Straight Hucklebuck

Both limited. Video of Waddle from practice, and he's catching passes without an obvious limp. I think they both are playing.

We're constantly having to ask these "what happened" questions with this team. Allen one week is 320 and 4 TDs, the next week its 169 and 1 INT. Diggs disappears and it's all fine at OBD. Cook 179 yards one week, 35 the next week. Kincaid 8 catches one week, 1 target the next week. We all see these things.

So at minimum WR in Round 1. In this scenario we’re going all in on that player. Because it’s Diggs, R1, Shakir, Shorter and Harty. So do your plan, let Sherfield walk, and bring in a <$5M vet FA. In this scenario, if Shakir takes another large step forward and the R1 WR can give you 800+ yards, you might be ok. Keep Harty, hope Shorter becomes playable and come out of FA with a low cost veteran that is better than Sherfield.

No roster can lose its WR1 and WR2 and be fine.

Allen is the franchise. Beane has got him Diggs and Kincaid, with no other premium investment since 2019. And we wonder why this offense comes and goes. Somehow get your hands on two WRs that actually can play. If not, we’ll be here again next season.

No way Beane envisioned 14-138-1 when he signed Harty to 2 years, $9M. I don’t know what he did or didn’t do to show this coaching staff that he needs to be on the field. But two coordinators so far barely use him. He’ll catch a critical 25-yard pass in Kansas City, and then not touch the ball on offense for 3 weeks? He gets 3 snaps against the Bengals, Josh looks for him deep immediately. NO PLAN We saw the same thing with Nyheim Hines last year. Absolute disconnect between the GM and Coaching Staff, swept under the rug by hard to catch a RB up in this system.

Until Diggs or the Rookie R1 WR gets hurt, in which case Shakir slides up a peg, and you don't have any useable WRs in slots #4, #5, #6. It's one storyline that has been talked about on here - the Bills have been virtually injury free on offense outside of Knox. In this scenario, hopefully Shorter can outplay his 5th Round draft slot. Only concern with DaQuan and Floyd is giving money to guys who are both 32+ when next season starts.

Well, I guess it will be RD 1 WR, Diggs, Shakir, Harty and Shorter.

So we agree on the 1st Round pick at WR. But $3M - $5M FA WR is Harty (2 years, $9M). $1M - $3M FA WR is veteran minimum Sherfield type player. So effectively, let’s bypass FA at WR and use a 1st and 3rd/4th on another WR. Because <$5M WR isn’t going to do anything.

I think all you can do is approach him and ask for a salary cut, but their camp knows the Bills are not going to eat $30M in dead cap to get rid of him. That length of that contract and his age is not a good match. I think our WR room needs to be blown up. It's been 2 seasons now where #4, #5 and #6 are unplayable. We go into next season with Diggs and Shakir, that's it. Shorter is not a plan. Let's pray they don't re-sign Gabe, and that means you're again trying to get one in FA, and really, no matter what, you need to draft WR in R1. And on that 💩free agency point - we've tried the low end FA route - Crowder, Emmanuel Sanders, Sherfield, Harty - and these guys stink. So Evans is of course going to be a premier FA, but we've seen time and time again this low end guys are not good enough to even get on the field. Look through the 2024 WR FAs and tell me who you'd like?

This was from early December when the team was 5-5 and 6-6 and picking in the teens. The Bills have won 4 in a row and now are picking in the 20's so Odunze will be long gone, Nabers and so forth.

Beane's approach has been to keep as much of the 2020 team together as possible. We've strained the cap to keep everyone we can. We're still using a Daboll system on offense, we've promoted Gabe to #2, we've kept Hyde and Poyer, extended Milano, White, gone back to the well with Lawson, Phillips and so forth. I think the team is stable, a lot of veteran leadership. However, I think we're seeing that the Bills have squeezed as much blood out of the stone as they're going to get. I think a real search for OC and DC is required. The Bills will need DT, DE and Safety, but they need another top-flight WR. I'm not interested in finding the next Cole Beasley.

Hey Coach, Let's go through it. ' 2019 - Duke Wiliams leads the Bills in targets in the Texans Playoff game. Our Coach is running Frank Gore / Devin Singletary at a 50/50 split. 2020 - Diggs has the best year in Bills history at WR. However, Cole Beasley gets injured against New England, misses the season finale, and the team struggles with the Colts, has the great defensive performance against the Ravens, and could not keep up against prime Kansas City. 2021 - Beasley and Brown are fading as the season goes along, the contributions from them dip. The other critical decision that has permeated the future is - Beane signs Emmanuel Sanders to be the #2 WR. Again, season starts strong, but by Week 7 he's out of gas. Gabe has the big game in Kansas City. We punt on getting another Diggs level WR, and don't try in the draft. 2022 - The fact that Allen squeezes 35 TDs passing out of Diggs, Davis and Isaiah McKenzie is still pretty amazing to me. Knox doesn't take a big step forward. The team has to bring back Cole Beasley and John Brown out of semi-retirement towards the end of the season. This is where Chris Simms really starts harping on the idea that nobody is scared of the Bills weapons. Allen has the UCL that needs to be managed the rest of the year. The bottom of the WR room is useless - Crowder, Kumerow, Shakir isn't used. The take away is Gabe Davis has an alright season, but his results don't extrapolate to the increase in his playing time. 2023 - The longest scoring funk of the current Josh Allen Bills: Jaguars - Giants - New England - Tampa - Bengals - Denver. Diggs last 100-yard game comes on 16 targets against the Giants, Kincaid is still being used as a dump-off only option, Davis' inconsistency getting worse (0.0 or 100 yards). The bottom of the WR group (Harty, Sherfield, Shorter) is remade - and they contribute nothing. The Bills seem to have tried a little of everything on approach: 012 personnel, Diggs peppered with targets, heavy James Cook, Allen not running, now running again, obsession with tunnel screens and bubbles. There is just no consistency with the offense. Allen is at an all-time high in number of interceptions thrown, all his metrics (yards/game, rating, Interception %) all trickling down. The TD production is there because the rushing TDs are double this year, but good chance he ends the year under 30 TD passes. Add it all up and what is says to me is that we've squeezed all the blood out of this iteration of the stone. Allen as the super weapon, Diggs as the primary WR, the Brian Daboll tree. The word identity gets talked a lot by the National Media because they don't really watch the team. But when I watch this team and Allen this season, I don't know what approach I'm going to get. Maybe that's their trademark, doing whatever they need to do in that given week. But Cook is not going to go off every game, Diggs has disappeared, Kincaid is better than Knox, but we paid Knox so eats at Kincaid's production, Shakir is reliable, but he's not featured, Gabe Davis requires broken coverages to really contribute. We need more playmakers. Cook and Kincaid are a start, but since 2021 we've had a gigantic hole at WR #2. In this offense there is very little the Bills present in terms of physical mismatches. They don't have a WR that high points the ball, can win contested catches down the field, that really can take the top off the defense. Have to invest in another WR. Josh needs to work harder in the offseason. He's great, but it was clear last year that he didn't work as hard.

Yeah I think this is true. Here are the 3 reasons I think it’s so: 1. Josh Allen is highly variable, and highly scrutinized. He has a penchant for turning the ball over. At the same time he makes plays. Almost every interview he does is about managing his risk taking, the constant pecking on his mental state. I just watched his interview with Michael Smith, and that’s the whole interview, ditching “low positive” and getting back to himself, but it ultimately circles back to turnovers. Allen said it - he’s viewed as a “turnover machine”. 2. I think the Bills don’t have enough offensive firepower. 2020, 2021, 2022 and now this year - we’re short another dynamic WR. So in my mind this is why this team seems to lose its way seemingly out of nowhere (48 against the Dolphins, 20 against the Jaguars). We have a rocket armed QB that wants to throw outside the numbers to WRs and our best WR is a high level possession WR (Greg Cosell) and the rest of the options are just guys. 3. Our defense is old - Safety - a lot of age on the defensive line - and because of that we’re always managing injuries down the stretch. It adds a layer of stress. Add into that this coaching staff over the years have had poor defensive showings in the Playoffs, playing 17 yards off every WR. This leads to a bunch of nail biting games.

Once this staff identifies you as someone who needs to be inactive, it’s hard to get off that list. See Elam, Poona Ford, Hamlin, etc.

Today was the deadline for Justin Shorter wasn’t it? So we’re stuck with useless Trent Sherfield the rest of the year.

Laporta -TE-R2 Rice-WR-R2 Flowers-WR-R1 Addison - WR-R1 Kincaid - TE- R2 Smith - Njigba - WR - R1 Dell - WR - R3 36-414-2 maybe one of the Packer rookie WRs like Reed or Wicks? Mayer - TE - R2 Musgrave - TE - R2 Johnston - WR - R1

Brady (and McDermott letting Brady) have to run 011 personnel. Diggs-Davis-Shakir-Kincaid-Cook on the field at all times and commit to that. We don’t have any time for Murray, Sherfield and Knox. It’s Week 18, we’re done with experimenting with 012, Cook heavy, tunnel and bubbles screens, Allen and the low-positive no running. A year’s worth of data says Diggs, Davis, Shakir, Kincaid and Cook have to be on the field as much as humanly possible. No more 50% - 60% snap counts. Need all these guys at 80%. I picked the 600-yard option. The other ones were 1,000+.

Yeah the dump off stuff with Kincaid started right away against the Jets and continued all the way until last week. The Bills never changed course - Dorsey or Brady - on that depth of target. One thing we don't have a measure of is Kincaid's 40-time, broad, vertical, 3-cone, 20 yard shuttle or bench because he didn't workout or complete the combine. I mention this because he recently did an interview where he talked about his offseason plan including getting stronger. We've seen him be able to be tackled quickly and take some hard shots. I think the smooth route runner is correct, the hands is correct, but he doesn't look like a physical mismatch type Tight End, and certainly I don't think he runs as fast as LaPorta's 4.59.

There were (5) big Tight End options in the Draft: Kincaid: 66-589-2 (1st) LaPorta: 81-860-9 (2nd) Mayer: 27-304-2 (2nd) Musgrave: 33-341-1 (2nd) Washington 7-67-0 (3rd) Kraft 28-324-2 (3rd) Mallory 18-207-0 (5th) I think Mayer could still be one of the better Tight Ends from this draft despite the lower numbers, but with Kincaid we're not dealing with a bust of a player - he's passed that bar. Kincaid is reliable, and has carved out the #1 receiving Tight End role by year end. I think maybe we see he's not a physical mismatch that will barrel over people, or Moss-people in the end zone. The Bills don't seem to scout that criteria high up their list when they select WRs and Tight Ends.

Well maybe he does have a source, but we know it's not something like a Grade 3 AC-joint sprain that you physically can't play though, or a Drew Brees-esque complete rotator cuff tear, or a broken scapula, or whatever else. If he's playing through it, structurally it has to be intact. I think Bills fans jump to the he must be secretly hurt more card a lot whenever a player doesn't play well. We know he's got a ton of bumps and bruises. He took huge shots on that shoulder in the Giants game. He got drilled in the head in the Patriots game.

Yeah, the Bills let Kincaid get too far into the season using him solely as a dump off outlet to get any real numbers. Also, Knox and Kincaid have not co-existed without eating into each others numbers, Kincaid’s snap count was 55% on Sunday. All you can hope is that the Bills saw some things Sunday that they can utilize going forward, to where the season won’t be a predictor for his post season impact. It starts by getting his snap count up. He’s not on the field enough.

Allen wasn't on the injury report at all in Week 17. But he's on the Injury Report with Right Shoulder starting Week 7 - Week 16.

You know every time the Bills offense underwhelms we pull the “that’s the best defense we’ve faced all year” line. They played poorly, and will only face Playoff caliber teams the rest of the way.

Hopefully he signs with someone we have to play, and they decide to give him 20 carries.