SoTier

Or maybe not. Time will tell. Outside of true believer Bills fans, there are lots of skeptics: Ten teams most likely to implode.

Right-o. Bull Buchanan is a troll because he isn't bowing down to worship the fantasies that you and other gullible Bills fans spin about Allen, McDermott, Beane, etc based on nothing but wishful thinking. Carry on proving your ignorance.

Why would anybody change their minds after 3 or 4 practices in shorts?

Exactly this. Contrary to what some fans hope, McCarron is what he's been: a backup QB, and Peterman isn't necessarily even that good but neither has had enough game experience to be fully evaluated, which I think why they are on the Bills. They haven't been totally proven duds but they aren't likely to challenge, much less embarrass, a rookie QB taken in the top ten. The Bills never had any intention of sitting whatever first round QB they drafted for more than a few regular season games, so they "cleared the deck" by trading Taylor, passing on all of the FA QBs with starting experience, and finally signing McCarron well after almost all the other FA QBs were gone. McCarron and Peterman are not only "not much competition" for Allen, but I think that's how the Bills intended it to be well before they drafted him. Whether that works out well for Josh Allen or the Bills in the long term remains to be seen. The GOAT of what? Failed first round QBs?

^^^ How is Tre White all that different from Antoine Winfield or Nate Clements or Stephon Gilmore? Actually, he was a replacement for Gilmore, the Pro Bowl DB the Bills let walk ... just like they let Winfield and Clements walk away. That's been the Bills personnel pattern over the last twenty years: drafting first round DBs (or RBs), using them for their rookie contracts, and then moving on. How is Josh Alllen a superior pro QB prospect to JP Losman or EJ Manuel, other than he doesn't go by his initials? All three had as their biggest pluses their big arms. All three were considered "projects" who would need work to become pro ready. All three had questions about their mechanics, including their accuracy. None of them demonstrated that they had the intellectual skills sets they needed to make them good NFL QBs such as being able to read defenses. I'll give the current Bills regime credit for being "different" from their predecessors when their actions/selections/results don't bear depressing resemblace to previous regimes.

With the Bills FO staff, they've made so many poor choices drafting first rounders over the last 20 years that most of their top picks can be questioned even by fans with minimal football knowledge ... 1999 - Antoine Winfield - 23 2000 - Erik Flowers - 26 2001 - Nate Clements - 21 2002 - Mike Williams - 4 2003 - Willis McGahee - 23 2004 - Lee Evans - 13; JP Losman - 22 2006 - Donte Whitner - 8 2007 - Marshawn Lynch - 12 2008 - Leodis McKelvin - 11 2009 - Aaron Maybin - 11; Eric Wood - 28 2010 - CJ Spiller - 9 2011 - Marcell Dareus - 3 2012 - Stephon Gilmore - 10 2013 - EJ Manuel - 16 2014 - Sammy Watkins - 4 2016 - Shaq Lawson - 19 2017 - TreDavious White - 27 No first round picks in 1998, 2005, 2015 While the Bills coaching staff and FO have swapped personnel over the years with some regularity, most of the scouting staff really didn't change all that much until Beane took over last year. Unfortunately, the 2018 draft has the same "feel" as previous drafts ... another gamble on the proverbial "high risk/high reward" prospect while leaving better prospects on the board.

What exactly does Wentz' college career have to do with Allen other than they both attended smaller college programs? That isn't even a fair comparison because NDSU has been a dominant power among the Div 1 (FSC) for several years while Wyoming has had a modestly successful team with a couple of bowl appearances but nothing special. More to the point, the careers of Wentz and Allen have absolutely no connection. The success or failure of one has absolutely no connection to the success or failure of the other.

Well said. Beane and McDermott haven't done all that much but they've apparently been given blank checks to do whatever they want because the Bills stumbled to 9 wins and benefited from a major faux pas by the Baltimore defense. Allen has the deck stacked against him coming to the Bills, a team that has no OL and no WR corps. Add to that his lack of top quality coaching and relatively modest success against pretty poor competition on the college level, and he doesn't look like the horse to bet the rent on. That's not "praying for him to fail", it's just not ignoring reality. Excellent post. Too many Bills fans refuse to accept the fact that OL play is the key to having a successful offense. Unfortunately, they're going to learn a hard lesson this coming season because the Bills OL is simply not good enough, which means that the Bills offense is going to pile up three-and-out, turn overs, very few TDs, and QB injuries.

And if he wrote that the Bills would go 8-0 in the first half and finish 13-3, you'd be slurping it up like it was your grandma's spaghetti sauce, and it sure wouldn't be "useless". The Bills don't have an NFL caliber OL or WR corps. They not only don't have a starting QB, they don't even have a QB who was significantly better than the other two in minicamp. When a veteran QB who's been around as long as McCarren can't easily out perform a green rookie and a second-year QB who demonstrated as little potential as Peterman demonstrated last season, it's time to start worrying that the emperor's new clothes may be an illusion.

Word out of mini camp is that McCarren couldn't separate himself from Peterman or Allen, which is a scary scenario ... and a blueprint for a 2 or 3 win season.

That Bodine started for Cinci doesn't mean that he'd start elsewhere, including, according to some here on TWD, the Bills. Zay Jones is a bust until he proves otherwise. Kerley and Ivory are long past their primes. No rookie QB is going to be good enough to start on most NFL teams because the learning curve is too steep, and Allen isn't considered pro ready -- his collegiate coaching simply wasn't good enough. Quite frankly, the offense on this team is reminicent the Jauron era, both in the general lack of talent and in the HC's attitude towards offense. I would like to be proven wrong but I don't expect to be. Hopefully, Daboll is better than Dennison, but I'm not holding my breath on that, either. Sad but true. I watch old videos of the Bills offense in the 1990s, and it saddens me that so many younger fans have never, ever seen the Bills regularly play well on offense. The thing is, McDaniels hasn't actually demonstrated that he HAS learned from his mistakes. He was a brilliant OC when he left for the Broncos and failed as a HC. He's still the OC for the Pats until Belichick hangs 'em up.

When I was a kid maybe, but then when I was fourteen I saw the world in simple black and white primarily because I was naive and ignorant. I'm not either now, and haven't been for a long time.

Pretty much this since it's about all that he'll have the talent on the field to do. Why? Aside from McCoy, Clay, Benjamin, and maybe Dawkins, what other offensive players would make most NFL teams except as backups? The reality is that the Bills easily have one of the worst offensive talent levels in the entire NFL, so 28-32 is probably much more realistic.

Right-o. Like Kelvin Benjamin.

This thread seems to be the football equivalent of the fascist political mantra of "my country, right or wrong". If professional football is a "business" when it comes to owners/managements replacing decent/older/injured/more expensive players with better/younger/healthier/cheaper players, why is it "treason" for players to look for better pay/better opportunities for recognition/better working conditions/more security? Isn't that what tens of millions of Americans do every year when they quit their current jobs to take new ones. Are they "traitors", too? OP, take your stupid post and shove it where the sun don't shine. It's disgusting.

A "qb meltdown" implies that the Bills will get competent QB play from at least 1 of their QBs in the preseason. Can I interest you in the purchase of a slightly used but recently rehabbed bridge over Chautauqua Lake?

The Bills are in far more need of a decent LG than a RT in case you didn't notice ...

What bull manure! It's not the fans' fault that the Bills have sucked for about 35 of their 58 years of existence. That's on the owners and their minions in the FO since 1960. They're the ones that hired all the crappy and mediocre coaches and players.

Usually DTs don't come into their own until their third or four year at the position, so it seems foolish to trade him at this point in his career, but Beane and McDermott haven't impressed me with their trading prowess despite the accolades from so many Bills fans.

Not on offense they don't. The only veterans on offense that would likely be starters on most other NFL teams are McCoy, Clay, and Benjamin. Dawkins might be a fourth if he can continue to improve, but he's likely to suffer from not having Incognito beside him. I'll believe that Daboll is even a competent OC when he proves that he is. Dennison was supposed to be a decent OC but proved to be a dud, so a second failure will be an indictment of McDermott's own competence.

Pollyannish? Yepper. To paraphrase Bill Parcels, "you are what your record says you are".

The quality of individual players in any draft is not determined by either the other players in that draft or by the hype spread by media talking heads. In the 1983 draft, the greatest QB class ever by result not by ratings of talking heads, produced 3 HOFs plus a decent NFL starter. The KC Chiefs still managed to pick an absolute bust in Todd Blackledge, the second QB taken. In the second best QB class ever, 2004, produced first round QBs Eli Manning, Phillip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger ... and JP Losman. Losman was not a first round prospect, and being drafting in the first round with three other QBs who are likely HOF candidates didn't make him any better or worse than he was. FYI, the last time I looked, finding good DBs is a lot easier than finding good QBs. If Mahomes turns out to be a stud and Allen does not, the Bills will have screwed themselves once more ... just as they did in 2009 when they gave away All Pro LT Jason Peters or in 2010 when they gave away All Pro RB Marshawn Lynch. If you don't like my opinions, don't read them or put me on ignore but don't dare tell me -- or any other poster -- to "shut up". FTR, the Bills do not have "one of the best secondaries in the league" but feel free to make up BS to justify your uncritical fandom for a team that's produced only 20 winning seasons in 58 years.

That was my point. How NFL teams have draftees rated is what's important in determining who and when kids get drafted -- and those ratings/evaluations are carefully guarded "trade secrets" as it were. What the media people put out is for "entertainment'. It may sell subscriptions or be click bait or garner ratings, but these guys aren't going to lose their jobs if they say "pick X at #1" and X bombs. By next the next draft, nobody will remember. If the NFL FO's pick too many busts, they're out on the street, so the story about how X loves his mom or Y overcame this or that set back isn't going to factor in to the NFL considerations.

I think that they drafted a QB to placate the fans ... which is exactly what the Bills did in 2013 and 2004, too. Drafting Allen -- and using up so much draft capital to do it -- provides them with the perfect cover if their gutting of the rest of the offense blows up in their faces.

I was actually far more optimistic last season than I'd been in a while. I thought they'd win at least 7 games, and if the D stepped up, 8 or 9. I didn't think they were good enough to win 10 games, which is what I believed it would take to make the playoffs but I didn't count on Miami losing Tannehill for the season or Denver going down the toilet or Baltimore giving a remarkable imitation of the Bills under Rex Ryan in the last game of the season. The offense last season was barely functional, and it wasn't all Tyrod Taylor's fault. McDermott's hiring of Dennison forced Taylor into a system that simply didn't fit him, and Castillo's shift to a new blocking scheme handicapped the OL for most of the season. McDermott and Beane also stripped Taylor of all his viable targets except for Charles Clay. Even the greatest QBs can't shine when they're running for their lives and have no reliable receivers to bail them out. Aside from signing Bodine, there's been nothing added to the Bills offense in 2018. Maybe Zay Jones will prove he's not a bust. Maybe AJ McCarron will prove he's not a career backup. Maybe Vlad Ducasse will have an epiphany in his ninth or ten year in the league and play like a competent RG, something he's never been able to do (that's despite the glowing ratings from the statboys). I didn't mention Josh Allen because I think the best thing that could happen to him is that he doesn't play this year unless it's parts of games late in the season. He doesn't need to get mangled, mauled, and then raked over the coals for poor performances playing with the hot mess that's the Bills offense. Dream on.