HappyDays

That was in his college scouting report but hasn't been true in the pros IMO.

I guess I can't 100% trust this guy anymore but good news if true, no Christmas game.

This is getting ugly:

No chance. McDermott would lose the locker room if he did that. Every player can see in practice that Cook moves at a different level from the RBs behind him. If McDermott put him in the doghouse because of a very common negotiation tactic, he loses his grip on the team.

Can't remember ever seeing a Bills CB move like this

Rumor I heard from someone that would know is Bengals @ Bills as the week 1 SNF game. Getting them week 1 in primetime in a rocking Highmark Stadium is the best case scenario since historically Cincy has struggled the first two weeks.

Well they're ultimately an entertainment business and that appearance earned them a lot of positive attention, which is a very profitable outcome for the organization. The rant to me also felt rehearsed. Like when Beane paused for a second and Jeremy White started stammering "uh, uh" and Beane interrupted him "let me finish" like he was waiting to say that. I'm not a conspiracy nut and I'm not saying I know for sure it was a stunt, but everything this regime has done on the public facing side has been very calculated from day one. So that's my theory.

I've gone back and forth on it but as of now this is where I'm at as well. My original thought was you let Cook walk so you can afford a true top 2 WR. But Beane clearly just isn't going to spend his money there. So Cook for the foreseeable future is easily our most explosive skill player. We aren't going to see deep passing TDs so without Cook our offense would have no easy button TDs on the menu, and it's just hard to run an offense with such a low margin for error. Cook's AAV will probably end up right around the combined cap hits of Ogunjobi and Tre White. No question I'd rather have Cook over those two, it's not even a debate in my mind. So I'm not sure paying him will actually negatively affect our team, it just means Beane will have to spend less money on defensive depth players which is a meaningless consequence to me.

Uh oh... Kincaid looks fat...

New regime coming in wants to clean out the stink from the last regime... I didn't expect it either but I get it. They have BTJ and Hunter to play outside so Gabe and his rehabbing knee are a redundancy on the roster.

He was in town to see Shane Gillis' show. It was unrelated to his release. I was told he was shocked to get this news today, didn't see it coming.

It won't even be that expensive. I wouldn't be surprised if a team throws a 7th at Jacksonville before he's officially released at 4PM today. The trading team would only be on the hook for $1.5M. If he doesn't get traded, it will probably cost around the same. He's still rehabbing a knee injury and teams mostly have their rosters set at this point.

My ranking assumes everyone is fully healthy: Shakir Palmer Samuel Knox Kincaid/Coleman Moore Shakir is easily #1. Palmer is easily #2. After that it becomes tighter. I put Samuel #3 because when healthy he has proven to be the most productive of the remaining players. It's possible he has just totally fallen off a cliff in which case he'd be near the bottom, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt for now. I'm surprised everyone is ranking Kincaid over Knox. Based solely on last year Knox was clearly the more reliable pass catcher. And I don't take Kincaid's knee injury as a good enough excuse for his lack of production. To my eyes he was drifting on routes, he wasn't adjusting to defensive coverage, and his hands were too unreliable. He has a higher ceiling than Knox but as of today Knox is the better player. I put Kincaid and Coleman together because I have them in the same bucket of young pass catcher who has been inconsistent but appears to have a higher ceiling than what they've shown to this point. I'd say I'm probably slightly more optimistic about Coleman at this point because he's younger and more raw, so more room to grow IMO. Moore I have last. I'm pretty down on him. He's entering year 5 and hasn't been able to stick anywhere. Bad QB play doesn't fully explain that career arc. I see him as just Shakir's and Samuel's backup. He'll play when injuries inevitably come up but he's been way too unreliable throughout his career to count on him for a full time role.

Thanks... fixed my post.

So basically Davis will almost certainly play for the vet minimum this year. Jacksonville owes him $11.5M guaranteed for 2025, but whatever his new team pays him Jacksonville will be able to recoup from him because of offset language in the contract. So unless some team is paying him $12.5M or more which is obviously not happening, he has no incentive to play for more than the vet minimum. He's making the same money in 2025 either way. This makes me slightly more willing to bring him in if we want to keep 6 WRs and use Moore as our punt returner. Slightly.

Hilarious and entirely predictable outcome for Jacksonville. As for the Bills, it seems like the team is invested in Moore at this point, they gave him a press conference which is usually a signal he's close to being a roster lock. So I don't see where Davis fits in. And frankly I wouldn't want his error-prone skillset back in this offense unless it was like his usage in 2020 when he had 3 legit WRs ahead of him on the depth chart and he had a very specific role.

One of the few trades I dislike for both sides. Pittsburgh's offseason makes no sense. They currently don't have a QB and didn't make a serious attempt to draft one. If they want to compete they need as much offensive talent as possible. If they don't want to compete, why did they also trade for Metcalf? Offseasons like this are why they get stuck in wildcard purgatory. For Dallas they still haven't paid their best player in Micah Parsons and now they're trading for a WR in the last season of his rookie deal? And adding another diva to the team in their head coach's first year when he should be establishing his culture? I mean who is the last WR to leave Mike Tomlin and work out elsewhere? And I don't think Pickens really gives their offense the skill set it needs which is explosion and YAC ability.

This makes me feel more confident in my theory that the whole thing was somewhat of a planned stunt. I don't think Beane goes off like that unless he gets the okay from Pegula. Wouldn't surprise me if WGR knew about it ahead of time too, free content for them for a full week in a slow part of the NFL offseason schedule.

I still contend that Kincaid needs to work on his mental game more than his physical game... We didn't draft him to physically dominate his coverage man or pancake defenders. We drafted him to use nuanced route running and understanding of leverage to make himself an available target for his QB. Kelce is more physical than Kincaid but the cerebral game is what makes Kelce possibly the GOAT. I hope Kincaid is watching film as much as he's strength training.

This is my worst fear, that people are going to start taking me seriously 😁 Good question. I'd put coaching first honestly, and I want to be more specific by saying that it's Andy Reid having McDermott's number that has been the biggest factor holding us back from a Super Bowl. KC's offense is regularly producing much better against us in the playoffs than they are throughout the regular season and in other playoff games. They've never punted more than twice against us. Our defensive talent and their offensive talent have changed but the outcome has always been the same. So I think McDermott takes the bulk of the responsibility. After that I'd go defensive talent. We haven't had a legit #1 CB play a full game against them since Tre White played in our first AFCCG. Our DL talent has always been middling. We've had injuries throughout the defense, and I don't think that fully explains the utter collapses we're seeing on that side of the ball but certainly it has been a contributing factor. And then lastly I'd put the offense which has regularly kept us in those games but has also failed to close the deal in the last two games when it had the ball last. So all that being said I do understand wanting to focus on the defense this offseason, especially since both the FA class and draft class were stronger on defense. I'm not blind to the fact that the defense has been a massive disappointment in each of our playoff losses. I just feel like I trust Allen to get the job done more than I trust McDermott so I wish we'd give more of our resources to him.

I think you have the cause/effect backwards. Part of the reason I think that is that McDermott's defensive scheme and philosophy is built around the idea that every time your opponent runs the ball it's a net positive for your defense. This has been a common criticism of his defense, that we too easily invite the run. So it would be weird to make that concept a staple of your defense, but then on the other side of the ball intentionally go run-heavy. I'm all for a balanced offense. But the team was forced to run that small ball style more than they really wanted to I am sure. No way McDermott wanted his offense to have 6 4th down conversion attempts in the AFCCG, and needing to convert at least 5 of them to even have a chance of winning the game, but that's what happened. The personnel dictated the game script and the game script dictated the outcome.

So I guess I don't necessarily care about total passing yards. I was just illustrating that although you said a lack of WR talent didn't impede us, the clear decline in volume passing stats and passing success rate is an indication that it in fact did impede us. And of course wins are what counts. Especially playoff wins, where the Bills have now fallen short two years in a row because no one other than Allen was able to make a play at the end. This past AFCCG Cook made a clutch play to score a TD on 4th down. We need more of that from the players around Allen because those moments more than season-long stats are what win championships. When we were leading by 1 with a chance to go up by 8, our offense stalled out on 4th down because we were forced to try and drag ourselves downfield a few yards at a time. On the final offensive drive Cooper slipped on a 3rd down WR screen that should have been a 1st down and more, and then Kincaid dropped his clutch moment on 4th down and the game was over. All of the pretty looking season-long stats meant exactly nothing when we needed someone to come through in those moments. It's funny you say wins are what count except to fantasy football people, but your whole argument is that our PPG means our WRs were good enough. My whole point is that what I'm talking about doesn't show up in any stats. It shows up in moments. Isn't it obvious? I'd have traded a 2nd and a 5th for DK Metcalf. His contract would have effectively replaced Diggs' contract which Beane had already been accounting for as part of the future salary cap before Diggs went scorched earth. That's the type of player this offense is missing, a true #1 that creates explosive plays downfield. And yeah that would have meant sacrificing a couple of our defensive signings and probably not extending Bernard. I'd have easily taken that trade off. But we'll find out if Beane's strategy was the right one.