LEBills

Shavers looked great today. He is nothing special speed wise but he got himself wide open for three big plays today. Looked like the tuddy they got him inside and Diaby (DE) rode him to the sideline and then released. Shavers took it deep and was fast enough (long striders can be deceptively fast on those longer routes) to beat the safety comfortably. Josh buying time was critical. Shavers had the deep in where he just found the soft spot on the zone. Then down by our own goal line, he got in his DBs toes and when he turned broke it to the sideline to be WIDE open. Really good showing for him today. He isn’t going to be a superstar but if he can be our Romeo Doubs that would help so much.

Only 16 games in 2022 due to Damar too Diggs averaged more yards per game and a higher percentage of his qbs yards than Reed did. Reed was very good and had great longevity but I agree with Bull, Diggs was better just brief.

This was my reply to the other poster not you. Strange to quote that.

Stuff you are hearing, or just what he has done (and not done) on the field?

Is Beane’s home life that bad? Now I feel bad for the guy

28:00 was a great discussion. I don’t listen to a lot of pressers so how they broke down how Beane and McDemott are answering questions it is enlightening. I have my gripes with Joe, especially his pre draft evals and how he talked about Cooks value for a contract, but I think he hit it on the head when it comes to Keon. Diggs forced his way out and Davis became a free agent. We went into 2024 with no one with significant stats with Josh. So drafting Keon and making him a starter out of the gate especially one who is basically a boundary receiver was not fair to him. Now he may just not be an NFL level player, but I don’t think this was conducive to him maximizing the talent he does have.

Yes sorry you are missing my point. Beane has made some fine picks. And the job he had isn’t the easiest - coming to a team just out of a 17 year old draught, finding a QB that became elite but took most of his rookie contract to get there. He has had more challenges than other GMs for recent superbowl teams. He is not a terrible GM. As I have said before, I don’t care about where we are drafting. Sure he is getting above average value, but many of those GMs that are doing worse than him no longer have a job. I am measuring him against the stalwart GMs whose results have led to an extended tenure like his. They have either drafted, traded or signed their way (often times all three) to enough elite talent on rosters to get to the Super Bowl. Beane’s cumulative has not been good enough. This has devolved into a conversation of is Beane a good drafted or not. I think this benching of Keon is as much due to the position they put Keon in (being the guy expected to replace Diggs because they haven’t done anything else significant to do so) as it is Keons ability and effort. Then find another way to get them - trade picks for starters or sign in free agency if it is soooo impossible. Somehow others teams have done it. He did it once with Diggs and that was his best move behind drafting Allen. If you can’t scout yourself into great talent, then trade for it. But that would require being better with your salary cap to be able to acquire players with larger contracts. Something we have struggled with since Allen’s rookie contract has ended.

Beane hasn’t fumbled every pick, but he hasn’t done well enough. I don’t really care about where we draft, there are good players that go outside the first round every year. The Chiefs dynasty is in part because they found two hall of famers in Kelce and Chris Jones outside of the first round (prior GM but still under Andy). Not to mention Tyreek. Using AJ as an example really isn’t bolstering your point. Yea he is fine for where he is drafted (0 sacks in 12 playoff games lollll) but in such a competitive league nailing 5 fine players is not getting you over the hump as we have seen. The proof is in the playoff exits. Beane (and the Colts GM) stick out as GMs that have had their job for a long time without the results.

Since he only gets screen passes he classified him as a running back. Easy mistake to make.

Yea everyone misses on picks to a degree. The GM that draft Phidarian Mathis is no longer a GM. Basically the only GM that has been tenured longer than him that hasn’t at least made a Super Bowl is Chris Ballard with the Colts. Even acknowledging everyone has their whiffs, what picks he has had that have had success have not been significant enough to counteract the misses and get us where we need to go.

Yea that was my biggest gripe with Diggs as a Bills receiver too. If you want to focus on that that is fine, but there is a reason playoff and regular season records are separate. If you think Reed is our most prolific playoff receiver I would agree. Moulds still holds the single game receiving record there which is cool

yes he did, but when just saying who was the more productive WR, Diggs is more productive. Sure there may be reasons for it but the stats are what they are. No slight on the 90s teams. We will look back on the Diggs era fondly in 30 years too.

ok haha

While that is true, even if you look at percentage of passing yards. Reed had 29.18% of Kelly’s receiving yards from 1986-96 (Kelly played one more game than Reed did in that time). Diggs had 30.63% of Allens passing yards from 2020-23. Reed was great, I think Diggs was just a bit better.

Diggs averaged 81 yards per game to Reeds 59. They have the same amount of 1000 yard seasons though Reed played with the Bills for 11 more seasons than Diggs. Different eras is part of it, but Diggs is the most productive.

The Bills and Green Bay are not even comparable when it comes to value. Beane has the worst WR strategy in the NFL as he mostly fills the room with free agents in one of the top 3 most expensive positions in football. We have one WR we drafted in 2024 and one we drafted in 2022 on the roster lol. The other three are mid level free agents (making like $20 million combined this year lol) and a UDFA. If you look at our perennial competition the Chiefs and Ravens, they are down near Green Bay because they have drafted receivers recently. You can do everybody eats, but you have to draft WRs and eventually hit on one. You can’t do everyone eats and try to fill the room with other teams free agent cast offs. For the entire time we had Diggs, we never drafted another WR before the 4th round. So our passing game became more and more Diggs-centric as Smoke and Bease gave way to McKenzie, Crowder, Harty and Sheffield. So that when Diggs forced his way out, our WR production basically dropped to nothing. Aside from drafting Keon, the urgency to fix that has not been there and is the #1 reason I hope Beane is gone sooner than later.

I can see them grading well individually but the scheme allows for opportunity. The Bucs blitz at a high rate and many of those blitz’s involve a secondary player. Despite the blitz’s their pressure rate is below average. So they have given up the 11th most passing yards, including the 10th most 20+ yard gains and the 4th most 40+ yard gains (so when they whiff they whiff hard). Miami is a pretty comparable team to the Bucs on defense, high blitz rate, passing results are very similar. I still think the Bills beat themselves that game. There should be many opportunities if Josh handles the blitz well and takes the deep shots that will be there.

He is 70% of Mack Hollins, as good if Mack Hollins ate soup for lunch

Bucs are the weakest team vs outside aligned WRs that we have faced since Baltimore. Keon has his problems, but I think he gets over 70 yards this week if he gets his normal snap count. Mack Hollins just put up 106 on them last week

No he was scheduled to go on. He tuned in to the show a little early waiting for it, heard them talking about receiver and lost it when they brought him on lol

This was my heavily downvoted comment back then. Justice for LEBills too! Still so strange how he handled this. If he had just had a normal response like “hey I wish we could have added a bit more competition there too, but I have confidence the guys we have will do well this year” no one would ever recall this radio segment, even with the WR struggles

I know you heard rumors that they were trying to get Calvin Ridley, have you heard that he drew a hard line on the 2026 first? The whole thing is pretty vague. As much as I think Beane stinks, these reports really don’t seem very clear that that line was drawn.

Yes. I agree. Matt Harmon pointed to this pre-draft and since. For all the love I (and others) have for Troy Franklin, he struggled much worse than Keon last year when he was a primarily outside wide receiver. They moved him inside over 50% of the time and now he is looking much better this year. Ladd McConkey played in the slot over 62% of the time this year and last. The Bills are forcing Keon into this outside receiver role because they are desperate for bodies that can line up out there rather than trying to get the best out of him. Square peg, round hole type of thing.

This is exactly where I am at. Keon has talent but this was not an easy situation for him to land. He was the first pick and expected to replace the most prolific WR in Bills history as a rookie. Due to terrible roster construction, he has had to play as the primary outside receiver since he got here. And a part of that is basically only giving him deep targets downfield especially this year. I’m not a football genius and maybe he is getting these routes and I’m not seeing them, but some of his best plays last year and at FSU were when he took a slant and was able to do some RAC. And those plays actually contributed to him having pretty decent advanced metrics for a rook. Now certainly Keon hasn’t helped himself and I wasn’t even a fan pre-draft (I believe I had him ranked as WR12 in my rankings that are posted here somewhere). But I don’t think everything has been very fair to the kid. If he was drafted to the team when we still had Diggs and he could develop at his own pace, maybe we would see more flashes. Right now though, he seems to be washing out unfortunately. When Josh was asked about Keon yesterday at his presser and paused and said “well he got one [touchdown]” that seemed like a teammate that is not happy with him.

ok KJ, he is not good at it for an NFL player