Avisan

Shakir's production under Brady extrapolates out to 906 yards over 17 games, which would have been 34th highest among all pass catchers last season. That wasn't particularly difficult, unless you think we'll be unable or unwilling to use Shakir in the same way we did under Brady last season.

I am very aware that arguments made in bad faith typically fail to lead to productive discussions, yes.

Opinions unbacked by any facts are of comparably lower value than opinions backed by a non-zero quantity of facts. Is anybody here making an argument that the Bills' WR room is going to be good because they expect Claypool to be our starting lineup?

Surely you can do better than this, right? ...Right?

Oof, this is a rough take, and a rough comparison. Five out of our expected top 6 have had seasons as productive NFL players with significant roles. One of those five is a reclamation project, unrelated to his physical talent. The remaining player is a rookie that has NFL size and talent. Nathan Peterman has exactly zero games against NFL starters that show he can even be a stopgap. Not all hypotheticals are equally likely.

You can think the WR room sucks all you want-- once you start insisting that it is a fact that the WR room sucks, or that it's preposterous to think they might be decent, is where things get hairy.

Man, if he turns out great we are in REALLY good shape moving forward.

This is not a poll. This is some dude named Jarret Bailey's rankings.

Sure! It's unlikely given the Bills have a Top 3 QB and a Top 5 overall organization, so may is doing a lot of heavy lifting, but it's possible. I think it's extremely plausible he could end up Top 12, a la Stroud. Not likely, but plausible. In terms of likeliness, I think the Bills' WR talent comes in around #16 (one of Coleman or Claypool is productive), #28 (neither is productive), #12 (both are productive). I think middle of the pack would be a net improvement over back-half Diggs and Davis last season.

I mean this is exactly why the conversation isn't happening, it's all just vibes at this point until the season starts, and why I described it as a glorified poo-flinging contest to go down this road. If Claypool and Coleman both struggle it's a rough group. If they both perform well it's a good group. If one of them performs well it's a solid group. The Bills' room is currently tough to quantify and has a ton of uncertainty, which isn't inherently bad, but understandably yields their current ranking of bottom quarter.

Hollins was targeted 94 times in a meh 2022 Raiders offense and was good for 7.34 yards per target, he can do it if called upon. We're in a good spot if he ends up as our #5 or #6.

I mentioned this earlier in the thread-- it just isn't a very productive line of conversation? I think our passing offense will rank top 10, production-wise, and that's more or less all I care about. I think we have 4 players that are proven NFL-caliber players, plus Coleman and Claypool, and if either of them pan out we have a top 16 group and if they both pan out we have a top 12 group. If neither pan out we have a top 28 group. The degree of uncertainty with Coleman and Claypool limits the fruitfulness of the conversation. I think the Bills can have solid production with the current group, though.

Genuine question: why? Was our passing offense letting us down during the back-7 stretch of last season? Or were there perhaps games you feel we were not "the better team" but got lucky and won anyway?

Sure thing! Top 6 pace overall in net passing yards if you exclude Dallas, top 14 if you want to count a 31-10 running game beatdown of a playoff team as a mark against our offense. We are currently here.

We own their 2025 second round pick.

How are we defining "not good enough," though? I keep asking and so far the answers I've gotten are "Josh Allen threw INTs", "Destroying the Cowboys via the run game means the passing offense was bad", and "Top 10 isn't good enough" which is at least a real answer but is very different from what most other folks seem to fear will be the case this season. I'm especially confused by people who look at our play in the 6-1 stretch against primarily pretty good teams and think that means our team will fail to make the playoffs.

I, for one, would feel much better about the Bills' offensive investments if they overpaid draft capital for a player like Toney.

Pop quiz: Who is the General Manager of the Buffalo Bills?

Guess we'll find out in a couple of months!

See here's the thing: I'm pretty consistent and specific in what I argue when I am making an argument. I have reframed a few times when for whatever reason someone hasn't accurately translated those specific frames into their perception of my argument, or has otherwise chosen to shift their argument to something else in their response. So when we're discussing production and targets and what to expect/what our team is capable of, and things start veering off into whose WR rooms a given poster decides are better or worse than ours, I don't care. I have no reason to care. Even if I did care, and provided a good faith response, it would devolve into an argument over how I could really prefer the Bills' WR room over x team's WR team, even though it's a purely subjective discussion to begin with. What I do care about is what our WR room is capable of contributing production-wise and how that stacks up against the league in aggregate, because that is ultimately how we are going to measure and rank our passing offense's quality relative to other teams. This is adjacent to, but not the same as, a poo-throwing contest over whose WR rooms can beat up whom's. TL;DR: Names and production are not actually the same thing

I thought the point of this discussion was the Bills' offensive production and overall competency? We have sufficient tools to be a top 10 passing offense and the numbers support that. You expect 10th to 15th, which is pretty reasonable if you're pessimistic about elements of the offense. I think your opinion that top 10 isn't good enough is also pretty reasonable, even if I disagree. The tenor of discourse suggests that the Bills receivers will be awful, though, which doesn't make much sense. They're likely going to out-produce the majority of the units you would rather have. I think we've all cleared that up very nicely, yes.

No, no it doesn't. I genuinely don't care what other teams have in their WR rooms. That's our defense's problem, and their track record is extremely good overall outside of facing the Chiefs in the postseason. Our offense will have 5 out of 6 receivers that have already been productive in the NFL and a round two rookie. It will have dome frustrating games against good defense without a safety blanket but will still be productive over the course of the season. @BADOLBILZ I literally cannot spell it out any simpler The Chiefs were not a particularly good passing offense last season but threw the ball a ton despite that and racked up some high volume stats, enough to land two players in the Top 32 due to target quantities. Thank you for reinforcing the point.

For those somehow still confused, if you threw to five Mack Hollinses 550 times, you are going to breach 4,000 yards of passing offense. 4,037 yards, to be exact, good for 10th overall last season. Well, thankfully our offensive production doesn't correlate highly to your personal opinion of our WR room versus that of other teams.

The point is that being the primary target on an offense gets you the targets and therefore the production to land in the Top 32. You can be a pretty average WR and if you are the primary target of an offense with an ounce of competence, you're going to make it in. If the Bills lack a primary target by offensive design, they may or may not have receivers crack the Top 32 threshold even if they have a productive offense overall. The Bills don't have terrible receivers, and the narrative that they do is frankly bizarre. They lack a top guy, but everyone expected to make the top 6 cut have the talent to play and be productive in this league. Most of them have done it before. Mack Hollins, our expected #5 or #6, had a YPT of 7.34 when targeted almost 100 times on a meh Raiders offense two seasons ago. We're going to be fine. The most reasonable expectation is for the Bills to be a top 10 offense again.

You aren't arriving at the same answer, though. You're drawing comparable conclusions from different answers. That you attribute significance to the similarity of your conclusions doesn't change that they are definitionally coincidental. This is pretty straight-forward stuff and a prime example of why I hold the approach I do when it comes to discussions with other laypeople, and why I do my best to shut up and listen when interacting with an actual subject matter expert.