Success

Would certainly be better if we kept Hodgins. I really had higher hopes for Epenesa - I thought he showed some flashes early in the season, but then kind of disappeared again. Good write-up. Agree w/ most of the assessments. Not a bad draft, certainly - but not great. We need hit on more picks going forward.

He's the Bills' Rocky Bleier. Needs some time.

"The Sting" is awesome. It still holds up.

I 100% agree w/ the OP. It's too easy to say "every team faces adversity" and expect these guys to be robots. After Hamlin, the season flipped for me. I went from riding the SB train, to just hoping he'd be alright. The season didn't even seem to matter anymore. When Hines returned that 1st kick against the Pats, I was sort of back in - hey, maybe they can really do this. But even that game, they were kind of going on fumes. Without the TD returns, we might have lost that game - to a much worse team, at home. Adversity does reach a kind of critical mass at some point, and we got there this season. It just wasn't in the cards. Eyeroll & vomit away.

Yes! I can totally see it. We're pretty set at corner if Tre gets back to form - Elam on the other side, Johnson in the slot. Benford is talented, a real late-round find & has the physicality to play safety. Then, we can let Poyer walk (hate to say that, as he's one of my faves, but it's the smart business move), and not have to expend draft capital to fill that void.

I've made peace w/ this. The Bills WERE a dominant team for stretches this season. We had just a few too many injuries, and then all of the crazy stuff w/ 3 games in 10 days/moving one game to Detroit, and what happened w/ Hamlin. It's not like running it all back dooms us. We'll still be a top team.

He's still pretty young. I don't think this was a "contract year" thing as much as a guy who has finally grown into the position at the NFL level. He reminds me a bit of Polamalu. I'm hoping they figure out how to keep him. I think he'll only get better.

The other teams are getting stronger - but my hope is that we still find a way to win the division, not just next year, but in a few of the years ahead. I'd like to see us do what the Pats did to the division all of those years - all 3 other teams would get impatient w/ coaches and QB's, and often be quicker to move on from both than they normally would be.

I don't know enough about O-line schemes. But how much can our issues be tied to coaching? I look at what Scarnecchia did for years in NE, and then also what Cincy did with 3 starters out, and 1 playing hurt. I feel like we don't need THAT much of an upgrade in personnel. Dawkins & Morse are both very good, and I think Brown is still developing. Bates & Boettger are solid.

I do hope we keep Edmunds, without overpaying. Probably too much to wish for - but he has been really good for us and one of our playmakers on D.

How about "the last playoff loss before their historic dynastic run?"

Very true. But I actually wonder now if it might not be better to sneak in, play on the road & have low expectations.

Patriots - their D was better than ours this year, and one of the top D's in the NFL. If we had that D last week, we'd be playing this coming Sunday. Now, they have an ACTUAL OC coming in, to coach a QB who will never be elite, but isn't as bad as we always say. Jets - I thought they should have made the playoffs this year. And that was with bad QB play for most of the year. They are going for a vet - Rodgers, Jimmy G., who knows. Their D is already one of the top units in the league, and they have some great young players. I think Saleh is the real deal. Dolphins - obviously, the greatest threat. If Tua was healthy all year, things might have played out very differently over the past few weeks. They are a very good team, on both sides of the ball. I think the AFC East could be historically good as a division. It will be such a fight - I'd still pick us to come out on top, but there will be a few close games that will likely decide it in the end. Thoughts?

Not really. 13 seconds was easy. This was just a playoff loss.

I'm going to go w/ "2 kinds of badness." 13 seconds was the ultimate gut-punch. I can't think of too many big games in any sport that turned like that, that quickly. That was sheer IMMEDIATE pain, and took me longer to get over. Weeks. I already feel the pain of the Cincy loss - which wasn't nearly as bad when it happened - dissipating. But it's a more disturbing loss. As the OP and others have stated, it just kind of showed some flaws that might be hard to overcome. I'm actually less optimistic than I was after 13 seconds. So, that in a way is worse.

It's probably where I'm at after the Cincy game that's causing this - but all I read was, they have a great team but they need everything.

I also look at guys that moved on to other teams - Moss played well in Indy the last part of the season. Teller, Hodgins, even Breida & Feliciano. It seems like guys we had play better on other teams. We're not maximizing talent.

We do. We need a legit WR2. We have Diggs and a bunch of solid receivers who are 3 or 4 guys. You need someone opposite Diggs who create match-up problems for defenses and stretch their coverage. And I kept thinking at the end of the season - what if Diggs gets injured? The drop-off is too big. If you get a legit WR2, it just gives you a better chance if something like that happens. As it was this season, an injury would have ended our chances. Definitively.

I'm not as worried about White as some. I thought he was improving every game, except for last week. It does take time (sometimes) for a player to get back to 100% after an ACL. It will make such a difference next year if he's all the way back or close to it, and Elam takes a 2nd year leap, as he really came on the last part of the year also. Here's hoping. Not much else we can do.

A lot of great points in the OP - but I'd still list Frazier as one of the problems. His defenses here have been ranked high the past 3 years - but all 3 years, they have folded when it counted. We couldn't stop KC 2 years in a row, and this past Sunday was a debacle for the D. It's a good point that they adjusted, but Cincy moved the ball at will all day, and I felt like they could have scored more if they had to. I don't know enough about schemes - but the scheme we play consistently seems too vanilla, too soft. It seems like we're always playing D to try to protect a lead, instead of genuinely trying to turn a game. I think about when we had Schwarz. Did we have more talent then? I don't really think so. But he put his mark on that D - you could look at their play, and call it a Schwarz D. And they could dictate a game. We have enough talent to do that now, but we don't. It doesn't look like the coaching will change much, and that's disappointing. I like Frazier & I was glad they hired him initially, but I feel like he's holding us back now.

Anyone remember Chris66? He was a Pats fan who tried to torment us for many years on the old board, and I think I even saw him on this board for a few years. Very passive/aggressive - would never overtly troll, and always said he was here for the good discussion, but always took shots at the Bills. I always said he'd disappear as soon as we were good.

I really wonder about our talent. Is it that we don't draft well - or don't develop & utilize our players well? Zach Moss actually ran pretty well after he went to Indy. There are also guys like Teller & Hodgins. And I can't help but think of how Cincy's line performed, with 3 starters out, and 1 playing hurt. They schemed better, and got the most out of those players. Sometimes, it seems like we're getting the minimum out of the talent we have.

Yep. I was "Future Success" on that one.

I'd be for it - but it would depend what we could get. I doubt we'd get much at all for Epenesa. I don't know if there is a way to check this, but I felt like everyone played better when Miller was in there. It seemed like they were all making big plays - does anyone else think that? I remember feeling like our line had really come together earlier in the season.

I like Kiper - but after the top 3-5 picks, it rarely goes according to his predictions. I consider his mocks more like a player ranking (which really, most mocks are). I've seen 3 other mocks that have us going WR, which, as the OP mentions, wouldn't be a bad thing. I'd prefer OL, but there are some great round 1 WR's this year.