Shaw66

What they've said is he will be outside for now. I think we won't see Williams inside this season. I think we will see him working in the middle beginning off season in 2024.

I like that guess. It's consistent with my guess about what McDermott's grand scheme is. I think he is testing the limits of the speed-vs-size tradeoff. He is going to force offenses to prove that they can over the Bills' front seven in the run game, and until those offenses can prove they can do that, McDermott is going to play fast athletes who tackle aggressively. (That, by the way, may also have something do with why Elam hasn't won the CB2 spot outright - he hasn't brought that kind of talent to stopping the run. I don't know, but it's consistent with this idea that Bills could play with one linebacker. If you're taking run stopping linebackers off the field, then the defensive backs have to be run stoppers.)

I don't care so much what the draft profiles were. I think McDermott is building to a model he thinks is what's needed in the modern NFL. He wants speed and athleticism and doesn't think size is that important. I'm not saying that's right or wrong, it's just what I think he's doing. He requires speed, athleticism, brains, and aggression in the middle. Edmunds' size was an added feature, a plus, but not essential to what McDermott is looking for. Edmunds turned out never to have the aggression. Williams has it all, with the brains yet to be determined - can he play the position? I don't think McDermott cares very much that he doesn't have the size Edmunds has.

That is exactly the problem. You can be sure the Bills' financial experts have been studying the market very carefully to figure out how far they go on ticket prices and PSLs. They can't afford to outprice the market. They'll be forced to eat some of it.

I agree. Ultimately they agree. Beane couldn't and wouldn't force McDermott to keep a player McD didn't want.

I don't know about three OL, but it's a good point. I'm not a roster guru, but I'd be surprised if they let Settle go. If they do, I'd think there'll be a market for him.

Uh, those aren't the important numbers. The Bills apparently have net income about $100 million. In other words, if the project is $300 million over budget, it wipes out three years of profit. That's significant.

Interesting that Quessenberry and Boettger, people that many of us once viewed as good depth, both are mired on the third string. Says something about the depth on the line.

If there was any question about ticket prices or seat licenses, these cost overruns, and however much more to come, answer the questions. It's going to be costly, and the Pegulas will not simply swallow the whole cost. Even if the Pegulas eat half of it, and put the other half on the fans, that's $150 million! Ain't making that parking cars. It only can come from ticket prices. It's the classic small market dilemma - it's expensive to play in the big leagues. Bigger markets have more people with discretionary dollars, and more dollars. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the Pegulas will take the whole cost of the overruns. What they're trying to do owning and running these teams is give Buffalo a big league experience. It's what they signed up for. That's an incredible commitment of personal wealth tied up in this business risk, and they may view it as the chance they took when they got into the NFL.

Absolutely. We all tend to forget what a big jump it is. High school to college is big, college to NFL is big, too. It's a whole nother level or two. I heard someone say that, except maybe in the SEC, if you're an NFL talent, it may only be one game a year where you're lined up against another NFL talent. Everyone else you play simply is not at your level. Even in the SEC, it's true most of time. You hit the NFL, and all at once the guys across from you are bigger, quicker, stronger, and smarter than all but one or two of the guys you saw in college. There's only on way to adjust, and that's to get live reps against the kind of talent you're going to be playing against. In fact, that's one of the hidden benefits of having a good team instead of a team from the drought years. Each year in camp, we hear many players say how good is to be able to practice against Diggs, against Miller and in this case, against DaQuan and Oliver and Ford and now Phillips. None of it means Torrence will make it. That remains to be seen. But he's getting to go against top-quality NFL talent every day in camp, and that speeds up his development, as compared to being on a mediocre team, or worse.

Wow. That doesn't look like last year's model.

That's true. Josh and Dorsey. Bills have the tools. Dorsey needs to run an offense that utilizes them, and Josh has to execute it. This offense should be as multiple and as feared as the Chiefs at their best with Hill and Kelce.

I've said before that if Kincaid can make some plays early in the season, the threat of him will be enough. He and Knox will force the defense to be stout in the passing game up the middle, which should create opportunities for the wideouts, and for Cook in the flats. So, I think Kincaid could prove more important than what is reflected in his yardage.

What I like is the versatility. There's a role for a Beasley-type quick little guy in the slot, a guy who can separate from man coverage with raw quickness and change of direction. That's a different kind of threat. Kincaid is a Kelce-type threat in the slot, a guy who offers a big target in the open spaces in the zone. If Dorsey does it right, that will be times when Kincaid and a small slot guy are in the huddle at the same time. If, for example, Shakir can be that slot guy, and he also can play wideout, when they're both in the huddle the defense has a real problem. A formation with Kincaid wide and Shakir in the slot poses completely different problems for the defense than one with Kincaid in the slot and Shakir wide. The same, maybe even better, with Kincaid on the field with Harty or Sherfield. If Kincaid is as good as he seems to be, based on camp reports, the versatility of the 11 guys on the field for the Bills will be amazing. Think about it: The #1 wideout is top 5 in the league, and a matchup nightmare. The #2 wideout threatens all over the field, depending on whether it's Davis, Sherfield, Shakir, or who knows, maybe Shorter. The slot guy threatens the middle of the field - I mean, if Kincaid can be a threat anything at all like Kelce, it would be amazing. The running back looks like a serious three-down back who can be great in the passing game. And the quarterback is both a great thrower and a legitimate running threat. The Eagles might be the only offense in the league with such high-level threats throughout their entire lineup.

I think you're ignoring a lot of factors. First, sometimes teams miss on a draft pick. Yes, one would expect that a first round choice would have won a starting spot by the end of his rookie season, and Elam didn't do that. The Bills may have made a mistake in an evaluation of his talent. It happens to teams all the time. The objective is to minimize the bad choices. I'm not saying Elam's a bust - I think he will be fine. If I had to guess, I'd say he'll be the full-time starter before this season ends, but we'll have to see. Second, when your team is good, it's harder for rookies to win starting time Why? Because there's better talent on the team, so the competition to start is tougher. Dane Jackson and Benford wouldn't appear to be tough competition on paper, but obviously they're better than their resumes. Third, just like you can miss on early round picks, you can score on later round picks. That seems to be the case for Benford. Fourth, when your team is good, you draft later, and the sure-fire starter label that goes with first round picks really only applies to the picks in the top half of the round. As you go down through the first round, you begin to find more guys who are not instant starters. That's been true with the Bills first round picks since they got good. Rousseau started but didn't really light it up. Those guys are not that much different from high second round guys, and those guys often are not instant starters. Fifth, trading up is something Beane has done often. Everyone is jumping for joy that he did it for Kincaid, so I wouldn't be too quick to criticize the technique. He also did it for Josh Allen, and that seems to have worked out okay. As for the linebackers, I'll repeat what I said yesterday, in this thread or another. Have you ever known Beane NOT to go after talent when he thinks he has a hole in the lineup? He's clearly gone after edge rushers, receivers, running backs, offensive linemen, corners. If the Bills think they have a hole, Beane fills it. What does that have to do with the middle linebacker position: The Bills don't think they have a hole there. If McDermott wasn't satisfied with Spector, Bernard, Dodson, and Klein, they would have gotten a veteran free agent, or they would have made LB a priority in the draft. They didn't do that, and that tells me that they aren't worried about linebacker.

I don't think they're infallible. But I do think that they have 100, maybe 1,000 times more information than any one of us. McDermott's been doing this for 20 years, every day of every year. He has a DB coach and several assistants who are watching these guys in practice, in games, and rewatching all of it on film. They also have an overall plan for the defense that they don't share with any of us. So, yes, I do think it's much, much more likely that they, collectively, understand which player is best able to do their job. I remember Kyle Williams just laughing off the idea that some guys at PFF could watch film and evaluate his performance. He said it was ridiculous. He said they didn't have the experience, and they didn't even know what his job was on each play.

No, I'm not doing that, but I don't mind if you think so. It's no big deal.

It's not a random anomaly. There's millions of dollars at stake. The networks don't do random. Your first paragraph explains it. There are stories about teams that were of interest to the fans during the offseason. Other than Hamlin, those stories were not about the Bills. The networks know which teams were interesting to the fans, so those are the teams they show. During the season it's different. There the networks fight to get the best teams and the best games. The networks know the Bills should be competing for the title, so they want prime time games with the Bills.

Absolutely. I agree with whoever that coach was who said what he said. To be an elite QB, you must be elite at moving the ball consistently with your arm. Allen was not that last season. The elite QBs - Brady, Peyton, Rodgers, don't have to run to be elite. Rodgers was an effective, opportunistic scrambler, but he wasn't a runner. But they all were great game managers and highly accurate throwers. They had high completion percentages, in part because of accuracy, but in part because they knew the way to win was to get a completion, any completion, on every play. The completion is more important than the yards gained. Allen didn't do that last season. Now, we all can talk about the receivers and the oline, but Brady certainly did not consistently have great receivers, and Rodgers didn't either. And they didn't have consistently great olines, either. What they did do was take the easy completion that the defense gave them, play after play. They made really easy throws a lot of the time. Josh has to learn to do that, play after play. It's great that he's one of the most talented throwers ever, but really that's just a plus, just like his running is. At the core of his job is getting completions. His completion percentage has to go up. Dumb he may be, but he was absolutely right.

It's really simple, and people don't want to accept it. McDermott (and lots of other coaches) say it all the time. The best player plays. It's a competition, in practice, in games, all the time. The current winner of the competition plays. You aren't the winner in the competition because you're a close second but have more potential. Potential doesn't make you better. The guy with potential has every day in practice to show he's better. If he's a close second, like Elam was last season, he gets playing time in games. He gets graded. If his grades are better than the others, he gets more playing time. If they aren't, he doesn't. How much playing time did Ford get because he had more potential? Very little. Why? Because other players were better, and the Bills wanted the best players on the field. Ford kept getting tryouts for the first time, a little playing time here and there, and he never did it. Somehow people think it should be different for Elam. All it really means is that your evaluation of Elam is different from McDermott's. McDermott desperately wants to win, and he has about 100 times more information about Elam than you do. I think if McDermott thought Elam was the best option, he'd put him on the field more.

How do I know? Really? How do I know? How many teams have you been on where the coach played the second best player at some position over the best player at the position? I've been on a lot of teams, and I can't recall the coach EVER playing the second best player. Coaches want to win. Coaches also want the respect of the players; the players know who the best players on the team are, and they lose respect for the coach when the coach doesn't play them. It's true about all teams I've known. Coaches quit when the owner makes them play players who aren't the best at their positions. So, it's simple: The Bills grade their players in detail. They play the best players. Elam is not a regular starter. It follows that Elam doesn't have the best grades at the position. Compare Elam to Cook. Cook didn't play a lot early in the season. Why? Same reason as Elam: He didn't grade out as being good enough to play. He played more as the season progressed. Why? Because he kept working and his grades improved, in practice and in games. Better grades, more playing time. Eventually, his grades got so good that he passed Motor, and the Bills finally concluded they could let Motor go. Cook passed Singletary. Elam hasn't passed Jackson and Benford. It's that simple.

I think should have been precise; thee regular season is different from the preseason. The preseason TV schedule is driven by what the fans think - the fans seem to think the Bills are done, so the networks don't want to show the Bills. I think the regular season is driven more by common sense - the networks know who the good teams are, and the NFL knows who the good teams are, so the Bills got a lot of prime-time slots. I look at the ESPN.com NFL home page most days, and it amazes me how few of the stories are about the Bills. It's because the fans aren't interested in the Bills this off season, so ESPN knows not to cover them much. That will change once the season starts, because I think the Bills will be a force to be reckoned with. When the Bills are dominant in the league, the fans will take notice again. It's what I've always said - the Bills have to earn their coverage. The Giants, the Jets, the Cowboys, they don't have to do anything and they're on the front pages.

It's consistent with how the media always cover the Bills. Until you're viewed by the general public as legitimately good, the Bills don't get covered. The general public believed the Bills were good for exactly one year: from 13 seconds to the loss to the Bengals. Now, the general public has forgotten about the Bills again. The Bills have to win something to become relevant to the general public; until then, the networks aren't interested. It's life in a small market.

That's you talking. That's not McDermott. On this team, as on every other team, your job is to do your job, the whole job, not just part of the job. The players get graded on how well they do the whole job. Elam hasn't played because he doesn't do the whole job as well as the other guys. Simple as that. Even if covering the receiver is the most important part of the job, even if grading is weighted to reflect that, which it probably is, Elam is not grading out better than the other guys. That's why he isn't playing. That's why Epenesa isn't a starter, no matter how good he may have been in college. That's why Cody Ford didn't start. That's why Cook didn't get significant snaps the first half of the last season. Somehow, because you have some love affair going with Elam, you think Elam should start even though he isn't the best at the position. Have you ever known Beane to leave a position of need ignored? Ever? He needed guards this year, and he got them. He need corners last year, and he got them. He need edge rushers starting about three years ago, and he got them, in spades. Beane ALWAYS fills needs. So you know what your list of drafted linebackers, and the list of free agent linebackers signed, means? It means that Beane and McDermott do not think that MLB is a position of need, that they think they have the guys they need to play the position. You actually seem to believe that all the linebackers, other than Milano, suck, and that somehow McDermott and Beane haven't noticed? Don't you see how unrealistic that is? Their linebackers DON'T suck, or they would have gone out and gotten someone.

No, no, no. The Bills are very public about the extent to which they grade people. Every player is graded every day. How they play on the field is graded in minute detail. McDermott has been very clear, over and over, that the guy who plays the best plays, regardless of his draft position. And no, he does NOT play guys in real games so that they can develop. Practice is for developing, games are for winning. So, yes, it may be less apparent to you, but that's just because you're not paying attention. The guy who does the job best plays, period. That's the way it works on almost every team, from pee wees up to the NFL.