BillsFanSD

Before I looked, I figured our O/U would be 10. But I forgot about the 17th game. 10.5 seems about right to me -- at first it looked slightly high, and now that I remembered the extra game it looks slightly low.

I love the 1990s Bills as much as the next guy, but most of the household-names guys from those teams were kind of hard to like at the time, or at least they were complicated. This team features a bunch of guys who are just awesome. Josh is one of those awesome guys. So glad for this team.

Signed, apparently.

I like this signing a lot, assuming we're talking "backup" money. Which surely we are.

This front office has absolutely earned my trust and I'm extremely reluctant to say "no" to any potential FA who we might consider signing. But I'll make an exception for Gronk. I really would prefer not to have him on our roster.

Live television services like DTV are rapidly becoming dinosaurs. It would be kind of weird for ST not to move to Amazon or some similar service in the very near future. My experience has been the same as several others in this thread. I subscribed to DTV back in 1999 as soon as my wife and I bought our first house. At the time, the issue was "DTV or cable?" but that was a complete no-brainer -- I wanted the Ticket so we never even seriously looked at anything besides DTV. These days I think we probably watch satellite for 30-45 minutes or so each night before bed and that's it, and that's only because we have a cheap TV in our bedroom that doesn't stream and I've never bothered to pick up a Fire stick or anything for it. It's a complete waste of money except that ST is a non-negotiable part of my viewing. So basically I'm paying for 12 months of DTV plus the annual ST subscription really just for ST. If ST moved to Amazon, I could pay triple what DTV charges and still come out ahead. Surely the NFL and Amazon (or whoever) know that.

I'll never blame any player for choosing a payday over a ring. NFL careers are short and there's nothing wrong with wanting to make the most of it if you manage to put yourself in a position to earn top dollar. But yeah, obviously this was never really about going to a contender. On to free agency.

I didn't realize that JJ Watt is a Chelsea fan. **** off, Chelsea FC.

2019 Week 3 against the Bengals. Allen breaks out of a certain sack and eludes a couple of other tacklers to scramble for a first down on what ended up being the game-winning drive. It's at 10:14 in the NFL highlight video and I think it was literally the very next play after that play by Knox that everybody remembers.

You lost me at the Christian Wade part.

I agree with others that this is mainly just an issue of not having a lot of talent at the RB position. The line could do a better job in run blocking and Daboll could do a better job of mixing in runs, but when you're only calling the occasional running play here and there because there's so little talent at that position relative to QB/WR it's hard to do much. We don't need the next Thurman Thomas or Barry Sanders. This is going to be a pass-first team because a) we have an MVP-caliber QB and stellar WRs so of course we lean into our strengths and b) this is the 2021 NFL, not the 1992 NFL, which means you pass the ball if you want to win. We need a guy who can get yards when called upon and especially a guy who can be a threat in the passing game. We obviously don't have that guy on our roster right now.

QBs aren't going to get any cheaper. If you're convinced that Allen is the guy you want under center for the next 10+ years -- and I think you should be -- then it's just going to be more expensive in the long run if we wait around.

I was over the KC game by the time I went to bed a few hours later. We were beaten by a better team on both sides of the ball. It sucks that we lost, but there was really nothing to agonize over. There was no single player who stood out as an obvious scapegoat (Kelly, Allen last year against Houston) and no single play that might have changed the outcome if it had gone the other way (Wide Right, Homerun Throwback). If we had played our A-game and everything had gone well for us, the final score would have been close but I'm not sure the outcome would have been. KC was just firing on absolutely every cylinder. I'm still probably saltier about the playoff game against Miami where Reed got ejected than I am about this one. Also, I'm older and wiser than I was during the SB era and I think I have a better sense of perspective now. This team exceeded my preseason expectations by a pretty significant margin, and they have a very bright future in front of them.

Patriots: Need a QB Dolphins: Need a QB Jets: Need a QB Bills: MVP-caliber QB already on the roster, only a matter of time until he's extended long-term Until one or more of those other three teams resolve their QB situation, the Bills will rightly be strongly favored to repeat as division champs. We'll talk when somebody trades for Watson or something. Until then . . .

One additional danger with the "Don't blow up the roster that got us here" mentality is that it often leads teams to re-sign "name" players who are past their expiration date to contracts that exceed their value, in the interest of keeping the band together for one more gig. That generally doesn't work.

Nobody's saying "blow up the roster and start over." It's the off-season, and I can guarantee McBeane has already identified a few areas where the roster is comparatively weak and where they can make some improvements. I mean, does anybody here think that we're in good shape at RB? McDermott obviously doesn't. Surely we can all agree that our pass rush and coverage against TEs wasn't up to standard. Those aren't problems that just showed up on Sunday night -- we've been talking about them all season.

Who's their QB? Who's ours? Yeah, not worried.

I would have thought that Sherman would be out of our price range, but admittedly I haven't paid much attention. Just speaking as a fan, I've loved Richard Sherman ever since he entered the league -- he would be a fun addition to the roster IMO. I know he's polarizing though.

We all get frustrated when Allen turns an 8 yard sack into a 20 yard sack, but nobody seems to be angry when Allen escapes from a tackler and runs for a first down or hits an open receiver deep. And he's done that over and over and over again during his brief three year career. I'm fine with just learning to live with the occasional negative play -- it comes with the territory along with all the sublime plays.

I think we have one pretty good LB, maybe two. I don't think either is really elite.

Man, it would be a shame if Al Riveron got fired.

Great write-up. I didn't realize Milano's projected price was so high -- I like the guy, but I agree that he's a hard pass at nearly $14M.

I'm really not worried at all about the offense. We need a RB, but those are easy to come by. Davis can replace Brown if it comes to that, we have Hodgins sitting on the bench which is kind of like an extra draft pick at this point, and presumably we'll add another WR or two in the off-season because they're like DBs that way. We should also continue to add competition to the OL, but we would do that anyway. If we return the exact same offense next year with the addition of a 2nd-round RB, that would be fine with me. The defense was hugely disappointing this season. They seemed to coming into form late in the year, and they won the Baltimore game for us, so it's not as if the cupboard is completely bare or anything, but they went from an elite unit last season to a middle-of-the-pack (at best) unit this year for no obvious reason. Pass rushers are expensive and hard to find, but you have to figure that one or two guys who can get into the backfield consistently would make a big difference here.

I'm fine with Singletary as a change-of-pace back. He didn't perform well this year at all, but he showed enough flashes last year that I'm fine with him having a role on this team. But that role can't be RB1 or RB1-B. This position needs an upgrade. The silver lining here is that it's blindingly obvious that our coaching staff is dissatisfied with the RB room, and it's not terribly difficult to find RBs in the draft and FA.

I'm very unhappy with Brown right now, but I'll admit I'm just salty about his playoff production. He's a good player and I appreciate the contributions he made to the team the past couple of years. We wouldn't have made the playoffs last year without him. That said, my sense is that he's expendable. Davis has probably already passed him on the depth chart -- actually I don't think there's any "probably" about it. We can draft somebody or bring in a free agent to maintain quality depth behind Diggs-Beasley-Davis. We're going to be in an unfamiliar situation of being forced to let some very good players walk who we would have been happy resign if the salary cap weren't an issue, and Brown is a really call compared to some of the other guys who have pay days on the horizon.