SoTier

While Allen has grown a lot since the end of the college football seasons, there's no guarantee that he'll continue to improve. At some point, all QBs hit "the wall" where they fail to improve significantly if at all. Allen's impressive improvement might be that he's had more room to improve than most first round QB prospects, such as Mayfield. Moreover, improvement because of mastering fundamentals comes easier than improvements in more complex skills like reading defenses or making the right decisions required because the pro game is much faster and more complex than the collegiate game. It's not unusual to see a first year starter -- think Mark Sanchez, Colin Kaepernick, or EJ Manuel -- look pretty good in that first year starting and sometimes even early into his second season -- but then simply stop improving any more. The problem with that is that what's "acceptable" or "good" for a first year starter isn't "acceptable" or "good" for a guy who's been starting for 4 or 5 seasons. All QBs "hit a wall" at some point. The poorer ones hit it sooner. The great ones take much longer to do so, but with many QBs their performances aren't all that clear-cut. They seem to be much more dependent upon their teammates or coaching or various tangibles/intangibles. Think guys like Jay Cutler, Ryan Tannehill, Blake Bortles or Jameis Winston. Analytics can't predict when a QB is going to stop improving.

De-Nial isn't just a river in Egypt.

I am not surprised that Dawkins is struggling. He wouldn't be the first good looking rookie to suffer a "sophomore slump" by not being able to improve enough to keep pace with expectations. Moreover, with OLers, success often depends upon whom they're playing beside. Last year, Dawkins looked good playing beside Pro Bowler Richie Incognito. Now, he's playing besides a rookie or JAG at best ...

How is treating every opinion as if it were equally reasonable/plausible/correct etc or pretending that every poster offering one knows what he/she is talking about any different from giving out trophies for "participation" in T-ball or kiddie soccer?

Darnold looks to be a rich man's Trent Edwards, Captain Checkdown Part Deux.

Agree. Kizer's INTs cost them at least 2 or 3 wins last season, and maybe more. That's why they wanted Taylor, and why Jackson is unequivocal about Taylor being the starter. They want to win games, and I suspect that they'll win several more than many Bills fans think they will.

I picked 701-900 yards because I think the Bills' OL sucks only slightly less at run blocking than it sucks at pass protection.

Maybe Beane should ask AJ McCarron if "the status of the OL" will influence who will start at QB for the Bills.

There's a slight difference between a team that backed into the playoffs with 9 wins and lots of luck after missing them for 17 years, and a team that dominated its division and conference for most of a decade.

So, you think that just because the Bills got lucky and won 9 games last last year, cutting offensive talent and replacing them with JAGs and backups or players with well-known injury problems is a formula for success and should be repeated? Do you believe in the Tooth Fairy and Easter Bunny, too? In 2017, the Bills let Pro Bowl DB Stephon Gilmore and WRs Robert Woods and Marquise Goodwin walk in FA. They traded away Sammy Watkins in training camp, and then sent Ronald Darby to Philly for Jordan Matthews. They traded away former Pro Bowler Marcell Dareus during the season. So far in 2018, Eric Wood and Richie Incognito retired and Cordy Glenn was traded. DBs Leonard Johnson, EJ Gaines, and Shareece Wright as well as backup OT Seantrel Henderson left in free agency. Who have they replaced these players with?

I believe the stadium had a capacity of 80k back in the glory years. I also think it was just a couple of games over a span of time from about 1989 to about 1998.

IMO, the emperor's strutting around buck naked, and all the Bills believers refuse to admit to what they see. The Bills have been shedding expensive players via FA and trade and replacing them with cheaper, not as good players and rookies, especially on the offense, since McDermott was hired. Contrary to the storyline from the Bills true believers, that's pretty much SOP for the Bills for the last twenty years. Lie to yourself about the Bills if you want, but I'll continue to call them as I see them, and I see Beane as just another in a line of Bills GMs more interested in increasing team revenues than in winning games.

Exactly this. How many rookie QBs have gotten fans excited in preseason and then crashed and burned when they face regular season defenses. Mayfield, Darnold, Allen, Rosen ... no matter how good they look in preseason, they are going to have a rude awakening when they get their first opportunity to play when the games actually count.

Whoopty-doo! Beane signed two of the cheapest UFA OLers available for backup money and he drafted an OG in the sixth round. That sure sounds like he "addressed" the loss of an average or better starting center and a Pro Bowl left guard in the time-honored Bills tradition of Tom Donahoe, Russ Brandon/Dick Jauron, and Buddy NIx. Reality and truth aren't allowed to interfere with the excuse-making for the Bills failure to address offensive shortcomings. ROTFLMAO. The Bills aren't going to pay what it costs to bring in decent veteran OLers ... or WRs, either. That should be obvious with Woods, Goodwin, Watkins, and Glenn all playing for other teams while the Bills have brought in mostly a group of busts, never-weres, and never-will-bes to replace them. Eric Woods. Richie Incognito.

Teller is probably not ready to play. Most kids that go on Day Three who go on to make decent OLers need to seriously improve their blocking techniques, their footwork, and their conditioning -- and that takes time. You're not likely to get many starting OLers as rookies outside the first three rounds.

This is so reminiscent of 2009 when the Bills under Russ Brandon and Dick Jauron traded away All Pro LT Jason Peters, Langston Walker retired, and all the true believers pretended all the OL needed to do was "gel". At least in 2009, the Bills had rookies Eric Wood (first rounder) and Andy Levitre (second rounder) to give them some hope.

Vlad Ducasse is a bust. He has never been a starter anywhere except when the guy ahead of him was hurt ... and the Bills didn't draft him. They signed him relatively cheaply because he was, at best, a backup. I also said that you occasionally found talented players hidden among the Day 3 and UDFA kids but you're not going to find them often enough to build a competent OL. Look at the teams like Dallas and Philly and NE that are noted for having excellent OLs: most of their OLers come from the first three rounds in the draft because that's pretty much were most of the best players in the NFL comes from. Just because Richard Sherman was a 6th or 7th rounder doesn't mean that a team should ignore drafting DBs on the first two days of the draft, and expect to find their next starting DB from the picks they make on Day 3.

Why would Moore or Anderson consider signing with the Bills? I don't believe either needs the $$$ so badly that he'd subject himself to playing third string behind the Bills' crappy OL ... although playing other teams' third stringers would probably be safer than playing other teams' first stringers given the quality of the Bills OL.

Darryl Talley wasn't a first round pick that the Bills traded up to get. Developmental players come cheaper than a two draft picks, one a first rounder. If you spend that kind of resource on a player, you should get more than a kid who needs more time to learn the game. It's not unlike Buddy Nix's penchant for gambling high picks on players coming off injuries -- mostly a waste of resources. Read the draft analysis on Edmunds. The knock on Edmunds was that he does not play instinctively.

The Bills traded Dareus because he was allegedly lazy and didn't use his skill. Is being lazy and having no skill somehow better just because it's somewhat cheaper?

The level of denial about the quality -- or more correctly, lack of quality -- of the Bills OL in this thread is amazing. What excuse comes next, boys and girls? Since we've already had the BS about playing "vanilla" schemes in preseason, when is the second favorite excuse for OLs -- "the OL needs time to gel" -- make its appearance? Preseason game 3 I expect. All the coaching and game planning in the world isn't going to turn a collection of busts, never-weres, and never-will-bes into a starting caliber NFL OL.

Bull manure. Coaching, work ethic, and QB play cannot replace talent, and for most of the last 20 years, the Bills have tried to get by with low draft picks, UDFA, and other teams' second teamers manning their OLs. Yes, you can find talented individuals on Day 3 of the draft and among the ranks of the UDFA, but you need some players with genuine talent, too. The Bills knew the kind of QB Bledsoe was when they traded for him. If you're going to spend resources on a QB, why would you not spend some extra resources to provide him with protection and targets? This is what I'm afraid that the Bills are doing with Allen, too: depriving him of a real opportunity to succeed by stinting on providing him the support he needs. If Wood and Incognito were still on the team, the entire OL situation would not be nearly so dire. The Bills could afford to draft some Day 3 guys like Teller and give them time to develop. If Glenn were still on the team, Dawkins' poor game wouldn't be so worrisome. Losing Wood and Incognito should have changed the Bills priorities in acquiring players this past off season, but I don't think it did; McDermott and Beane remained focused on the defense.

I'm not holding Taylor blameless, but Bills fans have been using their QBs as scapegoats for poor OL play since 2003 when they blamed Drew Bledsoe for "holding the ball too long". Sometimes they've been correct but most times it's been the failure of the Bills FO/GM/HC/whomever has been in charge of personnel to improve the talent on the OL. Whatever bricks and bats one wants to throw at Doug Whaley, he understood that you can't build a good OL without some investment in talent. I don't believe that McDermott and Beane, who are supposedly "joined at the hip", do because they seem to be going back to the bad old days of trying to create an NFL caliber OL with non-NFL talent.

Yes. One of the announcers mentioned that. I think the original plan for the Bills was to only play the 1s for the first quarter or maybe 1 series with Allen, but I think that they were so bad in the first quarter that they stayed in the entire first half. I think that the first D also played into the second quarter, maybe all of the first half, too, with some substitutions, but I'm not sure. The 1s on both sides of the ball sure stunk it up against the Browns' 1s, which is very worrisome.

The media, national or local, isn't going to determine if Josh Allen is successful or not. That's going to depend upon his performance on the field.