ComradeKayAdams

Two obvious reasons: 1. They weren't sure how the draft would play out and couldn't assume they would be able to draft Ford or any other decent RT. 2. Cap space isnt even remotely an issue this season or next.

Your user name is apt.

Or maybe Dawkins is everything they thought and more! I'd like to see Daboll experiment with a Dawkins - Long - Morse - Teller - Ford line for a sustained period of time and see what happens. I believe this is the most physically talented OL we can throw out there and also among the youngest with the most long-term potential. I'd also like to see the Bills try rolling with 10 OL on the roster. An entire backup line of Nsekhe - Spain - Bodine - Feliciano - Waddle would be the envy of the league! The utmost priority should be protecting Allen, even at the expense of a 7th WR or a 7th LB.

Don't underestimate the passion and loyalty of those tarps. They've been there since day 1, every Sunday, since 1995, enduring the harsh fall Florida weather, quietly biding their time.

True, and it wasn't just the OL that sucked. The WR's, TE's, and the QB rotation of Peterman/Anderson/off-the-street Barkley/rookie Allen also did the running game no favors. McCoy is among the 30 greatest RB's to have ever played the game of football. I'm betting on him having an excellent bounce-back season in a drastically improved offense. And I'd like to see Singletary play 1 full quarter of preseason NFL football first before we discuss dumping a future Hall of Fame RB for him. And keeping Yeldon over McCoy? LMAO...

I encourage everyone to read up on the historic '85 Bears defense. It was absurd at how dominant that group was in all statistical aspects of the game. They tore through the playoffs and had only one bad game all year: against Marino's offense. They remain the gold standard for professional defenses after 99 NFL seasons. I see nothing wrong with trying to compare our current defense to the 1985 Bears defense. Our current DC was the starting CB on that unit. Our DB's and overall depth might even be better than that of the '85 Bears. The difference lies with the front-7 and specifically the pass rush. There is clearly no Hampton, Dent, or Singletary currently on this roster. I can actually imagine Milano - Edmunds - Joseph emerging as a sort of modern version of Marshall - Singletary - Wilson, but not this season. The beauty of that Chicago LB corps, though, was that they contributed 20 or so sacks worth of pass rush in the 46 D system. I can't imagine our LB's doing that, even with Lorenzo Alexander's specialty Sam LB role. The Chicago DL was also good for about 40 easy sacks each year. Oliver will need to be the next Aaron Donald before this unit can begin to approach that level of pass-rushing ferocity. Hughes is very good at applying constant pressure, but he's over 30 and has never topped 10 sacks in a season. Murphy has never topped 9 sacks in a season. Lawson, Yarbrough, Harold, etc... are decent backups and nothing more. Find me 1 elite DE and another very good pass-rushing DE and we can talk about a historically great Buffalo Bills defense next year!

It's interesting to see how McDermott and Beane have been building this defense. Each level of it (DL, LB, DB) now has a recent first round draft pick with the talent and potential to become regular First-Team All-Pro candidates (Oliver, Edmunds, White). Then you have a bunch of under-the-radar free agent signings (Hyde, Poyer, Murphy, Kevin Johnson, etc.) and day 2/3 draft picks+UDFA's who fit the scheme perfectly (Milano, Joseph, Harrison Phillips, Wallace, Neal, the other 3 Johnsons, etc.). The only big splash in free agency was Star. Alexander, Lawson, and Hughes are the only players on defense remaining from the previous regime. I also like how Leslie Frazier (60 years old) is probably at the point in his career where he is no longer looking for another head coach position, meaning that we may have him as our DC for a very long time. At the moment, to me this defense is probably an elite DE and a backup MLB away from on-paper perfection. They also need to spend a lot of the summer focusing on their 3rd down and red-zone packages. Historically one of the best NFL defenses of all time? Not sure about that one. But best defense in franchise history? By next year, it could be a very real possibility!

That was some culture he built in Buffalo from 2001-2003. I was particularly impressed with how that talented 2003 roster proceeded to finish 4-10 after a dominating 2-0 start. Maybe they just needed to hear a few more air horn blows to stay motivated? ***** you, Gregg Williams, you disgusting piece of *****.

Will we have the roster space to carry both?

With the retirements of Kyle Williams, Lynch, Levitre, and now Moats, no Bills draft pick from before 2011 now still plays in the NFL. Also, Gilmore and Woods are probably the only former Bills draft picks whom we regret losing, but neither wanted to be here anyway so whatever.

I was clearly being flippant when I posted that. By "suck" I mean wasn't a "franchise QB" while in Buffalo. Flutie, Bledsoe, Fitzpatrick, Taylor...all of these guys were more mediocre than bad. By the way, I'm actually 37 years old and have been following this team religiously since the Bickering Bills of 1989. I'm well aware of Bledsoe's 2002 season, but I also remember him kind of sucking for the rest of that season after a post-Halloween game against the Patriots. To the Flutie apologists: I'm not going to delve into this tired topic, but those Wade Phillips defenses were outstanding and carried those teams in the late 90's...and you know it. Flutie's unpredictable scrambling ability was certainly preferable to Rob Johnson's inevitable sack/turnover/injury, but Flutie was always just a "meh" QB. Maybe not "suck," but just "meh." By the way, I still vividly remember names like Jerry Ostroski, Jamie Nails, Corbin Lacina, Billy Conaty, Victor Allotey, and Joe Panos. Neither QB was ever going to win a Super Bowl behind that garbage OL, so I'm completely over that era of Bills football. You should be too.

Josh Allen is the singular reason why we are currently feeling optimistic about the Bills. I can recall a variety of similar feel-good stories and general positivity with each previous regime post-Levy that the football media fed us. But none of that mattered because Todd Collins sucked, Rob Johnson sucked, Doug Flutie sucked, Drew Bledsoe sucked, JP Losman sucked, Trent Edwards sucked, Ryan Fitzpatrick sucked, EJ Manuel sucked, and Tyrod Taylor sucked. But Josh Allen feels different from all of the aforementioned. He has an impressive collection of QB skills and attributes (physical but also mental) that none of those guys ever had. And at the moment, he DOES NOT YET DEFINITIVELY SUCK.

This is an idea that Rex Ryan would have loved: make everything so complicated for the opposing team that even your own team probably won't be able to figure it out.

Great thread! Here are my thoughts: 1. The defense looks mostly settled to me. The only real roster battles I see are at DE behind the top 3 (my money is on the rookie Johnson who has the most upside) and big nickel (Bush, Neal, Maurice Alexander the LB). I only see a couple battles for starting positions at DE opposite Hughes (slight edge to Murphy) and CB opposite White (slight edge to Kevin Johnson). 2. I think the interesting battles at OL are more about who starts where and less about who makes the team. My best guess is that they plan to keep 9: 2 pure tackles (Nsekhe, Waddle) + 2 tackles who can play guard (Dawkins, Ford) + 3 interior guys who can play center (Morse, Long, Feliciano) + 2 pure guards (Spain, Teller). 3. At the skill positions on offense, most also seem to be settled in my opinion: 2 QB (Allen, Barkley), 3 RB (McCoy, Gore, Singletary), DiMarco, 4 WR (Jones, Foster, Beasley, Brown), 3 TE (Kroft, Smith, Knox). That means Jackson, Perry, Yeldon, Sills, Williams, McCloud, McKenzie, Roberts, Croom, Sweeney, etc. are all fighting for only 4-6 roster spots with a heavy emphasis on special teams ability and practice squad eligibility. 5. The punter job is definitely up for grabs between Bojorquez and Carter. I'm giving the slight edge to Bojorquez until I see Carter in action. 6. Looking over my current roster predictions, I have the defense mostly returning intact from last year but the offense only returning EIGHT players! Those 8 are Allen, Barkley, McCoy, DiMarco, Jones, Foster, Dawkins, and Teller.

I realize this type of hindsight thinking isn't productive, but can you imagine if we had somehow paid Gilmore the money his agent thought he was worth two years ago? White and Gilmore as your two shutdown CB's would have been a lot of fun...

I agree with all of this. Both the Bran and the Night King storylines were severely lacking in detail and coverage toward the end of the series. My best guess is that this may have been done intentionally in order to set up the prequel, which I assume/hope will address many of the surrounding questions? From a storytelling perspective, I guess the point of the Night King was to rally all of the disparate and antagonistic groups of people in Westeros together and get them on friendly enough terms in order to create a better Westeros post-Cersei and post-Dany. Or something...

Are the Jets now trying to out-tank the Dolphins or something?

We play 9 games against teams on this worst-12 list: Jets twice, Dolphins twice, Giants, Skins, Bengals, Browns, and Broncos. The Steelers, Ravens, and Titans also aren't looking so ominous at the moment.

There's actually a lot of truth to this. Sadly, national media people who get paid to cover the NFL don't follow the Bills and know this team nearly as well as the average TBD'er. Examples include Colin Cowherd, Shannon Sharpe, Stephen A. Smith, Cris Carter, etc. So much of what they know about the team comes from the following: 1. Vontae Davis quitting at halftime. 2. Nate Peterman and the ensuing blowouts. 3. Josh Allen not having over 60% completion percentage in small college program. 4. 17-year playoff drought coupled with Pats winning the division and sweeping us every year. 5. Antonio Brown rejecting us. The narrative of the Bills being a joke will only change when they start winning games, and it probably won't even take much for the narrative to turn. Start the season 4-0 and watch as people suddenly start talking about us as a legit Super Bowl contender. Regarding the pass defense, there were still a few major flaws I saw last year: 1. Below-average pass rush opposite Hughes. At least one of Lawson or a healthy Murphy needs to step up. 2. Instability at the CB position opposite White. Either Wallace or a healthy Gaines can secure this spot. 3. Statistically poor red zone defense. A lot of this may have been fatigue from the historically awful Bills offense last season.

I suppose it's possible that all of these teachers are, in fact, Amy Schumer. Maybe she's just really good at escaping from the police and starting over again in another location.

Absolutely. That's probably our 5 most physically talented right there, at their proper positions, each with long-term potential. Also note that this creates an entire backup unit of Nsekhe - Spain - Bodine - Feliciano - Waddle that is probably more capable than any starting lineup we fielded last season. The sudden loss of Incognito and Wood hurt the Bills last year, but Beane has the OL recovering nicely this offseason.

That's just it: Dany has now shown to be no different than any of the other horrible sociopathic rulers that the Game of Thrones universe has ever known. Important characters in the series initially joined her cause because they thought she was a revolutionary who would usher in a new and unusual era of moral leadership. She could have easily ended the war by simply taking out Cersei at the Red Keep as soon as all the scorpions were demolished. But as she herself told Jon Snow on Sunday, she chose to rule in Westeros by "fear." This isn't some gray ethical situation here that we can all debate academically like a bunch of online neckbeards. Dany didn't just decide to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki to display strength to the Russians; she proceeded to take out Tokyo and every other major industrial city of Japan after Hirohito surrendered. The problems with this strategy are that you end up creating a lot of extra enemies that could have otherwise been avoided (all of her advisors, practically everyone from Westeros, Jon Snow) and that your hold on power is only as secure as your actual strength (1 dragon left, remaining Dothraki, remaining Unsullied). Dany is going to lose the "game of thrones" this Sunday because she played a very poor strategy in the end. Being merciful isn't synonymous with being weak.

I can't??? She just slaughtered many thousands of innocent people. I realize this is fiction, but I've always been a bit disturbed at how so many people had thought of Danerys as a "good" character. Even going back to the first season, it was quite obvious that something was off with Daenerys Stormtits.

Yeah but at least we have a lot of Johnsons on D!

Perry has a lot of value as a special teamer, while Yeldon is a 2nd round draft pick bust that the Jags and everyone else in the NFL didn't rush to sign. I wouldn't say Stanford was awful. He was mediocre and could potentially be upgraded with summer cuts from other NFL teams. But at the moment, no one on the roster is more capable backing up Edmunds than him. Joseph is a smallish, 6'1" 230 lb Will/Sam outside linebacker. Croom is unbelievably overrated among Bills fans and is probably a borderline roster cut in the eyes of the coaching staff right now. He's likely competing with Sweeney and Fisher for TE spots #3-5. No one bothered to draft Jackson in the 7th round, yet you come across as so confident that he makes an NFL roster somewhere?