BigDingus

https://sports.yahoo.com/patrick-mahomes-declined-endorsement-money-deference-alex-smith-last-season-010612684.html "Mahomes and his agent Leigh Steinberg talked to ESPN about how he declined local endorsements last year in deference to veteran starter Alex Smith. Steinberg said that Mahomes got some of the offers that come with being a first-round rookie, but chose to focus instead on finding his place in the locker room before having his face plastered on Kansas City billboards while Smith was still the starter." Anyone living in WNY know how the local endorsement scene is going with Josh Allen? Not that we have an incumbent starter like Smith on this roster, but just curious if his face is all over billboards and commercials already. Think it shows a lot of character to turn down money and exposure, just so you can integrate into the team better.

Like others have said, it's great in THEORY but usually bad in practice. It's like Rex Ryan's defenses.... There's no one way to do things, as each week it's different depending on matchups and personnel, using different combinations and packages for different situations. Sounds fantastic....but it doesn't usually work so well. Players don't become great at anything, confusion happens, mistakes are more common, and the depth players who don't get the reps to fine-tune their abilities end up being far behind when they do finally have to play. I hope it works out, but usually having one main scheme with different variations and packages is more successful. Sometimes having a simple & straightforward philosophy yields much better results (see Jim Schwartz's defense) than switching it up week to week.

Didn't we take the White Stripes song & fan "ooooOOOOooooOOooOooooOOOOhhhh" thing before kickoffs from Penn State? And we took our logo from some Division 3 college too right? And the "12th man" thing we took from Texas A&M"....and....you're right, we take a lot from other places lol

What is TBN? And does this impact the Bills in some way? Asking seriously, not trying to be rude. Just haven't heard it spoken of on these boards or anything.

Since Lindell is the most accurate kicker in Bills history, combined with being our kicker for the longest period during the drought, I'd put him at #1 easily. He also had quite a few clutch kicks, and was one of the few underrated bright spots on the team. Unfortunately, he didn't get as much credit as he deserved since we weren't in many close games that really mattered. Even though he was the source of most of our points, those didn't equate to wins, and people outside of Buffalo aren't going to take notice of that. If Hauschka stayed around for another few years and won us some meaningful games, I could see him moving up the ranks too though. And as much as people remember the crappy end of Carpenter's career here, he was pretty damn good for quite a while. Easily #2 for me right now.

It was both. Not sure who specifically told him Allen was "blowing people away," but at least 1 person from the media, followed by someone with the team, said good things about him - https://sports.yahoo.com/little-month-draft-first-round-qbs-152832915.html Quote from article: "I had a member of the media up there first tell me and then I talked to, you know, somebody involved in their organization. Josh Allen is blowing people away,” Simms said on “The Simms and Lefoke Podcast,” via Bills Wire"

I tried to reiterate this several times in my original post, but it seems some people want to just ignore that & generalize by saying "all teams have poor depth blah blah." That's not true at all, and that's not the main point of contention. We don't need starters behind starters behind starters, but many people are ignoring obvious problems... first off, how limited we are at entire starting positions in general, followed by the massive drop off behind them, Teams have 2 starting WR's...with the 3rd guy getting significant reps. Kelvin Benjamin is already a risky player to be your #1, but the guys at #2 and #3? Holy hell they are depth players on other rosters, not starters. So who's behind them? An even more steep drop off. If Benjamin gets injured (which is very, very likely), there goes the whole WR corp which our also inexperienced QB's are throwing to.... And the O-line? Did nobody else see the drop off last year when we still had a couple good guys on the team? We complained every week about the starters outside of Incognito & Wood, as they were pitiful. Now guys worse than them are starters, and the guys behind them are nobodies. We aren't just "thin," we are barren. And again, we have unknown & inexperienced QB's throwing to a paper thin WR corp while being "protected" by these guys...yet we're supposed to act like it's ok? Every year injuries happen, and every year people go into the season only mentioning how great we look on paper. A couple weeks in and you can rip that paper up, but usually there are guys you can be confident in sitting behind the starters. Guys who have experience, are solid role players or rotation players, and guys who contribute in between reps of our starters. We don't have that this year. And defensively, guys...you see how it's a rotation based on packages and what the offense is doing. DB's get subbed in & out, DT's get subbed in and out, even LB's get subbed in & out (Brandon Spikes anyone?)...those guys see play time. They don't just ride the bench until someone's injured. These non-starters DO play week to week, they just aren't heavily relied on. This year, those guys on our roster are likely going to have to be major contributors, and if anyone goes down (which they always do), be the main focus. That's not good.

I just read an article on Yahoo's front page that mentioned this from Simms. Here it is -https://www.yahoo.com/sports/little-month-draft-first-round-qbs-152832915.html It also discusses every other 1st round QB, but it makes a good point - "The norm is that everyone spends May gushing about their first-round rookie quarterback. If you’re hearing nothing but negative reviews, then worry. Take all of the minicamp and OTA updates with proper skepticism. Everyone looks better in helmets and shorts, without a pass rush bearing down on them. Every pick is a home run at this point." "To repeat: Any bit of praise about a rookie in May probably means little." But hey, I'll take glowing reviews ,whether they're a sign of things to come or not, over bad reviews all day every day. Glad to see people are high on him at the moment. Hope he keeps it up

Again, people forgetting about Reuben Brown.... I feel like it's almost weekly I have to bring him up. It's almost like my personal duty that people don't forget we had such an all-time great player on our roster for so long, yet he never gets mentioned because he came after the Super Bowl years & before the drought really picked up. The guy deserves a spot on the wall IMO. Even though Kelly was great, Bruce was clearly the best player at his position on those SB teams. Similarly, Brown was the best at his position on his teams, but people are going to remember others more. Out of all of those, I agree with Christie as the kicker too. The guy was clutch. If not him, then definitely Rian Lindell, as he was the most accurate kicker in Bills history. In regards to your other suggestions, I'd still take London Fletcher at LB or throw a healthy Sam Cowart in there. Also, forgot about Jay Riemersma....really underrated & deserving of a spot too.

One thing that I consistently notice each off season is the fan predictions always leave out a very glaring issue - players get injured. By now, we should all know how quickly 1 key injury can derail the outcome of games, let alone several piling up over the course of the year. Sometimes a roster looks great on paper, but dig a little deeper and see who's sitting behind who, and how that will impact the team in the very likely case a player goes down. Last year we had injuries to Jordan Matthews, Charles Clay, Tyrod Taylor, Zay Jones, Cordy Glenn, Shaq Lawson, Kelvin Benjamin, Nate Peterman, Tre White, John Miller, Brandon Tate, Nick O'Leary, and many more. Years prior, we had key people hurt for extended periods of games (which include many who I already named) like Marcell Dareus, LeSean McCoy, Sammy Watkins, Robert Woods, Marquis Goodwin, Ronald Darby, Stephon Gilmore, Eric Wood, Cyrus Kouandjio, Percy Harvin (ha), Aaron Williams, Nigel Bradham, Manny Lawson, etc. Every team has injuries, but many teams are setup far better than the Bills when it comes to replacing those guys & the production they bring. Anyone who says they have "confidence" in our WR corp as it stands is either lying, or just crazy. Same goes for the O-line... Neither unit was good last year, but at least the line had some positive attributes. In 2018, we lost all 3 of our best players in Glenn, Incognito and Wood. We're left with (potential backups in parenthesis) - LT - Dion Dawkins (Conor McDermott) LG - Ryan Groy (Wyatt Teller) C - Russell Bodine or Adam Redmond RG - John Miller (Vlad Duccasse) RT - Jordan Mills (Marshall Newhouse) It's already unstable as it is, but with the depth we have, we're are so paper thin that a single injury would essentially be a death sentence to whoever is QB. And our run game? We significantly regressed in 2017, and likely will be inferior to that in 2018. The WR group we have is again, even worse than last season. We've got - WR1 - Kelvin Benjamin WR2 - Jeremy Kerley? I mean, he's got the highest average yards per season at 388.......... None of the guys on our roster have been #2 guys in the league WR3 - Andre Holmes or Zay Jones? They've got the next highest average after Rod Streater, with 316 yards per season played, so....yay? Other potential stars: -Quan Bray, 3 years in the league with a total of 75 yards -Kaelin Clay, an even better prospect, as he has 85 total yards in 2 seasons. -Malachi Dupre, 1 year in the league, crowning achievement was being promoted to the active roster for week 17's game against the Dolphins. Didn't play a down. -Robert Foster, rookie, 4 seasons at Alabama averaging 97 yards a year. -Brandon Reilly, 1 year on the Bills practice squad, promoted to active roster for final 4 games, didn't play a down. -Rod Streater, had 2 decent years in 2012 & 2013, has done less than nothing since. Then we've got the other rookies, Ray-Ray McCloud, Cam Phillips, and Austin Proehl...Obviously most of these guys won't even make the roster, but the ones that do offer limited skillsets, no experience, or a combination of both. If Benjamin goes down, we are beyond screwed. And it should be noted that Benjamin has never started all 16 games in his career...so that's almost a certainty. And beyond the obvious, here's some other thin positions: QB - AJ McCarron, Josh Allen & Nathan Peterman: don't need to get too deep here, this one's obvious. A combined 6 starts between them, 4 coming from McCarron. Peterman had the record INT game and the snow game for the other 2. Allen was always touted as the "potential" guy who's stock was based solely on looks, arm strength and physicality, and not on-field play. By everyone's account, the most raw QB in the 1st round whose promise is based on if he can be developed properly. Needless to say playing with this line & this WR corps would do him no favors, so expectation is for him to sit, learn & start in the future. RB - LeSean McCoy: although he's generally reliable for most of the season, he's only started all 16 games 3 times in 9 years, including 1 season with the Bills (last year). He's easily our best player, but production has declined and will be 30 heading into the 2018 season. Behind him we have the also 30 Chris Ivory, who's better than Tolbert, but that's not saying much. Also has a history with injuries. CB - Tre White & Vontae Davis: even if just one goes down, that leaves us with next to no options. We have Breon Borders, Ryan Carter, Phillip Gaines, Taron Johnson, Levi Wallace, and Lafayette Pitts...a bunch of late round/undrafted rookies & practice squad fodder. Davis is also 30 & coming off an injury, so it'd be a miracle if our starting duo plays most of the season. And yes, there are other soft spots as well, but those spots are either covered better up front, or have more experience backing them. Every team has "needs" or positions they're weak in, but for a team many on this board are confident can make the playoffs, I can't see another playoff contending roster with nearly as many holes. People need to temper their expectations and remember to factor in injuries and depth. It's always a battle of attrition, but there are certainly teams that have positioned themselves worse than others in that regard. I'm hopeful Allen will become what the Bills want him to become, but when factoring in injuries & our limited depth, this year will likely only do him a disservice if he's the starter.

Probably a 3 - 13 season. But hey, if it's like a Peyton Manning 3 - 13 rookie season, I'll be fine with it.

Allen isn't going to win it, and Peterman would have to make a huge leap to win it, so odds are it's McCarron. Really shocking analysis, I know.

So if in our imagination the Bills won a Super Bowl, while simultaneously we pretend the Cavs lost an extra NBA Finals, we can pretend the Cavs are the worst team in the 4 major sports? Yay! Make believe is fun!

Now's the time of year where people get most uptight! During the offseason when the Bills find themselves without an incumbent starting QB, that's when the message boards really get feisty. Hell, I remember the JP Losman vs Kelly Holcomb summer as a particularly fun one! Drafting a QB in the 1st round was always going to get fans riled up in some way.

That's the laziest, worst, most inaccurate comparison I've ever seen. It's clear you didn't watch anything on either QB while they were in college. Mahomes is far more athletic, more accurate, can read a defense, played against better competition, put up great numbers regardless of who he played against, and although he was in a spread, so was every other Texas Tech QB the last 20 years, yet none of them got drafted before the 5th round if at all. Graham Harrell put up better numbers than him, yet he was a practice squad guy for a couple years, then out of the league. Kliff Kingsbury, same thing. There have been so many, yet Mahomes gets drafted round 1 when nobody else was even considered worthy of a roster spot? Maybe you should recheck your analysis to understand why (that means watching the games). Also, Mahomes carried those teams with next to no help on either side of the ball. They had to throw all over the place since TT's defense was ranked 128 of 128 in 2016...so dead last. Mahomes didn't have big play makers like Crabtree to lob the ball to, and had the ability to make his own changes on the field. Along with his 41 passing TD's his final year, he had 12 rushing, all while playing through injuries just to keep competing. To put it in perspective, Mahomes had the same amount of TD's in one year as Allen had in his entire career at Wyoming.

I think the luck aspect comes from the fact they had the worst chance of any of the AFC teams to make it going into that weekend. I believe it was a 10% chance, and after our win, only bumped up a little bit. Considering the odds, they were "lucky" to have made it, but they didn't just "luck into" the playoffs.

I have yet to find anyone in real life, whether it's the people I work with in law enforcement or the countless military friends & family I know, that actually felt they were being disrespected. The closest I ever heard was one of our Sergeants during briefing make a joke about "entitled" athletes thinking we're all gunning for them, but that's it. Hell, if anything, our department has made sure to really crack down and extensively train everyone in policy and procedure to make sure there aren't any cases of abuse of power or excessive force. And that's not a bad thing, as we all should be held accountable and treat everyone fairly. On the military side, my wife's friends get more agitated by the people that bring up the "disrespecting our troops!" than anyone kneeling. It's annoying that people decided to take a protest and spin it to directly mean "those guys hate our soldiers!" when none of it had anything to do with the military. Edit: And no, just because I stated this doesn't mean anything about where I stand politically. You don't have to be a liberal or conservative or whatever-the-hell to just state the obvious.

Only the Music City BS (I was 13), and NEARLY the Cowboys MNF game. I teared up, but didn't cry for the latter.... I was just so pissed that we collapsed in such epic fashion on our first MNF game in 13 years, all while I was living in Dallas & went to a bar with a bunch of Cowboys fans hoping to pull off the upset (we hadn't won a game I believe, and they were undefeated). But yeah, besides those 2, the Bills tend to enrage me more than make me want to cry. The McKelvin fumble to lose against the Pats, the choke job on national TV against Brady Quinn, the throttling we got last year on TNF against the Jets...pretty much any nationally televised game the Bills find a way to blow it.

I never cared, and still don't, regarding what players do & don't do for the anthem. Kneeling was never disrespectful before this, now suddenly it shows contempt for the country? Uh what? And the fact a US Army Ranger is the one that proposed that as a form of peaceful protest, shows there was never any intent to disrespect the country. On top of that, since I was 16, I have only missed 3 Bills games period, and not one single time have I ever seen a person at the bar, my house, or wherever I'm watching suddenly get up and stand when the anthem came on... Were they all disrespecting the country? No.. The funny thing is there were only several people, all backups and no-names, across the league still kneeling when the POTUS brought it up again...then suddenly half the league starts doing it in response. Did anyone really give a s*** that 3rd stringer Joe Whats-his-face on the Titans was kneeling off screen? No...but all of a sudden because of phony outrage, and players getting ticked, half the league rebels & does it. My wife is in the military, I'm in law enforcement, and I come from a family of both, yet I seriously never once thought "OMG! That guy kneeled! He hates the US and all I believe in!" But man, do I have to hear about it every second on ESPN radio (and every other outlet) from all the people supposedly upset in my defense...

As much as I wish the Bills would have a new stadium built to play in, I know it's not feasible. Buffalo just doesn't have the population or they high-end demographic that could really justify the expense, and using tax payer money is always a raw deal for the locals. If the population of the metro area consisted of more wealthy people, with a large upper middle-class and higher, it would probably be ok even if the population was small. But since the average income is so low, and there isn't a high demand for luxury suites or corporations to shell out a lot of money for large groups of season tickets, a new stadium would probably not attract the amount of money needed to make the investment worth it. And unless there's a roof tacked on, the stadium still won't be full during the winter just like every other year (people tend to believe that we always sell out regardless of weather, or if we have a winning team, but even during the Kelly era, plenty of seats remained empty at that time). I think the best bet would be going for a cheaper, smaller, better quality venue like Pittsburgh. Even adjusted for inflation, the Heinz Field costed only $529 million to build. Or we could attempt something like the Cardinals, which built their stadium for $661 million (adjusted for inflation). Either way, just due to being in NY, the costs will be higher, but there's no reason the stadium has to hit $1 billion or get anywhere close to that.

Unfortunately, nothing Allen does in OTA's, mini-camp, voluntary workouts, practice, etc. will be impressive, as he has never had a problem with that aspect (his draft stock alone is proof of that). It's what he does on the field that is concerning, so until he looks impressive on the field, it's hard to get excited. The entire reason he was picked so high was based on his POTENTIAL and what he COULD do if developed properly. It sure wasn't for his win-loss record, play in big games, stats, All-Conference selections, accuracy, or standout college career. Even though people love to say "Preseason games don't matter!" I'll be impressed if he performs well even if it's against 3rd stringers. As long as it's on the field against NFL competition, it'll go a long way towards proving he's worth the hype.

Well... Allen's completion percentage just went up 4% with this news. Guess he might actually hit 60% this year!

A good game? Wtf are you talking about?! You must LOVE Tyrod then, as he puts Johnson to shame. Rob Johnson - 10 of 22 passing (45% comp.) for 131 yards, 0 TD's, 0 INT's, 6 sacks & 3 fumbles, with a 64.8 passer rating. DAMN! Killer game he had! Yup, he did everything he could to win that game! How many coaches have you ever seen bench the QB that lead them to a 10-5 record, a clinched playoff spot in week 16, had already lead them to the playoffs the year before, and replaced them with an unproven guy who was hadn't won jack, was always injured, and had averaged 122 yards a game up until that point in his career? ZERO. In 6 games the year before (1998), Johnson was sacked 29 friggin times! In Flutie's 10 games that year, he was sacked 12 times.........Johnson was bad from start to finish, Flutie actually did something. But yeah, try & justify the ridiculousness that was that decision. Johnson the injury-plagued statue was never the "good" option for that game, even if our team did everything it could to win.

Nobody outside of Buffalo EVER would be dumb enough to seriously think starting Rob Johnson was a good move. The fact 46 people said Rob Johnson just shows how much denial still exists in this fandom. When your starting QB leads you to a 10-5 season and clinched a playoff birth before week 17, you do NOT pull a switcheroo and throw in an unproven guy to start your playoff game! In what f'n world does any non biased person think that makes sense? NOBODY outside of random deluded Bills fans would be capable of the mental gymnastics required to make that leap. Besides the obvious skill/talent disparity, you instantly cause turmoil in the locker room and lose your credibility as a leader. You have one guy that your team went into battle with game after game, respected, followed and played for, suddenly get yanked and replaced with a guy who had done nothing but lose games & get hurt, and hadn't earned anyone's respect. Oh, and you really think a week or two of 1st team reps is good enough for the players to get a sense of all the ins and outs of that QB's play style? Is their timing going to be anywhere close to as refined and ingrained as the guy they went through OTA's, minicamp, practice and 15 games with? And the fact that they knew the starting QB did nothing wrong to validate losing his spot on the fly makes it even worse! You have people on these boards that couldn't even grasp the logic behind starting Peterman in the San Diego game, when Tyrod had actually been playing like garbage, wasn't half as successful as Flutie, and it was a REGULAR SEASON GAME against a team that had a losing record! Yet somehow pulling your starter who didn't s*** the bed several straight games, had already clinched a playoff birth (and lead you to one prior), and doing so in a PLAYOFF GAME makes sense? The stupidity of those people is baffling. It doesn't even matter if the Music City Miracle happened or not, or if the Bills had won the game! It was still so asinine that it's a point of what not to do to this day! How many coaches have you seen pull a turd move like this since then (or even before)? NONE. You know why? Because it doesn't make sense on any rational level. If you would seriously make that move (and apparently 46 of you would), your opinions on football are irrelevant. /rant

If I were Foles, I'd prefer to stay in Cleveland too. You're basically the hero of that city, played lights out, and have a chance to be a major contributor on a stacked team if Wentz can't play for any reason. You also have a coach that works his system around the players he has instead of the other way around, which allows you to perform to the best of your abilities. And he already has experience going to play for a dud coach in a dud system when he played for Fisher in St. Louis. Why go through that mess again when you know you're only being singed as a bridge guy? The second you do something wrong, or a game goes poorly, the blame goes to you & the fans who have no allegiance towards you will be calling for you head. Screw that.