Billl

This is the part that some here seem to struggle with. The Bills WERE the best team in the league the first half of the season. They were a plug and play team of veteran players. Early in the season, that’s a huge advantage over teams like Cincinnati and Kansas City who have young rosters full of talented players who are still acclimating to the NFL. The downside is that those veteran teams don’t get better as the season progresses. They don’t have to gel because they already know their roles and responsibilities. Instead, they tend to wear down as the season progresses, and they don’t bounce back quite as well as they used to. The young teams do tend to get better, particularly when they’re coached well. The game slows down for them, and the coaching staffs can install more of their game plans as the season progresses. The younger athletes can shake off some of the bumps and bruises that their veteran counterparts can’t. This is why pointing at a week 6 game where the Bills trailed until the last minute of the game is pointless. The Chiefs won 13 of 14 from that point on while the Bills tapered off as their players wore down. They still went 8-3 which is very good, but the eye test told you that they weren’t the dominant team they were before the bye. I’ve got a feeling that 2023 is going to look similar in a lot of ways. The Bills will likely look very crisp coming out of the gate, as most of the team already knows the system having played in it for several years. The question will be how will they look 20 weeks into the season.

Because he spiked a fake trophy?

The original thread on the KC message board from when Kelce was drafted is pretty funny. http://www.chiefsplanet.com/BB/showthread.php?t=272536

I’ve already acknowledged that injuries matter. Old players with injury histories are more likely to get injured again. It’s why, after the Buccs Super Bowl, the Chiefs replaced all 5 starters on the OL. They learned from the loss and now they’re champions again after not allowing a sack to the most dominant pass rushing team in the league. In 2021, Buffalo torched the Chiefs secondary in the playoffs. The Chiefs responded by adding 2 new Safeties and 3 new Corners. The Bills haven’t done that after getting “OBLITERATED” by the Bengals in the divisional round. Hyde, Poyer, Miller, and White are all being counted on heavily to have bounce-back years, and 3 of those guys will be 32 years or older next year. They’re all really talented guys, but the odds of them getting hurt or simply wearing down again are substantial. Buffalo had the oldest roster in the league last season, and they’re going to be older this year. They’ve got 7 players expected to be starters who will be 30 or over. Kansas City has 1. Buffalo had 11 players over 30 start games last year. The Chiefs had 2 (Carlos Dunlap started 2 games.) I don’t have to pretend that the Chiefs are in a tier above the Bills. The Chiefs have gone 11-3 in the postseason the past 5 seasons with two championships and are 2-0 against Buffalo during that span. The Bills are a really good team, but they’re in the second tier with the Bengals, Eagles, and 49ers right now. If you don’t believe me, check the Vegas odds. Sorry you have such a problem with me saying that I think there is a gap in a thread asking whether or not the Bills have bridged said gap. You’re free to disregard my posts rather than specifically messaging me asking me to elaborate. Just because you don’t like my conclusions doesn’t mean that I’m being unreasonable. The Bengals and Chiefs are loaded with young talent. The Bills are loaded with old talent. That was true last year, and it’s going to be true this year. Doesn’t mean the Bills can’t still win a championship, as they’re still among the favorites. They are likely to experience injuries to key players, though.

You don’t believe that there’s a gap between the Bills who just got dog walked in the Divisional round and the team who has been in 3 of the last 4 Superbowls with 2 championships. I disagree. The last 4 years, the Chiefs have either beaten the Bills in the playoffs or beaten the team that did the following week. Kansas City was decimated by injuries in the Super Bowl against Tampa. They responded by replacing all 5 starters in the offseason. Buffalo has had issues with injuries to Tre White, Von Miller, Micah Hyde, and Jordan Poyer. They’re all back, and three of the four are well into their thirties. Kansas City was a very healthy team last year. They also had 12 major contributors who were 22 years old or under. Buffalo had the oldest roster in the league. There’s a pretty strong correlation between age and injury. I don’t think Beane has done a very good job of replacing aging veterans with younger players who can pick up where they left off.

https://larrybrownsports.com/football/video-stefon-diggs-throws-helmet-anger/531588

I swear it's like summer of you wait three months to watch the draft just to complain about every single possible thing. What's the point?

How is it idiocy? They can afford it while their core is young and cheap. Von and Diggs are set to make around $52 million in 2024. Sauce Gardner and Garrett Wilson will make less than $15 million. When your best non QB players make that little, it frees up a lot of cap space. Idiocy would be wasting the cheap years of guys like Quinnen Williams, Gardner, Wilson, Breece Hall, Elijah Moore, Alijah Vera-Tucker, etc. with a bad QB.

Almost like it was a negotiation. All of the amateur agents around here were ripping him for not signing the 5 year deal with $133 million guaranteed. Lamar is smarter than those people.

This has been a fun re-read.

I’m sure they’re carefully crafting their apology letters to us.

With the 31st pick in the draft, in front of beautiful Union Station in Kansas City MO, the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs select Dawand Jones, Tackle from tOSU. Priority #1 is to keep Mahomes upright, and the Chiefs are pleasantly surprised that he fell to them. The Steelers and @Virgil are on the clock to start round 2.

It’s simply not true that you were responding to me making a comment about the quality of the QBs the Bills have faced. You brought that up out of thin air that people won’t respect the Jets or Dolphins until they win a division against an elite QB. My response was that the Bills haven’t won a division with a good opposing QB. I was responding to you, not the other way around. Congrats on the regular season wins and point differential championships, though. I’ve got to admit I’m a little confused as to why the Chiefs should be more concerned about the Jets than the Bills. I mean, the Bills play the Jets twice a year. The Chiefs do play them in NY this season, and that’s a very loseable game.

This is your quote: “So why can't you understand the perspective that a logical fan will believe that the Jets or Dolphins will unseat the Bills when they ACTUALLY prove they can outperform an elite QB'd team over 17 games?” YOU brought up the idea that a team needs to prove that they can win a division against an elite QB. My response was that the Bills have also never outperformed an elite QB over the course of a season. It’s either important (in which case Allen has something to prove) or it isn’t (and the Dolphins/Jets have nothing to prove in this regard). You’ve got to pick a lane, though. Now show me where I said Johnson was better than Rousseau. (You can’t because it didn’t happen). What I did do was compare several picks that were similar in terms of when they were made, where they were taken in the draft, and their respective positions. The Jets have recently taken Sauce Gardner in the first. The Bills took Elam. Jets took Breece Hall. Bills took James Cook. Jets took Quinnen Williams. Bills took Ed Oliver. Jets took Jermaine Johnson. Bills took Rousseau (and Basham and Epenesa). The Jets took Garret Wilson. The Bills took Davis and Shakir (who aren’t really comps in terms of where they were drafted). The Jets didn’t get the better player every single time, but in totality they’ve massively outperformed Buffalo in the draft in recent years…and they just added Rodgers while Buffalo just lost one of their best young players as a cap casualty. Your take-away from that has been to say that Rousseau is better than Johnson and then spike the football. Now I’m not sure why you keep trying to inject the Chiefs into the conversation, but they lost one game to a bad team in week 3. Nobody is claiming that the Chiefs were the best team in football in the first half of the season. The Bills already hung that banner. The Chiefs were expected to take a step back. They had 8 rookies and 6 second year players play meaningful snaps this season. It took a while for them to gel, but it turned out pretty well in the end. What they were in week 3 has no bearing on the future, as those players have improved and will continue to improve. Meanwhile, the Bills fielded a team of veterans who were a finished product week 1. The problem is that they started to show their age as the season progressed. Guys like Miller, White, Hyde, and Poyer were useless by the end of the year and they won’t be younger nor have less wear and tear on them next season. So I guess it makes sense that you’d prefer to talk about week 3 of the regular season than the postseason, but I think we both know what presents a clearer picture of where each team is going forward. That brings us back to my point in this thread. The Jets have a solid roster loaded with young talent. Adding an elite, HOF QB to the mix absolutely makes them serious contenders for the division.

What do you mean it was my argument? I was responding to your statement that the Jets and Dolphins haven't proven that they could win a division against a team with an elite QB by saying that the same was true of the Bills. It mattered enough for you to make the statement about NY and Miami, but you suddenly found it irrelevant as soon as the same logic was applied to Buffalo.

Mahomes just beat Herbert, Carr, and Russell Wilson to win the division. All of them are better than the best QB in any division Allen has won. What’s more is that he’s beat Luck, Watson, Allen, Allen, Burrow, and Hurts in the playoffs while Allen is 0-2 against that list in addition to being 0-2 against Mahomes head to head. I’ve got no idea how or why you’ve tried to make a discussion about Rodgers going to the Jets a referendum on Mahomes’s career, but when you’re trying to downplay Patrick’s accomplishments, you’ve lost the debate in spectacular fashion. He’s the most accomplished QB in the game and almost certainly will be for the remainder of his career (barring a Rodgers Super Bowl win in NY). You’re welcome to try to split hairs about who is better between Rousseau and Johnson, but you’re missing the point. Rousseau is the best player Beane has drafted since Allen. That’s 40+ draft picks over a 5 year stretch. He’s maybe a little bit better than Johnson. Johnson is the 4th best player the Jets drafted in 2022 alone. The Jets have loaded up on talent in the draft recently while the best player the Bills have drafted in nearly 5 years is a rotational DE. Also, I have no idea where you came up with the idea that he led the NFL in run stops. He had 50 combined tackles on the season. Foye Oluokun had 192 tackles that year, and I can assure you that fewer than 150 of them were in pass coverage. When it comes to the draft, Beane’s biggest strength is his ability to find guys who can at least stick on NFL rosters. He hasn’t drafted a single player who has made a Pro Bowl since 2018, though. The result is that the team is loaded with aging players. They looked old and slow against Cincinnati, and that’s not counting the guys like Von Miller, John Brown, and Micah Hyde who weren’t even able to suit up. Now, it looks like they’re running it back minus Edmunds (one of the few young, key contributors). We’ll see if it works. Either way, I think this roster is going to be torn down to the studs a year from now. The only question will be who’s in charge of the rebuild.

When have the Bills ever proven they can win a division with an elite QB in it? It sure seems to me like they’ve lorded over a division with nothing but garbage at the position only to get knocked out of the playoffs by Watson, Mahomes, Mahomes, and Burrow. Josh has playoff wins against the corpse of Philip Rivers, Lamar Jackson (who got injured and didn’t play a full game), Skylar Thompson, and Mac Jones. The Jets I’m not saying that Johnson is necessarily better than Rousseau. As of now, they look pretty even. The point is that Johnson was maybe the fourth best player the Jets drafted in 2022 whereas Rousseau is the best player the Bills have drafted since Josh 5 years ago. The Jets are drafting circles around Beane. They’re loaded with talent that hasn’t even come close to hitting its peak with guys like Garrett Wilson, Quinnen Williams, Bresee Hall, Sauce Gardner, and Jermaine Johnson. Buffalo’s stars are Von Miller (34 and coming off a second ACL injury), Tre White (hasn’t been the same since his knee injury), and Stefon Diggs (turning 30 this year). They literally have one young player (Groot) who has shown any potential of being a cornerstone type player. If you were starting a franchise and had to pick the roster (excluding QBs) of either the Jets or the Bills, all 32 GMs would take the Jets. Similarly, all 32 GMs would take the Bills QB, but it’s nowhere near the chasm it was last year. The Jets are a good team that is absolutely capable of winning the division. The Chiefs are clear favorites. After that, there is a tier of 4 teams (Eagles, Bills, 49ers, and Bengals). The Jets are in the next group right behind them. Vegas has them at 10 wins and gives them about a 30% chance of winning the division.

I’ve said multiple times in this thread that the Bills have the best odds to win the East. Vegas puts them at about a 40% chance of winning the division. They’re about as likely to win the AFCE as the Lions are to win the NFCN.

It’s funny that when the topic is Allen’s place among the best QBs in the league, the prevailing opinion here is that the Bills would be 1-16 without him but when the topic turns to what team has a better roster QBs notwithstanding, suddenly the Bills measure up just fine. Not sure it works both ways. IMO, the Jets have an excellent roster full of young, cost-controlled talent. Their drafts have been excellent with the glaring exception of their bust at QB. Well, now they’ve added the guy with 2 MVPs in the past 3 seasons. It sounds an awful lot like the formula the Buccs and Rams followed recently. On the other hand, the Bills are the team who hit on their QB first and then built a roster around him. Allen was their first pick in the draft 5 drafts ago, and there really hasn’t been a pick since then who is currently a proven impact player on the team. The Bills drafted Ed Oliver, and the Jets drafted Quinnen Williams. The Bills drafted Kaiir Elam, and the Jets drafted Sauce Gardner. The Bills drafted James Cook, and the Jets drafted Breece Hall. The Bills drafted Groot, and the Jets drafted Jermaine Johnson. To my eyes, the Jets look like a team whose best players are still young and improving. I don’t see a lot of young talent on the Bills. They’re a team who went all in last year and started to show their age the second half of the season, and now they’re starting to shed salary. Edmunds is gone. White and Miller are coming off serious injuries. They were building for 2021 and 2022. They’re likely still very good in 2023, but the Dolphins and Jets see them as vulnerable, and Vegas agrees.

How many games do you think the Bills would have won last year with Zack Wilson and Mike White playing QB? The Jets won 7, and I'm not convinced the Bills would have won that many. Now they're adding Rodgers who, IMO, is in the same tier as Allen and Burrow in that they're capable of playing at an MVP level. NY just drafted arguably more talent in last year's draft (Gardner, Wilson, Johnson, Hall) than Beane has since 2018. I don't think it's a stretch to say they're on the same level as Buffalo. If Miller and White don't return to their pre-injury level of play, the division is wide open. Vegas still has Buffalo as the favorite, but they're only given about a 40% chance of winning the division. That's a long winded way of saying that I think adding Rodgers makes them a credible threat in the AFC.

There’s a lot of grown men trying to pretend that Rodgers somehow doesn’t make the Jets a real contender to win the division. The Jets have a hell of a roster, and they just added a QB who has been MVP in two of the past three seasons. The Bills are still favorites to win the East, but Vegas only has them as them at about a 40% chance. I realize that half of this board believes that only the Bills have good players, but Aaron Rodgers is pretty good IMO.

Lotta cope going on ‘round here.

I’ll take KC or any other team if they aren’t available.

That play happened on third and five, and he was about to lose yardage even if he didn’t drop the ball. It was a big play, but Kansas City was about to get the ball around their own 20 down 7. The Eagles weren’t about to take control. They were about to punt. When did Bills fans start begging for postseason football to be played in perfect conditions?

Is anyone flying to Kansas City for the draft?