Shaw66

No, not too high. And I agree with what you say. Acknowledging it's difficult doesn't automatically translate into an excuse. There's a difference between an explanation as to why something happened and making an excuse. For any team, the answer to the question "why didn't you win the Super Bowl" is "we weren't good enough." There are a lot of explanations for why one team or another wasn't good enough. There are explanations for the Bills, too. What people mean when they say that an explanation is an excuse is that they think the team is using the explanation to make it okay that they didn't win. One thing we know for sure is that the Bills - the owner, the GM, the coaches, and the players, do not think it's okay. They aren't making excuses for themselves. They're trying to do something that is very difficult, and they're going to keep trying. Fans can complain if they want, but I'm not complaining. Yes, the Rams won a Super Bowl, and almost immediately they weren't competitive. The Bills are competitive every season, and they intend to stay there. I can support that.

Well, yes. But we are talking about Cowherd's critique of the Bills and why they haven't succeeded. His take was uninformed and naive. He essentially said the reason the Bills have failed is that they already had a really good defense and they kept acquiring more defensive players. That's naive and uninformed for two reasons: (1) if they didn't need to acquire more defensive players because their defense already was good, well, then they don't need to acquire more offensive players, either, because their offense already is good, and (2) they actually drafted someone who looks like a good interior offensive lineman, and they signed a free agent who's been a solid starter for several seasons. So, sure, he can complain all he wants, as we all can, about the fact that the Bills haven't won a Super Bowl, but he deserves to be called to task when he says stupid things.

There's good stuff here to comment on. First, I agree very much it's on Dorsey. Davis is certainly good enough, and the supporting cast of wideouts certainly are good enough, also. They're all playmakers. And Short might surprise. I agree that we can't expect a lot of yardage out of Kincaid, but I think it's likely he will have impact beyond his yardage. If he catches some balls early out of the slot, he's going to force defenses to play differently. All of it, however, depends on play design and play calling. That's on Dorsey. I think he was inadequate last season, and the question is whether he actually will make real progress growing into his job. As for your final point (bolded), I have to say that that kind of comment always bothers me. I think it ignores how incredibly difficult it is to win a Super Bowl. Every season, we hear the winners talk about how hard they worked, how everything fit together just right, how they all love each other. It's really, really hard. If it were easy, KC would have won four in a row by now. It's six months of brutally hard work, with injuries, surprises, etc. Really difficult. It's not like the Pegulas sent McBeane out to the store and they forgot to get milk, and then next year they forgot the milk again. It's more like they sent McBeane to the store and they failed to bring home a rare vintage cabernet from 1953 - sure they've got a really nice car to drive to the store, but it still doesn't mean that they're going to be able to find that one bottle of wine. Send them out next year, they still might not find that bottle. Winning the Super Bowl is more random than we'd like to think. You can do pretty much everything right, and do one thing wrong - pick one decision in those 13 seconds, and you don't win. Of course, it means that someone else did enough of the right things and you didn't, but the difference between those two performances is tiny, and it's very difficult to be the winner, even once. It's not going out to pick up a quart of milk.

Thanks for this. I don't track the drafts all that carefully, but it has seemed to me that they've been light drafting o linemen. Whatever, as you say, they haven't been very good at finding quality oline talent that is worth keeping long term. Of course, I tend to forget that they've had Dion and they acquired Morse, so that's something. And the book is still open on Brown. And, of course, they haven't been sitting on their hands. They've been signing linemen for years, looking for the right guys. Maybe McGovern and Torrence will be the answers inside. McBeane don't do anything without a reason. I think they are reluctant to draft olinemen in the first couple of rounds because olinemen may be among the biggest crapshoots in the draft. Olinemen are notoriously unprepared to play in the NFL when they come out of college, and except for the true stud tackles who go in the top 10, it's just seems very difficult to determine who's going to grow into the kind of guy who is a keeper. It's easy to miss on olinemen, like drafting a Cody Ford - a guy with the body but who just doesn't grow into a quality NFL lineman. That means that in terms of utilizing your high draft picks efficiently, you're better off drafting other positions that can be projected with a higher degree of certainty. You get a higher return on your picks. Wait for a Torrence, who seems to have a high floor. Of course, that strategy means you have to get yourself some good linemen in free agency, and McBeane haven't succeeded there. Add in the mistake they made with Teller, and it leaves the Bills where they are right now - and where they've been for several years: hoping that this year's off-season fixes will do the job.

And Ray

I agree. Davis will be fine, and Kincaid will be a big addition, even if he puts up modest (400-500) yards. The offensive line should be better (everyone is back, plus they've added two guys who should start at guard). Last year, the Bills were everyone's hot item. This year, they seem to be everyone's whipping boys. Guys with load mouths don't play the games - big, tough, well-trained athletes do, and the Bills have a lot of those.

Cowherd's really good, when he gets his facts straight. As others have said, he complains about the Bills oline without once mentioning that they've addressed the oline - we'll see if it works. And he asks why the Bills are spending on defense when over the past four or five years the Bills have been around the top of the league in points allowed and total yards. What he doesn't mention is that during the same time, the Bills ALSO were around the top of the league in points scored and total yards. The point he should be making is that the Bills have a great offense already (yes, it could be better, but the mantra about their needing another wideout is way, way overdone), and now they have a stable of elite pass rushers in a league where pass rush is the only thing that stops good passing teams.

2795 for Kyle. 2284 for Ed. Really very similar production.

Oliver's press conference is interesting. He isn't the best speaker, but he's genuine. You can tell how confident he is. Solid guy. Best part is the end. Someone asked him about whether he's accomplished all he hoped, and he said "we have everything, but we don't have the hardware. We have the oline, we have the dline, we have the coach, we have the owner." HE said he wants to win a lot of Super Bowls. It was cool. This team is all in. Love it.

Yes, take Beane over just about every one. The fact is that every GM misses, and probably every GM has a losing streak at particular positions. Browns have had a losing streak at QB for a couple of decades. Fans of every team are well aware of the positions where their GM has struggled to solve the problem. It happens everywhere. Someone someone has a master grading system for GMs, evaluating draft results compared to other GMs and free agency moves, including players lost in free agency. The Bills have a QB on a monster contract, and still the roster continues to improve from year to year. Hard to fault Beane because at one position or another he hasn't hit it out of the park - overall, he's been great.

Definitely intentional. He wants players fresh in the fourth quarter. But it also has other advantages. With eight "starters," if you will, they can mix and match in different situations. Pass rushers, run stoppers, etc. I don't think it's a lack of possible talent. We all see the best DTs and DEs, and they're special. They're difference makers. If McBeane thought they could have a better team with difference makers rather than eight good rotational guys, they'd go there. It does provide some compensation relief, because there are some positions (QB, wideout, corner) where you just can't do it by committee - you have to have stars in those positions, so that's where the compensation has to go.

Bills now have five- FIVE - edge players drafted in the first round: Floyd, Miller, Shaq, Rousseau, Ray.

Interesting stuff. Thanks. I agree that Williams is the type of guy McDermott envisions in the defense. Babich was frank in saying that it remains to be seen whether he will stay attached to receivers as well and play as physically now that he has moved up to the big leagues.

This is flat out true. What remains to be seen is whether the defense will be worse without him this season. That's the big question for this season. I'm betting on McDermott. I keep quoting Babich, who said the other day the same thing Beane and McDermott say all the time. They want football players - meaning tough, hard-nosed, smart, aggressive athletes. Edmunds wasn't one of those. He was good, and the defense worked well with him out there, but he never became the kind of player McDermott wants. I will not be surprised, at all, if Dorian Williams turns out to be the guy.

I don't think there's any evidence of that at all. These guys aren't about trying to prove bad decisions actually are good decisions. They didn't keep Edmunds to make that pick work. They didn't keep Singletary to make that pick work. They didn't keep Cody Ford to make that pick work. They extended Oliver because he fits what they're trying to do on defense and he was willing to take compensation that made sense to the Bills.

Like most everyone except @Gunner and a few others, I didn't see this coming. A lot of fans around here want a top-five player at every position, and that's simply unreasonable. No team can afford to pay top-five rates to everyone. I think this tells us a few things: 1. Since it looks like Oliver's currently the 11th best paid defensive tackle in the league, with a few guys who will come off their rookie contracts who will pass him in the next year or two, it means the Bills didn't overpay for him. 2. It also means that McDermott doesn't think he needs a star at defensive tackle. He needs a certain kind of guy, and Oliver apparent is the kind of 3-tech he wants. The Bills paid for an edge, but they won't pay for a DT. 3. It's also interesting to compare him to Edmunds. Edmunds got top four or five money, and Beane wouldn't pay that, not for Edmunds. If Edmunds would have taken top-10 or 12 money, he probably would still be a Bill. 4. This also relates to the discussion I had today with @Chaos about the philosophy of going after the one-year rental guy to make a Super Bowl run. It just doesn't seem to be McBeane's way. They'll pay an Oliver nice but not outrageous money to keep him long term rather than write a short-term check. (Of course, maybe getting this done frees some cap money so that Beane now can afford the rental - who knows?) I would say that Beane has made very few mistakes on extending players. He didn't lose Poyer. He didn't lose MIlano. He kept Taron Johnson. He extended Diggs. Allen, of course, was a no-brainer. Beane has extended players for good reasons, and I'd bet that this will turn out to be a good move, too.

I disagree. It's not about the roster moves. It's about the coaching. Chiefs had Reid and Spagnolo, Bills had Frazier and Dorsey.

Yeah, I've never seen any data that's been accumulated on the subject. What I said was that that kind of continuity was the strategy. Whether the strategy actually results in any way that would show up as a statistical difference, I don't know. What I'm saying is based in part on what I hear Babich say, and what I've heard McBeane say in the past. Beane has said often that they draft to build the team for the long term and they use free agency to fill holes. They say their objective is to draft good players and keep them. Babich was clear that the need for players to get real-time, in-game reps is essential for their growth and development. When you put those thoughts together, you can see how it fits together, even if you, personally, don't think it's a good idea. The objective is to draft White and Milano and others, and keep them for a long time. The cap and other factors make it impossible to do that across the roster, but the objective is to have as many of those guys as possible. When you miss by a little, you draft an Edmunds and give him every opportunity to grow into what you want. The problem when a guy doesn't work out, like Edmunds, is that although he's played well enough to stay in the lineup, he's taken reps away from the next guy who's going to play that position. The bigger problem is when you man a position with one-year rental, like Saffold, because then he hasn't satisfied your need at the positions AND other, younger players who are part of the future didn't get the reps. That's why, I think, McBeane don't like the one-year rental approach. Think about it. Who's the real talent the Bills have acquired? Diggs, Morse, Miller. None of them were one-year, hole-plugging, Super-Bowl-or-bust acquisitions. They were guys brought in to fill important, longer-term needs. They are exceptions to the build-through-the-draft philosophy, but they were not one-year rentals. I get that you and others like the rental approach, and a lot of people like that approach because they are believers in the Super-Bowl window; they believe that when you have an Allen, you should mortgage the future to surround the guy with talent and win while you can. I understand that approach, but I don't spend a lot of time thinking about how the Bills might get Hopkins or OBJ or whomever, because I don't think that McBeane follow that philosophy, and therefore they aren't likely to be going there. Belichick won with an approach that's more like what McBeane are doing. He'd spend on a shut-down corner, but only for guys who were going to be in that role for multiple years. He tried the one-year rental with Chad Johnson, Randy Moss, and Antonio Brown, and he failed every time.

Yes, but the less turnover, the better, or so the strategy would suggest. I don't have the data, but it would make sense that teams that are chasing short-term free-agent talent have more turnover. I'm not saying either strategy is correct. I'm saying that, as with everything, choices have consequences, some good, some bad.

Well, all those things are correct, sort of, more or less. But just as Babich said in his presser, the only way for players to grow is to get reps in games. To play whole games, whole seasons. So, every time you have a one-year rental, you're impairing the growth of a younger player. There's a cost to that. Moreover, the one-year rental creates a hole in the lineup for the next season, a hole that you haven't trained a young guy to fill, so the GM has to go back to free agency to plug the hole. The process begets itself, which means you're looking at more frequent roster turnover, which is contrary to the long-term building philosophy McBeane want to follow. You may be right; maybe the best way to build and stay on top is through free agency. McBeane don't agree.

Is anyone actually talking about Babich here? I will. I don't know anything about him, but I watched his presser. I was impressed. He's very down to earth, well grounded. Talks clearly and freely in response to questions, without saying anything too specific or critical about any player. He genuinely is in the McDermott cult. He's living the continuous improvement, growth mindset thing that McDermott lives by. I thought it was clear how excited he is to see McDermott regularly in the defense meeting rooms. He loves McDermott as a head coach, but he said doing defense is what McDermott really loves. I'm excited to see what happens to the defense this season. I think it will be a whole new ball-game. It will look the same, all the same basics, but I'm expecting the level of achievement to go up a notch. McDermott lives for that kind of play, fast and tough, and he keeps getting more of those kinds of guys. That's the story about Bernard and Williams, for sure, and Taylor Ray and Shane Rapp. They're piling up special athletes, even if some look like they don't fit or they're reclamation projects. In particular about Williams, he said he has a lot of the things they are looking for. As for his size, he said the Bills are looking for football players, and that they aren't looking for people who fit molds. He almost said that if you're a football player, size doesn't matter. And the implication was that if you aren't a football player, size doesn't matter, almost as though was thinking that Edmunds had all the size and speed anyone could want, but it didn't matter, because he wasn't a football player. (That's reading between the lines, a lot, but I think it's what they're thinking.) And then he said what I've been saying about McDermott - that they want to put 11 guys on the field who can play all different kinds of ways. Someone asked whether the Bills might platoon at middle linebacker, have different guys depending on down and distance or something. Babich clearly aid no, in so many words. He said success as a player is about repetitions, and if they go MLB by committee, they giving anyone enough repetitions. He said they want a guy who can play whatever style they need, and their objective (platooning the line aside) is to have 11 guys on the field who never come out, regardless of the situation, because they can stop anything. Essentially, 11 guys saying, "you cannot beat me." And he said, without naming names, that because that's their philosophy and because they had Edmunds, we - the fans and the media - haven't seen any of their linebackers. Edmunds got all the reps. He left it to us to infer that he's not as worried about MLB as we are. He doesn't know who it will be, and there's no timetable to make a decision, but he seemed confident that middle linebacker will not be a whole in the lineup. I suppose he's confident because (1) he knows he's going to be picking from some talented football players, and (2) McDermott is now leading the way.

I agree. Ralph just didn't like spending money on the team. Doesn't mean that he wasn't generous. In fact, he showed great character on behalf of the small-market teams.

Thanks, Brit and Gunner.

Thanks, Deek. That's useful information. We'll be in King's Cross, because that's where the train to Edinburgh leaves from. And Google Maps actually gave me good information about the Tube to the stadium Presumably Tottenham will be similarly efficient as Wembley. Now, I'll need to track down a hotel.

Of course, whatever wins a Super Bowl is great. If Justin Shorter catches two touchdowns in the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl, then Beane's a genius because he grabbed him when he did. if a one-year rental doesn't win a Super Bowl, Beane's wasted an opportunity to build his team for the longer term. There are positives and negatives to most strategies. The one-year rental worked for the Rams and Miller, and in the same season it didn't work for however many other contenders used it. All I said is I'm not a fan; if Beane does it and it works, I'll love it.