Mikey152

I think James Cook is what makes this a hard decision. On one hand, I’d say that his relatively light load in college and the NFL makes him a decent investment as far as availability goes. conversely, that same low usage also speaks to whether or not he offers enough value above replacement to deserve the contract he is looking for. i think it is a rare case among running backs where fans/the bills don’t want to pay him not because there is concern he will wear down, but more so because his production is likely replaceable for less money. to put it plainly, I think most people on this board feel like ray davis plus a 30 mil receiver like DK is better than Palmer + Cook. im not saying that was an option, but as far as allocating resources are concerned, There seems to be a disconnect between James Cooks production and his impact (relative to someone else getting his snaps)

Hence why he never moved outside even though tOSU outside CBs were a relative weak spot. I will say this, though...a lot of the OSU dbs seemed to have the same issues the last couple of seasons. A bit grabby, good in a straight line but struggle with COD, etc. I wonder how much of it is coaching, because Jordan surprised me with his testing...Id like to see his agility scores

Maybe. But he never really left the CB room at tOSU, he would just rotate in at safety for certain looks or to fill in for injury. He was their nickel CB. Even as a deep safety, he was mostly playing coverage. What I think had him slide was our outside CBs these past two seasons were kind of the weak spot and yet they never really moved him outside. In theory he is big and athletic enough to play out there, so it begs the question as to why they kept him at nickel.

The Buckeyes really took off defensively when they moved him to free safety part time. Ransom was more of an in the box defender, which forced downs to play deep middle. When Ransom went down, they played Hancock deep middle and moved Downs closer to the LOS where he could make more plays. He acquitted himself nicely. They kept doing it after Ransom came back and he played a lot of safety snaps in the playoffs. That said...he is more of a pass defender, IMO. More Micah, less Poyer or even Johnson.

I “disappear” because I have a life that revolves around more than arguing with you over something so inconsequential. In fact, as I type this I wonder why I am even here arguing with a faceless internet troll. As for the numbers, that is the whole point. You didn’t prove anything. If you actually read the whole post (which said lie, or at best an over exaggeration) you would see that the offense had two stretches of three games where the passing offense was super productive. The first three games of the season and Sf/La/Det. The rest were kind of meh. as for your “proof” you didn’t even using passing numbers…you used offensive production. There are so many factors that go into points per game, and you literally tried to control for one variable as proof, then you made up some fake percentages with no actual evidence to back it up as to how much of it could be attributed to cooper. It’s insane. And all to prove a point. But that is the ultimate irony, isn’t it? In one post, you use how many points our offense scored to justify cooper was impactful, then in another you turn around and say our WR are trash despite our offense scoring the most points in the league. What I am realizing more and more is this is an impossible discussion because there is no logic or rules…all emotion. You feel like we have a wr problem and you will do what you have to to prove it. I, on the other hand, am just trying to understand and eventually support why Brandon Beane makes the choices he does. Big difference. cooper was a good trade. A third round pick for a guy of his caliber and a cheap contract was a good move for the Bills, regardless of how it played out. That said, he was a bust. Whether it was because he was hurt, didn’t have it anymore, or this offense just wasn’t a good fit it’s hard to say. just so we are clear, I am not running from this debate. I’m just over it. It is the same thing over and over again. It’s life sucking. So congrats. You win the war of attrition.

This is why it is impossible to have a discussion with you. You make subjective statements and act like they are objective constantly. All I really ask is that you are consistent. so, in the name of consistency, by what measure are the Bills a bottom 5 WR room? Pedigree? Production? Personal opinion? Player mix? Because it feels like you change the bar to suit whatever point you are trying to make and ignore evidence to the contrary that you will turn around and use in subsequent discussions if it suits you. if it is pedigree…the bills top 5 receivers were all drafted on day 2, except for Shakir (who is arguably their best wr and certainly their highest paid). if it is stats…I think it is fair to say that their individual performances last year weren’t very impressive statistically. No 1000 yard seasons and only a handful of 100 yard games. The only problem with this criticism is we brought in a top WR (cooper) and he struggled to produce too. So did Diggs after Brady took over. What I don’t understand is why Cooper and Diggs get a pass for the production dip, but the rest of our receivers have bad numbers because they are bad. I mean, Cooper was 4th on the team in snaps while he was here most weeks. what I am trying to say is, of course everyone wants better receivers. We want better players at every position. But what we continue to disagree about is what actually constitutes a better receiver and how much of an impact they would actually have on this offense. Because the best receivers are expensive AND they want the ball. So it stands to reason that better production from your number 1 might hurt you in other, unintended ways. I’ll close with an analogy…just because your car would be faster if you installed a supercharger on it doesn’t mean everyone should run out and install one. We get it, our car could be faster. But after you factor in things like cost, reliability, gas mileage, etc. it isn’t a fit for everyone.

That's supposedly the narrative...everyone was afraid of Amari Cooper. So afraid, in fact, that the covered him even when he was on the bench getting less than 50% of our offensive snaps. No, we were just saving him for big third downs...as a decoy. The fact of the matter is, he got more than 50% snaps in two games last year as a Bill. We lost one (rams) and lost our consecutive 30 pt streak in the other (NE) This narrative that the fear of Amari Cooper transformed this offense from trash to top scorers has got to stop. He was a good swing. It didn't work. He's not on the team anymore.

Legit follow up... If Amari Cooper is directly responsible for a TD a game point difference, why is he still a FA? The fact of the matter is, you are quoting extremely high level team stats and controlling for only one variable. That is why your data is disingenuous...you are mixing correlation with causation and treating it as fact. When presented with underlying and alternative explanations, you are dismissive. You're using data, sure...but only data that proves your point. You also fail to address data that doesn't. That is called confirmation bias and is disingenuous.

I understand the WR train premise. I’d even go as far as to say I don’t think it is entirely wrong. Where I do think a lot of you make a bit of a mistake is you go in with a premise (our offense needs better WR, specifically outside) and you go looking for evidence that supports it instead of looking at ALL of the evidence without bias and coming to more objective conclusions. Im going to make my case with 4 WR: Diggs, Davis, Cooper and MVS. Let’s start with Diggs. Statistically, he was a top WR in the NFL with the Bills for most of his tenure here, and I bet few would argue the eye test matched. The prevailing story for his drop off in 2023 was some combination of he had lost a step and locker room issues, but the truth is he started 2023 on fire. Then the Bills hit a rough patch, fired Dorsey, and his game tanked. His targets went down, his depth of target went down, his focus went down. So did his skills erode, was he on the naughty list, or did the offense maybe just change? Then you have Davis. Total boom of bust as an outside WR. Made a lot of big plays, but his targets also resulted in a disproportionately large amount of the Bills negative plays under Dorsey. Enter Brady and his snaps go up while his targets go down (except in that one weird game where they fed him the ball on short stuff). He’s blocking more and going deep less. Seems frustrated. Next up, MVS. Definitely a flawed receiver, but pretty much a prototype deep receiver. Big and fast and can track a football. The bills made a concerted effort the first few weeks of 2024 to get him some snaps and take some deep shots, but they could never connect and often stalled drives. Ultimately they wind up cutting him to acquire cooper. He goes to NO and resumes being an effective deep threat there (way over 20 ypc). Which leads us to Cooper. No matter what your take on how much he contributed to the Bills in 2024, it’s hard to argue that he is the most accomplished WR the Bills have had outside of Diggs in a decade. He might not be a top 10 WR anymore, but he is definitely good enough to be a #1. This is what we all thought we needed post Diggs. But the Bills deploy his on less than 50% of snaps (he was 4th we most weeks) and he has games with ZERO targets. Only one game with double digit targets and he had a terrible conversion rate in it (6/14). Whether he helped or not is debatable, but what isn’t is he did not produce like a #1 wr…or even a #2. So, you can read all of that and say “Mike, those guys are all scrubs or old or whatever” and what we really need is a star in his prime or a top draft pick or just a really fast guy. It was the players that were the problem. I think you want to believe that because the alternative is harder to accept: The Bills like their offense this way. Sure, they don’t mind having a guy who can get deep outside, but they also see it as inefficient and high risk, so they aren’t going to invest a lot there. I think they like running the ball and throwing short and over the middle. It derisks the offense AND they still scored a ton of points. All that really suffered last year were stats. WR stats. Outside WR stats. Basically, the Bills have what they want…game manager Josh Allen. I don’t think they WANT to build an offense around assets that increase risk.

It's funny, because he is kind of a combination of Shakir and Samuel...Fast (but stiff) like Samuel and good ball skills in traffic like Shakir. Because of that, I think he is probably a better flanker than either of those 2 despite the size.

Moore is interesting... I don't have high hopes or anything, especially after last season and how all those castoffs panned out. That said, if you throw on some ole miss tape, it is hard to understand how he busted so hard (I mean, he broke AJ Browns school records and had Antonio Brown comps coming out). I think the hope is he played for the Jets and Browns...talk about dumpster fires. If it's because he is a crappy person, oh well I guess. The problem with Moore is he feels redundant to Shakir (and Samuel to a lesser extent).

I just DID look at the numbers. I am gonna drop the last game of the year because it was a clunker. Cooper played in 8 games for the Bills and didn't play in 8 others (first 6 and missed 2 due to injury). In the games without Cooper, the Bills went 6-2 and scored 30+ points 5 times. In the games with Cooper, the Bills went 7-1 and scored 30+ points 7 times. What is interesting to me about that is...in those 8 games with Cooper, he only played 50% or more of the snaps in two games, and only led the team in targets in one game. And guess what...we lost the game where he led the team in targets, and we scored less than 30 in the other one where he had more than 50% snaps. So I could easily argue that while the team got better after acquiring Cooper, any time he was a focal point they were not as good. Contrast that with Shakir. They won every game he led the team in targets. Contrast it with MVS (who we cut for Cooper, essentially) in NO. Way more productive. I also watched every Bills game last year. You can try and sell me this line of bull that Cooper was the reason they got "better" on offense, but it is BS. You like to use Beane moves as confirmation bias...If Cooper was really worth 7 points a game last year, do you think he would still be a FA?

your PS is a lie...or at the very least overexaggerating because it fits your narrative. Josh had two excellent three game stretches, from an efficiency standpoint. One was the first three games, and the other was SF/LA/DET. They're super comparable in everything but quality of comp and attempts. Cooper had a nice game against SF. Against SF and Detroit he didn't even get 50% of snaps and had 3 targets total for 12 yards. I think the problem is more with your assumptions...That the reason they were more conservative was because of the WR talent. Ordinarily, more conservative should correlate with reduced scoring. But if ANY coach can become more risk adverse AND score more points, who wouldn't take that? Less passing and more scoring is a good thing. I know there is concern about rising to the occasion in a shootout, but I think the ability is there. Looks at the Rams and Lions games.

That feels like a bit of revisionist history, tbh. Through the first three games of the season they looked like world beaters without Amari Cooper. Then the Ravens and Texans happened, but what nobody talks about in those two games are A) Shakir got hurt and B) the offensive line played like trash and not because nobody was getting open, but because they were straight missing assignments and allowing free rushers. so yeah, they let go of MVS and traded for Cooper and they played better on offense…pretty much looked like the first three weeks. But Cooper didn’t really do much, missed some games and was getting out snapped by Mack Hollins. i think it is hilarious that the first argument brought up when saying we need a receiver are the numbers our receivers put up. But those same people are all too quick to say that Coopers contributions were about more than numbers…he was so good he pulled coverage from the bench. cooper fits your narrative, I get it. But they scored 30 in multiple games he didn’t play in. they didn’t score 30 in any games Shakir didn’t play the whole game. And I’d have to check because I am going off memory, but they scored 30+ in almost every one he finished.

Ok, two things... First, better receivers are only one part of the equation...they don't just materialize. You need to sign, trade for or draft them. Which means you aren't signing, trading or drafting other positions. So signing better receivers only means you are signing better receivers...it doesn't automatically make your offense or your team better. I mean, we already showed how there isn't a direct correlation between receiver talent and offensive production and team record, right? That doesn't even touch the fact that this WR room is "bad" at the top...not the bottom. The odds that a 4th Rd wr would have enough of an impact to change the way a defense plays against us or help us break team records is laughably naive. Second, maybe you aren't watching the same games I am. Because the reason our offense plays the way it does isn't just on the receivers...MVS is clearly a deep threat and we cut him, for example. We clearly made a move to limit turnovers and possess the ball. I mean, we played a 6th offensive lineman more than ay team in the league....who is playing two deep against that? We also seem to think that because he has a strong arm JA is an awesome deep ball QB...but he isn't. It might be his biggest weakness. So they chose to be efficient, get big plays with YAC, and protect the ball and their QB and Josh won MVP and they scored the most point they EVER HAVE. I get it...you think they CAN BE EVEN BETTER if only they had a guy that can blow the top off the defense...newsflash: the bills don't agree and haven't since Dorsey left. They certainly don't think it is more important than improving their defense and retaining key contributors. So far, the proof they are right is an all-time high in offensive production and an MVP for their QB. The proof that you are right is fantasy stats.