BullBuchanan

Josh initiates most contact outside of the pocket. As long as he doesn't take an illegal hit, I'm really not worried about him getting significantly injured running the ball any more than I am him dropping back for a pass. He's 6-5 245. I'm more worried for the defender.

He's significantly better.

Do we want the jets to lose or would we rather they win and put more talented teams on the hot seat? They arent a threat to our postseason unless we lose. Same with the titans. I'm FAR more worried about the dolphins and even how we match up against the chargers.

He will need at minimum 1 and ideally multiple championships to get in I think unless he keeps up production for a crazy long time, like another 8 years. There are so many great WRs today that I don't know if he separates. He's at his peak right now and I don't know if I'd take him over a peak Adams, Hopkins, Julio, or even a guy like Antonio Brown in his prime. Against the stars of today like Kupp, Jefferson and Hill I don't know if you can make an argument that he's better than 4th. There's no question he's an elite player of his era, but I think he's going to have to collect some hardware to separate himself from the pack.

thanks for backing me up? exactly. was nice to see him finally get some minor involvement

I really liked what i saw from cook last night. I hope heavy usage continues for him down the stretch and we find more creative ways to involve him in the passing game.

Judon is an EDGE, not a middle linebacker. Almost like we played one of the worst QBs in the league last night 🤷‍♂️. Why do you think he's a "leader"?

Did we watch the same game? My favorite part was when he gives up on pursuit of this runner when he's within 2 yards of him. A close second is watching him perform his signature move - getting caught in the trash on this 3rd and 18 run:

You can't have an experiment when you've done literally 0 testing or analysis. What are you even talking about? He hasn't played.

You kind of have to throw Kelce out of the equation. He's so elite that it doesn't make sense to use him as a comparison for any other player. He might be the most dominant player at a given position that I've seen since Gretzky in that no other tight end is even playing the same sport he is.

I hated the extension terms. I thought he was worth half of what he got paid, but TE's are hard to come by in this league and they probably figured it was better to be all in on an above average talent than to not have one at all. I'm not sure if it's his fault or Allen's but I've never seen him catch a pass that he doesn't have to leap and outstretch his arms to to sideline for. He's not a threat as a route runner, doesn't have great hands and doesn't seem to have tremendous on-field speed, though he is pretty good with the ball in his hands.

Which ranked him 42nd in the league in BOTH total YAC and first downs. in 2020 he was 33 and 16th respectively. Those two solid, but unspectacular years that marked his peak as a player. At that peak he was a "solid" b+ tier player. At no point did he ever approach anything close to elite except in the minds of Bills fans. He had less production than Stevie Johnson did across all metrics.

Don't exaggerate my meaning. i didn't say that he was terrible at his peak, I said he "was never that good", and he wasn't. He was never an elite player at any point in his career where he never eclipsed 1000 yards, 6 touchdowns and just barely scraped by 350 yards of YAC once. If you needed a player to catch the ball and fall down, he was ok at that, but he had several clutch time drops too on key downs. He was an adequate player that benefited from a system where he saw heavy utilization - not unlike John Brown. He was a top 50 guy for a minute, but not the elite player that folks in Buffalo thought he was. A lot of players would have been as or more successful int he same position.

Dude is beyond washed up and he was never that good to begin with. We're better off without his 0 YAC.

Because the other guy got injured? How enlightening. They both played behind later round rookies. I actually really like Elam as a player and I think he's flashed some, but your reasoning here (or lack thereof) is ridiculous.

Rhodes has been unemployed in a passing league. Unless you're planning to turn back the clock to 2014, I'm not sure he's going to be the upgrade you think he is.

Why? Dawkins has been awful this year. His slow feet have been getting beat on the edge every game.

I was devastated that I didn't have the chance to bust out one of my most prized possessions today.

These two items are things that look glike reasonable arguments on paper, but they aren't at the heart of the issue. The problem with McDermott isn't that his team isn't executing because of injury on defense or lack of experience in the case of Dorsey. It's simply that his team is not ready. We're being outcoached on a regular basis. People bring up the defensive injury thing all the time, but it really doesn't have much merit against the criticisms. We aren't having defensive problems because we're simply outclassed. We're top 10 in both passing yards per attempt and rushing yards per attempt. Our defense is actually playing very well, except situationally. We routinely put opponents in 3rd and long only to get destroyed on low percentage plays that are not particularly creative. That's a pattern and I don't think it has much to do with talent. It's a lack of preparedness and poor judgement on behalf of McDermott and his staff. We have similar problems on offense. Our Red Zone offense jumps off the page as an immediate flag. Usage of Dawson Knox is another. He's been coming up massive in big spots late in games this season and is invisible in our offensive gameplan the other 55 minutes of the game. We deployed a balanced offense against Minnesota in the first half to great effect and then jumped right back into pass-only madden mode in the 2nd half with a depleted WR corps and QB1 with a bum elbow. Nyheim Hines has been electric whenever he touches the ball on special teams, yet the team has made no effort to get him involved on offense. And then we're still making massive strategic mistakes. Against the dolphins, when it was a billion degrees out we put together a gameplan that had us running 90 offensive plays to our opponents 39 yet still somehow being unable to outscore them. 90 plays in that heat and humidity. For reference, our season average (where we're ranked 7th highest) has us at just under 66 plays per game. We punched ourselves out and it took a toll in the weeks that followed as even more players were unavailable as they recovered from that. When this team is firing on all-cylinders, they can beat anyone. And when i say that, I mean any team - ever. The problem is that too often our staff makes decisions that put our players behind the 8 ball. Often they succeed in spite of it, but when they don't, and especially when they start to snowball, it starts to look very ugly. When we look back at 13 seconds - that wasn't us getting unlucky - it was an eventuality of this team not being prepared to win when all the chips were down - and that falls squarely on the coaching staff. I'd be lying if I said I felt like McDermott has learned anything since that day.

Anything besides winning a super bowl is a disappointment. This is especially true considering how weak the league is right now. I'll get ove rit if we don't win, because I'm accustomed to it, but the stakes need to be high for the coaching staff and front office.

Did you mean to quote me? Seems we're making most of the same points except that guaranteed money gives players more money. You're right that the size of the pie is the same, but the amount paid to individual players is not, because there are lots of contract terminations that leave these players with unpaid deals. There's nothing that would prevent teams from releasing players and paying new talent, so I don't see how it reduces the player pool at all except if owners are reluctant to pay a player they no longer want plus a new one. It's not a problem in hockey though.

If all contracts were guaranteed, negotiations would be a lot more straightforward. Outside of it being guaranteed, they paid market rate for what they believe is a franchise QB who led the league in passing during his last season. Not sure what's so stupid about that, beyond the gamble on the legal side of it, which worked out in their favor.

What I'm talking about are back-loaded deals that will clearly never come to pass in term of playing games with the gap. Baseball is totally different because they don't have a cap. In football, whether or not the deals are guaranteed should mean less to ownership, because how much the players are entitled to and the minimum amount teams must spend is fixed. every team in the league more or less spends the same amount of money, and it's all paid for by the TV deals. None of it comes out of anybody's pocket, so all the teams are on a relatively even playing field when it comes to their ability to afford players. The only thing a team has to do is decide how they want to spend it and make sure that they make good decisions. Explain how a non-guaranteed contract leaves more money available to other players.

No. It's over.

You failed to support your thesis here. Whether or not deals have guarantees has no bearing on the slice of the pie that players get and it shouldn't. The only thing it would impact are the individual deals, but not the total spend for the roster. Fully guaranteed deals are a massive boon for players not only because of injury, but because of games teams play with the cap. Guaranteed deals can still have escalators and options baked in, but should otherwise be baked in. You'll likely end up with shorter deals overall and a little off the top in some cases and it should all even out in the wash.