Ayjent

Well. He's not wrong about them going too low on the tender at all. Getting Matt Milano hasn't exactly made this team better than when they had Gillislee - Milano is only on the team because of who drafted him, not because he necessarily deserved a roster spot over Hodges.

Exactly, it wasn't a serious comment. It was really just to state how much the Pats have dominated the division and the Bills, and that the Pats add insult to injury when they pluck good players from their division opponents - Gilmore was a good starter, Gillislee and Hogan weren't necessarily starters but were good contributors that the Bills found on the cheap, and Branch was good for DL rotation. Losing these players left a void at CB that had to be addressed in the draft, and worse talent for depth. The Bills put themselves in position to loose all of these players because of the foolish contracts they gave out to Dareus, Glenn and Clay that have them too close to the cap to pay guys like Gillislee and Hogan modest increases in salary, and put them in position to not take the additional year option on Watkins and eventually trade him, lose Gilmore and Woods. They've been hamstrung by their own mismanagement of the cap going all in to make the playoffs with Rex. Rex couldn't coach his way to the Playoffs if you gave him the best roster in football, given how the league has passed him and his twin brother's defense by, The Bills talented, but flawed roster during Rex's tenure wasn't quite good enough to overcome an incompetent defensive scheme despite getting surprisingly good offensive coaching. It's just a testament to how epicly bad Rex was during his tenure with the Bills - not surprising really, but very frustrating for us fans who saw it coming. I really don't think he deserved year two to be honest, and I think the only thing keeping him afloat was the offense. Now we are watching them hit the reset button. Sure things could go well with a lot of talented vets on the team, but having huge question marks in the Secondary and at WR in a passing league doesn't exactly scream playoffs to anyone. The way I see the season playing out is this: I don't think we will get the same level of Offensive coaching that we've had the past two seasons, and we are going to be frustrated with the Offense, while seeing a pretty decent improvement in the defensive performance.

Just because the draft partner also is terrible at assessing talent and making picks in the draft doesn't make it a smart move. Everyone knew it was a very deep and talented draft for WRs, and there was no need to move up the board for a WR. It was a boneheaded trade regardless of what they gave the Browns. Watkins was very talented, but I never really understood why he was valued as the overall best WR of that draft - he hadn't really even demonstrated that he could operate in a more traditional NFL passing game and really was used a lot in WR screens. Not to mention the Bills had a decent group of WRs already and it wasn't like the only missing piece for the offense was WR. The problems for offense started at QB and OL from 2013-2015 - two places Whaley just isn't very good at evaluating. Trading away a 1st round pick in next year's draft for a WR when their is a likelihood that your guy at QB from two drafts before isn't the guy is just lacking foresight. Also, it's not like the Bills didn't have holes elsewhere that a 1st rounder would be nice to have. The way Whaley was building the team had little margin for error. Unfortunately for all of us, there was a significant amount of error.

They've been terrible at the draft, regardless of draft pundits grades. They've been terrible in handing out large contracts to some players (Dareus, Glenn, Clay) which leads to not keeping solid players that wouldn't brank the bank (Hogan, Gillislee), and letting high round picks move on after their rookie contracts (Woods, Gilmore). They then draft players to fit a particular scheme and then abandon that scheme (Ragland). They empahsized the WR position throughout Whaley's tenure without anything to show for it on this year's roster. They did a terrible job of building franchise anchors for the team through the draft from 2013-2016 - Manual, Woods, Alonzo, Watkins, Kuoandijo, Darby, Ragland are all gone - only Preston Brown, John Miller, and Shaq Lawson to show for on the current roster as potential starters and I don't think anyone is thinking Pro Bowl calibre player for any of them. I thought Doug Whaley was good at acquiring players through FA and trade, but was absolutely horrendous at the draft. The team was left with bloated contracts and a dearth of young talent. You could see this year coming sometime, Beane and McDermott just accelerated the inevitable by trading away the best of the young talent that was about to get expensive for draft capital. It remains to be seen whether that was wise, but I'm very skeptical. There are plenty of ways to suck at personnel decisions - so taking a different direction doesn't mean the destination will change. I think the Darby trade really wasn't wise considering he was cheap this year, and they could have extended him after a sophomore slump at a discount. If they are really interested in getting this team in the right direction, they should be more focused on cleaning out the bad contracts and keeping the young talent. I think that you are right about coaching to some extent as well. The Bills have had some of the worst player development in the league for many, many years. You know this is the case when guys are showing a ton of promise in their rookie seasons and then not improving. This has something to do with the constant turnover as well, but of all of the coaches they've had over the years, Roman/Lynn and Schwartz were the only ones that seemed to get more out of guys as they became more familiar with their schemes. I think the Offense is going to regress significantly this year, because Dennison is not an adaptive OC (i.e., he runs his offense regardless of whether the roster is full of square pegs for the round holes). WIthout an adaptive OC (e.g., Lynn, Roman, Gase, Shannihan) - Tyrod is likely going to struggle doing things that don't fit his skill set as much as the Offense he ran the past two years. I hope that I'm wrong, but that's the way I see it playing out. The Bills have had a pretty good offenses the past two years, and pretty bad defenses. Before that they had a pretty good defenses for two years, and pretty bad offenses. Are we ready to do another switcheroo - I think that is going to be the case this year - Pretty good D, pretty bad O.

As an organization? Yes I can blame them. They picked a project QB in the 4th round last year without seeing it through and ended up picking another QB in the draft and in free agency this year. Turning a 4th rounder into a conditional 7th is a bad return on investment. Now the current coaching staff and GM may not have liked Cardale (which is pretty obvious), but again nothing like selling when the market is down. The Bills could have easily waited a little while to see if teams had a major injury and maybe let Cardale have an opportunity for a decent preseason showing and turned that into better trade value. Look this organization doesn't get the benefit of the doubt until they start making smart moves on the regular, regardless if a new sheriff is in town. Different doesn't mean better, until it proves otherwise. I have no idea if Cardale will be a decent QB - he looks like he has some physical skills and some leadership ability, but he also has some really big places to improve his game. With a project QB, it just seems very shortsighted to trade him when his value is low.

Here is another quick geography/history lesson - Richmond, VA was the Capitol of the south and if you've ever been there you'd know how southern it is.