he is very raw and the game is moving quick for him. Perfect PS guy, though.

Really looking forward to watching the All 22 of the defensive line. Walker has obviously flashed with several splash plays, but on a few of the clips out there, it looks like Sanders has been the one eating some double teams which has freed Walker up to go one on one. Not hearing Sanders' name, but if that has been true on several plays, if he's holding his ground against those double teams, then he's having a nice night as well. Either way, I am not sure we will see them in the 2nd half. But based on what we have seen, I think both of those guys get a lot of playing time even early this season.

That's a TD..... Incredible catch!

Hoecht with another great rush..... That guy is going to be a welcome addition after the suspension. He's shown very well for the most part this preseason. And it looks like they saw all they needed to from Bishop tonight. He played well. He may not be perfect, but if he can get his head in the game and use his instincts, he has all the physical traits to be good. Going to be up to him as to how good he will be but tonight was good for him.

Man, we got a 2nd string RB that can kick FGs and a 4th string TE that can punt. If nothing else, that has been fun to watch this preseason.

Two good reps from Bishop so far around the line and a decent clean up tackle on the 3rd play.

Stay healthy! GO BILLS!

While I have my doubts that it would work long term in the NFL, I would love to see a team invest heavily into the best man to man CBs I could find. Load up with them. Then, instead of playing base defense, I would like to rush with numbers. Put your lock down CBs on an island and rush everyone else. If they are blocking with 5, bring 6 or 7. It's basically playing Cover 0 all the time, but you would have to structure your team to be able to hold up on the back end. That's why you would have to have 3-4 premier CBs and get the most speed and power you can find everywhere else. They don't have to be stars because you are sending everyone, but they have to be "traitsy". If you are rushing 7 or 8, I would hope you can stop the run since every gap should be covered in theory "run downs" and you would have to keep an eye on RBs leaking out. But, if you are coming in waves, you can somewhat dictate to the offense what personnel they put out there and they would almost be forced to keep a TE or extra lineman in to block. So, it would take away some of the mystery of what the offense can do. Regardless, I don't think we'll ever see it because it is such a drastic change in the way you would have to play and you would have to full on commit to building your entire defense around the scheme. All your money and top picks would probably be funneled into the CB position because you need the best back there to pull it off. That's why you do see Cover 0 be very effective in spurts. But eventually they get burned because teams just don't have enough lock down CBs to make it work for extended periods of time. But I would love to see a team try it on a regular basis.

For those saying Beane wouldn't trade 2 firsts for Parsons, maybe that's right. But maybe it's not. Beane has made it very clear that a premier pass rusher would be his dream add to this team. Not only with the Von signing or the Bosa experiment this year, but he just came out and admitted a week or 2 ago that if he could add 1 player to our team from any other teams in the league, it would be Myles Garrett. Is Parsons as good as Garrett? No. But he is still one of the best pass rushers in the league and I am guessing Beane would absolutely be interested in adding him if he does become available. Would he trade 2 firsts to get him? I don't know. Maybe. The problem is the contract. To get him in, we would need to restructure a couple guys and trade a couple players away. It's absolutely possible to do. But will he want to trade 2 firsts and 2 players? I am guessing not. So, it's trying to figure out a compromise. All things being equal an I trading 2 firsts for him? If that is what gets it done, I am. We only have so many kicks at the can left with Allen in his prime and it's time to go all in. And while losing 2 firsts would hurt, theoretically they will be very late firsts. And trading up in the 2nd round is a lot easier to do than trading up in the first. So, you still want a pick in the 30s? You can make that happen if you want to. But there are only a couple of guys in the league better at Parsons in terms of rushing the passer. But a guy at his age at that quality doesn't come available that often. Sometimes you just have to take a swing. In the end, though, I highly doubt he ends up being traded.

He had a bad year last year for sure. But at one time, he showed some talent and does have some physical skills. I'd absolutely look at him if released because I do think he is better than Hamlin and the other depth we have. That said, he hasn't lived up to some of the hype he had coming out. PS. For those saying we need a strong safety and not a free safety....... While that may be true in theory, our defense runs best when we have position-less safeties. When Hyde and Poyer were running things, the brilliant thing about their pairing is that they could both do the same things and we could disguise what we were doing on the back end. Can he play both? I don't know. Haven't watched enough of him week in and week out to know what they have asked him to do. But, if there is one position group I trust McDermott to get the most out of, it is DBs and Safeties. I'd trust their judgement in regards to whether they want to bring him or not as they have a lot more tape on him than I do. Regardless.....I think we are rapidly approaching the point we need to do something whether it's him or someone else.

There's not a lot of positive redeeming value to take out of tonight, especially on first watch. Sure, there are a few things I want to take a look at on the All-22 when it comes out, but for the most part this one is just going to be flushed away. I'll look at guys like Sanders, Walker, and Jackson a little closer to see how they did, but beyond that, I am not sure anything interests me to look at closer that I didn't see tonight. While the result doesn't matter to me at all, what does matter to me is the overall poor play of the secondary and Andreeson. As good of instincts as Andreeson seems to have in the run game, it is completely the opposite in the pass game. He is lost out there and the ball is constantly going over his head for big plays. He has no spacial awareness in zone coverage and that's a bit problem on a team that loves to play zone. Last year, I thought he might be a guy that could get us through a game if necessary, but the more he has played, especially in this preseason, I am getting very concerned about the depth at MLB. We have a nice player Bernard as a starter, but I am beginning to think we are nowhere at the position behind him. And the secondary play was pretty horrific to say the least. I hate to hit the panic button in preseason games because there is no game planning. But the fact is, this team by all accounts wants to run more man coverage this season. And after what I saw tonight, I am not sure we have the players to do that. Jackson was awful. Hairston is hurt and going to be running way behind in terms of reps even when he does come back. And Tre, while a nice story and a great guy, isn't someone I want lining up in man anyway. So, I am worried about the depth there, at least until Hairston is healthy and gets his legs under him and enough reps to matter. And this leads me to the Safety position..... Ugh. I have a bad feeling we are going to be longing for the days of Hyde and Poyer holding it down back there for almost a decade. Look....I am not like many on here just writing Bishop off yet. I do think there is some physical talent there, but there's already questions about his health and how much he can play. The other question is whether or not he will get it mentally and he just hasn't been on the field enough to develop that either. Hamlin is a fringe backup. Rapp is a decent player, but he has injury concerns with the way he plays. Honestly, we just don't have much at the position behind him at this point and that could be a problem. I mean, a problem to the point where I am ready to bring someone else in. But is anyone that you can bring in going to pick up the defense in 2-3 weeks enough to make a difference? I mean, are we going to be desperate enough to bring in a physically shot Poyer that at least knows the defense as depth? I don't know. But if I am Beane, I am shopping around for a Safety for sure. There are other things I am going to go back and take a look at as I mentioned, but coming out of this one, it's about MLB and Safety depth for sure.

He is.....and the world will be watching him eat sunflower seeds on the sideline all night, hopefully.

That's funny. Other media that I have heard from that were there said that outside of a couple big plays, the Bills had a lot more wins overall. But this dude looks like a fan, so I would expect him to have a Bears bias.

That may be true. Haven't seen him in the regular season yet, though. While I haven't been able to see the practices to this point, there have been several media out there saying he's been one of the 3 best players on the field at camp outside of Allen. So there's that. I won't be able to form my own opinion until I actually see him play for an extended period of time myself. But it could very well be he won't be able to keep up. We'll find out right out of the gate week 1 as we are playing a team that boasts 2 of the top 5 man coverage separators in the league as of last season. Unfortunately, like it or not, he's going to be probably the best we have at CB2 for a while, though. Max won't be back for a few more weeks and he will have missed a ton of valuable time on the field. And if I know anything about McDermott, he is not going to put a guy out there on the field in regular season games until he deems him ready in practice. Quite honestly, outside of some reps here and there, we may not get a big dose of him until after the Bye providing there are no injuries. But, we'll see.

I'm seeing a lot of conversation about Tre getting picked on and the defense as a whole. And, this game, in a vacuum, I can see how people that maybe aren't as familiar with the X's and O's and everything that goes into game planning would feel this way. But I'm here to tell you there were a lot more positives on the defense than there were negatives. After rewatching the game, especially the first half where our better players played, there were a lot of positives to take out of it. First, let me start off by addressing Tre and his performance. Yes, he got threw at a lot. But, you have to expect that is going to happen because of who we have playing the other side. Now, regardless, you have to remember there was absolutely no game planning done in this game. Basically we lined up and played. There was no defensive scheme. When the real bullets start flying, you are not going to see Tre White on an island all by himself on virtually every snap. We are going to play a ton of zone and he's going to have help on most downs. He's not going to be responsible for locking guys up man to man like he was trying to do yesterday. On top of that, you have to remember that not only were we not scheming on the back end, but we weren't scheming up front either. There were no stunts. There were no pass rush blitzes (at least to the extent you will see them in the regular season). We lined up, rushed our guys, and what happened, happened. In the regular season, we are going to be game panning in a way to do everything we can to take away the first read on offense. So, that right there is going to help Tre out by giving him an extra second to make sure he is in the right position. One of the biggest positives I saw yesterday is that even though we didn't get home, there were quite a few pressures. Bosa had 2-3 real nice rushes in the limited action he saw. Walker and Sanders both busted through a couple times and were a step away from finishing. Solomon had a couple nice rushes. But the guy I want to mention is Hoecht. Some on here are dogging his game and I think it is a bit unwarranted. Was he out of position on a couple of plays? Yes. He overran some stuff of committed a bit to early. But let me tell you.....he had several reps where he was fast off the ball and got some pressure as well. He tipped a pass that should have been intercepted. He had both hands on the QB at one point and just didn't finish. But you could see the potential of things he will bring to this defense when he comes back from suspension. He wasn't perfect yesterday by any means, but he was far from bad either. He showed me a lot more positives than negatives and he will be greatly helped with scheme. The only guy I was disappointed with on the line was Jackson. I thought he struggled most of the day. He had a couple of good reps and did get held a couple times that weren't called, but he had more trouble than I was hoping to see. No, he was a third rounder for a reason. He's not polished. I think he plays with great effort so he's got that to build off of. It's going to be about improving his technique. He's a guy I think might find himself scratched early in the season, but as he gets more reps under his belt with proper coaching, could potentially have more of an impact later in the season. But it may be a while before we see what he truly is. Anway, this was longer than I anticipated it to be, but I just got frustrated seeing so much overreaction to this game and what happened on the field. Yes, I got mad too seeing us give up big yards on every 3rd down screen as we always seem to do, but again, some of that is due to the lack of game planning. And the thing is, Dabol being who he is, knew our defense was vulnerable to screens. So, credit to him, especially in preseason knowing we aren't doing any scheming at all, for calling them. He knew we weren't going to be ready for them and he put them in his plan. And you could tell he wanted to win that game yesterday with the way he played his guys and the calls he made on certain downs. Not saying he sat in his office specifically game planning, but there were certain things he did that were intentional to take advantage of things he knew. Anyway, the point is, don't panic. There were more positives in this game than negatives and if you focus on individual players, there were some things to possibly get excited about. Remember...... The regular season is 100% all about the team where is preseason is 100% about the individual. Keep that in mind while you're watching. It would be different if all of our guys were getting their butts handed to them, but that was not the case at all.

Defensive Line. I'd love to say the WR battle, but it has been proven over the years in preseason that when Allen isn't in there, they don't have the best opportunities to catch the ball. That said, if we get the All-22 for this game like we should, that is a position I will revisit on tape where I can just focus on the release packages of each guy and to see if there is separation being created regardless of the ball getting to them on time. Quite honestly, with no gameplanning, it's tough to judge certain positions. That said, we can watch the offensive and defensive lineman and get a pretty good understanding of who is winning the one on one matchups. You won't see a ton of pulling and misdirection here. The preseason is more about a man whooping another man and the best place to see that is in the trenches. Sanders and Walker got a lot of buzz early in camp for making plays but we didn't hear a ton about them late in camp whereas it was pretty much the opposite for Jackson who we didn't hear of doing much early, but seemed to flash the last few days. I know he was on PUP heading into the start of practices even though he was there from day 1, but I am wondering if it just took him a bit to get back up to speed and that's why we didn't hear from him much early. Regardless, the time is now to show what you have and these are the guys I want to be seeing win one on one matchups. I don't expect to see the starters much, some of the key guys I don't expect to see at all, which should give these young bucks a lot of run today. So, that's where my focus will be today. Much like the WR position I mentioned earlier, going back and taking a look at the safety play later will be interesting too. They just aren't on the screen enough on the TV broadcast to get a true representation as to what is going on there.

Yeah, depending on the severity of it, Week 1 could be a little cloudy. I'm guessing he makes it back, but he may not be 100%. If it's me, I'm not rushing it, though. Of course we want to win Week 1, but there is no stranger week in the NFL than Week 1. Anything can happen and anyone can beat anyone because of how unpredictable it is. I have said several time that no matter what the outcome is Week 1, it isn't going to sway my opinion of the season one way or another. Whether we win by 30 or lose by 30, even that won't change thing. It's just an odd week with so much volatility and unpredictability. So yeah, get him healthy and back to 100%. Even if he misses a couple weeks to start the season off, it's not worth rushing him back. Rather his absence affect a couple weeks of the season instead of the entire thing. While not ideal, obviously, I'm glad it happened now and not 3 weeks from now.

Not only that, but a 2-3 minute review on top of it!

I may be wrong here, but wasn't that Circling The Wagons podcast the one that came out and said that red helmets weren't coming back and then the red helmets came back like 2 days later?

Officially official..... Adam Schefter @AdamSchefter And now the Bills have reached agreement with their second-round pick, defensive tackle TJ Sanders, on a four-year, $10.645 million deal that has $10.073 million of it guaranteed, per agents Robert Bailey and Drew Rosenhaus.

Adam Schefter @AdamSchefter And now the Bills have reached agreement with their second-round pick, defensive tackle TJ Sanders, on a four-year, $10.645 million deal that has $10.073 million of it guaranteed, per agents Robert Bailey and Drew Rosenhaus. Alright! Can't wait to get rolling next week! GO BILLS!