Richard Noggin

Criticizing others' intellects whilst committing three errors with what I suspect is a native language. THIS is what the internet is truly for 🤌

It IS possible for Kincaid to be featured in the Bills offense much like Beas was before him withOUT that having a negative impact on Davis. I wonder how many of us would even accept Cole Beasley's 1st 3-year Bills production for Kincaid this season.

But operating a jet-ski IS inherently dangerous no matter how any single person treats it. It's a powerful motorcraft that one rides upon at high speeds ON WATER which adds an unmistakably element of danger obviously lol

I mean, your anecdotal evidence of riding a jet ski on a gigantic and lightly populated body of water during the several months a year when that's fun is...not super pertinent. I've ridden jet skis in places where there is some significant congestion (Merritt Island causeway on "Space Coast" of Florida, handful of lakes in north and central Texas, and a couple lesser Finger Lakes)...and the risk of something going quickly wrong for someone is pretty apparent. It is only POSSIBLY safer on a jet-ski than in a car due to the lopsided scale of how often we're in cars societally. So each of us is more likely to be injured in a car because of the exponentially greater EXPOSURE to those risks. It's NOT safer on a level playing field of factors AT ALL. Automobiles, at least, protect our bodies. Jet-skis do not, of course. Hell, my best friend's stepdad (when we were in high school) was jet skiing on the Niagara River when his own biological son crashed into him from the side (kinda like what Hines experienced). His leg got fully severed around the knee and he bled out and died, just like that. Riding ON a powerful motorized vehicle is inherently dangerous. Riding IN a motorized vehicle is also very dangerous, but at least your ACTUAL BODY doesn't get crashed directly into the way it does on a bike, motorcycle, jet ski, etc. The vehicle can bear enough of the brunt to keep you mostly safe in most scenarios.

More important than what Basham does in New Jersey and what Teller has done in Cleveland is what Jonathan does here in Buffalo. And probably Lawson, too. That's the comparison(s) the team was actively making that led to the trade. Can't wait for the Bills to fully move on from both DE/DT tweeners they over-drafted in consecutive years purely due to perceived value and definitely not projected fit. Epenesa should have maybe gone to a 3-4 team who liked his size/length/weight and strength as a 5-tech, and Basham should have been drafted lower overall and maybe valued for his stoutness to reduce down to 3-tech in subpackages. I get the picks from a purely draft value standpoint, in a vacuum, but this ain't a vacuum. They weren't good fits for the Buffalo Bills. It could have worked, I guess. But it didn't. That being said, Epenesa will probably flash a few times in his final season with the team. His production last season was solid for a depth rotational edge.

Leonard Floyd is a legitimate edge rusher, and Ed Oliver is probably an above average 3T. Rousseau is at least average at LDE with tons of upside. Daquan Jones, as you recognized, is understood to be an awesome-or-at-least-solid 1T. Add in the depth of Poona Ford at 1T and both Tim Settle and Jordan Philips at 3T, along with Epenesa and Jonathan and Lawson at the edge...and nowhere here have we even mentioned the week 5-London return of Von Miller... That doesn't sound AT ALL like a "bad" defensive line.

Harsh, but true.

Aside from most of 2020 (when our OL ranked fairly highly and Josh was Mister Zen, this is what defenses have decided NOT to do against Josh Allen). Turns out Allen will effing kill you like a barbarous surgeon savant if you let him operate free from duress. So teams have since mixed in all kinds of attacks, to all kinds of mixed results (mostly still in Buffalo's favor, but pressure and variety IS essential to speeding up Josh Allen's processing and getting him to turn the ball over). I'd like to see the Bills defense ALSO attempt to actively disrupt an elite QB's mental processing with variety and aggression. Seems to be more effective than backing off and surrendering plays.

Bringing pressure early and often could play right into the Jets' hands, as I expect a ton of quick hitting run/pass mix that gets the ball out fast and attacks the field horizontally more than vertically. Attacking the Bills is about taking what the off-coverage gives you (outs, slants, "now" routes and screens galore) while establishing the run and run-action game. Best way to defend that? Good question.

Players aren't "supposed" to interfere with fellow players' contract issues. It's just decent labor code not to eff with your "buddy's" pursuit of maximum value. Very uncommon, and for good reason.

Maybe "good running" contributes to "bad tackling" on plays like this?

I was multi-tasking during the game, unfortunately, so missed evidence of Cook pass blocking effectively. That's likely his last remaining weakness, at least from our limited vantage point. He never had a run like that. Wade had a couple one-cut sprints that flashed. The Evans run today really was Beastmode-ish, broken-field cutting and breaking tackles and running over dudes on his way to the endzone.

Kinda par for the course innit

If a WR's catch % is consistently below average, and also below other receivers that the SAME QB is throwing to, how can that be "mostly on the QB"? You aren't even considering Occam's Razor here. The simple, bigger picture objective truth is that throwing to Davis is Allen's lowest percentage option. (High reward, but too much risk for a high volume of targets.) Davis' avg depth of target, and resulting eye-popping yards per reception, means we really should have more tolerance for lower efficiency numbers, for sure. Gabe Davis HAS undoubtedly flashed some splash deep and red zone plays against man coverage (we can all immediately recall a handful of plays concentrated mostly in a few games). I just can't ignore his bizarrely flawed catching fundamentals at times (that reaching/clapping thing he does when coming back to the ball, especially) and the times when he's just WAY out of sync with his QB when reading and reacting to coverages on option routes (sometimes easier to pick up on in person at the stadium). You see a lack of separation on routes that aren't flags, posts, or flies. He kind of sucks, statistically, doing much else. Drops a LOT of passes. Interrupts an offensive "schedule" too often to be a high volume, true #2 option over the course of a season.

Gave Davis still fighting the football. He is not a natural, consistent catcher of the ball. Will still have big moments because he's a specimen, but his fundamentals are shite.

Doesn't feel like an accurate representation of the sentiment among those who were against re-signing Edmunds. I've found that most fans who wanted the team to move on from Edmunds felt like his lack of impact plays and his ineffectiveness as a blitzer made him unworthy of the contract he'd get on the open market. He's obviously assignment-sound and rangy enough to cover a lot of ground in coverage, but he's otherwise pretty unspectacular. Someone was going to overpay him, and I'm glad it wasn't the Bills.

We should all HOPE that defenses actively "scheme ways to try and take him out of the gameplan." Get Allen cookin with his WRs and maybe move some safeties and/or LBs out of their ideal run fits.

ESPN, of all outlets, threw up a tantalizing infographic (highlighting a VERY SMALL sample size). Unfortunately, I'm suddenly unable to recall exact parameters, but it went something like this: Last/only three teams to add in one offseason two offensive skill players with four or more pro bowl appearances (possibly over a controlled/recent span). Team Acquisitions Outcome 2023 Jets Rodgers, Cook tbd 2020 Bucs Brady, Brown Won SB ??? ??? (very frustrating) Won SB Probably kind of easy to identify the 3rd team that did it (minus my brain fart)...maybe the Rams with Stafford and Beckham?

My view is that for some athletes who excel at head-to-head collision sports, they are tapping into a hormonally life-or-death level of competitiveness. Losing is like chemically unacceptable. Or psychologically, if you prefer, their egos reject losing in a desperate/violent way. I've played with guys who were obviously on another level, and they were often edgy pricks if things weren't unattainably perfect on the pitch.

Following you around here because this is interesting discourse. Could the reluctance to just insert Elam into the defense and adapt schemes to his strengths have something to do with that making his presence on the field a "tell" for the offense? I mean, it sure seemed like the defense under Frazier lapsed often into VERY predictable schemes anyways, and McD's play-calling takeover hopefully hints at a shift towards a more multiple, matchup-focused approach... We all mostly agree that in the playoffs, against high-end AFC offenses, Frazier's defenses seemed to lack the better answers necessary to frustrate those top attacks after putting an entire season on tape. If Kaiir Elam automatically = press man coverage, then that's one problem the QB and WR don't need to solve post-snap. Or in the case of Frazier's schemes, if the Bills D almost always = off-coverage/cushion and light boxes, then that's even more problems the QB and WRs have easy answers to.

Doesn't this particular discussion of "fit" echo what happened with AJ Epenesa in a way? While he fell deep into the 2nd round and his perceived value was sticking out, his best or at least most common NFL projections were as a 2-gapping 3-4 DE; a Pittsburgh Steeler type of guy. Long and strong and edge-setting. So the Bills draft this stout Iowa bull and immediately ask him to become a fundamentally different athlete. Instead of leaning into his well-documented strengths, they seemingly decided that his "very poor" speed RAS and "okay" agility RAS could be made less mediocre by asking him to lose another 10-20 pounds (he had already shed at least 5-10 lbs for the combine), thus for sure eroding his one "great" RAS, which was his size. Longview draft "strategy" (to reference our other ongoing discussion) supports picking AJ Epenesa when he falls to you in the back half of the 2nd round. But then tactically the coaches need to have an actionable plan to utilize said player's strengths, or else that perceived draft value is rendered moot, and Beane could have maybe identified a better fit.

Elam doesn't seem to fit as a McD CB draft prospect they should have spent extra assets on, given how zone-heavy (even if it's cover-3 and cover-2 which often function like man post-snap depending on the play calls) they have been. Or, if Elam the prospect was such a good prospect that they felt justified in moving up in the 1st round, why aren't they doing more to adapt to his unique skills and utilize his specific strengths? Why wasn't that part of a premeditated shift towards more press and man coverage? Seems like Benford and Jackson (6th and 7th round picks, respectively) provide plenty of promise in the defensive philosophy the Bills have relied upon since McD's arrival. Is Frazier's departure part of this? Was he hesitant to scheme to Elam's strengths? Or was Elam a bit of a reach to ensure they got the last 1st-round worthy CB prospect in a year when that was a perceived glaring need?

So I think what you're sharing in the provided example is potentially considered "tactical" in that it's specifically influenced by contemporaneous circumstances for a given draft and a given perceived roster need, and does not adhere to a longer term, macro view of maximizing draft value year after year to consistently add cost-controlled, high-end talent. It's heavily swayed by current perception of circumstances, and therefore subject to more flexible and relative and potentially undisciplined or short-sighted use of assets. The repeated trade-ups have cost the roster how many day-three picks in Beane's tenure? No one will argue whatever Allen's pick cost. But what about Edmunds, Ford, Knox, Elam, Dawkins (?) et al? (Didn't we trade up for Dion Dawkins? Memory is foggy on that one.) Draft strategy here seems to be to zero-in on specific players each year and spend more to acquire them, if necessary, draft value be damned, which almost no NFL GMs would actually admit to. Maybe it's just that what seems short-sighted and reactive I call "tactical," and what seems more patient and prudent and value-conscious I call "strategy." Semantics is a fraught endeavor in sports convos.

Man, I was still only on the BBMB back in 2005 when "retatta" was a message board thing here. So I am completely missing the actual reference beyond knowing there was some obviously humorous TBD thread 18 years ago when I was exclusively frequenting the "official" Bills message board when that existed. Anyone care to summarize for us BBMB refugees (or for the many youngins)?