Logic

The who on the what now?

If anything, I hope MVS DOES sometimes take snaps at X, but not to get Coleman off the field. Rather, I would like to see MVS running the deeper routes and clearout stuff, and then Coleman playing move/big slot WR, where he can get a free release and can attack opposing defense's (much smaller) nickel corners.

Thanks for the post. I truly appreciate your perspective and your taking the time to try to instill some optimism in me. As to the things I bolded: 1.) I don't think ranking WR corps (on paper, which is all anyone can really do at this time of year) is a meaningless exercise. I think there is value in sizing up different areas of a team's roster and weighing them against other team's personnel, to see how your team may stack up against others or what kind of attention your GM is or isn't paying to certain areas of a roster at a given moment. I wonder if your hesitance to participate in this exercise is indicative of the fact that you, like me, would fail to be able to honestly rate them much higher than "bottom third". 2.) As HappyDays pointed out above, pretty much every Super Bowl participant going back multiple years has had a dominant #1 pass catcher. Sure, in the Chiefs' case, it's been the tight end. And yes, the Bills have a young one who looks like he COULD become elite. But he's not there yet, and building the roster around him as if he already is doesn't seem like the soundest strategy to me. Hope is not a plan. 3.) I will admit to adamantly voicing my displeasure with the way Beane has gone about building the WR corps this year. But if my disapproval has been "over the top", then I would argue that those defending the team have at times been just as over the top in their delivery. I think the offense's success this season will depend on a lot of "hoped for" things coming to fruition. We HOPE Shakir breaks out. We HOPE Samuel has a career best season. We HOPE Coleman hits the ground running. We HOPE Kincaid proves to be a Kelce level player. We HOPE Claypool or MVS or Hamler step up. We HOPE Brady proves to be a good OC now that he has the gig full time. IF all of those things come true, then we'll have a good offense. But hoping/expecting that many things to happen seems just as over the top as me fearing that they won't. If I have any anger at all, it's because I have the gnawing feeling that my favorite team is failing to optimally set its franchise QB up for success offensively, and that that failure is starting to become an ongoing pattern. 4.) While no DC "ignores" anyone in the NFL, I only see one guy on the Bills' roster who might command some special attention, and that's Kincaid. None of the Bills' WRs are guys that opposing DCs are circling in red pen or having extra meetings about. Again, I appreciate your response. I respect your position. I understand and accept that others are more optimistic about this plan working out than I am, and I understand and accept that my pessimism on the matter is a departure from my usual rosy outlook on things. I'm sticking to what my eyes and my gut tell me. I hope -- I really, truly, sincerely hope -- that I'm wrong and you're right. I will happily come back here at the end of the 2024 season if the Bills are a fantastic passing offense and my fears prove unfounded, and tell everyone how wrong wrong wrong I was. You can hold me to that. And I hope that I can hold you to the same if the inverse happens, and the Bills are toothless in the passing game.

I'm not gonna make a separate post on this topic, because everyone will get all up in arms and accuse me of making a LAMP, and it'll do more harm than good, but... I'm genuinely curious: If trying as hard as possible to be objective and unbiased, where would each fan on this message board rank our WR corps compared to the rest of the league? Maybe you could even give it two scores, one for where it appears to be now (on paper), and one for the potential of what you think it could become. But either way, I'd really love to know that answer. Cutting away all of the rest of the discussion, I'm just curious where everyone would rank our WR unit. I genuinely want to know.

Yeah, I get it, Mup. People aren't used to seeing ol' Logic be pessimistic and do anything other than toe the company line. One of the big reasons that I have so often appeared optimistic and had a rosy outlook is that I have more often than not agreed with the way Brandon Beane has built this team. I continue to be a fan of his, and I think he's a great GM. But it would be intellectually dishonest of me to not give voice to my displeasure when I think he's making missteps and not giving Josh Allen the best chance to succeed and, thus, not giving the Buffalo Bills the best chance to succeed. Time will tell if I'm right or wrong, but you can trust that I'm always going to be honest about the way I view things. And this offseason, for the first time in a long time, I feel disappointed in the way Beane has chosen to go about things. I feel less optimistic right now than I did at this time last season, and that's not a nice feeling. Cringe if you must. I shall continue to speak my truth.

I don't think that at all, nor did I state as much. What depresses me about this group is that -- in my opinion -- they installed two fairly unimpressive guys as presumptive WR1 and WR2 (I was not a fan of Coleman as a prospect and I think Curtis Samuel is just fine, but no better than fine), then proceeded to sign only WR4-WR9 types who DON'T have a chance of overtaking the top guys. Like...that's the problem in a nutshell to me. The depth of the group is fine, but there's not much quality to it, particularly at the top. To be honest, I actually think it would be a fairly high quality WR depth chart if a number one receiver was added to it. In other words, I think Coleman can be a good #2, Shakir a quality slot (which he'll be anyway), Samuel a great #4, etc. If it just had an alpha WR at the top, then I'd be fine with the rest of it. But it doesn't. It looks like a nice supporting cast for a #1 guy, but the Bills don't have a #1 guy. At the end of the day, the WR group just looks subpar to me. I've run out of different ways to explain why that is, but it continues to be my feeling. I'm normally the most optimistic, rose colored glasses wearing Bills fan you'll ever meet, but I don't like the way they've gone about the WR position this offseason. I think that anyone who is being fair and rational, if they're really being honest with themselves, would have to admit that this Bills WR group looks to be no better than, say, 25th in the league. I count about 5-7 teams that are similar or worse at WR, but that's it. Do you disagree? Do you think it looks any better than the 25th best group in the league? To me, having a bottom third WR group is simply unacceptable when you have Josh Allen in his prime.

You're right. They have no chance of overtaking such proven top-of-the-depth-chart stalwarts as Curtis Samuel and rookie Keon Coleman. Look, we're just gonna go round and round in circles on this thing, Alpha. I think the Bills have a bottom five in the league WR group. You don't. Let's just shake hands and growl at each other a little and call it a day.

Death, taxes, and football fans complaining about those new-fangled streaming doohickies that are RUINING THE SPORT I LOVE!!!

Also, for the love of God....Amazon has free trials. You get a free month, cancel before it expires, then use a new e-mail address to get another free trial. Wash, rinse, repeat as many times as you like. This doesn't have to be a war on Big Tech. Watch it or don't. Your cookie is in the mail.

Miami is typically a pretty good team in September. I predict a Dolphins win, followed by universal "Dolphins are gonna win the division!" proclamations by national analysts and cocky Dolphins fans, only to see the annual post-Halloween Dolphin collapse and another Bills division title.

You can get a free trial of Amazon Prime for zero United States dollars. Put it on your TV and everything. I mean...the NFL can still suck it anyway, but ya know...no need to miss the game, considering its cost of "free".

Always been a dropper. Lack of trustworthy hands is probably the biggest reason that a guy his size that runs a 4.37 and has played with Rodgers and Mahomes his whole career has never posted 700 yards receiving in a season.

The Chiefs signed Juju Smith-Schuster and Marquez Valdes Scantling (both of whom were reasonably coveted in that FA period), both of whom got $10million deals. The Bills' big offseason WR signing, for comparison, is making $8million per year. The Chiefs then drafted a wide receiver in the second round, just like the Bills did this year. Beyond that, you're mentioning guys like Hamler, Claypool, Hollins, and Shorter, which...case in point. Shakir is the only one I'll maybe grant you, and while I do like him, he hasn't proven to be anything better than "average to good" in the NFL so far, based on his production to date. Or you're bringing up James Cook and Ray Davis which, okay, sure, the Bills should hopefully be able to run the ball. Lovely. It doesn't change the fact that they're throwing a bunch of low quality noodles at the wall to see what sticks at the wide receiver position. As for the contention that the Bills offense will stay "pretty much where they were last season"...I guess we'll see. Personally, I doubt that happens. It didn't happen with the Chiefs when they went young and cheap, and they have a better quarterback and offensive playcaller than the Bills do.

Gosh I hope not, because he fell far enough that the Bills really wouldn't have had to trade up very far to get him. Beane claims they never tried. Guess we'll never know.

When your "biggest offseason additions" list contains John Parry and Marquez Valdes Scantling, it's probably going to be a "pour me another round, barkeep" kind of year

Not sure if this was posted yet, but it looks like most of the stuff that comprises the "up to" part of MVS's contract comes in the form of not-likely-to-be-earned incentives. It's likely that he'll carry a $1.5million cap hit.

At this point in the offseason and given where the Bills WR depth chart is/was....I like the signing of MVS. The WR corps is still not where I'd like it to be, I'd still rather they had taken a WR in the 3rd and spent the MVS money on a free agent DT (rather than the other way around), and I still feel they didn't do enough on offense this offseason. All of that being said, and with me having cried over spilt milk enough already...I think MVS will help this team. He has a skillset that this WR corps was lacking. As pointed out in a Tweet above, while he does struggle with drops at times, he also makes big catches in big moments. See: vs Bills, vs Ravens, vs 49ers in the playoffs this year. I'm just irritated because it has constantly felt like we're a step (or two) behind the Chiefs lately, and this just continues that trend. Two years ago, they decided to get cheaper and younger, shipped off a highly paid WR1, and said "we'll get by on scraps and young guys". They drafted a WR in round two, signed a mid-tier WR and some bargain bin guys in FA, and proceeded to have one of their worst offensive outputs of the Mahomes era. They then had to spend the next two offseasons signing and drafting MORE wide receivers because they realized that, even with Mahomes at QB and Reid at OC, they needed more offensive weaponry in the 2024 NFL. We're where they were two seasons ago. We're at the "we'll just get a pile of different matchup guys and trust the QB and OC to make it work!" part of the story arc. I predict that the offensive output will take just as much of a dip as theirs did, and that we, too, will spend the next two offseasons trying to dig out of it. Hopefully, our tight end and defense step up the way theirs did to allow us to win even though our offense is, predictably, sagging. It would just be nice to feel like we're setting the trends, or zigging when others are zagging. That we're learning from others' mistakes, blazing our own trail, and being the team that OTHER teams want to copy. Instead, it just feels like we're doing whatever the Chiefs are doing, but two seasons later. I hate it.

MVS has 1,500 more career receiving yards and 6 more TDs than Hollins in the same amount of seasons. MVS has also made a few big plays in the playoffs en route to KC Super Bowl runs, whereas Hollins has really never done anything notable on a big stage. I'll grant you that Claypool's most productive seasons were better than MVS's, but he's three years removed from those now, as his career has taken a STEEP decline, and he was a Bills signing away from playing in Canada. Cephus and Hamler have no argument. To be honest, though, the fact that we're sitting here arguing the comparative merits of MVS, Chase Claypool, and Quintez freaking Cephus is pretty emblematic of what kind of offseason it's been for the Bills in terms of getting Josh Allen any viable weaponry at receiver.

Beane already maxed out the company credit card paying for the last few Ferraris, so jalopies are about all he can afford right now. Please check back next offseason. In the meantime, the Bills will ride the jalopies as far as they'll go before breaking down (the Divisional round, if recent history holds).

Cephus's career best single season yardage is 349. KJ Hamler's is 381. MVS's is 687. MVS has posted 3,155 yards and 16 TDs in his career. Cephus and Hamler COMBINED have posted 1,188 yards and 7 TDs in their careers. So if we're talking production over potential, then yes, I'd say MVS is better than Cephus and Hamler. If you want to argue that those two guys have untapped potential, I won't argue with you, but based on their careers to date, MVS has absolutely been the superior player.

Nothing in Shakir's history shows that he can be a consistent and capable deep threat. Could he become one? Sure, but he's never been one in college or so far in the pros. There's more to downfield ability than a 40 time. Shakir's career yards per reception and aDOT at Boise State were not consistent with someone who is a reliable deep threat. Nothing he's shown in his time so far with the Bills indicates that much has changed in that regard. As for Samuel, again, he simply has not shown to be a reliable deep threat in his career. Can he do it now and again? Sure, but that's not his bread and butter. Again, there's more to consistent downfield ability than just a 40 time. Coleman is a rookie, so again he goes in the "MAYBE he can do it" pile, along with Hamler and Shakir. But in terms of guys who have PROVEN they can be consistent downfield threats at the NFL level? The Bills don't have any on the roster.

I wouldn't classify this as a deep ball, nor would I classify Khalil Shakir as a field stretcher or downfield threat. Curtis Samuel's strength is in RAC ability, too, not so much downfield stuff. And Coleman is an unproven rookie, so we don't know WHAT kind of downfield ability he might offer. As of this moment, I'd say we have to unproven POTENTIAL field stretchers: KJ Hamler and Keon Coleman. The former can't stay healthy, and the latter has never taken a snap in the NFL and can't run by corners on a go route.

He's better than Quintez Cephus, KJ Hamler, Mack Hollins, and probably Chase Claypool. His career production relative to theirs makes this indisputable. He also provides a downfield threat that the Bills currently lack. Given what it will likely cost to sign him, I'd be fine with this. It would materially improve and diversify the Bills' WR corps. Not as much as we'd all like, of course, but the salary cap is the salary cap.

Between his injury, Kincaid being integrated into the offense, and the change in OCs, I'm willing to give Knox the benefit of the doubt a bit, especially after he had put up back to back 500+ yard seasons. His average receiving yardage over his five year career, including last year, is 393 yards per season. If you take out last season, which seemed like a bit of an anomaly, you get 445 yards per season. So split the difference between those and you get about 420 yards. I think that, say, 300-400 yards and 5 TDs as the TE2 would be a reasonable expectation, and one that would certainly help the offense. Yes, Kincaid will eat into his targets and production, but then again, a lot of targets were vacated by Diggs and Davis, so it probably evens out. I will leave it for other people to debate whether 300-400 yards and 5 TDs, quality blocking, and valuable depth are worth the money Knox is getting paid. I'm not really interested in that discussion. It's not my money, the guy already took a paycut, and the Bills are allocating relatively little to the position overall in 2024.

With the dearth of quality receivers on this roster, I sure hope the answer to the question of "what will happen with Knox?" is "he'll play a lot and be a productive target for Josh Allen". To quote the inimitable Brandon Beane: "Let's don't forget we can throw it to tight ends and running backs, too".