HappyDays

My honest take on this is that you shouldn't be relying on washed up vets to force themselves onto your team, and washed up vets shouldn't act like they can skirt the rules. We claimed him, he decided he didn't want to play anymore, so be it. We tried to upgrade the backup to the backup and it didn't work out. I really don't get all the drama over it. Ja'Marcus Ingram and Dane Jackson are the same player as far as I'm concerned. I don't want to see either of them getting real snaps for this team. I wish Slay had worked out but it has zero real impact on our season. And no I wouldn't release him just to let him go to Philly where he might start against us in two weeks. He made his choice and that's that. Slay's contract made it easy, we would have been on the hook for only $300K. Every veteran is different. Brandin Cooks for example would have cost I think at least a couple million this year and the team that claimed him would have absorbed his salary and cap hit for 2026 too. Adam Thielen was just claimed by Pittsburgh. Would that have been his first choice? Probably not but that's the rule.

I think it's gotten to an Andy Reid in Philadelphia level where it is best for both sides to part ways. I agree Tomlin will get a job elsewhere right away - my bet is on the Giants who have some young talent and need someone to steer the ship more than they need someone to blow it all up. Pittsburgh has just gotten too stale and they need a fresh direction to energize the locker room and the fanbase. They're stuck in a weird sort of purgatory where Tomlin is too good a coach to have a flat out bad season which is probably what they need to reset the talent in the organization. New England fired the GOAT, had one awful year, and now look to be set up for the next decade. It didn't mean Belichick couldn't coach anymore. It was just time to move onto the next chapter.

This is a whole lot of drama over a guy that we were trying to bring here as our CB4. He wasn't going to get a chance to "leave everything on the field" because he was barely going to play. He was replacing Ingram who has been a mainstay on the inactive list. What a waste of media attention this whole saga has been.

Since losing Hoecht and Oliver it actually has been close to the bottom of the league: Without Bosa we don't have a prayer of getting consistent pass rush, unfortunately. Might be without Epenesa too which puts Shaq Lawson or Morgan Fox in line to play a significant role. Bad week for this to happen. We'll have to beat Cincy by sustaining drives on offense and blitzing a lot while maintaining coverage on the back end. Tough needle to thread but their defense is so bad I think our offense can out pace them. Cook should have 30 touches in this game.

Wow I really did not expect Ingram to get claimed. I guess Kamari Lassiter is injured so they need the depth? Oh well. Ingram is a marginal NFL player, I'm not losing sleep over it.

We actually don't. If we win out we just need New England to lose to Miami or NY. I'll be rooting for them against the Ravens in fact. We want Baltimore out of the playoffs.

Ingram was definitely going to make it through waivers and back onto our PS. So yeah I'm guessing we'll just re-sign him to the active roster. No harm no foul.

Why are people thinking Ingram will be claimed? He's a PS caliber CB that we keep around because he's been in our system for a few years. Whenever he actually gets on the field he looks lost.

Another mystery injury that pops up out of nowhere and likely keeps an important player out of an important game.

I must be the only Bills fan that doesn't care if it's New England who wins it. If it isn't us, makes no difference to me. I don't think New England is talented enough to win it all but if they do so be it. If nothing else it would shine a light on some of the issues that have gone on in our organization and maybe increase the pressure.

Maybe, but his injuries the past couple years have been non-contact. I don't think that's a size issue. The knee injury that popped up on the report yesterday must have happened in practice where there isn't any real contact. There have been constant soft tissue injuries popping up with this team all year long, and really for the past few years. I don't want to automatically blame the training staff, it could just be bad luck, but the problem has been so persistent and happening to so many different players that it makes you wonder if some part of our conditioning process is broken. Things like Josh Palmer randomly popping up as a DNP out of nowhere and McDermott saying "it doesn't look good" in his last presser, that kind of thing doesn't seem to happen to other teams, certainly not with the frequency it happens here. I'm at a loss.

This is the one. It's not as crazy as it sounds either. If we cut Samuel and Knox, and restructure Allen and Brown, that alone gives us about $50M in cap space to work with next year and that's just doing the bare minimum cap manipulation. You would definitely want to make Pittsburgh keep some of the salary as part of the trade if at all possible but either way we can fit him or any other available WR of our choosing into the cap next year.

Bills 34 Bengals 27 I've been absolutely terrible predicting our games this year. Even when I get the result right I've been way off on the score. I've given up on trying to guess what version of the Bills will show up each week. For this game I think the Bengals defense really is just that bad, worse even than the Bucs defense that we dominated. I expect Cook to have a field day and the passing offense to suddenly look functional for the first time in weeks. On defense I don't know what to expect but Burrow looks a bit rusty and we don't have to worry about their run game too much so I think we can stop the bleeding at least. Ultimately I expect our offense to sustain drives better than the Bengals can in our house in cold weather.

I'm getting a different result with the NYT playoff simulator through the Athletic. If we beat Browns and Jets and lose the other 3 games, they have us 75% to make the playoffs. Add any other win and it shows >99%. So to guarantee ourselves a spot we need to handle our business against the two clearly inferior opponents left on our schedule, and beat 1 of Bengals, Pats, or Eagles. Ideally we'll beat 2 of them and then can rest starters against the Jets.

Yeah that's pretty much what it comes down to. The NFL is too big for Ingram. Slay may be way past his prime but he's an improvement. Nothing to complain about with this move. He costs $350K against our cap and upgrades the depth, even if only slightly.

I saw a video of Chris Simms breaking down our run offense in this game. He briefly touched on this INT saying that Davis screwed Allen over by not crossing the CB's face. I'm not saying that Simms is automatically correct, or that Kurt Warner is, or least of all that I am. I inherently trust @HoofHearted more than anybody on this board with these questions. I'm just saying that's what it looked like Allen's thought process was. Gabe throttles down a bit and only accelerates back into his route once he realizes where the ball is headed. That brief slow down affected the outcome. I could be convinced Allen shouldn't have thrown this ball in any case because Echols' leverage muddies the read, but I do believe the ball was thrown where Davis would have been if he had continued the pace of his route and that a pass breakup would have been the worst case scenario.

Do you think Davis needed to cross the face of the slot there or did Josh misplace the throw? My thought watching it live was Josh expected Davis to continue running and the end result is we probably end up in 4th and 2.

No I'm fine with the horizontal passes to Shakir. They haven't been successful the past couple games but I wouldn't give up on them. I mean literally forward passes. Drops, INTs, fumbles, inability to get both feet in - those have been the outcome of way too many targets in Shakir's direction this year. We have to give up on the idea that he is a legit slot WR. He's a gadget player who's playing hurt so his overall role just needs to be reduced. I'd give TEs and RBs the majority of our targets from now on. Palmer if he can ever get healthy should get the most targets outside and even those targets should be limited, and maybe Cooks can give us something when he's been fully implemented. Anything else in our passing offense should be reduced as much as possible.

One bonus I just thought of to Houston winning - we ideally want to be the 6 seed if we're assuming Baltimore wins the AFCN. For that to happen we ideally want Houston tying or beating our record. That means we travel probably to Indy or maybe Jacksonville in the wildcard round. That's a preferable outcome to traveling to Baltimore IMO.

Yeah I think Cook still is a bit underrated by Bills fans. The blocking is great but his vision and footwork elevates the blocking more than the other way around IMO. They put a lot of trust in him to make the blocks right and he just about always delivers. He's done a really good job of picking up dirty yards too when nothing else is available which is why his rate of 0 or negative yard runs is so low. Compare that to Ray Davis who has a lot more negative runs on his resume.

Trading up for Worthy isn't working out well for them. He's on pace for 600 yards and has 1 TD. That's not a trade up in the 1st round type of outcome at all. Chiefs fans are annoyed with him and his role in the offense.

Pats have to lose to Dolphins or Jets for it to matter. If they beat both, even if they lose to us and the Ravens they end 13-4. If we win out we also end 13-4 and they win the tiebreaker for division record. Our slimmest of hopes is that the Dolphins upset them in week 18 and that we win out. I've given up on the division. It is what it is. Root for the Steelers to win the AFCN and the Chiefs to miss the playoffs. That gives us an incredibly easy road schedule all the way to the Super Bowl. Something like Pittsburgh, Jacksonville, Denver. I don't care if we play all of those games in Timbuktu, I like our chances.

I'm already done with Davis to be honest. Dropped a TD against Tampa, failed to get both feet inbounds at the end against Houston on a play that might have won us the game, had his typical route miscommunication with Allen leading to an INT against Pittsburgh. I'm so over it. Targets in his direction are 50/50 whether they'll be a big play or a complete disaster. It's actually starting to lean more 40/60. We worked so hard to remove Davis' brand of chaos from the game script only to welcome it back because we put ourselves in a corner. I'm good with Brandin Cooks taking his job permanently. Four things I immediately want to see less of in this offense, in this order: 1) Passes to Elijah Moore - one down, three to go 2) Passes to Gabe Davis 3) Passes to Knox 4) Forward passes to Shakir By and large these plays have been black holes in our offense all year long.

Kincaid is definitely our most important pass catcher. He's the only one that Allen inherently trusts, which is a big step forward from last year when the two were frequently not on the same page. It is weird though that we're calling him a key player when he was only in on 41.5% of snaps prior to injury. But he's been ridiculously efficient with a 155.6 passer rating when targeted. He's mostly useless in the run game because there are just better blockers than him on the roster, but our pass game is almost non-functional when he isn't on the field.

I think the point is that our offense is built to play like it did against Pittsburgh, not like it did against Houston. Of course I still question what will happen if/when we get into a playoff matchup where the opponent shuts down the run and gets a lead on us which forces us to pass. But the way our team is built we need to live with pounding the run and throwing primarily to TEs and RBs until absolutely necessary. Our best pass play right now is PA shot where we check it down to the RB or a leaking TE. So everything needs to build off of the run game. It is not an ideal offense by any means but it is our best path forward.