JGMcD2

No. It's assuming that Knox performs similarly with increased targets... a sample size of 16 games makes you fairly confident that's how the player will perform. Obviously it's not perfect and there are other factors. @Hapless Bills Fan keeps beating the horse that Knox was open a lot and just wasn't targeted.. likely because Josh's first read in his progression more often than not is Diggs, followed by Beasley, followed by Brown, followed by Davis before he even gets to Knox. In Washington it was McLaurin followed by Thomas or McKissic as a check down option. Situations are not all created equal and that's what needs to be recognized. There are a limited amount of plays to go around (the average team over the last 10 years runs 1023 plays per season on offense) and target share isn't created equal. Knox as the 5th option in Buffalo and Thomas as the 2nd option in Washington is drastically different. Looking at their rate stats is a decent albeit not perfect way to compare them had situations flipped. If you have a better way I am all ears.

There is probably room for some extra plays based on this here. I threw it together real quick... just a boxplot of Total Plays each season. Going over 1100 plays is pretty rare and generally an outlier. Quick summary stats for the total dataset from 2011-2020 Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max. 878 994 1018 1023 1052 1191 2020 Bills were above both slightly above the median and the mean with 1034 plays. There aren't significantly more plays on the table, at least not typically, you would have to have a season that would be an outlier to have significantly more plays than we did this year. Another real good season with an increase in plays to get to that Q3 and you're at around 1052 plays... so we run 18 more... that's not enough to spread around... even if we're split 50/50 pass and run to support a guy like Logan Thomas who needed high volume to put up the 72/670/6 line he did. I'll concede we're not at the upper bound, but there is not a lot of wiggle room.

It would look similar on paper. I will do some quick math. You give Knox 110 targets. His catch rate is 54.5%. 110 * 0.545 = 59.95 Call that 60 receptions. His Y/R is 12. 60 * 12 = 720 He had 3 TD on 24 receptions. 3/24 = .125 TD/R .125 * 60 = 7.5 Call that 7 TD Knox 60/720/7 Thomas 72/670/6

Yup. That's why I said Stevie in his prime was a good #2 option on a contending team. I never said Logan Thomas was the #1 option for the WFT and I am well aware of Terry McLaurin. My point is Logan Thomas would not get close to the volume in Buffalo that he did in Washington. There just weren't 110 targets available for the guy here. I'm not saying he is overrated, but I am leary of a player on a not very good team, commanding 110 targets, with Y/Tgt and Y/R stats that look more like RB numbers than they do even mid-tier TE numbers being anything more than a volume player. Travis Kelce's Y/Tgt and Y/R numbers look almost identical with Mahomes as they did with Smith. He averaged 9.1 Y/Tgt and 12.7 Y/R with Smith and with Mahomes he has averaged 9.2 Y/Tgt and 13 Y/R. Virtually identical... under Mahomes and Smith for Kelce. Kelce's efficiency never changed... he's always been a very efficient player. Mahomes has just targeted him even more which has increased his total production but his efficiency has not changed. For comparison Thomas was sitting at 6.1 Y/Tgt and 9.3 Y/R, it's not amazing, he was a nice check down option and racked up yards and catches because of it... but those are numbers you see from a RB. Logan Thomas' breakout season is comparable to Scott Chandler's worst season in Buffalo... 7.1 Y/Tgt and 10.6 Y/R. He's just benefitting from being the main option on an offense lacking other weapons outside of McLaurin. Would he be nice to have here? Absolutely. Is he a difference maker in the offense? Probably not. He wouldn't command the volume to put up ~700 with 6 TDs. It would be impossible. Cut his targets to say 70 in Buffalo (which is probably generous) and he puts up numbers closer to Dawson Knox and everyone is likely complaining that he's not a difference maker.

Yup. You nailed exactly what I was talking about with Stevie. He was one of my favorite players and damn good, but wasn’t elite. In his prime he was a great #2 option on a contender IMO. The only thing with the Chargers example after taking a quick look at plays this year - the Chargers were the upper limit in offensive plays. Only team over 1100 plays from just looking quick. The rest of the league ran somewhere between 950 - 1100 plays this year. I’ll do a good look back over the last 10 years but I’m pretty confident that there are a finite amount of targets to go around and it’s going to be in that range. You’re not going to be able to stretch it too much more than where we were this year. This season is likely in Q3... there might be a few more plays out there but I don’t think we can reasonably run too many more consistently to get enough targets to give someone other than Diggs and Beasley that volume.

I know people say that they don’t like to do this... but if you give Logan Thomas the same amount of targets as Dawson Knox his numbers are actually worse.... I’m not saying the same thing happens - Thomas definitely ends up providing more value this year. What I am saying is that there weren’t 110 targets on this offense for Thomas. There are only so many targets to go around. You can give him all of Knox’s targets, but then where do we go from there? How many does he pull from Diggs, Brown, Beasley and Davis? Probably not enough to make a substantial difference and not nearly enough to put up the numbers he did in Washington. Fine player who benefited from being better than the majority of the options in a bad offense. I’ll say it again, even though I’ve been made fun of for this. When you scout in baseball, you look at a player and try to place them where they would fit on a championship caliber team. That’s where you start with you grading. Is Logan Thomas a difference maker on a championship caliber team? He’s a nice role player who’s a good second tier starter, but he’s not putting anyone over the top. Just because John Means is the ace of the Baltimore Orioles doesn’t mean he’s an actual “ace pitcher” by definition. He’s a #5 starter/swing man at best on a championship caliber club and he would be graded by scouts as such. Another common way it’s phrased is “this guy is a first division starter or he’s a second division starter.” Comes from the idea early on in baseball that teams in the top half of the division were the “first division” and teams in the bottom half were in the “second division.” A first division starter would be able to start on almost any team in the league and second division starter would only typically be able to start on less talented teams. Logan Thomas is a second division starter.

Yup. Agreed. Is he just supposed to sit on the cap space in the meantime? I’m not really sure what the argument is on the other side? He had extra money to spend because of the cheap QB, so he spent it on some of the better players in FA to be competitive. You’re always going to have to overpay in FA, hard to find a great deal. Although he’s found a few. Then the argument becomes “Well then when Josh is getting paid a lot, he can’t draft so poorly.” But according to everyone here we don’t really have any difference makers via FA and then in the draft Beane can only find solid starters - which is what you want when your QB is making a lot of money. Honestly based on the messages on this board, I have no clue how we were in the AFCCG by drafting so poorly and doing so poorly in FA with a bunch of bad coaches and coordinators. 6 years for Knox and 4 years for Thomas? Thomas also isn’t getting 100+ targets in Buffalo like he did in Washington... that’s Kelce/Waller level of targets... does anyone really think he’s that type of player? He was a check down option. His Y/R was sub 10.

I personally would’ve cut him. I was underwhelmed by him for 2 years, but I don’t think it was this egregious error. It’s pretty simple, they felt having him on the roster at $7.5M was better than saving $7.5M and the next guy up after him. Was he a difference maker for us? No. But for all the whining about our bad defensive line play, you’d think people would be ok with keeping a decent defensive lineman who had shown flashes the previous year to see if he can make a difference or not in a season where going into it you’re making a run at the division and potentially the conference. The move isn’t setting the franchise back decades.

Wasn’t Trent Murphy fairly instrumental when it came to containing Lamar Jackson against Baltimore in the playoffs, which got us to the AFC Championship game? So not having Murphy could’ve have also cost us a chance at the Super Bowl?

How do their bad decisions stack up with the decisions across the NFL? Do other organizations make mistakes like this? Seattle passed on Metcalf twice to take LJ Collier and Marquise Blair. The Eric Wood extension, he was supposed to see the future and know he was going to have a career ending injury? 2/16 where they got 1 year out of it before they found out about the severe neck injury isn’t a gross error. Cool. Logan Thomas had a lot of receptions and yards based on sheer volume on a 7-9 team sorely lacking receiving options in an offense with QBs who made Trent Edwards look like Elway when it came to pushing the ball down field. It’s like saying Scott Chandler or David Nelson were great because they were top options on bad teams. Not absolving them of their mistakes... but those are some interesting choices as well. I’ll sandwich my post with my initial question... how do their bad decisions stack up against the bad decisions of other teams?

Either CB2 or FS.

Then you’re very rarely going to “win.” Being focused on the outcome as the measure of success can be tricky.

I agree with all of this. I just find the distortion of the events by the media funny depending on the player. You mean to tell me that if the line sucks and your skill players don’t make plays, the QB isn’t going to look as good as he would when the line blocks and your skill players make plays? color me surprised. Someone should’ve told that to the media when Josh was getting chased around his first two years in the league with little blocking and his best weapons were Robert Foster and John Brown. Sure, he made some bonehead plays, but it was never always all on him.

San Francisco (won’t happen for obvious reasons) Indianapolis New Orleans (Cap space will make it nearly impossible)

I agree, I think everyone in their right mind agrees the Bills need to start beating the Chiefs off the field and then on. I don’t think anyone is arguing that. If you want to start the clock with Reid’s arrival, fine, it’s not unreasonable. If you’re going to do that, you need to concede that since McBeane arrived they have considerably closed the gap. We can all agree the Bills were futile for a long time, but we can’t pin anything pre-2017 on McDermott and Beane. If you want to bash the Pegula family for the wrong decisions prior, but that isn’t an indication of what this group has done in 4 years. Bash McBeane for going 1-2 against KC so far, with the 2 losses coming in brutal fashion this year, or trading the pick that became Mahomes. That is all perfectly fine, but I’m not really following the logic that Reid is 5-1 against Buffalo. These guys weren’t calling the shots for 3 of those games. It has no bearing over them, I’m sorry. We’re not in the same conversation as KC at the moment, I’m acknowledging that. The point @Inigo Montoya was trying to make is that the gap has been closed and we are in the conversation to make that leap. Things need to be done to make that happen this off-season. The oddsmakers believe we’re going back to the AFCCG next season and as the team with the 3rd best odds in the entire NFL of winning it all.

Please don’t ever change. As much as you irritate me, I do like you.

You, @BADOLBILZ and @Mr. WEO. Has anyone ever seen you guys together all at once? I swear you’re the same guy.

How is it silly? You’re going to B word about the Bills because they’re competitive and seen as one of the Super Bowl favorites and got to that point in a shorter amount of time than the odds on favorite? Nobody is comparing teams, they’re comparing the steps they took to being a Super Bowl contender.

That’s a different timeline than the OP was discussing. It’s a valid point, but irrelevant related to the discussion the OP was starting. He’s comparing the path the Bills have taken to where they are to the path Chiefs took to get to the point where they are. So again, you’re penalizing Buffalo for finding a franchise QB before KC. Reid got 4 years to accumulate talent and screw around with Alex Smith before McDermott even walked through the door in Buffalo. Essentially your argument is Reid Chiefs > McDermott Bills because Reid Chiefs had a 4 year head start on finding the talent they wanted. It took KC under Reid 7 years? 6 to reach an AFCCG. 4 to reach an AFCCG for Buffalo.

I want to make sure we get this timeline right. The McDermott Bills are behind the Reid Chiefs because it took the Chiefs 5 years to find a franchise QB and 6 to make an AFC Championship game. It took the Bills 1 year to find a franchise QB and 4 to make an AFC Championship game. The Chiefs also had 4 drafts prior to McDermott even arriving where they acquired players like Kelce, Jones and Tyreek Hill who are their top players. But somehow they’re behind? Basically they’re penalized for finding a really good QB earlier than KC did?

Haha.

The OP is clearly talking about the path the Chiefs took when Reid arrived compared to the path the Bills took when Beane and McDermott arrived and you blatantly ignored that to spew your dogma. Nobody is telling the story of the two franchises, everyone knows the Bills were wholly incompetent pre-McDermott, the 17 year playoff drought is pretty hard evidence. @Thurman#1 is spot on. If you’re really trying to critique McDermott and Beane based on what the Bills did from 2013 up until 2017, then you’re just doing your thing and trying to stir the pot. I know you’re going to say it matters because the Beane ripped apart a team “equally as talented” as KC at the time. Do me a favor and go back and look at those rosters pre-2017 and tell me how many guys that you wish we still had that we could have reasonably kept that would be contributing today?

People are likely going to argue that we’re in a worse position than KC was. They’re going to say KC had a Super Bowl caliber roster that was short a QB and then were able to keep it together for a few years with a young QB making a rookie salary when they hit their peak. Whereas Buffalo is going to have to give Josh a big contract before that peak comes in Buffalo. That’s what they’re going to say. I don’t agree, but that’s going to be the argument. Also, something about Beane being a crappy drafter because he doesn’t make enough high risk picks, but they crucify him when he makes high risk picks and they don’t immediately become as good as they read they would be on Bleacher Report. Also, probably something about wasting money. They’ll probably say that too.

I’m agree with most of it, even though like 50% of the guys you’re cutting are FA (Norman, Smith, Jones and Barkley). You lost me with a RD1 RB. There’s minimal value in that always and it won’t fix our inconsistent/horrible run blocking. I am all for beefing up both the OL and DL though.

I remember when @Billl told me how amazing Townsend was because he held a few XP. Now I know why he didn’t mention anything about his punting ability!