SCBills

He honestly keeps getting good PFF grades. I don't really notice him out there either, aside from a chase down of Tua 2 weeks ago, but whoever evaluates him over there likes something they keep seeing.

Agreed. I guess I am more speaking to those who suddenly have Jones as "the one guy we can't lose".

How would you feel in the situation was reversed? And we lost the guy who's 3rd in pressures and 2nd in sacks from the DT position. Who's young and only getting better in McDermott's Defense? I only ask because 32 out of 32 NFL teams would take Oliver over a healthy Jones if they could take one player for this year. We are reacting based on the loss of Jones, but what if we lost Oliver in his place? Would you feel better about that?

The Offense next year returns, basically, the entire OL plus the depth.. Josh Allen.. Diggs, Cook, Knox, Kincaid, Shakir & Harty. They'll really only need a WR2, and that can be an instant impact player if taken early in the draft. The Defense.. honestly.. it's time. It's probably past time, to move on from the OG's. Poyer and Hyde are fine. Not great, not bad, they are fine. This should be their last year here. Tre White.. I'm sorry, but the 6M we can save by cutting him should go towards extending Epenesa. The upcoming Draft, on a quick way too early glance, looks to be one that should go WR early and then heavy Defense. I'm not convinced getting younger on Defense next year won't make us better by the end of next season. I hope we win it all for Hyde, Po, Gabe & White this season.. but they've run their course here. Gabe, I can hear an argument to keep him, but not at the expense of AJE.

We're getting to a point where the season ending injuries on defense have GOT to stop.. That being said, if we can get to the end of the season with: Von/Floyd Poona/Settle Oliver/Phillips Rousseau/AJE Bernard/Dodson Williams/Dodson Johnson/Neal Benford/Elam Jackson/Elam Poyer/Rapp Hyde/Rapp That is still a Championship caliber defense. There is still the hope Milano and/or Jones can get back for the Playoffs. If 1T is an issue. If OLB is an issue. If CB depth is an issue. The trade deadline doesn't pass for a few more weeks. We have a couple weeks to see if Poona Ford and Dorian Williams can be the in-house answers. Elam is not as bad as he showed in London. He was arguable our best defensive player in the playoffs last year. That said.. his performance, in a weird London setting, was beyond poor. If that's the Elam we now have due to his lack of development, mental issues and/or struggles in McD's system... a move needs to be made, because we cannot have that on one side of the field. That's a fatal flaw in the defense. The youth movement is real. The Bills will have to decide after this season whether or not they're ready to embrace it. Embracing it likely means this is the last year White, Hyde and Poyer are on the Bills roster.

These responses are becoming comical. -Bills signed Poona Ford as a depth 1T. He's not Daquan Jones.. Most teams don't have a player like that just sitting around as depth. -Bills drafted a RD3 LB to backup, perhaps, the easiest position on the defense to play. He's not All-Pro Matt Milano, but he was a Top 100 pick at a position that translates quickly to the NFL. -Outside CB, I'm worried about after Benford & Jackson. I don't trust our depth at all now. If our Offense doesn't figure out how to not have random games where they don't show up.. we're not winning a Super Bowl regardless of who's on this Defense. But on this Defense, we still have the potential of getting to a point this season where our DL consists of Von Miller, Greg Rousseau, Leonard Floyd, AJ Epenesa and Ed Oliver. Most fanbases would laugh at you and tell you to shut up when complaining about Defensive talent after those names are rattled off. We had the potential to rival the 49ers for best defense in the league. That's likely not happening now. Tell me what AFC Defenses are more talented than ours, even in our current state? Bills have comparable talent on Defense to the Browns, Bengals, Steelers, Chiefs etc.., Jacksonville just made our Offense look like a JV team with one good pass rusher, a couple run stuffing DT's, a good linebacker, one good CB and one good Safety. They did the same thing to Kansas City. It would be GREAT to have 49ers East. We don't have that anymore. What we do have is a defense on par with most of the other defenses associated with top teams in the AFC. Miami fans don't seem to be crying because they Defense looked incompetent against our Offense. Because they are confident in their Offense. If we had reason to be confident in our Offense, we'd be 5-0. Not 3-2, with posts like yours littering the board. As much as the defensive injuries sting right now. Our Offensive woes in 2 games are why we feel this way about the Defense.

Oh, I definitely agree Benford and Jackson are the starters, whenever Benford gets back... but we need to know we have some semblance of competent depth. After what I saw from Elam, I don't know if we have that. I know he's capable.. he played well last year when given opportunities against the Chiefs and Dolphins. Heck, he may have been our best defensive players in the playoffs last year.. but this year has been bizarre and I'm worried about him being mentally reliable when called upon.

Daquan Jones has been elite in our system, but it's also - in part - due to the system. Same system has guys like Oliver and Bernard playing at incredibly high levels also. It hurts, but Poona Ford has been a very good player in his career, he's younger than Jones, and I'm interested in seeing what he looks like out there. People seem to be taking Jones great play and pairing it to his gameday inactive against the Bengals where we had a ton of defensive issues and his seemed to be the one that broke the camels back. It's Week 6. We have a guy on the roster to replace him. We are working towards a point in the season where may have the best DE rotation in the NFL. If any of these positions (CB, LB, DT) prove to be damaged beyond repair with what we have on the roster, the trade deadline doesn't pass until a few weeks from now. There are teams like Broncos, Vikings, Cardinals, Giants etc., that will soon be looking to move guys off their roster. This all sucks, no way around it, but we have Poona Ford and a RD3 draft pick as depth for Jones and Milano.. I'm willing to see what they look like for a few weeks and then we have the trade deadline to consider. We can also hold onto the hope that, maybe.. just maybe... Jones and/or Milano can get back for the Playoffs. CB is more where I'm worried about. I'd almost hope we get Elam right back out there on Sunday Night, because he was put in a tough position in London and we desperately need him to step up his play over the course of the season. We could probably move a Day 3 pick for a DT or LB should we need to... CB's will be available, but with the investment made, it would be really frustrating to have to do that with a former RD1 pick on the roster.

If he actually gets called up, I'll join the concerned chorus. This screams to me McDermott looking at his extremely young outside corner room and wanting a cheap vet presence that knows the defense in there to be an extension of himself in the room.

If I'm the Bills moving forward, the next iteration of this Defense (starting next year) builds around the following: -Rousseau -AJE -Oliver -Bernard -Benford Hopefully we win it all and send some guys off into the sunset with a Championship, because in order to build around those guys, we may need to make tough decisions on Gabe Davis, Tre White, Micah Hyde, and Jordan Poyer. I'm not sure any of them are on the team in 2024. If the choice is between Gabe and AJE, I'm choosing AJE. He likely won't be as expensive and it's riskier and, most importantly, takes longer, to develop talented DE's. We can find a Gabe Davis replacement late in RD1 or with a potential trade up in RD2. It took Rousseau a year or so to develop. It's taken AJE a couple years. Boogie was a bust. If I'm Buffalo, I'm thinking long and hard about an AJ extension. I'm certainly not trading him when he finally looks to be turning into the guy everyone said slipped to us as a potential steal in the Second Round.

If, big if, we can stay healthy on the DL moving forward, this DL is what can win you Championships. Once we get everyone ramped back up, this is the best DE rotation in the league. We have Ed Oliver on the interior. Depending on how Poona Ford looks, I may be in the mind to just figure it out on the back end and see if there's a DT to play the Jones role available before the trade deadline.

Yea, AJ is only back if he takes a deal on Beane’s terms and no random teams with money to blow give him an outlandish contract for 1.5 years of production.

Bills can get out of the Von deal after next year. If they want to extend AJ, they can. Just backload it. Same thing with Rousseau the following year. The defense is probably going to have quite the shakeup in the off-season with guys like Hyde, Poyer, White, DaQuan, Floyd and AJ all being guys the coaching staff/front office is going to have to make decisions on whether to extend and/or cut bait.

Miami lost Ramsey, and who knows if he’s effective late season in a comeback. Armstead is hanging in by a thread. KC doesn’t get injured. They are invincible aside from Mahomes pretending to sprain an ankle every once in a while.

Ravens lost yesterday because they played a good defense and skill players kept dropping passes. Jags played well and when plays were there to be made every focal player didn’t come through. -Diggs lost a 50/50 -Gabe had a chain moving drop -Knox had chain moving drop -Cook had a chain moving drop -Kincaid didn’t fight for an extra yard -Couldn’t run the ball -OL bullied for the first time since NYJ It was a total failure all around for the offense.

Comment from their board: ”Do we need to trade the achilles of a star player for every win this year?”

McDermott not ruling them out for the season is… interesting. Bills aren’t usually ones to allow for any optimism/aggressive recovery timeframes. Sounds a lot like Jalen Ramsey. Done for the year vibes and then, maybe not.

Bills punted 6 out their first 7 possessions. You don’t think, maybe, that accounts for the TOP & Number of Plays? Bills will force turnovers this year. QB pressure creates turnovers.

Our outside DB room’s eldest member is Dane Jackson, with a bunch of second year guys. Makes sense to bring in a veteran who can provide that presence to the room from the PS.

When did I say those guys were going to be studs? We still have enough on defense. People would say “we can’t lose Ed” if we lost Oliver. “Can’t lose Groot” if we lost Rousseau. “Can’t lose Taron” if we lost Johnson. “Can’t lose Von again” if we lost Von again. Enough already. It sucks. But Tre is the only one that should be a fatal flaw if we can’t get baseline production at corner. You can scheme and/or find a linebacker. You can get by without a stud 1T DT. And these injuries hit before the trade deadline. We held a good offense with a QB that was on point to 11 points until the 4th quarter. That was without Benford, Roussea, Shaq and essentially Von as well. Scheme and Pass Rush can mask A LOT.

So sounds like we’ve lost Tre & Milano for the year and there’s a chance Jones can get back late in the season.

No. If anything I’d look to extend him to a backloaded contract to keep him as a building post Von with Rousseau and Oliver.

Yea, this overreaction is getting annoying and it’s not only aimed at you. Tre hurts for depth, but he was getting back to good.. he wasn’t elite in his form. Milano is elite. He’s a linebacker. Let me repeat myself.. he’s a linebacker. Jones was playing at an elite level. He’s a defensive tackle. Yea, it sucks. But we signed Poona Ford for a reason. He’s a 1T who likely now becomes Daquan lite. We drafted Dorian Williams in RD3 for a reason. The guy drafted before him was slated to start for Dallas at LB before he went down for the year in preseason. Tre is a problem if Elam is a complete bust. We seem to have zero depth behind Jackson and Benford now.

I'd replace Tre White with Taron Johnson. Tre looked to be on his way back to a good corner, but Benford is playing around the same level. I'd like to see what we look like with Ford before I say Daquan Jones is/was Top 4. Matt Milano is definitely a big loss, but at one of the easiest positions on a defense to fill.