Shaw66

That's an interesting point. Josh has his relationship with Beas and Brown. Now Diggs can come in, and he knows Brown and Beas are vets and he can trust them. It will make it easier to roll Diggs into the mix with these pre-existing relationships. I suppose someone in Brown's position might have preferred to stay the #1 guy - #1 is good for the ego. But Brown seems like a pretty savvy guy, and I think he knows he isn't a Diggs. And I think he knows that Diggs will actually be good for him. Again, I wasn't talking about the practicality of actually adding Diggs last year. I just wanted to see what his production, added to the production of the team, would have meant to Josh's passer rating.

I never looked at the NBA from that perspective. I'd think if you were a fan of a particular team, the NBA's system sucks unless your owner happens to land the right combination of players for a couple of years. If he doesn't, if he never does, you're the Knicks. What fun is that. But I have to admit that as sort of casual NBA fan, it IS fun to see different teams every year or two. Who's Lebron paired with this year? Will that work? Those two guys at Houston - Hardin and Westbrook - can't possibly make it work together, can they? I don't know, let's see. That is fun. But I don't think it would work in the NFL, because winning depends so much on teamwork, and teamwork is enhanced greatly by continuity. The talents of guys coming are offset by the declining continuity and teamwork. How much better do the Chiefs get if they two lights out receivers to go with what they already have, a guy who would send Watkins to the bench? Maybe you'd end up with Jerry Jones buying all the best players, and they would crush everyone, but I doubt the best players would want to share the limelight or the coach would be willing to put up with trying to mold a new bunch of guys into a team every year.

I agree it's absurd, but it also makes sense at the same time. The position is so important that you simply can't afford to make a mistake. When you have a guy like Goff, who looks really good but isn't there yet, you're going to extend him and pay his price. He's close, and the chances are the next guy you get won't get as close. It's really tough to get the right guy, and when you get one he's worth everything. A Brady, a Rodgers, a Brees. So if you're close, like with a Goff, you extend him. It would take real guts to let him go and start over. A Parcells would do that, but it takes real courage. I'm not saying it's the right call; I'm just saying that when you have a relatively young guy who is close, the fear is he's too valuable to let go. Look at Jerry Jones and Dak Prescott. What do you do with Prescott? The guy has looked like an absolute world beater sometimes, but he gives me the feeling that he may never take the next steps. You gonna let him go and then start trying to position yourself in the draft over the next couple of years so you can hope the stars align and you get another Aikman? There are a lot more teams looking for QBs than there are Aikmans floating around. Or Cousins. Someone was going to pay Cousins. His numbers were great, but there was something about him that I always found uninspiring. He just doesn't look or feel like the kind of guy you're going to win with. But he's awfully close, and maybe he'll get over the top. That's the fear that drove Washington to tag him, even as the price kept going up. Washington finally decided they wouldn't pay it, they just weren't sure, but Minnesota was ready, in a heartbeat. It's hard to say no to a QB who's close.

What do you mean, he needs to? If his passer rating is 95, you're going to shop him and go looking for a new QB? That's absurd. That points out exactly why it is not a prove it year. Dak Prescott, Aaron Rodgers, Deshaun Watson and Carson Wentz didn't have a passer rating of 100. Are you cutting them loose, too?

Bills defense held them to one point fewer than they were scoring on average for the last seven games of the season, and 3 points less than they were scoring in the last 6 games of the season. Bills defense held them to 40 yards fewer than they were averaging. And three points they gave up came on a short field created by an Allen fumble. Defense certainly could have played better. It was not a collapse. It's not a collapse when, with the game on the line, on two of Houston's last three possessions, the Bills held them to two three and odds and stopped a fourth down short yardage play. That's losing, but it's not a collapse.

Can an offense with a top 5 receiver and top 10 quarter back score score 19 points in a half after being shut out? Bills shut out a really good offense for a half. They didn't in the second half. That's not a collapse. That's getting outplayed in the second half by a good offense, just as much as the defense outplayed their offense in the first half. No one's calling the the Texans' offensive performance in that game a "collapse." The defense wasn't quite good enough. The Bills' offense flat out didn't deliver when it had to.

I don't buy the basic premise of the article: that the moves in free agency help you predict the positions where Beane is likely to draft. I think the fact that Beane drafts into the positions where he just signed free agents, like Cody Ford after signing an entire offensive line, including reserves shows only that once Beane has filled his needs in free agency, he's free to go BPA. It's true that Beane may not have gotten any long-term solutions in free agency, but he got competent guys McDermott could work with. That meant Beane could take the BPA, who happened to be Ford. Just like Singletary happened to be the BPA in the next round. In other words, filling holes in free agency does just that it fills holes. Filling holes frees the GM from "needing" to go a certain way in a certain round. You get the BPA, and you keep doing that and you have a lot of really talented football players. If you have talent everywhere else and journeyman free agents plugging holes at one position group, so be it, you play with that group. That's exactly what we saw with the receiver group last season. Clear holes, filled in free agency. They didn't draft a receiver, even though they probably knew they hadn't gotten as good as they would like at receiver. They were content to play with the guys they got. This season, they still saw a hole, and free agency is for filling holes. They traded instead of going free agent, but it's the same thing. They filled the hole. They don't have at receiver this season, but it doesn't mean they won't take a receiver in the second round. If a receiver is BPA, they're taking him. If a receiver is more or less tied at the top of the board with a guy at a position of need, they'll break the tie in favor of need.

It's a 60--minute game. Sure it matters when you give up points, but it matters more in terms of psychology than anything else, but that doesn't make it a collapse. They held the Texans below their offensive average; that is not a collapse. What happened against the Eagles was a collapse.

I agree with you, on both points. This notion that the defense collapsed is ridiculous. Texans had the 12th best offense in the league in yards, 14th best in points, over 23 a game. The defense held the Texans to 19 in regulation. That's hardly a collapse. Moreover, the defense got an absolutely essential three and out before the Bills drove to tie the game, and the defense also got an excellent stop on the Texans' first possession in overtime. That was hardly a defensive collapse. An offense like Houston's, witha quarterback like Watson, is going to score some points some of the time.

What I didn't say when I started this, what I didn't even understand, was that doing what I did was just one way of imagining what the addition of Diggs means. I think I was clear that it wasn't real, it was just a way to think about it. Reading the posts has helped see what we might learn from the numbers. So, sure, Doc Brown is right that you couldn't just drop Diggs into the mix and have it all work just right, have Daboll know how to use the receivers best and have Allen know how to find them. The gap between the theoretical discussion and the actual on-field performance is big. There are a thousand variables, 2019 variables, 2020 variables, all of which would have and will define the actual result of adding Diggs. I see now that the point was to predict but to give us a tangible idea of what Diggs might mean. So at least for me, the numbers helped me quantify what adding Diggs COULD mean. It gives me an order of magnitude to think about. It gives an idea of how much better Allen would be with really good receivers - his passer rating goes from below league average to solidly average, almost minimum acceptable. As, I said, it shows that even with good receivers, Allen has work to do to get to where we want him. And the numbers are believable. It's not difficult to imagine how the passing lanes open up with Diggs on the field, how he demands double teams some of the time, and how that leaves matchups or spaces that Brown, Beasley, Knox and Singletary can take advantage of, matchups or spaces that weren't always there last year. It's not difficult to imagine Diggs making six or eight or 15 plays over the course of the season that no one on the 2019 roster could make. One play a game. Sometimes that one play is just an eight yard catch for a first down. We can see that happening, and the numbers I posted are consistent, statistically, with the kind of play I just described. It gives us a number - 700 - that gives us an order of magnitude of how much improvement in the passing game we could see. 700 yards a season, 30-40 yards a game. That's actually a reasonable number. Thirty yards a game is two or three plays that Diggs makes that the Bills didn't get last season. That seems reasonable. So what do we think about 30 yards a game? I think that's a very healthy improvement. Thirty yards a game is two or three more first downs. Two or three first downs a game moves the Bills from 20th in the league to 10th in total first downs, a significant improvement. So, sure, there's no one-for-one translation of data into performance. How they're going to mesh, how Daboll is going to use them, how Allen is going to adapt to the opportunities presented, not to mention all the other variables - oline, injuries, personalities, all of that, that's all a big unknown. But the numbers show what's possible, and not wildly optimistic possible, but achievably possible. When you bring it down to a single game, it's even more speculative, but as some of you have shown, even at that level, it's interesting. I don't remember the details of games as well as many of you, but it's certainly easy to imagine how the Ravens game would have been different with Diggs. Diggs gets outstanding separation off the line of scrimmage. If he didn't have other skills that made him valuable as a #1 or #2, he'd be an absolutely deadly slot receiver. He'd put Edelman to shame. Assuming Allen knew how to make the reads, the Bills could have been running a short passing game against the Ravens that could be really effective moving the ball and negating all the blitzing the Ravens were doing. Go ahead and blitz, Diggs or Beasley will be open on almost every play, or maybe we'll catch you in single coverage on Brown with the middle wide open. The point is that with Diggs (again assuming Daboll and Allen do their jobs) the Bills passing game is ideally multi-faceted. Shortly after the trade, I said that getting Diggs achieves what McDermott (and other coaches) have said they want - they want an offense that can attack all parts of the field, so that the opponent is forced to defend the whole field. We spent all last season talking about how the Bills needed a deep threat to pair with Brown, and none emerged. We've talked for years about having deep threats. The Bills never had them. We were left to complain about throwing deep to DiMarco. Well, friends, that has changed. The Bills no longer are looking for Robin to Brown's Batman. The Bills got Batman, and Brown is an outstanding Robin. The entire field is now open for business. The numbers I posted are just an idea, actually a reasonable estimate, not pie-in-the-sky, of the statistical impact Diggs could have.

I thought someone would show up with this schtick. You're right, of course, that nothing matters if Allen doesn't deliver the ball. But it's not like Allen never delivers the ball. He hits open receivers, and with Diggs he's going to have more eopen receivers, for sure.

It's all just fantasy, but if you're going to take receptions from Brown and Beasley, you have to give them the receptions they will take from McKenzie and Duke. Probably gets you to about the same place;

You know, Beane says he's strictly BPA at the top of the draft. And all the time the team was weak, I could see that. BPA. Just add talent, meet you needs in the later rounds. But now It sure is difficult not to look at needs. Edge rusher, absolutely, love to have a stud there, but there's no quick relief in sight there. But I won't be surprised, ever, if they take take a defensive back earlier than most of us think. Their philosophy is that they MUST have a strong back 5, including the nickel back, and they have to assume that attrition, retirement, injury will hit soon enough. They also MUST have a running back. And they'd love to have an offensive lineman who could challenge to start. I have to believe Beane's strategy will be driven by need.

Of course you're right. You can't predict how a team would have performed with a different player. But I think the numbers do give a decent idea of just how much better the Bills could be with Diggs. That improvement I listed isn't mind-bending; it's just a nice increase over what they actually did produce. Allen's passer rating still is just middle of the pack. Actually, I think the numbers give a good measure of how much Allen has to improve. The numbers suggest that Allen playing in well-staffed NFL offenses still needs to improve significantly. Something we all know already.

I agree. Three successive first round picks? Probably not, but at least I could understand thinking about it.

Pardon my ignorance. I pay little attention to the draft. The Bengals have the top pick? I assume you're asking would I trade the #1 pick this year for Allen. I wouldn't. What I've seen of Burroughs (is that the kid's name from LSU?) he looks like a really special player. I wouldn't trade him. But I wouldn't have traded Allen after his rookie year for that kid the Cards got. I said it here or in another thread. When Allen came out, in a great QB class, everyone knew he had the highest ceiling of any QB in that class. The problem with Allen was that there just were a lot of questions, a lot of things he hadn't done yet. Now it's two years later, and his upside is still just as high, and the perceived problems have been slipping away, one by one. He still has more to improve, for sure, but compared to two years ago, a lot of the risk is now gone. Think about this: The Bills just traded the equivalent of the 18th pick in the first round to get Diggs. Some people think the Bills spent too much. So, if Minnesota offered to give all those picks back, plus we keep Diggs and the pick they gave us, and we just had to give them Allen, would you do it? Allen for the 18th pick in the draft? No football GM in his right mind is trading Allen for the 18th. Or for the 10th pick. Nobody would do that. QB is the position that demands that you have the right guy or you won't win. When you have the rights to a guy who still has the potential to be one of the all time greats and who after two years, a guy still hasn't shown any uncorrectable faults, when you have a guy like that, you do not trade him for any pick in the first round except #1. And you only make the trade if you think the guy you can get is more likely to be a HOF QB.

Good point. He's a playmaker. Singletary is good, but not a full-fledged playmaker quite yet.

I was wondering this morning what Josh Allen's season would have looked like if the Bills had had Stefon Diggs in 2019. It's not perfect, but what I did was add Diggs's receiving numbers to the Bills' totals, and subtract McKenzie's numbers and Duke's numbers, because they were the two guys who were the primary third receiver. The numbers are interesting. Receptions go up 24. Attempts go up 36. Yards go up over 700! Touchdowns go up 4. Interceptions go up 1. Allen's passer rating goes up to 91.0, 17th in the league. Now, I know there are all sorts of reasons why it might not have played out that way, but at least it's some measure of the difference Diggs could make. Browns and Beasley's targets might go down. On the other hand, completion percentage probably goes up, because Allen's receivers would have been open more often. And even though their targets might go down, their yards per catch probably go up. There's no way to undrstand fully the impact of Diggs being on the field. Substituting the data at least gives us some kind of picture. The biggest difference is yards. 700 yards a season is over 40 yards a game. Yards per attempt go up from 6.7 to 7.6. That kind of improvement would have made the Bills a much more potent offense.

I didn't see the separate thread, but if you haven't read the article, I'd recommend it. What I liked about it was not so much about Diggs but about McBeane. Over and over and over again we hear the same thing about Bills players. Relentless competitor, intense practice ethic, team above all else. The Bills will figure out how to manage his vocal nature. They want his intensity. They want a locker room full of intensity.

If you're a GM, and your objective is to have the most success of any team over the next ten seasons, and if there's a draft where you can take any QB that's left on the board, I think there is no way Allen lasts past #10. Someone is taking him. Who's ahead of him? Mahomes, Watson. Russell Wilson. Maybe Grappolo.. Not Goff, bit Winston. Maybe Wentz. I wouldn't take Lamar Jackson, but that's me. I wouldn't take Wentz. Not Prescott. Someone takes Allen in the top 10, because of his upside.

I think that's crazy. His price would skyrocket to $25 or more, for multiple years. If he were a free agent today, it's like he's the #1 guy in the draft. This is a supremely talented young quarterback who is succeeding to some degree, and more importantly hasn't failed in the NFL. That makes him more valuable than ANY QB in the draft. He hasn't shown any real limitations, just things he hasn't done really well yet. How much would you spend for the #1 pick in the draft if you were a team that needed a QB? If you could buy a guy like that in free agency, you'd gladly write a contract approaching $80-$100 million. Minnesota did more than that for Cousins, and after two years into each guy's career I'd definitely have taken Allen over Cousins. Heck, Cousins didn't even play for his first three years. That's not to say Allen is a sure thing. I'm really high on Allen, but he still has to do it, he has to play like a champion quarterback. But he has great potential, and he's less likely to fail, than any QB in the draft. Every guy in the draft is a crapshoot, in a sense. Manning and maybe Luck are the only guys who were locks coming out of college, everyone else is a big bet. Someone would be willing to place a big bet Allen.

I don't agree, and the only reason I can give you is subjective. The one guy I think Allen looks and plays most like is Elway. Same size, same rocket arm, same toughness at the end of runs, same desire to win. Elway could will his team into the end zone, often by willing himself into the end zone. His team followed that leadership and came together behind it. It took Elway nine years to break out of the mold of just ordinary QB. NINE. Eventually it all clicked, and for the next three or four seasons he was one of the dominant QBs in the league. It's not going to take Allen nine years to get there, but whenever he gets there, you don't want to be the GM who gave up on him too early. Allen's gotta regress this season before the Bills will begin to have doubts. I think you have to look at it this way: In what people thought was one of the best quarterback draft classes in a couple decades, who was the guy generally acknowledged to have the best upside? Allen, hands down. The sky was the limit. Highest upside. The knock on Allen was all the other things, but no one was worried about Allen having any physical limitations. When they looked at all the other stuff, they began to think the risks were big enough that of the four Allen may also have the highest bust potential. That's why his stock dropped. Now forward to the present. Has Allen's upside changed? No. Maybe tarnished a bit because of the poor long-ball production, but that's it. People can still see in him all the potential they saw during the draft. What about the knocks, all the other things? Well, generally speaking, he's been checking them off, one by one. Not completely, not yet: Hero ball, accuracy, lack of big-time college experience. He has been showing that those aren't problems. Not completely, but I think you have to admit that he is significantly less a risk to bust today than he was during the draft. So his upside is still great, and his downside is smaller. He isn't failing, he's still growing. The bust risk is smaller. So if you're drafting today, and teams know all of that about Allen, he won't get past the first pick or two. No way do the Bills let him go.

In his free agency presser, Beane already seemed to be hedging on the subject, suggesting that it will depend on how much they want. He won't overspend. I think you have to keep the o line together. There's always another Joseph coming along, but a hole in the line is a problem.

All of this. Plus, for all his virtues, Kirk Cousins simply does not inspire a lot of confidence. Losing a weapon makes Cousins less effective. As an aside, after reading the article, I watched the video. I haven't looked at highlights since the day of the trade. I was startled looking at the plays Diggs makes. He's a play-maker in a class comfortably higher than John Brown. He's not Antonio Brown, but he's similar. He's a big-time acquisition. And what's more amazing is that Diggs is probably thrilled - goes from a receiving duo to a receiving trio, goes to a team with a guy who promises to be a better QB, in an environment where people are starved to win.

That's interesting. I think Tannehill is an okay-sized athlete with excellent athletic skills. Quickness, speed, decent size, good arm. Yeah, maybe he can't take the beating that the 6'5" 240 pounders, but he's more than tough enough to play. Kind of how I remember Trent Green or Bob Griese. Brains is just a hunch I have based on watching his on-field decision making. He seems to get the game. But I'll readily plead guilty to not knowing enough about him; I'm just talking about my impressions of the guy.