HappyDays

I think he's mostly holding up well and seems to be taking on doubles. Hard to tell though becuase Walker keeps drawing my attention

Haven't seen a Bills DT look this dominant in a long long time. Yes I know it's just preseason and against backups, but still.

Every time I focus on Walker he is pushing the pocket. Did on that play too even though the pass was too quick for it to matter

It's hard not to stare at him, easy to find for sure. I can see him being great for us on 3rd downs this year. When he's using his raw power and upper body strength to penetrate he is tough to handle.

There's pretty much nothing on offense I'm interested in tonight. I just want to see the young DL show up

Nice work Bishop. We needed him to shake off last week and he has had himself a great game.

Walker really looks the part

Hardy is tonight's Codrington from last week, he is completely lost in coverage

Walker has looked good in run D tonight

Really nice release from Shavers there but he dropped it

I know there was a thought that Dorian Strong was a steal in the 6th but so far in preseason he's been brutal

Doesn't sound season ending, but more info needed:

Bosa, Hoecht, Sanders, Walker. That's where the improvement needs to come from and I expect it to. I think each of those players will be more impactful than their counterparts last year. If fans are skeptical Bosa will stay healthy, I get it. That's a genuine question mark and we'll just have to hope he doesn't miss any extended periods of time. Ditto for Milano staying healthy because we all know how much of an impact he makes when he's himself. The most obvious path to improvement from last year is the 3rd down defense. We ranked 30th giving up 44.5% of 3rd downs last year. I don't have specific stats on 3rd and medium/3rd and long but I would bet the discrepancy on those compared to the rest of the league would look even worse. To my eyes poor pass rush in those situations was a big problem. So we really just need our new collection of pass rushers to show up on those downs and get our opponent off the field. Even if the secondary is just as mediocre as it was last year, the DL impact will be the difference.

Yeah the reaction to that game has gone way overboard. I think Ben Johnson decided to actually do a little game planning, to make his offense look good and give his team some confidence. Not a bad tactic for a first year head coach. So he called plays that attacked the middle of the field where he knew our depth LBs couldn't hold up in coverage. Our coaches on the other hand did nothing of the sort. I remain optimistic that there will be some real changes made to the scheme and play calling this year, and I'm a believer in the investments we made on the DL. None of those changes are going to be apparent until September though. If it looks same old same old against Baltimore than we can start to panic.

So get the #1 seed. Get a whole week off to rest up and then likely avoid the Ravens or Chiefs in the divisional round. We've had our opportunities to get it but every year we have these multi-game slumps that kill our chances. This year especially we have our best chance in a while because Ravens and Chiefs both have harder schedules. I think 14-3 gets us the #1 seed this year. So go get it. If we don't and we lose a player in the wildcard game or a hard fought divisional game, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Damn this would be the 2nd year in a row they lost their 1st rounder to a knee injury, if it's as serious as it looked.

Whelp I probably should have added that one caveat...

I don't think Beane's miss rate is bad compared to the rest of the league, if anything I'd wager it's better than most because of the number of starting caliber players he's found in the mid and late rounds of the draft. His problem is that he hasn't drafted a truly great player yet, a game changer. That's where the other top GMs in the league have him beat one and all.

They'll bring the cart out for anything at practice, no point in risking it.

Hairston just needs to be a hit this year, we can't afford for him to struggle or be injured all year. And honestly I've been thinking that would need to be the case even before Tre's injury today. Obviously hoping for good news but it was always likely he would get hurt or not be able to perform. As much as the DL got all the attention last year, my take was that the secondary was the bigger problem. My concern is that if Hairston isn't ready the secondary hasn't improved at all. That will make it harder for the DL to have an impact. I loved Hairston as a prospect but he needs to get back out there soon so we can see where he's at. If he isn't ready and Tre's injury is bad then I would begrudgingly welcome Rasul Douglas back because he at least gives us a baseline.

Probably nothing but worth keeping an eye on:

Best case scenario early in the year is Sanders and Walker at least make an impact on 3rd downs. That alone would represent a huge improvement from last year. On the whole our defense last year was about average if you mix a few different metrics together. The one factor that really dragged the performance down was 3rd down conversion where we ranked 30th at 44.5%... And I'm sure we all remember the numerous 3rd downs where the QB was sitting back comfortable with plenty of time to find an open man. Sanders and Walker both have looked good when they've been able to pin their ears back and penetrate and get after the QB. So neither of them are going to blow up the stat sheet this year but I could see them having a sneaky big impact in that one critical area. Landon Jackson doesn't look like he'll contribute much if anything this year. He looks to be on the DeWayne Carter track of not dressing on gamedays and then you just hope he develops next offseason. Hairston's impact will entirely depend on how White performs. His problem will be that the staff trusts White and it's not like Hairston was seizing the job during training camp, so it would probably take some combination of White looking like a liability and Hairston quickly progressing in practice for him to get on the field in the back half of the season.