DCOrange

His last season as a starter, he played for a god awful team and if you extrapolated his numbers for a 16 game season, he would have finished with roughly 4,300 yards, 29 TDs, and 6 or 7 INTs.

I don't really know when this became a thing, but this is flat out false. Denver offered to trade for Kaepernick on the condition that Kaepernick would take a 50% paycut, to which he declined like anybody else would have. This happened BEFORE he had ever protested and before the league allegedly colluded against him. The only offer that Kaepernick has reportedly received since he began protesting was a league-minimum deal from Seattle. It's not really shocking that a guy that played decently well as a starter the last time we saw him would want more than the minimum to continue playing.

I'm not really much of an offensive line expert; just meant it to make the point that you can take Oliver and still add 4 offensive players in the first 4 rounds and they'll likely all be pretty good prospects.

I personally don't believe in paying average starters $20+ million even though that's the going rate for them. I'd rather just move on to someone on a rookie salary than to settle for that level of QB play (unless the rest of the team is exceptional). But having said that, if you don't follow that same philosophy (which most NFL teams do not), his contract is actually quite good. It's basically 4 one-year contracts; whoever acquires him can cut him at any point and get almost all of the money back and his cap hit is pretty much the norm nowadays for a QB that isn't on their rookie contract. His cap hit will be roughly in the 16-20 range for QBs next year.

Just my opinion (based on my assumption that Buffalo is picking in the 3-5 range): I will be happy if they go with one of these two routes: 1. Trade down and stockpile picks. I would guess this would mean moving down far enough that a WR or OLine would no longer be a reach, and I'd probably lean in that direction (we're talking like the mid to late teens); I'd like to get N'Keal Harry or Kelvin Harmon there based on what I've seen of them so far this year. Even after trading down, I wouldn't be vehemently against taking a pass rusher or corner in the 1st round; trading down should give us enough picks to address most of the offensive concerns anyways. 2. Stay in the top 5, take Bosa/Oliver/Quinnen/maybe Greedy if they're available and then turn the focus to offense. You could theoretically come out of the first 4 rounds with: Ed Oliver, DT Collin Johnson, WR Isaiah Prince, OT Riley Ridley, WR Darrell Henderson, Karan Higdon, or Matt Colburn, RB I'd be pretty thrilled with that.

Better than the old system at least IMO. I'd like to see them expand the playoff system though. The thing is that Dungey has been very hit or miss this season and if he's missing against Notre Dame, it'll probably take Dino too long to bench him for Syracuse to have a chance. They need him to bring his A game (assuming he's still the starter by then).

That's definitely possible here. For what it's worth, Kyle Crabbs from the Draft Network released his top 100 today and he had Johnson at #100 and Tyree at #98. I think they're in the process of updating their consensus big board in the near future too so I'm curious to see where the others rank them.

Hey, Anthony Johnson and Tyree Jackson both squeezed their way in there! Johnson ranked as the #14 WR in the class and Tyree as the #6 QB.

It's more or less fodder for pundits to discuss in the lead up to games. For example, if Syracuse and Notre Dame happen to win their next two games, it'll likely be a matchup of two top 10-15 teams, in which case it will be hyped up a lot and a win over a top 15 Syracuse team could be enough of a resume boost to keep Notre Dame's playoff chances alive even if they lose a game at some point.

I really doubt UB is holding him back that much. If you're good enough, people will find you, and Johnson has received a lot of attention as is; it's not a case of people not paying attention to Buffalo. Perhaps people are skeptical that he would perform as well against the big dogs...I think that's a fair criticism, but it's true that it's unfair to him that he doesn't really get the chance to prove himself as much at Buffalo. As far as the 40 time goes, we'll see. He wouldn't be the first person whose official time is significantly slower than what he was clocked at before; it happens pretty consistently. And a 4.55 is still enough to run past guys in college, even in the major conferences but even moreso in the MAC.

I don't know, we'll see. I don't see the speed personally. Maybe he tests better than he looks, but when I watch him play, I see a 4.55-4.60 kind of guy. Catches with his body way too much for my liking too. Davis was a great prospect; I don't see it with Johnson. Seems like people much smarter than I are all over the map on him though. I've seen people like PFF and DraftNik have him as a 1st rounder, while others like the ESPN duo, Draft Network, Charlie Campbell and Matt Miller do not. Miller and ESPN don't go very deep on their big boards this early in the year, but I know Campbell has Johnson ranked as the #23 WR in the class right now and none of the 5 contributors at the Draft Network have him in their top 10 WR rankings and I believe their consensus big board has him around 150th right now. I'm not really sure what to make of a guy that has such a gigantic variance at the moment but I personally would tend to agree with those that are lower on him right now. The fact that he'll be (I think) 24 or 25 as a rookie doesn't help either given how raw he appears to be. Edit: I'm not sure what his DOB is, but I remember him being old for the draft class

Isn't Jonah Williams generally viewed as a better prospect than Little?

He's faced plenty at Houston. Teams he's played: Oklahoma - 7 tackles, 2 TFL, 2 sacks UCF - 5 tackles, 3.5 TFL Louisville - 6 tackles, 3 TFL, 2 sacks, 2 pass breakups, 1 forced fumble Arizona x2 - 16 tackles, 2 TFL, 1 pass breakup, 1 forced fumble Texas Tech x2 - 11 tackles, 2 TFL Memphis - 6 tackles, 2.5 TFL, 1 sack, 1 fumble recovery USF - 7 tackles, 2 TFL, 1 sack, 1 pass breakup Tulsa (were really good one of the three years he's faced them and he had 12 tackles, 2 TFL, and 2 pass breakups in that one) If you take just the games against good competition and extrapolate it over a 16 game sample size, you'd get: 112 tackles, 30.5 TFL, 10 sacks, 10 pass breakups, 3 forced fumbles, and 2 fumble recoveries.

Well this aged well. https://thedraftnetwork.com/2018/10/30/matt-colburn-has-a-little-doug-martin-in-him/

He's such a tease. It seems like he disappears for 90% of most games but whenever he makes a catch, it's a huge one. Still, I'd love to take a chance on a guy as young as he is, with the size and speed he has, and at least decent production. I'm not sure if he's my #1 WR free agent target this year, but he's damn close.

I really think he'll be available on Day 3, or the end of the Day 2 at the earliest. Certainly will be an interesting test case for analytics though. I know PFF for example loves him and has him as like the #2 or 3 WR in the class while it seems most other draft pundits have him outside the top 10 WRs.

https://thedraftnetwork.com/2018/10/30/options-to-help-fix-bills-offense-in-2019-offseason/ Not all that much to this article in terms of meat, but it gives us some names to keep an eye on, both in free agency and the draft.

Unless they plan on playing Montgomery at WR, this seems like a really weird trade. He's basically a poor man's version of their current backup RB.

He's averaging more yards per game than the Bills leading receiver lol

I think we need 3 between free agency and the draft to be honest. I think Buffalo will sign Adam Humphries to play in the slot and then I would guess they at least check in with someone like Tyrell Williams and ultimately draft at least one WR early.

I would have been pretty happy if Buffalo were able to trade McCoy for a 4th and then flip the 4th for Demaryius, but oh well. At least with the Golden Tate trade it seems like Nelson Agholer might be available in the offseason, so that's another potential option.

I do agree that they appear to be on two different paths. I'm still not very high on Zay, but he's at least shown enough to warrant keeping him around. Benjamin has shown enough to warrant getting him off the team. I don't want either guy to be a projected starter on this team next year though.

The production is pretty even to be honest. Yards per catchable target: Benjamin: 9.4 Zay: 8.4 Target quality: Benjamin: 8.1 (31st in the league) Zay: 7.8 (46th in the league) True catch rate: Benjamin: 60.9% (105th in the league) Zay: 70.4% (95th in the league) True drop rate: Benjamin: 13% Zay: 3.7% PFF rating (and ranking in parentheses) Benjamin: 60.7 (89th) Zay: 61.9 (80th) PFF receiving rating: Benjamin: 60.4 Zay: 60.5 Zay's been slightly better this year, but the gap really isn't very large. They're both in contention for being the worst starting WR in the NFL.

I'm not sure I agree with this to be honest. I think if he were content to winning games with defense and protecting the ball on offense to keep the scores down, Tyrod would remain the QB. Choosing to attempt to win games that way while we're clearly overmatched is different from if they continue to play that way once the offense has all the pieces they desire. I don't really agree with the way McBeane have gone about trying to rebuild the foundation, but it at least appears to me that the plan is to address the offense this offseason now that the defense is more or less set.