Shaw66

Yes, but I was assuming that all four of them had their BEST seasons. It's not likely that all four will do that. In their BEST seasons, collectively, they saw a lot more targets than they will see this season. Someone has to get 1200 or more yards, which means someone is going to have to have what, for him, will be a career year.

Don't you think that only one of Valdez-Scantling and Claypool will make the roster? I do. And unless Claypool is spectacular this summer, I don't see the Bills betting on him instead of MSV. I'd say Claypool has better upside, for sure. Younger, probably more talented. With Valdez-Scantling, what you see is what you get. Still, I think the whole point of having one of these veterans on the roster is for stable, veteran leadership. I don't see the Bills trusting that job to Claypool. I think Valdez-Scantling is a lock. Is there room on the roster for Claypool, too?

That's funny. I forgot about Claypool. I've already written him off in my head, and OTAs haven't started yet! Okay, so it's one more guy with 873 yards as his best season. Add him to the list someone presented to me in February, and I still would have been scratching my head.

Yeah. If in February, someone had shown me that receivingg lineup, I would have said, "Wha ..?" I mean, really, the total absence of proven, high-end talent is bewildering. It's not like they signed a guy who had been great once but had fallen off. The BEST season any Bills receiver ever had was Samuel's 851 yards for Carolina in 2020. If Samuel, MVS, Shakir, and Hollins ALL replicate their BEST seasons, the four of them still won't have 3000 yards. As I keep saying, it's all about Brady and Allen. Scheme, play calling, and execution.

Frankly, I never liked the guy. I don't study NFL games and players, but I have a game on almost whenever one is available. But even to my casual observation, he always seemed unreliable. He rarely seemed to make the big play. As I've read and thought him since last night, I think he's a good addition. He and Samuel will make a nice veteran presence to lead Shakir, Kincaid, and Coleman. And as others have pointed out, MVS has interesting playoff experience, which also can be helpful. He's an upgrade over Sherfield, and I'm not sure the Bills will expect much more out of him than that. Hope for more, but not expect more. 500 yards would be great. And if he doesn't make the team at all, that would be a good sign.

Definitely the committee approach. The guys who will play have been or look like 600-800 yard guys. It's hard to get to 4000 yards total passing yards if no one goes over 800. Kincaid, Samuel, Shakir, Coleman, and MVS get 800 each? Possible, but not likely. As I've been saying, someone is going over 1000; we just don't know who it is. Any of Kincaid, Samuel, Shakir and Coleman could do it. But stacking the box? No, it isn't happening. Samuel, Shakir, and MVS all have legitimate deep speed, and if defenses want to put 7 and 8 in the box to stop the run and the short pass, the Bills will torch them deep. We've seen Shakir do it, and we know Samuel can do it. MVS is now the third. Throughout his career, Josh has burned defenses that play too close to the line. This is definitely a yards-after-catch committee. Shakir, Samuel, and Coleman all are punt returners, and Cook is a serious threat, too.

This is an excellent description of the state of the passing game in the NFL - that the offenses are so potent that pretty much no defense can afford to double cover wideouts consistently. They're using all kinds of variations and essentially betting that the offense will have trouble finding a weakness. Yes, the offense that has a special talent, like a Tyreek, has an advantage because he can just kill you if you don't pay attention to him, but there are very few of those guys and even those guys get stopped by smart defense some of the time. It certainly seems like the Bills have consciously gone against the dominant #1 receiver model. If they have good play design and play calling, and if Allen executes the offense as it's designed, this group of receivers will be successful.

I think Samuel is a different guy. Harvin was extraordinarily talented, almost a generational talent, who many thought would be a devastating weapon. For a lot of reasons, he didn't turn out to be that. When the Bills got him, it was an attempt to catch lightning in a bottle. He'd already struggled on other teams, and when it didn't work, no one was surprised. We'd all hoped that he could capture his old magic, but we also knew that was unlikely. Curtis Samuel, who was a big name coming out and who hasn't proven to be as good as many thought he would be, nevertheless has been a consistently productive receiver, reliable and healthy, including his most recent seasons. Even if all he brings is what he's done in the past few seasons, that's a nice contribution to the offense. The bet the Bills are making with Samuel isn't a long-shot, maybe-they'll-get-lucky bet. The Bills are betting that in a balanced offense, with effective run and pass games, with coaching he's succeed with before, and with Josh Allen at QB, Samuel can be 500 yards more than he's been. It's not a crazy bet on a speedy veteran.

I hear you, and I don't know what he's going to be like, at all. However, I'll say two things in response. First, all I said is when I look at him, what I saw was a guy who looked to me like Evans. Whether he's Evans, I don't know. But what I saw is a guy who just makes plays, which is who Evans always has been. Second, I wouldn't rely too much on the relative productivity of the two in college. Evans played in a wide-open run and gun offense that was putting up 100 to 200 (!) yards more per game than Michigan State and 150 more than Florida State. Now, you can argue that the offenses Coleman were one weren't as good because of Coleman, but I'm not buying that. A&M was explosive.

Finally, someone who agrees with me. When the Bills drafted him and I watched some video, Mike Evans was who I thought of. Here's Evans' draft profile on NFL.com: Sound familiar? I think once he works his way into the league, he's going to be a regular 1000-yard receiver.

I agree. I think we're going to see more 4-3, especially on likely run downs. And I'm not sure we'll Taron Johnson leave the field. Not sure where Johnson will go, maybe strong safety, possibly corner. McDermott wants to populate the field with multi-talented guys. He has Bernard, Milano, Johnson on the field already. Bishop may be another. Williams is another one of those guys. McDermott is going to find a way to get him on the field.

You're right about 2023. I'm excited about 2024. I think the passing offense will have an entirely new look.

And possible roles for Solomon and Hardy. It really was an interesting draft.

Um, what flexibility crap? Morse was a center, period.

You know, I've been looking at this thread title for a while now, and I thought it would be something to good to talk about. So, I finally looked at the thread a couple of minutes ago, read several posts. Here's what I've concluded: I have no friggin clue what to expect from Shakir, and from the looks of the posts here, no one else does, either. The one thing that several people have said and that I think is the best guess is that the Bills are going to spread the ball around a lot. Someone will lead the team in targets, and someone will lead in receptions, but who that will be won't be known until pretty far into the season. The Bills don't have a classic #1 guy any longer, but they have a lot of interesting talent to throw onto the field. Any one of Kincaid, Shakir, Samuel, or Coleman could end the season has the leading receiver. For the passing game to succeed, someone has to go over 1000 yards. Not likely that two will. A successful season for the passing game might feature guys with the following total yards: 1400, 900, 800, 800. Cook, Davis, Knox, etc. might total 600-800 together. That's 4500 yards. Completely doable, even though we don't know which guy will be at 1400. It's up to Brady to design the passing offense and for Allen to execute it. If they both do their jobs, the passing game will be fine because, even without a classic #1 guy, the receiving talent is pretty good, maybe very good.

Because during the ordinary course of most the season, new threads appear naturally. Like, during the season, during the first few weeks of free agency, and for five or six weeks before and after the draft. However, there are a few periods, like between free agency and the draft, and after OTAs until training camp, when there may only be two or three new threads in a week. That happens because there's no news, so the naturally occurring threads dry up. But that doesn't mean there's nothing to talk about; it just means that no one is actually spending a few minutes to think about what might be worth discussing. This is a way to encourage a few posters to be a little creative and find things to talk about. In the old days, the players and coaches would take those periods off, too. It wasn't because there wasn't anything to do; it was only that no one had bothered to think about what they could be doing. Some posters don't to take that time off, either. Primarily, however, what difference does it make? There's a post of the day every day and if no one is interested, each day the post of the day from earlier days will fall off page one and be gone. If the posts of the day aren't falling off the first page, it will mean either that (1) those threads are attracting posters or (2) no one is interested in talking about any of the other threads. In other words, the posts of the day either will create things to talk about or will demonstrate that there truly is nothing to talk about.

I'll chime in. I think this is a good idea. There clearly are some periods when there are few new threads being created, and threads just get kind of stale. I don't think it's correct that that happens because everything that could be said has been said. I think with a little creativity, people will think of topics that are interesting to talk about. If the POD will be pinned only one day. If it's boring, it will fall off the first page sooner or later. If it's interesting, it will hang around. Questions like: List three things you'd change to make the Bills better. Three sentence limit. List three for offense. List three for defense. Which team will be the toughest competition in the AFCE? Has McBeane's roster gotten better, overall, every season they've had the job?

When the schedule comes out, we can get back to complaining about how the Bills got screwed!

Absolutely, both on the COVID side and the NFL side. Exactly. Is TikTok a threat to national security? I have absolutely no idea. There are very few people, possibly in the tens of thousands but more likely in only the hundreds or thousands who are competent to ask answer that question, but there are tens of millions of people who think they understand. I think football is much more about coaching than about talent. I think we'll see it this year - this team is going to be better than most people expect. Why don't they expect much? Because the talent is unproven. Why will the Bills succeed? Because the coaching IS proven. I think outsiders who really know football, like the best broadcasters, understand that it's more about coaching, but they don't talk about all that goes into building a successful team. Why not? Because it's bad television. It's much better television, throughout the course of the game, to talk about the stars, to sell the idea that the stars are the reason this team is great and that team is struggling. It makes for a nice on-air drama. It's boring if all they do is talk about Xs andOs, and about the work the coaches did to design the offense and understand what defenses are doing to them. The ins and outs of that stuff gets tedious. The result is that we - the fans - don't understand all of the detail the coaches and scouts do. Instead, would fed a more or less nonstop stream of how great these players are, and that leads us to believe that what our eyeballs are seeing is all that there is to understand. It leads us to trust our eyeballs, so when the Bills draft Coleman we run off to see his highlight reels and read a couple of soundbites and reach a conclusion about him. There are people in every modern field with enormous expertise, and that expertise makes a big difference.

This is great. Thanks. I agree completely. I'm glad you clarified your point. Actually, I suppose it may be that I just missed the point in the first place. Humility is the key. I don't score high on the humility range, but at least I get that the gap between what real experts, the people in the business, know and what all the rest of us know pretty wide. I don't how many times I've said something like, "look, I don't know. I'm just looking at the decisions that have been made and trying to figure out why they made them." I don't always assume that Bills management was right; I just assume that they had some pretty good reasons for doing what they did, reasons that go beyond what I can understand. Reasons based on knowledge I don't have and conclusions driven by years of experience in the field. So, yeah, I agree. It's the attitude that says, "I've watched a lot of football and I understand this stuff," that bothers me. Truth is, you pretty much can't possibly understand what McDermott and Beane understand. And I think @Rampant Buffalo put it in a very interesting way - knowledge and insight. The area where I have some sympathy with those who aren't always so humble is the question of whether McDermott is good enough. Is he stuck in a rut, or is he still in the process of accumulating insight? And even if he's accumulating insight, how long is going to take for him to accumulate enough? Of will he ever? After all, millions of people spent their lives thinking about all sorts of things, but there was only one da Vinci. It's time for McDermott to paint a Mona Lisa.

Absolutely. A lot of great stuff here.

That's all true, and as I've said, I generally agree with the point. However, I still am not prepared to dismiss the views of people on this forum, or to say that they are never right. Some people are just good at some things. Some people here, for example, are good athletes in their own right, and I do believe that it often takes one to know one - that is, I believe that some athletes are just good at looking at other athletes and knowing, somehow, whether the guy can play or not. It's not intuition, but it's intuitive. My intuitive response to Sammy Watkins was wrong; my intuitive response to CJ Spiller was correct. Consequently, I read what people say here with interest, even though I may believe that in general, the Bills' staff, particularly this staff, has better information and more experience, and spends more time evaluating players and the Bills needs, than the average poster here.

The question is not whether doctors or NFL general managers are wrong sometimes. The question is whether they are wrong about medical diagnoses or football players, as the case may be, more often than you or I. If I have a pain in my chest, I'm going to the hospital, not Two Bills Drive. Yes, the doctors in the hospital may be wrong, but that isn't the question. Yes, NFL front offices could get better at player evaluation. However, given the nature of the problem, they never can be perfect. Maybe it was possible two years ago to predict what would happen to Rashee Rice, but not with any certainty. There was no way to predict Von Miller's most recent knee injury. In both cases, what happened to them was possible, and the teams that acquired them MIGHT have chosen not to acquire those players because of the perceived risk, but a GM who says no to every player with a perceived risk will fail miserably. The nature of the job is to do the best you can with the information and the resources you have. GMs have better information and better resources than any of us, and that makes them quite likely to be better at player evaluation than you or I. Doctors, too. I've mentioned GM, the book about Ernie Accorsi as GM with the Giants. The author describes going to a Penn State game to scout players. Accorsi was watching the game and said. "Look at Posluzni's feet. He makes the correct first step every time." I've been watching pro football for 65 years, and I've never casually noticed anyone's feet, and if I did, I wouldn't know what the right first step is supposed to be. When I go to the hospital with chest pains, I want the medical equivalent of Ernie Accorsi, even if he did bet on Jeremy Shockey.

Not that's it's relevant to anything (other than a collective intelligence), I read somewhere that if you ask 1000 people how many jelly beans are in a jar of jelly beans, their answers will be all over the place. However, the average of all their guesses usually comes out remarkably close to the actually number. Still, I like just watching the Bills and what they do, primarily on the field. The off season is a bunch of guys just trying to give the coaches the best combination of pieces to put on the field, guys who know a lot about football. It's interesting to me, but it's all just prelude to the games.

Hondo - It will come as no surprise to many around here that I generally agree with what you said. The Bills accumulate more data, probably by a factor of ten or more, than any of us here has available to evaluate players, whether they are coming out of college or they are free agent veterans. And that information is valuable. However, I think you're a bit unfair to posters here. There are a lot of people here who actually spend a lot of time reading, studying, and watching film. Not as much as the Bills do, but a lot nevertheless. (And the law of diminishing returns works here, too. The first ten hours of study is generally more valuable than the second ten, and the second ten is more valuable than the third ten. After a while, the extended study is just producing data, but not knowledge.) Those people are learning things, and when they post here they allowing all of us to have the benefit of the time and thinking they put into their work. Yes, there's a bit of group-think that takes over, and that is a problem, but it does not alter the fact that a lot of people share a lot of interesting information here that educates all of us. I tend to trust the Bills over posters here, because they're professionals, they're smart, and they're committed. But I also value the thinking of people here who put in the time to have intelligent and informed points of view about the team's personnel decisions.