Billl

Calling him a bust is ridiculous. If he was a bust, then only 3 Bills WRs at most have ever not been busts. He’s got 364 catches for 5,384 yards and 34 TDs so far in his career. Those are basically Lee Evans numbers. That’s not what Buffalo was hoping for after 2015, but he’s not a bust.

He couldn’t stay healthy. When he was on the field, he produced.

Thurman wasn’t the best RB on his college team.

Seriously? He was barking at Josh several times during the Bengals game about ball placement. Then he threw a tantrum on the sidelines before storming out of the stadium instead of joining his team in the locker room. The guy’s a hell of a player who just happens to be a jackass. He’s not the first WR to be this way, and he won’t be the last. It’s odd that so many people here want to pretend that he’s not a malcontent when he so clearly is.

People are claiming it up and down this thread.

I’ve never once claimed to be a Bills fan. I’m a Chiefs fan. Have you seen my profile pic? I’ve always had a soft spot for the Bills on account of sharing a name with them.

I don’t have any inside information, but I don’t think the Chiefs plan to move Chris Jones to QB, WR, or TE, so that would by my guess as to why he didn’t show up to the workout for QBs, WRs, and TEs.

You’re spot on. If you’re not going to show up with your teammates, then shut your mouth. Diggs got 10 targets for 35 yards against the Bengals, and he blamed everyone but himself for the loss. He was the first to leave after the game, and he’s been the last one to show up each year. That’s fine as long as he produces and doesn’t show up his coaches and teammates. He didn’t produce when it mattered most, and he publicly berated his QB and OC before storming out of the stadium.

Right, but he also didn’t throw a tantrum the years prior. Look, I don’t think it’s a huge deal at all that he didn’t go. I do think that it’s BS to claim that he only did it because he’s the fiercest competitor in the league who is singularly focused on winning when he’s one of only a handful of players to skip the opportunity to work out with his teammates for the first time since the Bengals game.

He didn’t end that season yelling at his QB on the field over the quality of his passes, on the sideline about not throwing him the ball enough, or leave the stadium immediately following the game. He’s a top 15 WR. He’s also a me-first player. Both of these things can be true. You don’t see Mahomes and Kelce skipping voluntary workouts. If you’re a leader and not just a loud mouth, then you show up even though you don’t want to and don’t have to. His teammates know who was there and who wasn’t, and they’ll remember who was out there sweating in April and who wasn’t the next time he throws a tantrum on the sideline.

Not a good look given his history in Minnesota and his behavior during and after the Bengals game. Kinda hard to reconcile the whole “he only acts that way because he’s the fiercest competitor on the planet” narrative with not showing up to workout with his teammates. Hand waive it away if you want, but he chose not to attend the workouts with his teammates while the guys standing in his way for a ring showed up.

Then why wasn’t he at the workouts? Allen was there.

That’s exactly what it is, especially when you factor in the nearly $20 million they kicked down the road via the restructure they just did. There’s a million recipes for prolonged success in the NFL, but they all revolve around finding an elite QB and then drafting well to keep him surrounded with talent.

No Jerry Rice either.

It should have already been done. In 2021, Beane took Basham. The next two picks were Josh Myers and Creed Humphrey. Then in 2022, he traded up to get Elam. The next two picks were Tyler Smith and Tyler Linderbaum.

The Bills were smack dab in between the Chiefs and Bengals prior to the restructure in terms of percentage of the cap spent on offense. Lack of spending on offense as a percentage of the cap isn’t why they scored 10 points against the Bengals. I’ll agree that Beane has a fundamental flaw with the way he builds his rosters, but it has nothing to do with offense versus defense. People on this board talk often about having “stars and scrubs”. That’s not what Beane does. He continually overpays players who are pretty good but not great in order to have a complete roster. That simply isn’t sustainable when you’ve got a QB on a top of the market contract. Ideally, you want to find your stars and then draft well enough to not have to rely on scrubs. That isn’t an option when you draft as poorly as Beane has since 2019. The result is that he’s way overpaying a bunch of JAGs. Taking Allen and Diggs (stars) out of the equation, the top cap hits this season will be White, Dawkins, Morse, Oliver, Hyde, Johnson, and Jones. That’s $81 million or 36% of the entire salary cap going towards mediocre production. Beane’s failures come down to what nearly every GM’s fortune comes down to, his ability to draft well. The Rams are the rare exception to the rule, and their success was fleeting to put it mildly.

They also just restructured Allen’s contract to reduce his hit this season by nearly $20 million which skews those numbers pretty significantly.

4 of their 5 biggest cap hits in 2023 are on offense.

I agree. The question becomes whether those younger players are as good as the aging, expensive players. How many players currently playing on their rookie deals have shown themselves to be cornerstone type players? Groot looks like he’s going to be at least a solid player, and he’s still got upside. Other than that, there are mostly question marks. I liked Elam coming out of Florida, but I don’t know what happened with him last year. Will Davis put it all together just in time to earn a huge payday?

So you really think the Bills are an ascending roster or that Beane is going to somehow figure out how to increase the talent level on the team while Allen and Miller’s cap hits go from $26 million in 2023 to $71 million in 2024? While Diggs goes from $15 million to $28 million and he’s 31 years old? Where is this infusion of young talent coming from? Maybe I missed something, but there doesn’t appear to be a bunch of recent draft picks waiting in the wings to replace guys like White, Poyer, Hyde, Miller, Oliver, Diggs, Edmunds, etc. This franchise was built to peak in 2022, and it did just that. In the middle of the season, they were the odds on favorites to win the Super Bowl. This is the first offseason since at least 2018 that the Bills weren’t buyers, and a year from now they’re going to be full-blown sellers. Unless guys like Epenesa, Basham, Rousseau, Elam, Cook, Bernard, Brown, Davis, etc. are ready to step in and not miss a beat, then roster age and salary issues are going to loom large.

Typical BS from Florio. The Bills began last season with either the best roster in the NFL or the second best behind the Eagles. The problem was that they were an older team, and they wore down over the course of the season while some of the younger teams improved with experience. It’s entirely possible that 2022 was the best roster Josh is ever surrounded by. Not only did that team max out the salary cap, but it borrowed from the future via back-loaded contracts. In the end, Josh led the team to 10 points in their playoff loss. His line didn’t do him any favors, but Allen earned plenty of the blame.

Right? Like, have you ever wondered “what if” about that Norwood kick against the Giants? In a weird way, I feel like the Buffalo Bills would have won the Super Bowl that year.

Why don’t you talk about how unlucky he was to lose to the Giants via the helmet catch? Yeah, it’s way more impressive to lose before getting there. Sure would’ve sucked for Joe if he’d made 6 more Super Bowls and won 3 more championships.

I’m not sure where you got your stats, but the source you used must have been from about 2016 because it leaves off three trips to the Super Bowl and two rings for Brady. Basically it omits a HOF career worth of his stats, and Brady’s accomplishments STILL dwarf Montana’s.

That’s an interesting point you bring up about wondering how Brady would fare in different eras and with different rules. The reality is that he’s been in the league for 23 seasons, so you don’t really have to wonder. He’s played in multiple eras with all kinds of different rules, and he’s dominated all of them. He’s won in ball control offenses. He’s won in wide open offenses. He’s won in offenses featuring multiple TEs. He’s won while making countless little white slot receivers look like world beaters. I feel pretty confident that he’d manage to win throwing to Jerry Rice, John Taylor, Roger Craig, etc. while Bill Walsh was calling the plays.