BullBuchanan

We've downgraded at both Center and left Guard as of now, if camp reports about McGovern's struggles are to be believed. I wasn't at all opposed from moving on from Morse, but the lack of planning there was ridiculous. As for WR, We lost our top 2 receivers from last year and replaced them with our #3 and a rookie. Those 2 WRs + Shahkir accounted for 2500 yards and 17 touchdowns. Shakir's best year so far is 600 yards and 2 TDs nad Samuel is 850 and 5 TDs. Let's say Shakir hits 1000 yards and Samuel bests his career. You're still looking for a 10 TD improvement. That is massive. To date JA has not only been an elite QB for us, but he's been our best skill position player with 15 rushing touchdowns last year alone. He doesn't have much room to increase that number (which is far above his average), so if that comes down at all, those scores will have to be absorbed somewhere else. Who is going to do that? The rookie? Mack Hollins? Maybe Dalton Kincaid adds 4 - you're still down 6. This is of course forgetting that last years team wasn't anywhere near the top 4 teams. We don't just need to hit last year's level, we need to surpass it. I love what I've seen out of Shakir so far, but if you want to act like he's going to combine with Samuel for 2000 yards and 20TDs, you might as well just write these posts in crayon. my prediction: Shakir 850/6 Samuel 650/5 Kincaid 950/5 Allen returns to the mean with 9 rushing TDs Bills win 10-11 games thanks largely to divisional dominance and my prediction for a soft NFC west outside of the 49ers. They falter again in January and don't make it past the divisional round as they look outclassed against the Texans or Chiefs.

You have like 20 of these copium threads every year and your "predictions" never come to fruition. Probably because they aren't based in reality. Both Kincaid and Shakir should take a step forward this year, but even with a very significant one, we'll still have far, far less talent on offense than we did last season.

That's pretty extreme. I'm very down on the Bills this year, but I Think it'll be nearly impossible for them to get less than 9 wins. I think you can write down 10 wins based on our schedule without worrying too much: AZ,MIA,JAX,NYJ,TEN,SEA,MIA,IND, NE, NE. The Rams should be a win too, so even if they lose one of those that they should win, like MIA, JAX or IND, they'll still hit 10. We should absolutely sweep NE, history says we sweep MIA, and we should split with the Jets. That's 5 and SEA, TEN, AZ are dumpster fires which brings us to 8. The Rams are long in the tooth and lost their biggest weapon, while Jacksonville chronically underachieves.

My interest is also down, and part of that is expectations. For the first time since I was old enough to crawl I haven't watched any of the Bills pre-season games, because I feel like there's nothing I really need to see. I'm not even pumped about the regular season, because for us, it's meaningless. Our season starts in January, and unfortunately I haven't seen the team do anything to address our quick ends to "our season" from the last few years. Despite me being extremely bearish on our WR room, our pass rushers and defensive playmakers in general, I fully expect the Bills to be one of the top 7 teams in the AFC. I really don't care at all if they're #1 Seed or #7. If it has that much bearing on their post-season success, that's another problem. I'm not sure It's debatable that this is our weakest roster since at least 2018, and it may be worse because there is so very little elite talent on this squad.

Some might argue it "quietly" looks better.

I actually like Sam Howell a lot, but as a starting quarterback, he offers you basically the same thing that QBs 20-64 do. Any of them can win a game on a given day, but you never know what day that will be. Through my life I've seen runs put together by guys like Bruce Gradkowski, Shane Matthews, Case Keenum, Colt McCoy, and even Frank Reich. And then the very next time they played they were so awful it looked like they had no business in the league. What makes backups backups, is that you never know which version you're going to get. Maybe, if we need him, we'll get the Trubisky who scored 6 TDs to 0 ints for a 154.8 passer rating, or maybe we'll get the guy who played in Pittsburgh last year. There's no way to know and there's probably 25 or more teams in the league that have the same problem.

You just described every backup QB and 10-12 starting QBs.

This is an every year thing. The NFL doesn't have 32 capable QBs, let alone enough for us to have two. the only time that happens is when you have a vet and a rookie. Trubisky is within margin of error of most of the backups int he league. He may be "terrible", but so is everyone else. Would having Sam Howell, Easton Stick, Desmond Ridder, Josh Johnson, Jarret Stidham be meaningfully better? If our team thought it was a priority to get someone better than Mitch, they should have drafted one. This is what's out there. Take your pick.

Milano is my favorite player on the team but he's been constantly injured throughout his career and now has back to back season ending injuries at age 30. He should strongly consider retiring at this point. Even if he doesn't, we may never see the old Milano back again. It's really hard to come back from things like this in your 30s.

Well, what now?

Pretty terrible. not enough contrast. if they added some white it would look a hell of a lot better. If they were going to do a scheme like this, I'd take inspiration from the Falcons and the Bengals Black and Whites. Both classy looks

Douglas played at an elite level last year and we want to change his position? I'd rather discuss moving Ingram who is a fringe NFL player at CB.

Belichick, without question. The greatest football mind of all time.

In the modern NFL, most QBs get paid the same if they're seen as a franchise guy. They're all within the top 5-7 contracts whenever theyre up for a new one.

That list makes NFL's "next gen stats" seem very sus. When you have players with historic seasons like Hill and Nakua down in the 20s, Amon Ra, Adams, Cooper and in the 40s, and Deebo, Diggs, Waddle in the 60s, it doesn't pass the smell test.

They didn't get "burned" at all with Diggs. With him on the roster JA put together his best season ever as a pro, and diggs was in the top 5 in the league 3 of his years and top 12 int he 4th.

Absolutely at home. I find it incredibly difficult, if not impossible to track what's going on live as well as I can on a TV. Plus, without commentary the game just carries a less dramatic feel. That said,t here's no replacement for an at the stadium, game day experience, but I prefer to go to games I don't care about, like pre-season games, or those of other teams. I'd never go to a Bills playoff game or Super Bowl should they make it.

And neither do I, which is I specifically mentioned that That's the game where after he did that, the seahawks promptly marched down to the NE 1 and were a Marshawn Lynch handoff away from being SB Champs, right? Do you have any other of these examples that disprove your own point? It'll save me a lot of time having to pull up data to support my argument.

The regular season is already becoming meaningless with the changes made to the game over the last 10 years. It's all just about trying to stay healthy and figure out the best plan for the tournament.

No, you don't take a touchdown "every time". The great ones understand that. You've been wrong since it happened and you keep dying on that hill wrong every time you repeat it. Under that scenario you score a touchdown and Mahomes marches the field and does the same and you incorrectly blame the defense. Football is about more than scoring points as fast as possible, as Peyton Manning learned all too well. It's about managing the game, which Brady knew from the get-go, Mahomes learned very early on, and Manning and Elway eventually learned. As long as you and josh keep thinking "hey, I left the field with the lead", we'll keep getting sent home in the playoffs while others collect hardware.

Lol at passing stats comparisons from 50 years ago. When Fouts retired he was 2nd all-time in passing. Allen is currently 97th and 78th in passing TDs. Of course he has a great chance to finish in the top 10, but I never said he wouldn't be a Hall of Famer at the end of his career, just that he definitely isn't one if he never plays another snap.

They play in a suddenly tough division and have a tough schedule. I think they'll be better than their record, but If they get more than 2 wins, it'll be because McCarthy is willing it.

The problem is Josh is not performing optimally under his current program. He's plateaued over the last 3 seasons and is further from a Super Bowl today than he was then. Unless he gets extremely lucky where both Mahomes and Burrow are out in the same year, he's unlikely to win a Super Bowl with his current level of play - especially as he's getting older and his physical gifts start to decline. 1) My own job performance is far from optimal. I'm currently quiet quitting or "resting and vesting". However, I have performed optimally in the past, but it took 16-18 hours a day of dedication to reach that level. You can't do that forever, which is why it's important to capitalize on the prime years of your mid to late twenties when you have the combination of skills/experience and stamina to make massive strides in short windows. Even these things considered, I would say I'm within the top 5% of my profession and would have been closer to the top 1% when performing optimally. 2)Yes, salary would have a massive impact, but so would prestige and the possibility of accolades. I'm not in a position any longer to become "the face of the franchise" but that is a massive motivator to a lot of people. Some folks chase MVPs, others chase 30 under 30, Nobel Prizes, Industry awards, magazine covers etc. 3) Yes. I consider myself a coach, rather than a "boss". I'm ultimately responsible for an outcome, so I will guide people on how we get to that outcome, but I take their perspectives into account and generally let them try to manage their own processes for how they get there. While we're in the process of building trust, I'll keep tabs on the process and direct if I see issues, again, letting them find their own way unless asked directly. I praise privately and publicly processes that are geared towards finding desirable outcomes, whether or not they do, as we can't control the result of a process, only the planning, execution and analysis of the process itself. If you did everything right, but something still fails due to things outside your control (and you anticipated the ramifications of potential events outside your control), then all you can do is try again. Most of the time though, this doesn't happen. There are rarely events that cannot be planned for, it's just we choose to deprioritize extremely unlikely ones that would take enormous time and expense to mitigate, so we implicitly (or sometimes even explicitly) accept the risk. 4) Yes. I think there are several areas that jump out to me where Allen can improve his game that give his team a significantly enhanced opportunity to win. The most important one is that he needs to learn how to be a game manager 90% of the time, because that's what is takes to win consistently in the NFL. We all know he's one of the best football heroes to ever strap on a pair of cleats, but he's far from one of the best Quarterbacks, because he doesn't manage the game. Guys like Brady, later career Elway, mid-later career Peyton Manning, and Mahomes after his first couple years, figured out that it's easier to win playing boring football, than exciting football, though it's a massive edge to have that in your back pocket if you need it. Specifically to Allen, he needs to not only be less aggressive with his throws when the situation doesn't call for it, he needs to make smarter reads. Those reads not only need to factor in the risk of a bad immediate result, such as an interception, but the reverse implied odds of what happens even if he's successful. Most times when we've blamed a defensive collapse for losing or nearly losing a game, Josh Allen had an opportunity to be the last one to touch the ball. Instead he chooses aggressive plays too often that result in scores or turnovers. When he scores as soon as possible, he then gives his opponent an opportunity to do the same. This happens not just at the end of games, but at the end of halves. While 13 seconds was definitely not his fault, an earlier example in that game had him giving KC the ball back with nearly 40 seconds left in the half, during which Mahomes promptly drove the field and put his team in position for a FG (that was missed). In the game against the Giants last year it's 2:30 left in the first half on 1st down and instead of throwing to a wide open Murray underneath, he chooses Knox with three defenders between him and the ball, which results in a turnover. Against KC in the playoffs, with 1:50 left in the game on 2nd and 9, he locks into Shakir in the end zone instead of a wide open Diggs on the left side of the field, and he gets bumped into by Dawkins/Chris Jones and drills in the dirt. Then on 3rd and 9, he locks onto the deep threat in the endzone instead of seeing a wide open Shakir to the other side that would have given him, at worst, a 4th and 1 and a chance to muscle for a 1st with the downside being an easier FG. Instead he has to throw it away, Bass misses and we blame him for the loss. Of course, we forget that even had he completed the TD to Shakir or Bass made the FG, we'd be giving Mahomes 1:42 left to drive the field, which he statistically was more likely to do than not. These aren't isolated examples. They happen all the time, have happened his entire career, and aren't just limited to scoring too quickly or throwing risky balls. It also involves not locking into reads, seeing the potential for an open underneath guy with YAC opportunity instead of a flatfooted perimeter WR, building momentum to keep the defense on their toes and tired, and there's more, but that should be enough. I'm fully prepared for this to be met with a "nuh-uh" or for others to rathole on some minutiae here, but hopefully this shares some of my perspective on where I think he needs to get better if he wants a realistic chance at multiple Lombardi's. I'm rooting for the kid, and I always have been even if I didn't like the draft pick when it happened. I want him to succeed. I just hope I don't want it more than he does.

Which team is that? The Bills have been my #1 team for nearly 40 years. Just because I give you hard truths you don't like doesn't make it trolling sweetie.

1) I'm not over caring what he does in the offseason, because he isn't getting the job done. If you fail every single year and you have an extra 5-6 months to improve your game and you have an extra 4-6 hours a day, you should be putting in the work if this is really the reason you're alive. If it's just a job and you're punching a clock, of course you don't do that, but those folks aren't going for greatest X of the year awards. We can talk all day about how he's second only to Mahomes, but Mahomes is the guy who's been to 6 straight AFCCG, 4 Super Bowls with 3 wins, has 2 MVP awards, 2 SB MVP Awards, and a OPOY award. Allen meanwhile has one AFCCG appearance on his resume and a trophy cabinet with a bunch of division championship pennant flags hanging off it. Personally, i think Allen is more than content to collect his half a billion dollars to give 70-80% in the offseason and 100% on Sundays. 2) Mahomes in the greatest in the world and at minimum the 2nd best player of all-time. He's doing everything he needs to do to hit that level, so if he wants to eat Wendy's with Andy and do commercials, that's his prerogative. If Mahomes retired today, he'd be a unanimous 1st ballot Hall of Famer. If Josh Allen retired today, he'd never see the Hall of Fame unless he bought a ticket. Maybe he could carpool with Andrew Luck.