Shaw66

I love how fans come together on these things.

That's a fair point. What we can hope for is a serious advance in field generalship. More sustained drives, more success in the red zone. Not Peyton after five years, but Wentz or Goff after two - flashes of brilliance and occasional lapses. That's what I think we'll get. Not enough to get deep into the playoffs, but that should be the expectation in 2020.

I've been away from this thread for a while, came back and read this. I gotta say, it's one of the best looks at exactly how well/poorly Allen played. Allen got the Bills everything Allen could, he just wasn't good enough as you describe - not because he isn't good but because he has a lot to learn. A veteran QB would have gotten more out of the team. That's what Fitz is - every place he goes, he threatens more talented young guys because Fitz understands what to do all the time and does it to the best of his ability. Allen has some big steps to take. I've always been confident he'll take those steps, because his approach almost seems to be that he's a disciple, learning the ways of the master. When the Bills tell him to throw more of the short high percentage stuff, he's going to do it because, well, his approach is to follow the master. So he's going to do it - he has the physical skills to do it, and he has the learning capacity to do it. There's nothing to stop him. But that is truly easier said than done. So although I'm extremely confident we're looking at a star in the making, it's all just talk until he does it. Yes, he needs better line play and better receiver play, and there's reason to hope he'll get it this year, he still has to do what he has to do or it all adds up to nothing.

Shady you could have been Kinder but I have to agree with you. I think by the end of the season it was clear that the bills had the best quarterback in the draft.

Oh, yeah!. I think he's going to be deadly in that 15-25 yard range - that will be his strength. He's really accurate there, and he gets the ball there in the hurry. It's the short game that will open up those passes.

I really dont agree with this assessment. I didn't see anything that suggested to me that he doesn't have the right hard wired instincts. First, he moves well in the pocket. Good pocket awareness. Good sense of when to bail out. Second, when he scrambles, he finds open receivers well. Third, his comfort level in the huddle and at the line was high from the day he took the field. He doesn't get rattled. He played last year behind a horrible line with pretty poor receivers, with out having had in depth practice e in training camp, and he still looked like a winner. Watching him last season, I often thought that he can be every bit as spectacular as Mahomes. Different style, but just as spectacular. Nothing wrong with his instincts. I think he is going to surprise you I think he is going to be terrific in the short game, which is what is going to make him a star. Once he is effective in the short game, he is absolutely going to kill teams with moderate range and deep balls, because he will see a lot of open guys down the field. Beasley alone will catch 80 passes.

Thanks Hap. Interesting topic. I have a slightly different take on this. First, I don't expect 600 yards rushing. Maybe 400. And I don't expect a bombs-away approach to the passing game. I expect Allen to be less explosive, both as a runner and as a passer. I expect these things because McDermott wants a smart QB who manages the game and who makes the throws the defense gives him. He doesn't want a running QB, because it risks injury and because that isn't the best way to have an effective offense. Plenty of Allen's best runs last season were on broken plays, where the blocking broke down or the receivers failed to get open or Allen didn't recognize where to go with the ball. He should have better protection and better route running, so he will not need to scramble on as many plays. And his own recognition of what's going on should be better. That all adds us to fewer carries for Allen, and fewer yards. McD also wants the offense on the field longer, which means a shorter passing game and a higher completion percentage. They'll take the mid- and long-range throws when the scheme is creating high-percentage opening, but they will take more of the sure-thing short throws. If Allen doesn't do that, he will be failing. So the one thing I expect is a big jump in completion percentage. Allen's going to have time, is going to have receivers with hands who run good routes, and he's being told to take the short, sure-thing throws more than he did last season. What that means for his yardage, TD and INT numbers depends on how effectively Allen has learned this lessons and how well his receivers perform. If it goes well, 3500 yards and 25 TDs are within reach. Actually, I think the sky is the limit. But there also are a lot of ways Allen could fall short.

I wish him happiness and success as he moves on to the next part of his life. EJ is a genuinely good guy, hard working, earnest. It didn't work out the way he hoped, and that has to be disappointing for him, just as it is for the thousands of other guys who get close but don't quite make it. It isn't easy to hear you don't have what it takes, and it isn't easy to accept it. I wish him well.

I haven't read the posts in this thread, as they seem to have gotten into some detailed discussions that are nice to have but I'm not currently interested in them. I do want to comment on the point of the OP, simply because I find the difference between last year and this year so startling. Everything seemed unsettled last year. Giant question marks at quarterback, a big, uneasy feeling on the offensive line, question marks all over the receiving corps. Concerns about the defense. This year, there are questions, to be sure, but it feels like the likely answers are on the roster. It wasn't like that year ago. Between Ford and all the free agents, there should be at least adequate talent on the offensive line. Coaching is a question mark. Quarterback is a settled position; the only question is how much Josh will improve over last season. Wideout has a couple of guys (Jones and Foster) who at least made some plays last season, a couple of free agent veterans who have had their share of success at the position (Beasley and Brown) and a couple of guys who are at least intriguing (Williams and Sills). The defense seems more settled than last season, and Oliver can give us some hope of having someone special on the field. Bottom line, there are actual reasons why the team could be good in 2019. They aren't there yet, but there is a whole lot less fear that they will be abysmal. Last year, we had that fear.

What's special is that the guy had the kind of raw physical talent that made him a likely first or second round pick, had his career not gone sideways. That's what I think some people are overlooking. Why did he come to dominate the Canadian league? Because the guys with his kind of physical talent aren't playing in that league.

That's well said, and I'm sympathetic, but I dont think that's what McBeane think they're building. They think they're building a system that will get better and better for years, like the Pats. You can argue that they could have done it differently and gotten better faster. McBeane will agree with you. But they will argue that it's harder to stay good when you build that way. I don't know for sure, but I think McBeane would say that 2020 has always been the year that they expected the team to be successful. I'd guess they think a .500 or 9-7 team is on target.

I think the point is exactly that he isn't AB, OBJ, Hopkins or Jones. If he isn't any of those, he isn't a guaranteed starter. If he isn't a legit number one, he's in competition with every other receiver to be the number two, and some of those guys are better route runners and some of them have better hands. That's EXACTLY the point.

The best you can do on this day is standout. He stood out. That's worth something. It's better than to have people say about him he didn't stand out.

No one is declaring him a bust or an all pro. We're just talking about what it means that he stood out on his first day on the field.

Right, and Dalton threw more than AJ. And FOSTER's role can be to get CBs and Ss away from the line of scrimmage. I'm not dissing Brown, but everything points to him being, at most, a piece of a larger puzzle. He isn't likely to be the answer at #1.

Yup. I;m high on Duke, because he seems to be high on football.

Yes, altho apparently Duke stood out because he isn't a rookie and everyone else is. That makes his standing out a little less impressive, but it still answers one question about him. Whatever he is, he isn't raw and isn't a rookie. It's what I thought - he's played two seasons of professional football in Canada, and that's serious football. The talent level is down a notch, but what they expect players to do isn't. He thrived in a competitive football environment, and my guess is that he'll thrive in the NFL too.

Tiger - thanks for the post and the link. there's lots of good stuff in that article. the picture of Singletary, Oliver and Ford together is interesting. Ford is a giant!

Looks like you tried to respond to your own post and it turned into an edit. Here's what you said: I think you are exactly right about this. Exactly. I think your first paragraph describes what the Bills are trying to do with the receivers. And, to repeat what I've said dozens of times in the past six months, they are mimicking the Patriots. The Bills are all about scheme. That's certainly how the defense plays. And that's what they seem to be doing on the offense. They are going to play receiver by committee, and receivers are going to succeed, if they do, because the scheme gets them open and the scheme allows Allen to know when and where they will get open. The beauty of playing a scheme like that is that you can play it without star receivers, if the receivers are fundamentally sound and do their jobs (and if the QB masters the concepts and makes the throws). Any of these guys we're talking about - Brown, Foster, Jones, and I think Williams for sure and Sills, can be nicely productive in a good scheme. Frankly, that's exactly what we saw from Foster last season, and from Zay perhaps to a lesser extent. Against certain defensive sets, with certain play calls, Foster had a real advantage, Allen knew it and found him. I think that describes Zay's better games, as well. The additional beauty of playing a scheme like that you can always have a good receiving corps, because you don't need star receivers to make it work. Then you can hunt in free agency and the draft for the guy with better talent who is not a prima donna, plug him into the system, and BINGO!, you have something special. The Patriots keep trying to do that. They had some success plugging Moss into the system, no success with Chad Johnson or Gordon. But they tried. They had big success with Gronk - a special talent who willingly adapted to the system. And Edelman, who in some ways is a limited receiver with a few exceptional skills that make him really tough in the system. I keep coming back to what McBeane say - this is a process that takes years, and they aren't done. They're building and building and they expect the team to continue to get better. I think if you get them to talk completely frankly about it, they'd tell you that this team is headed in the right direction but hasn't learned enough yet and doesn't have enough talent yet.

Actually, I view these facts about the two of them the opposite way. I think the fact that they had poor production when the less able QBs were on the field as a comment on the RECEIVERS. I think it speaks to their limitations. AJ Green didn't stop catching pass when McCarron replaced Dalton in 2015. His production went down, but that was because McCarron was throwing less than Dalton. Good players are good players, and you can see it in them even when the players around them aren't so hot. Sometimes you have to look a little harder, like at Shady when no one is blocking for him, but they're still good and you still see what makes them good. So I'd say that both Zay and Brown are the guys their ENTIRE output has shown them to be, which is receivers that have, so far, failed to rise to the expectations that coaches and fans had for them. As be the two, Zay gets a bit more of a pass, because he's only been at it for two seasons. If by now Brown has emerged as a serious threat, a legitimate number one, it's relatively unlikely that it will happen in the future.

This is one example of how fan perception of players is skewed by rookie performance. Brown is another. He burst on the scene, produced multiple spectacular highlights. Now some people Zay is horrible and Brown is a couple of seasons from the Hall of Fame. (And I'd say Ziggy is another' Every year some edge rusher splashes into the NFL and looks like a world beater, but very few of them remain dominant beyond a few years.) I didn't fall into the Zay trap. I was willing to see what he did in his second year before writing him off, and in his second year he showed plenty of signs of being a solid NFL receiver. I did fall into the Brown trap; I was excited when the Bills signed him and thought they had made the move that will change the receiving corps. Then I started thinking about it, looking at his stats, reading what people were saying here, and I realized I had drunk the Brown Kool-Aid. The Bills' receiver room is full of good stories, good potential but only one proven player - Beasley. Brown could have big impact if the process turns him into something he has. Jones could be an important piece of the puzzle if the process continues to help him improve. Ditto Foster. Williams has the tools to have significant impact, like a Boldin, if the process etc. Sills the same. It's a bunch of question marks, and I've stopped thinking ANY of them is going to take a major step forward. My sense is the Bills need Beasley to be what everyone thinks he is AND the Bills need someone, ideally some two, to take serious steps forward.

What do you think this is, college admissions? He with the most bucks wins? Starters aren't determined by how much they're getting paid. But how much a free agent gets paid is some indication of how highly the league values him. Brown has been a free agent for two years running and no one is paying him even high number 2 money. That says something to me about how valuable the guy must be.

I never knew that. So is 10 1 back and 4 wide? Do they call it 10?

I don't know the mix of their packages last year - I'm not geek enough to study that stuff, but in any case I expect the offense to be different this year. Different in the sense that the mix of plays will be different. They intend, I'm sure, for Allen to pass more and run less than last season. Last season they seemed to be trying desperately to keep him at or below 20 attempts, but I expect this season they want to take the wraps off and let him throw 25-30 times a game. SO that will change the mix of formations and play calls. I think they also expect to have a more effective running game (how could they not?). I'd expect they would like to run more play action. That will all depend on how the line develops. Bottom line, I don't know what to expect. As we've all said for four months, a lot of it depends on what Allen can do. If he steps up his game, and I think he will, every aspect of the offense will look better.

that's what I understand, too. So to the extent that Brown are Foster are one trick ponies, their chances of starting are diminished. They will have to run the entire route tree, effectively, because the system, as I understand it, demands it. Nevertheless, we know that (with one possible exception), the Bills will go three wide a lot of the time, and there will be three guys who are the guys who play most of the snaps when they are three wide. That's the 1,2,3 I'm talking about. Ideally at least one of the three has deep speed, and the chances are that that's a two-man race between Brown and Foster. Beasley is a given as one of the three, so that means the lose of the two-man race is fighting for the third spot with Zay and anyone else who can get himself into the race. Williams, Sills, McKenzie are all possibilities. If Brown loses to Foster, he will have a fight on his hands, because he will have to prove himself as a route runner and a guy who can catch contested balls. If Foster loses to Brown, same deal for Foster. Either way, Zay's way into the starting three is to win the fight for that last spot. Whose the best route runner among Zay, Brown, Foster and Williams? Zay is the front runner, Williams is unknown. Who has the best hands? Well, he hasn't played in the NFL, but there's good reason to believe it's Williams. Who's the best blocker? I'd bet on Zay or Williams, but I really don't know. So far as I see it, bottom line is this: Beasley gets one of the three spots. Foster or Brown gets the second. Third is truly up for grabs. Brown has more experience, but I don't see a whole lot of evidence that suggests he's a lock to beat out Foster for the job. If Brown doesn't win that competition, he's in dog fight with Zay and perhaps a couple more guys. Brown could easily end up being the fourth receiver, as could Zay. And as I've said before, if you're the fourth receiver, that's pretty much like being the fifth receiver - you're just getting snaps as they come. And this whole analysis assumes Roberts isn't a factor. He could be. The one exception would be if the Bills figure out over the summer that they're going to go with two tight ends as a regular part of their offense. Then you're looking at two wideout. In that case Beasley likely is one and Foster and Brown are fighting to be the other. Beasley could also lose out if both Foster and Brown step up. The real point is that I don't see anyone other than Beasley whose track record makes him a heavy favorite to start. Brown is the favorite on day 1 of camp, but he could lose that title in two weeks.