Shaw66

I have to agree. Guy's started at center in a big-time college program, so it's practically a given that he has the mental skills to play the position now. Given that, it's telling that he fell to the fifth round. It must be clear to the scouts and GMs that his physical limitations raise real questions about whether he ever can succeed in the NFL, let alone start as a rookie. If he wins the starting job as a rookie, he will be the steal of the draft.

I listen to him and I just want this guy on my team.

I think we can look back now and say what we saw in the second half were actually the beginnings of what Brady would like to do. I think that's what Beane's work shows us. If Brady (and McDermott) didn't want the shift we saw when Brady took over, if they had wanted something different, Beane wouldn't have take Samuel, Coleman, and Davis. I think Davis sends a strong signal that the Bills intend to be a serious running team. Davis will take touches from Johnson - I think he will take over the #2 RB role, and I think he will emerge as a different but nearly equally valuable running back as Cook. And I think having a solid #2 was important because they want to run. And Beane clearly was not looking for the killer big downfield threat at receiver. It's exactly the discussion you and I had before the draft. Beane's given Brady two more guys in the Shakir-Kincaid mold - good athletes who can do everything, two more guys who fit in the style that we think we were seeing in the second half last season. Now, maybe it's all just Beane, McDermott, and Brady being practical - they didn't have a stud receiver in February and couldn't expect to find one, so rather than dream about a receiver room that wasn't possible, give where they were, they are building the best thing they can with what they have. Regardless of how they got there, however, I think the guys the Bills have added tell us something about how they intend to play. Whether it works remains to be seen.

PB - This is really good stuff. I don't agree with it all, but even where we disagree, it's getting to the heart of the matter. First, overall, I think it has to come down to coaching. Player personnel to some extent, but coaching primarily. In some ways, that's the point of my essay - Beane's job is to present the HC with a better mix of players than the HS coach can expect to get out of the random selection of kids in his school. We can argue about this player or that player, this trade or that signing, but in the end, Beane's delivering a pretty good collection of players, and the coach's job is to figure out how to win. We've pretty much all felt over the past few years that the roster was good enough to win it all, and they didn't. Roster could have been better, but it was good enough. After listening to Beane for several years, I don't think it's possible to "plan" personnel the way you say. There's too much that the GM can't control. Beane's probably been thinking since October that he needed a new #1 receiver, but he wasn't thinking that a year ago. He might have had a crystal ball, sure, but he really didn't have any way to know for sure that Diggs would go sideways in 2023 and then kind of separate himself from the team. If he had some sort of plan for the receiver room before then, it went out the window. So, starting in October, he's thinking about what he's going to do about a receiver. But by then, his cap situation was determined, his draft situation was more or less determined. He wasn't going to be able to get a stud rookie. There wasn't a stud veteran who was available. What does he do? He talks to the coaches about what sort of receiving help they could use, given where Shakir and Kincaid are in their development, what kind of offense they want to run, etc. Beane comes up with some ideas, and then he does the best he can. It's hard to stick to a plan in that kind of situation. So, he comes up with what he can, in this case Coleman, and he already got Samuel. Pretty good choices, guys with some interesting skills, interesting personality, and in many respects they're good building blocks to work with. They're both different from Shakir and Kincaid, and they probably make sense in terms of what Brady and McDermott said they'd like to do with the passing game. I think that demonstrates that Beane might have an overall philosophy that he's following, but it's not really a plan. Your primary point however, seems to be the truly critical point: the coaches seem to be quite good at taking what Beane gives them year to year and building a team that is successful in the regular season, but those teams never have been very successful at playoff football. My view for the past few years has been that McDermott's philosophy, and therefore Beane's player selection, works well in the regular season and not so well in the playoffs. McDermott's philosophy is that his his team will be good at everything, able to play any kind of game, adapt from week to week. Pass one week, run the next. Blitz one week, defend the next. The philosophy demands that the Bills have jack-knife players: o-linemen who can pass block one week, run block the next. It means you have a guy like Spencer Brown at right tackle. In the receiver room, it means you want to have five or six guys, all of whom can do a lot of things pretty well - run routes, catch contested balls, run after catch, block, etc. And McDermott is good at running that kind of team, as we've seen. It makes a team resilient, to use the popular word. But the playoffs are different. In the playoffs, there may be one or two teams that are multi- like your team is, and then it's just mano-a-mano. But there are also are teams that are very good at some things and just okay at other things. The Bills haven't been good enough to stop what the other team does really well and haven't been outstanding enough to take advantage of what the other team does not so well. It's like the Bills are stuck in some sort of high-end mediocrity across all aspects of their game. It's been that way on offense some times, but it's particularly been that way on defense. What's to be done about it? Although I've been saying for years it's primarily about coaching (and I believe it is), on the personnel side I think (as many other do) that pursuit of these jack-knife players means that the Bills roster doesn't have true game changers (other than Allen). There's no Chris Jones. We hoped Diggs would be one, but he never quite got there. The safeties weren't outstanding, but they were outstanding within the system. It's hard to be that guy from Milano's position. They hoped Miller would be that guy, and the Bills have had bad luck with him. Maybe he comes back. Rousseau and Oliver are good examples - both probably top 10 at their positions, and excellent at what they do, but they're top 10, not top 3. Maybe Beane and McDermott don't think they need a standout playmaker, but I do. On the personnel side, that's what I think. The coaching side is, in my mind, more of a problem. I think it's really hard to get the jack-of-all-trades philosophy to win in the playoffs. In particular in recent years, it's been necessary not just to be really good, but to raise your game to the level of offensive and defensive excellence that Chiefs have had. What Reid has done in KC puts him, I think, way up on the list of all-time great coaches. His teams always seem to have an answer. It's scheme and creativity on the coaching side, and it's outstanding playmaking on the personnel side. But it's mostly coaching. I think, and it appears that several posters here agree, that regardless of what one might think about the players Beane has assembled, they are good enough to win the Super Bowl. The potential is there to have a top-three offense. The defense may be a little weak. I think a lot depends on Bishop and Edwards, and on Miller. I'm assuming Milano and Bernard will be back, and I actually expect that we'll see some great stuff from Dorian Williams. I'm more optimistic than most, because I have more confidence in McDermott than most people. McDermott is not about doing the same thing over and over and expecting to get better results. His system is to examine, constantly, what works and what doesn't and to make changes. I like to think that he knows what I've just said, and he's working at changing those things that haven't worked. He is, for example, challenging Brady to build an offense that is feared around the league, and they have a vision of what that will look like. He has a vision for what his defense will look like. (On defense, I think he now has what he had in Carolina - a linebacker corps that can drive a great defense.) But my optimism doesn't win football games. McDermott 's approach may make sense, but sooner or later has to win in the playoffs. He could use another player or two, but fundamentally it's up to him to raise his game.

Wow! That's really great. Thanks. It's a lot to chew on. I was interested that you ended with catch rate. Last season, for the first time since he'd been in Buffalo, Diggs seemed unreliable. Before then, if the ball arrived almost any where he could get his arms to, he was catching it. He wasn't like that last season. I heard some media guy, maybe coach, talking one time about how on offense, the best way to be successful was to have (1) zero negative plays, and (2) have very few plays where you get zero. That is, make every play a positive play. For Josh, that means take the easy completion, even if it's shorter. For the receivers, it's catch every ball. Samuel and Coleman should be a big upgrade over Diggs and Davis in that department. Also interesting that they moved toward a more balanced attack. I would expect that balance is important to McDermott, and maybe even that he told Brady to be less pass-happy. I'm getting interested in this offense. And, in the second-last or last game of the season, at Oakland, Rutkowski was playing. He wasn't really a QB; he was the emergency QB and there was no one else. Late in the game, Inside the 10, late in the game, a touchdown wins, Rutkowski fumbled and the Bills lost, thereby giving the Bills the #1 pick. Rutkowski scores, and OJ would have been an Eagle, I think.

Interesting take. Makes sense. I like the look of Ray Davis. We saw the running game beginning to emerge last season, and I can see it progressing. The point is that the offense is going to be what McDermott wants - an offense that attacks all of the real estate that possibly can be attacked - from sideline to sideline, from five yards behind the line of scrimmage to sixty yards downfield. I think we're going to see a varied attack, dramatically varied. Curtis Samuel IS going to run running plays out of the backfield. Cook Is going to split wide. Before Coleman is fully up to speed, they are going to find plays to get the ball to him, and let him do his run after the catch thing. The objective is that it will look like the 49ers or the Chiefs - they always seem to be attacking your weakness, wherever it is. Put another way - your defense is deployed in a way that stops your attack in certain areas, and those offenses understand how to attack the open areas. Davis wasn't versatile enough to fit into such an offense. And Diggs wasn't emotionally able, wasn't a team guy enough to reshape his game to be versatile. Kincaid, Shakir, Samuel, Cook all have shown they play that versatility game, and I think that's who Coleman is, too. Brady's playing mad scientist all spring, and we can only wait to see what he cooks up.

Billy's still alive, so far as I know. I hope he doesn't mind that I use his name and number. I chose the name to honor and remember one of the all-time great Bills. And yes, 1968 was an awful year. So awful that the Bills got the #1 overall pick.

I think that teams that believe the Bills can't get deep will be looking at the backside of Samuel, Shakir, Coleman, and Cook. I think receivers are going to be crossing all day long, with one or another slipping deep on various plays. Someone will go over 1000 yards. Samuel, Shakir, Kincaid, or Coleman. Three others will get between 600 and 800. Cook and Knox will add a few hundred yards each, and there'll be miscellaneous other guys contributing. Allen will get comfortably over 4000 again this season.

Sorry, I am not Billy Shaw. I picked the name to honor Robert Shaw and the movie he made in 1966, A Man for All Seasons.

That's an interesting take. I have trouble seeing Shakir and Kincaid leading the way. They both seem like complementary pieces. Does anyone know of a good in-depth breakdown on the 2023 passing game? First half and second half were so dramatically different. Was it just Brady going in another direction; was Diggs slumping, or did they move away from him intentionally? Kincaid first half/second half?

That's interesting, what you say about Samuel. I have trouble seeing him having some kind of career year. I see him as being the player he's been for several years, but in an offense that gives him more opportunities. It's interesting to me to think of him as you suggest. As I try to visualize the passing attack, I'm asking myself. "Who is going to be the guy who's the premier guy, the feature guy. Not that he dominates so much with big numbers, but is the guy we think of as the go-to guy? Because Diggs was that guy, and that guy is important. That guy could be Kincaid. He doesn't strike me as a leader, as a feature guy. He may grow into more of a leadership role this year, but his play would have to step up from last season. As you say, it could be Samuel. I don't see Samuel that way. I think Samuel needs a premier guy next to him for Samuel to be valuable. Hard to see Shakir as that guy. And that leaves Coleman. Who knows? Maybe Coleman and Samuel, together, present a combination of match-up problems that forces defenses to reshape, which in turn gives Kincaid and Shakir room to operate. That's definitely an offense where targets would be distributed more evenly, as you say.

I think you're both saying the same things: Diggs was a premier receiver for several years, and he certainly was a key part of the offense. It's not very likely that we're going to see that kind of production in many coming seasons. And although I get that Diggs might simply be past the point where he can be again what he was, I expect a good year from him. He had special motivation when he came to Buffalo. He was motivated to show that the problem in Minnesota was Minnesota. 2024 he will be motivated in the same sense, to prove it wasn't him, it was Buffalo. I think the fire that burns in him has been reignited. The problem for Diggs is that his body's ability to respond to the fire is declining.

Beane and McDermott said when they came to Buffalo that their objective was to make the team better each year - continuous improvement. Remarkably, they seem to be doing just that.

Yeah. There are many ways to skin the cat. They did need a running back, and they got a guy who might have what it takes to replace Cook eventually. And I don't particularly like a plan that says "we need a player, and we'll take two to be sure we get one who works out." You're almost certainly not going to keep both of them, so you're using two picks to fill one position. Not a fan of that, but I can't say it's wrong. Going your way, they would need a running back in free agency. Going the way they did, they would need a receiver. Kind of six of one, half dozen of the other. As someone said, Beane had a plan and he executed it The roster now looks pretty good to me. He had a variety of other ways he might have gone, too. Bottom line for me is that Beane knows what he's doing.

As I said, there's room to criticize McBeane for getting into the situation they were in, but they certainly seem to have navigated the situation quite nicely.

Man, that's excellent. Clear and concise. When I take a step back and look at what's lost and what's been gained, I'm liking it. That's the point of my Rockpile. I like Josh throwing to these guys, and I suspect there still may be an addition.

I often find that it’s useful to forget the money and the hype and the stars and instead to think about the game of football at its most basic. I think about what it’s like to have a career as a high school football coach trying to win a championship. In high school, the raw material for building a roster is left mostly to chance (putting aside the little bit of recruiting that goes on in some places). The head coach has very little control over the quality of players who show up on the first day of tryouts; the physical capabilities of most of those players was largely determined in random bedrooms 16 or 18 years earlier, and now here they are. The coach’s job is to choose a roster from among the guys trying out, and then to train and mold them into a team that wins football games. The programs with the best coaches have up years and down years like everyone else, but they tend to have more up years. Why? Because their brand of leadership, their teaching ability, and their strategic and tactical approach to the game is better than most other coaches. So, even in years when the gene pool has left the coach a little short-handed compared to some other schools, their seasons often are quite successful. (I have had the opportunity to observe this phenomenon up close twice in my life. I played high school basketball for Bob Hettler, one of the greatest high school coaches in New York State history, and I was on the faculty with Morgan Wootten, one of the greatest high school coaches in U.S. history. The players changed year after year, but the winning more or less never stopped. (Wootten did have the advantage of being able to recruit, at least a bit.) Only occasionally did the talent fall together in just the right way to have a true championship caliber team, but even in down years, their teams stood out.) Coaches know when the talent they have is outstanding and when it’s just okay. Good coaches adapt to the challenge each season and look for the ways that this group of players can succeed, whether this group offers raw physical talent that is better or worse than last year’s group. That’s the coach’s job, and good coaches find ways to win. Coaching is coaching, at any level. Pro football coaches face the same annual roster turnover that high school coaches deal with. There are differences, of course: The high school coaches have bigger problem, because their roster will be a collection 16-18 year-old kids with their own issues. The pro coach, on the other hand, can expect at least semi-adult behavior from most of their players. The big difference, however, is the pro coach gets raw material selected from the very best players in the country. The pro coach, year after year, is going to start the season with a training camp roster of 90 of the biggest, fastest, smartest, and toughest football players in the world. And that means that the differences in team success based on physical talent become smaller: the guy being tackled and the guy tackling both excel at their jobs. For sure, if your team has more of the best guys, your team has an advantage, but in the NFL it’s very difficult to collect and hold onto talent that is physically dominant at several important positions. In the current era, it isn’t possible to collect and keep stars like the Kelly-era Bills did. I’m not saying that getting the best talent doesn’t matter. Of course, it matters. What I’m saying is that not having the best talent doesn’t mean that you can’t compete. With coaching, talent that is excellent but not the best can play a team-game that neutralizes the talent advantage any particular team might have. Of course, if I have the best talent AND the best coaching, then the talent will be the difference. People can argue endlessly about the talent on this roster and that roster, but at the end of the day success in the NFL is going to come down to how well coached your team is. Does your coach get your team into the strategically and tactically correct offenses and defenses year-in, year out and game-in, game-out. Does your coach get your team physically and mentally prepared to execute those offenses and defenses? In that context, consider for a moment what has happened to the Bills roster in the past three months that has the fan-base and the media all in a tizzy: The Bills lost six big names from their roster: White, Morse, Davis, Diggs, Hyde, and Poyer. When each of those six came into the league, the draft market place valued them, by draft round, this way: 1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 7. Add ‘em up: 24. And now consider the Bills’ top-six acquisitions over the past three months. Samuel, Coleman, Bishop, Carter, Davis, Van Pran-Granger. 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5. Total: 18. I’m not arguing for a second that there’s anything but the least-sophisticated logic to that analysis. You can’t really just add up draft value and determine which college is better. But those numbers aren't meaningless. Those numbers are some evidence of the fact that the talent every team starts with, at least in terms of what the league thought of them when they came in. Going into most drafts, most GMs would take 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5 over 1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 7. In terms of the quality of talent that will take the field in September compared to what the Bills had three months ago, I think I’ll take exactly where the Bills are today. Think about the departures: White, may still be a player, but at the very best he’s about to wind down, Morse, never the greatest physically, and his days were ending, Davis, the guy everyone loves to hate, Hyde slowing down and needs to go for his own health, Poyer, some years left, perhaps, but not his best. Diggs, may still be good, but not so good that he's worth the headache. Start looking at them player by player, or at least paired: Would you rather have Diggs and Davis or Coleman and Samuel? Would you rather have Morse or Van Pran-Granger? Bishop or (pick one) Hyde or Poyer? White or Carter? Collectively, I'd rather have the youngsters than kept or extended all of those guys. Now, for sure, not all of the rookies necessarily will pan out, and it may take them a year to begin to play at the level that’s needed for them to succeed in the league, but looking at the Bills three months ago and now, I will definitely take the uncertainty of these young talented players over the uncertainty of old, injured, troublesome talented players. Would the Bills be in an even better position if Beane had managed the draft in another way? I don’t think so. The extra talent one of the top three receivers in the draft would have brought to the team couldn’t offset the loss of the rest of the players the Bills drafted. Said another way: six guys are gone, and I like my chances better if I get six new guys instead of two (the new receiver and Curtis Samuel). In terms of how Beane and McDermott have done in their jobs, well, it depends if I’m a glass-half-empty or glass-half-full guy. I like that they’ve improved the team, but I also have to ask why a group of unproven guys actually is better than the gang that just left? How did the Bills get in the position they were in, with a group of guys who no longer were quite good enough to win, and with no backups in sight? However they got to that position, I think if you asked McDermott if he likes the talent he has today, he’d say, “Absolutely!” Can you win a Super Bowl with this talent? “Absolutely!” And that’s not just power-of-positive-thinking Sean speaking. I mean, he and we thought he could win it with the talent he had last year, and if this is actually a better group, then why shouldn’t he think he should win this year? Translate this back to high school football. It’s as though McDermott is coaching high school and has a five-star recruit at QB, several locks at D-1 scholarships (Milano, Oliver, Cook, Coleman, Torrence) and several guys who very well also might go D-1. Considering D-2 and D-3, he has maybe 20 kids who are going to play in college. Maybe one other high school in the state has a 5-star QB. Some other schools might have two five-star players, but unless they have a five-star at QB, they can’t be as good together as the five-star QB he has. Some other schools may end up with a few more D-1 guys than he has, but the reality is that doesn’t make all that much difference. Ask McDermott the high school coach if he likes were he is right now, and I’m sure he’ll say, “Absolutely.” Ask him, the pro coach, and he'll say, "Absolutely." I like what Beane has done since the end of the last season, and I’m looking forward to the 2024. The Bills will be in the middle of the contest for the Lombardi. GO BILLS!!! The Rockpile Review is written to share the passion we have for the Buffalo Bills. That passion was born in the Rockpile; its parents were everyday people of western New York who translated their dedication to a full day’s hard work and simple pleasures into love for a pro football team.

Thank you. You've helped me see better how it works. Samuel will get 30% of the snaps at wideout. So will Shakir. That's 60%. Kincaid will get 10%, minimum. Cook and other running backs will get 5-10%. Bills will play with an 8-man line on 5-10% of snaps. That's 80-90% of a receiver full-time at wideout. Coleman will get 80% of the other side. There are you two wideouts. That's what is going to happen, unless the Bills come up with a more serious answer.

Not that slow.

I thought so, but I am slow.

If you're serious, the thing about the Bengals is that what they did was an accident of timing. You simply can't run your franchise expecting that you can decide to have a receiver room like the Bengals have had and then just do it. Timing allowed them to keep Boyd, then get the other two. Certainly it's happened, and we've seen some other great receiver rooms come and go, but if I tried to build a team around that model, I could be waiting a long time before I have that kind of combo. Lots of pieces fell together for the Bengals.

I said it, not last week, but when the Bills signed him. He is NOT going to play strictly out of the slot. I'm sure of that.

They were anything but proven commodities when they were drafted. What they are is very much what the Bills' receivers are - good hungry athletes ready to play in a system.

Good point. Looks a lot like Cooper Kupp, Puka Nacua, and Demarcus Robinson, before they became a deadly combination. Or St. Brown, Reynolds, LaPorta, and Raymond. Kelce, Rice, Valdez-Scantling, Watson. The style of offense these teams are playing, and getting good production in the passing game, is not dependent of big name receivers. It's a style that repeatedly leverages the defense in ways that allow good athletes to get open. Shakir, Samuel, Coleman, and Kincaid are good athletes and they will get open.

Agreed. Beane's not done, but the pieces are already there. The real question is whether Brady is the man to do something with the quality parts he's been presented with.