Avisan

I think the room is pretty equivalent to the back half of last season (whatever the heck was up with Diggs really impacted his quality of play), and as discussed further upthread the Brady games were actually pretty productive, passing-wise. The Cowboys game skews it because we just ran all over them because they couldn't stop it. I don't think the Bills will improve overall passing production either, but I would be less surprised by a moderate increase than a dramatic plunge. Increase likely means Coleman or Claypool really step up, which would be a very pleasant surprise. A plunge to 25th means things absolutely fell apart, though. I don't think the evidence supports Brady being a train wreck, and the WR group lacks a superstar but should have a starting lineup of NFL-caliber players.

Oh, man. That's tougher. Anything higher than 5th or lower than 20th would genuinely shock me. I think it would take a significant injury to Allen for me to not consider 25th to be a someone's-head-should-roll scenario. Last year 25th was 3,163 net yards (Steelers). 3rd was 4,397 (Cowboys). I think it's far more likely that the Bills add 15 passing yards per game than that they drop almost 60 yards per game. I guess we'll find out the actual trend soon enough. Ready for football season to get here.

I think that's a reasonable prediction. I'm obviously more optimistic, but if you expect an offensive drop-off that's an extremely justifiable landing spot.

@BADOLBILZSome bizarre fantasies going on here. Regardless: If the Bills do not make any significant WR pickups, where do you expect them to rank as a passing offense? It's a very simple question, why are you avoiding providing a simple answer?

Yawn. 1.) Regular season =/= postseason, and the stats get separated out for a reason. You are welcome to your own personal approach to this, but nobody else is required to humor it when discussing/projecting regular season rankings. 2.) Passing yardage and net passing yardage are two different stats. Both are tracked as team stats. For example, nfl.com tracks raw passing as a team stats. It is also trivial to do this exercise for net passing yards. Minus the Dallas game, 255.5 yards/game, good for 6th overall. With Dallas game, 231.1 yards/game, good for 14th overall. Using your preferred team stat literally helps my argument. Which you would already know if you had bothered to do your homework. 3.) If the Bills have worse passing stats because they are beating teams by running the ball effectively, then... good? Don't we want that? It's not as though the Bills ran because they couldn't pass, excluding the Dallas game they passed very well. You are oddly talking out of both sides of your mouth with the Dallas game, using its aberrant stats to attack the quality of the passing game while pretending to praise it as a good thing. If the Bills don't have more Dallas games, the numbers predict a Top 10 offense based on Brady's regular season performance. If the Bills have two Dallas games next season and fall outside of the Top 10,nobody cares, because that's awesome news for us, and anybody who uses those games to attack our offensive capabilities is operating in bad faith. So again, are you sticking to a prediction of 23rd overall net passing offense for the 2024 season?

You are aware that Brady was OC for only 7 games, yes? In those 7 games, Allen averaged 243.7 passing yards per game, slightly below his season average of 253.3. One of those games was the Cowboys game, where we demolished them by running it down their throat (49 rushes) with a 5.4 YPC average. His passing yardage average the other 6 games was 268.7 yards per game. Extended to a 17 game season, that would be 4,567 yards, which would have been the 7th-most yardage this past season, 10 yards behind #6 and 11 yards behind #7. Even leaving in the Cowboys' game puts them at 17th over a 17 game season. If the Bills fall outside of the Top 10 because they have more games like the Cowboys game, I think I'm okay with that. If you spent half as much time double-checking your facts as you did bloviating, we could all save a bunch of time and energy here. Should we keep you at a guess of 23rd overall or would you like to amend your prediction?

You think Allen will be at 5.4 yards per attempt next season? If we take his career average of 7.2 YPA and apply it to 4600 yards (Top 5 based on 2023), that would require 37-38 attempts per game. To hit 7 based on 2023 would require beating the Chiefs' 4383 yards-- his average attempts per game the last 3 seasons is 35.84, which over 17 games at 7.2 yards per attempt is a season total of 4386 yards. Of note here is that 7.2 yards per attempt is lower than 2022 (7.6) and 2023 (7.4) so a drop-off due to losing Diggs is already baked in.

@BADOLBILZ After a quick attempted peek, I'm opting not to dig through months of posts to find your hot take(s) regarding where exactly you expect our passing offense to rank. Since you've said it so many times, taking the 5 seconds to type out 6 characters and hit reply should be pretty trivial.

Top 10, and I think closer to 5 than 10. Is nearly seven years new, now?

Interestingly, his yards per target while being "force-fed" was 7.34. Not terrible, and better than Stevie Johnson's per-target yardage with us. His career average is 7.65. Not great, not bad. If Mack Hollins is our 5th or 6th receiving option, I kinda think we might be in good shape.

Where do you, personally, expect the Bills to rank in terms of offensive passing production at the end of the 2024 season?

Do you think the Bills will rank 27th in receiving yards for the 2024 season?

Diggs is literally the only standout talent from our receiver group, the rest were... fine? This board heavily overrates Beasley, imo. We have players equal to or better than everybody but prime Diggs. Diggs wasn't a very good playoffs receiver for us, though, so his absence really doesn't concern me that much.

I presume the delta in offensive scoring and production around the league since 2020 reflect this alleged tremendous increase in WR talent?

Diggs/Davis/Beasley/Brown is a Top 3 receiving corps?

I don't think there are any offenses that score at will against a stout defensive front, though, which is where my perspective comes from. The Bills offense will probably be pretty adequate at its job in the postseason again. It was this last season, despite facing a very good KC defense. My hope for next season is that our defensive impact players can stay healthy enough on D to, well, make an impact.

Heck if I know. Von Miller was a swing for the fences that looked pretty good before he got injured. If I knew how to readily acquire elite DL talent, I'd be a NFL team employee gearing up for the season, not wasting time on a fan board. Hoping we successfully use some cap/draft capital on a difference maker next season.

Oh, I thought we were discussing postseason performances, since you invoked a dominant postseason run specifically. The Bills need better horses on the D Line imo, getting to the QB with four is by far the best bet for slowing down top offenses in the playoffs. The Giants and Buccs are very visible 21st century examples of that.

I mean, Top 10 would probably cut it? I would definitely argue a dominant front 4 is more important to getting past KC than a great WR room. When you're not the dynasty, you have to get a little lucky/have the stars align to make it through.

Correct. Stevie Johnson did that as the number one target in the Gailey-Fitz offense. He did absolutely nothing in the NFL outside of that role. Thank you for helping demonstrate the point. Stevie Johson averaged ~7.1 yards per target as a Bill. For reference, Diggs averaged ~8.3 despite his underwhelming back half of the year performance last season.

Okay, so this sounds more like a complaint about the defense's postseason performances, which is valid. Plenty of Top 10 offenses have won a championship. Incidentally, the Chiefs had an offense well outside the Top 10 despite a HoF TE and Reid running the show last season and still pulled it off. Frankly our offensive performance doesn't matter as much for postseason results as our defense, so I don't see why Top 3 vs. Top 10 matters that much. The offense has been good enough to get past the Chiefs in the postseason.

Based on..?

Not good enough for what?

Yawn. The Bills' wide receiver group consists of a productive WR3 from last year, multiple second-round picks, and proven spot contributors. It lacks a top end elite talent, which isn't ideal, but Shakir, Samuel, MVS, and Mack Hollins all belong on a professional football field. Claypool and Coleman are question marks for different reasons, but both have high-end physical traits and Claypool started his career with two solid seasons. It's a middling group that will be solid if either Coleman or Claypool play close to their potential and straight-up good if they both do. I think it's likely that Claypool fizzles and Coleman has a ~500 yard season, so I'm expecting a Top 20 group at wideout with good TE and RB performances to complement it. Y'all are acting like we're trotting out Stevie Johnson, Donald Jones, David Nelson, and Naaman Roosevelt as our top 4 again. It's absurd. Mack Hollins would have been a starter on that squad, not the 5th or 6th option. Barring injury to Allen, the Bills are going to be a Top 10 overall offense, per usual, with a few rough games against good defenses. Best start prepping your very, very impressive intellect for that impending reality.

I am aware of the nuance. The nuance is why I said what I said. Being able to assume good QB play and help from the other side of the ball reduces the heroics required from our WR unit and should lead to strong production numbers if our players have NFL-caliber talent, which they do.