Billl

So you choose to compare their regular season performances when Josh had better numbers, but when it comes to the postseason and Hurts has better numbers, it’s an invalid comparison?

Compare his 8 total TDs, 0 INTs, and 2 fumbles in the postseason to Allen’s 4 TDs, 3 INTs, and 3 fumbles.

Care to enlighten us on how implied probability works then?

Sure, but the question is whether they’re more likely to be unseated in the division or unseat Kansas City, Cincinnati, and the rest of the field in the AFC. According to Vegas, they’re about twice as likely to miss the playoffs. They’re +500 to win the AFC, so they have about a 17% chance. They’re +130 to win the East which gives them about a 43% chance of winning the division. That puts them at about a 65% chance of making the playoffs as a division winner or wild card. So there’s a 35% chance of missing the playoffs and a 17% chance of winning the AFC.

Herbert doesn’t belong anywhere near that group. He’s in the Cousins and Dak range.

Why would I know the answer to that?

The Bengals really looked like they came out flat.

How much time did they spend on Kirk and Mariota’s siblings?

So it wasn’t that they didn’t have the pass rush talent to pressure Burrow without Von. It wasn’t that Chase, Higgins, Boyd, and Hurst completely outclassed the Bills depleted secondary. It certainly wasn’t that the Bills couldn’t protect Allen, nor was it that the Bills don’t have any backs capable of creating for themselves when the Defensive Line is winning up front. It’s just a coincidence that the exact same thing was happening when the teams played three weeks earlier. Nope. 55 players came out flat that day, and they all happened to be wearing blue. That makes a lot more sense than thinking that the defending AFC champions were actually a much better team than the Bills were by the end of the season. It wasn’t that the Bengals looked like they were going to boat race the Bills 3 weeks prior and then validated it in the playoffs. It was that the Bills were “flat” (whatever that actually means).

No, he literally came in year three. Josh’s rookie year was 2018. Diggs came to Buffalo in 2020.

Teams aren’t flat for 60 minutes. That just doesn’t happen. The Chiefs came out flat against the Texans in 2019 when they were down 24-0 and couldn’t hang onto a ball to save their lives. Same thing in 2020 against the Bills when Hill dropped the bomb on the first drive and then Hardman fumbled the punt on the second drive to go down 9-0. That wasn’t what happened when Buffalo played Cincy. They started out the previous matchup getting manhandled by the Bengals before the game got canceled, and the playoff game picked up right where that one left off. Without Von, the Bills didn’t have the horses up front to pressure Burrow, and there was no way in hell that Buffalo’s depleted secondary could hang with Chase, Higgins, Boyd, and Hurst. The Bengals had more talent on the field that day, and they were about as bad of a matchup stylistically as it gets for the Bills. The result was a good old fashioned butt whipping. It happens.

That was my first reaction, but they’ve got a couple of young QBs they’re trying to develop. The biggest mistake McBeane made in Josh’s development was running him out there without anything even resembling a competent WR. At least now the Titans can ease whichever QB they go with by leaning on a solid run game and a legit WR. That has value even during a rebuild. It didn’t cost them any draft picks and it’s not a massive contract, so this doesn’t do anything to stunt their rebuild.

A mistake? No. But there are risks involved, sure. Especially for McKinnon who has had a history of injuries. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if he were to miss significant time. Von’s ACL was absolutely wear and tear. It’s not like he went down in a heap after he tore it. The tear was discovered when they were working on his meniscus and cleaning up cartilage damage. Even Poyer wasn’t really injured so much as he was banged up and playing at less than 100%. Older players are more susceptible to injuries, and they take longer to recover than younger players. That’s just a fact.

The three big injuries were to Von Miller (34), Jordan Poyer (32), and Micah Hyde (32). It’s never a huge shock when players who are over 30 get hurt. It’s a young man’s game, especially now that there’s an extra week during the regular season and only one bye in the postseason. There’s a strong correlation between age and injury. There’s an element of it, but it can’t all be attributed to bad luck. Buffalo had the oldest roster in the league last season, and they got older this year when they let Edmunds walk while extending Poyer and signing Floyd.

Not completely disagreeing here, but I think you’re taking way too much away from regular season games played in weeks 5 and 6 the past two seasons. 8 rookies played large roles for the Chiefs last season. When a team is built that way, they’re going to struggle greatly early on. If they’re coached and developed well, the team at the end of the season is going to be drastically improved by comparison. Veteran heavy teams like the Bills are sort of the opposite. They enter the season essentially a finished product, but with older players you have a larger risk of them wearing down as the season progresses. The Bills in week 1 were a superior team to what they were in the postseason. The opposite is true of teams like Kansas City and Cincinnati. McDermott’s biggest need for improvement IMO is to figure out how to get the team to peak at the right time.

With Von and Hyde out and Poyer and White reduced to shells of their former selves by the postseason, there was nobody on the Bills defense that Kansas City had to worry about. When gameplanning, sometimes you have to look at the opponent’s strengths and work around them. That wasn’t the case for the Bills. Kansas City could have designed their offensive strategy based 100% on what the Chiefs do best and given zero consideration to the notion that a single player could dominate them and ruin the plan. Guys like Milano and Rousseau are good players, but they aren’t game wreckers like Von, and with a depleted secondary on top of Von’s absence, elite offenses could do whatever they wanted.

I guess the shorter version of this is that you can draft BPA and you can draft for need, and both are valid strategies. But if you draft for need, which Beane 10,000% does, you’d better get them on the field sooner rather than later because they’re, by definition, not blocked by an entrenched player.

That would make Kincaid a top 5 player in the league. Pretty good return for the 25th pick in the draft.

Sure he can. He can collateralize the franchise in order to obtain a loan if necessary. Franchises have exploded in value, so he's got billions in equity he can tap into.

There's some merit to this, but it's a reflection of a poor strategy. At some point, you've got to be winning to let high priced veterans go and trust your draft picks. Rookie contracts are incredibly valuable assets.

Those people are wrong. Herbert doesn't belong in the same conversation as Josh.

He's a DT, not a DE, but those are both incredibly important positions that absolutely move the needle in terms of wins and losses. Kansas City has exactly one defensive player with a big contract, and it's Chris Jones, a DT. Their formula isn't the "stars and scrubs" model that so many here talk about. It's superstars and draft. You can afford to pay massive contracts to superstar players if you're able to get excess value elsewhere. One of the biggest differences between the Bills and the Chiefs is that the Chiefs have a ton of players whose production far exceeds their contracts. The Bills have Gregg Rousseau, and that's about it. Beane has got to start finding players in the draft who can be difference makers who can give you multiple seasons of production under their rookie contracts. It's far and away his biggest weakness as a GM. Justin Herbert ain't that guy. He's Phillip Rivers, Dak, Cousins, etc. He's always going to tease you into thinking he's elite, but I don't think he's ever going to take that final step.

I really don’t see him not getting extended. He’s the only defensive player on the team making any money, so it’s pretty easy to pay him. Justin Reid is the next highest paid, and he’ll be gone after this season. They drafted 6 players last season who will either start or get a large amount of playing time on defense this year which gives them a ton of cap flexibility.

Three years into their careers, you could have said the same thing about Baker versus Josh. The reality is that Ed is what he is…a pretty good but unremarkable DT. There’s been zero indication that he has some heretofore untapped level of ability to be a dominant player, though. There’s nothing wrong with that. He’s going to have a long career in Buffalo, and he’ll be well regarded by the Bills Mafia 20 years from now and mostly forgotten by everyone else. Quinnen Williams is a 25 year old emerging superstar that opposing DCs have to game plan around. He got paid 40% more than Oliver, but he’s twice the player. You know what’s more concerning than breaking out in a 4th season? Having 4 years and never breaking out.