HappyDays

This is literally the main purpose of the forum...

This is the earliest gameday thread I've ever seen.

I'm saying the exact opposite. I'm saying that scouting the player is the only thing that matters. Pointing to recently highly drafted TEs is not scouting Kincaid. Without context most historical draft data is totally meaningless. Like, why do you think Trey McBride's stats have any bearing at all on what Kincaid will do?

Hopefully the Bills social media team posts this video.

Has a player ever gotten a press conference this late in the offseason and not made the team? 🤔

Three things I'm looking for from Josh Allen in this game: 1) Stiff arm at least one LB 2) Hurdle at least one DB 3) Get in a defensive lineman's face after plowing through him head first for a 1 yard gain on 3rd and 9 Football is back!

I feel very good about our interior. McGovern, Morse, Torrence, Bates, Edwards; you could take multiple versions of that group and turn it into at least a solid starting interior. If any one of those players gets injured we can manage. Tackle is still the big question mark. I weirdly feel more optimistic about Brown than Dawkins right now but hopefully Dawkins has finally gotten himself into shape after a full training camp. More concerning than the starters is the depth. If Brown or Dawkins goes down for more than just a few snaps, which is not a particularly improbable scenario, we are in deep trouble. I don't expect anyone on the OL to set the world on fire, I just want solid starters at each position for the whole season. That would be at least a 40% upgrade on what we had last year.

No. A player with Kincaid's exact skill set, background, etc. has NEVER been drafted. I don't mean that he's a generational talent, I mean every player's unique traits are ultimately going to define them. Player comps are fun but they don't actually mean anything. You're throwing out names like Ebron and Hockenson and Pitts and I'm telling you that none of those players' careers mean anything to what Kincaid will do. Every single player that ends up successful in the NFL is an outlier. Almost every player that ends up successful you could point to some aspect of their profile that had never ended up successful before. In this case you're using a broad brush of "1st round TEs" which has an extremely limited sample size to go off of. Nonsense. Cole Beasley was on the field for 73% of offensive snaps in 2020 and 66% in 2021. He wasn't asked to block. We're a high volume passing offense. The best pass catchers are going to be on the field most of the time. I'm not predicting he actually gets 70% of the snaps by the way, they are going to make sure he is given ramp up time to acclimate to the pros. But his liabilities as a blocker will not keep him off the field. That scouting report on Kelce is not an accurate depiction of the player he became. The Chiefs rarely use him as a run blocker, he has become quite explosive, and he comes out of his breaks as well as any TE I've ever seen. When people compare Kincaid to Kelce, they're referring to Kelce's current skill set and role in the Chiefs offense. Obviously expecting Kincaid to become the GOAT TE at any point in his career, let alone as a rookie, is not realistic. But there are some comparative traits: -Elite hands -Good breaks out of his route -RAC ability -Instincts to work open in zone coverage and make himself available for his QB You seem to think that when people compare him to Kelce they're predicting he will have the same type of career. That isn't it at all. Ertz is another fair example, although personally I see more RAC ability from Kincaid than I ever saw from Ertz. Teams had concerns about the back injury he suffered in college.

The truth is I don't care about other TEs that have been drafted. Their success or failure has nothing to do with Kincaid. It's no different than when you tried to claim earlier in the thread that because 12 personnel league-wide is not very common, that means we shouldn't expect it to be common in our offense. None of that data matters at all. Before Josh Allen there were no <60% completion QBs from the Mountain West that ended up being successful. Picking out data from entirely different players in entirely different circumstances tells us nothing about the specific player in question. It's telling that not once have you actually used any evaluation of Kincaid himself to downplay your expectations about him, just data from other teams and other players. Everything we've heard is that Kincaid is constantly with the 1st team offense, he's separating, he's making himself available to the QB, he's finding soft spots in zone, he's catching everything. Plus he played in a pro style multiple TE sets offense at Utah and was an older prospect which means his development track is already ahead of schedule. You're throwing out all of that evidence because of a completely different player drafted by the Lions nearly a decade ago? That's poor analysis. One factor I think you are severely underestimating is Kincaid's cerebral abilities. That is what makes Kelce great, as much or more than his physical skills IMO. Kincaid on his college tape and apparently throughout training camp shows a knack for working himself open in zone coverage. I think that gives him a huge edge as a player beyond what other former prospects may have offered.

Shorter needs to prove himself on special teams to make the roster. I watched his special teams snaps against the Colts and came away unimpressed. Personally if Shakir continues to have issues catching the ball and separating I would trade him for whatever I could get right before final cut downs. I don't think the Bills will actually do that though.

No we're not. We're trying to tell you he will be a significant contributor in his rookie season. You'd have to ignore pretty much everything we've heard about him coming out of the draft and throughout training camp to think otherwise. Knox and Kincaid could not be more different as players. Now you're just saying random crap. I know your desire was for us to draft a 3rd round LB in the 1st round, but don't let your pre-draft feelings about Kincaid color your opinions. We have a lot of new information since he was drafted. Whatever expectations you had it's time to modify them.

Couple updates from Matt Parrino: Could we be so lucky as to have unlocked Isabella's potential in his 5th season? I'm still leaning towards it being a mirage until proven otherwise but there's at least a chance the hype is for real.

Andy Isabella 📈

He wasn't able to separate against the Colts backups. I also went back and watched his special teams snaps, to me he looks lumbering as a gunner and not especially competitive. Special teams was his best path to the roster IMO. The only reason his roster spot is still hanging on by a thread is because he was a 5th round pick this year. But I think this year even that won't matter as much as it did in previous years. At that point in the draft Beane was trading down as much as possible, it appeared to me that his draftable grade board was already wiped out by the time they took Shorter. There's a prevailing belief on this board that later day three picks are going to get a lot of time to prove themselves. The reality is that the depth of this roster is about as competitive as it gets, so you either show something to build on or you're gone.

"Up to" leaves a lot of room for the real number, but anything over the vet minimum is an overpay IMO. This feels like a classic post-Brady Patriots move which looks stupid on paper and ultimately reveals itself to be stupid in reality.

I'll be looking for 5 major things: 1) I want Torrence getting all the reps with the 1s. I don't need a faux competition where Bates gets reps because it's "his turn." We already know who Bates is as a player. Give Torrence a chance to prove he can capably start for this offense. If he fails the test no big deal, go back to Bates. 2) I'll be keeping an eye on Van Demark and Gouraige with the 2s/3s. I liked what I saw out of both of them against the Colts. Let's see if it's for real. 3) On Dorian Williams, I'll be watching how he does shedding blocks and filling run gaps. He struggled with that against the Colts. Until he can capably perform those tasks, he is not a realistic option at MLB. A little progression in those areas from last week is all I'd like to see. 4) My hunch is Isabella's performance against the Colts is fool's gold but I'd like to see him be rewarded with more playing time at least. He impressed me more than Shakir. I would even give him a couple reps with the 1s, let it be known that the competition for starting slot receiver is still wide open given Shakir's inconsistency there. 5) Epenesa - show up on the stat sheet this time. Basham - prove that he can build on last week's strong performance. Ford - we've heard nothing about him at camp and he was behind Settle on the depth chart, it's time for him to show the kind of impact we paid him for. We can't afford another free agent dud on the defensive line.

That's why Kincaid was mostly unnoticeable in this game. The coaching staff intentionally gave him assignments that they know he is weak at. They already know what he can do as a pass catcher, they are just fine tuning the rest of his game. On the two plays shown above he didn't exactly dominate his man but he did enough to keep them out of the way. For a player that will almost exclusively be a slot receiver that is good enough IMO.

Just to put this on the record... those catches were not "spectacular." They were good catches and good plays but ordinary at the NFL level. If he hadn't made one of those catches it would still have been considered a drop, they did not require a superhuman effort. I think Shakir's tiny arms make some ordinary catches LOOK spectacular.

Bills had a light practice today.

The other interpretation of this is that McDermott doesn't want to praise a rookie too much, to make sure he keeps working for it. He has sounded similarly guarded when talking about Kincaid. "He's done some nice things but still a long way to go." It's generic coach speak, I wouldn't read anything into it.