Billl

Edmunds made a great play in the second (I think) quarter blowing up a WR screen to Hardman. It was a second and 1 play, and it was set up so well that I thought it might be a house call, but Edmunds dodged the block and stopped the play for a 2 yard gain. It reminded me of the sweep Allen ran against the Texans last season.

Nobody’s giving up one first rounder for Carr let alone two. The guy is just good enough to not get a top draft pick but not good enough to make the playoffs.

Nobody here seemed to think Andy Reid won that trade. Quite the opposite, in fact.

How is it not sustainable? Yeah, there are a bunch of stars earning big contracts, but there are also a lot of key contributors making next to nothing. Chris Jones is an elite DE/DT making $21mm a year. L’Jarius Sneed is an elite CB making $1mm a year. Combined, that’s what two JAGs would make. Mathieu makes big money at Safety, but Thornhill, Breeland, and Ward make $7mm combined. Clark and Hitchens make $30mm between them, but the rest of the front 7 excluding Clark are on rookie deals. Mahomes, Kelce, and Hill have big contracts, but all are them are underpaid relative to their market value. The rest of the players on offense make relatively modest salaries. When 6 rookies either start or are heavy rotational players, it’s easy to pay star players. Tell the Matt Milanos of the world to be sure to write when they get to their new town. There’s no need to sharpen your pencil for players that don’t move the betting lines.

He’s not Kelce nor Hill, but he had more receiving yards in the postseason than anyone else. He had 14 receptions on 18 targets for an average of 16 yards every time they threw him the ball. At that pace, he’d have had 1,536 yards over a full season. That’s exactly 1 more than Diggs had this year. Hardly “WR2 stats”.

I figure starting players average around $8,000,000 per season. Obviously some are going to take up more than that, so you’ve got to offset that somewhere. The two main ways to do so are to draft players who can start while on their rookie contracts and by identifying less important positions that can be filled with a revolving door of cheap JAGs. Milano filled the role of starting OLB on a cheap rookie contract. Now that his contract is up, he no longer fills that need. IMO, 4-3 OLBs are about as unimportant a position as you’re going to find, so you may as well use it to offset a bigger contract elsewhere unless you have a true game wrecker. MM is a quality player, but I don’t think anyone sees him as a game wrecker. Let him go and find someone cheap to replace him then use that money to lock up your stars. If you don’t have enough stars to spend all that money on then go find some because that’s an issue that isn’t going to be solved by Matt Milano. Now is when Beane needs to earn his money. It’s great that he was able to find his QB when he had a ton of high picks to burn. It’s great that he found his WR when he had multiple high picks and salary cap space to spend. A competent GM should be able to get good players when they’ve got tremendous resources, but those days are over. It’s time to find a superstar late in the first round and another one on day 3. Find a couple more guys who can start in year one and a couple more who can compete to start in year two. Those guys are out there every year. You just need a GM who can find them and coaches who can coach around soft spots. If your scheme doesn’t work unless you’ve got a high dollar 4-3 OLB, then you need a new coach/coordinator.

Wow. Would have thought that the fact you got caught using a game where KC rested its starters would’ve humbled you a touch, but you decided to double down instead. I literally referenced having both starting WRs and the LT out like they did in the Colts game. Did that stop you? Nope. You went on some childish rant about how I didn’t read nor address your points. (Spoiler alert...I did). You continue to reference games where major pieces of the team were out with injuries as blueprints to follow as if opposing coaches can somehow devise a strategy around praying for injuries. The 4 games you referenced: Colts: Both starting WRs and LT were out. 13 points Texans: One starting WR and LT were out. Still scored 24 Packers: Starting LT and STARTING QB were out. Still scored 24 Chargers: Literally played backups the entire game. Still scored 21 So you’re basically talking about 2 games in the past 3 seasons that Mahomes played and Kansas City still scored 24 points in one of them without their LT and both starting WRs. Fabulous insight, thanks.

That’s what the entire league tried in 2018.

So who’s the competition? Marino is the closest comp in terms of pure numbers, but he couldn’t throw on the move the way Mahomes can, and he was a disaster in the postseason. In his career, Marino threw over 30 TDs twice. In those seasons, he combined for 40 INTs. Mahomes has also done it twice while throwing 18 total INTs. I just don’t see how it’s even a debate when his numbers are orders of magnitude better than anyone’s ever have been. Allen is a special thrower of the ball. He’s thrown 67 TDs and 31 INTs. Mahomes is at 114 and 24. So yeah, awards don’t contribute to it so much as they acknowledge it.

He also had 69 TDs and 38 INTs in his first 3 seasons. He had 6 TDs and 3 INTs in the postseason. Mahomes is at 17 and 2 with another game to play.

4 seasons into his career, Brees had 56 TDs and 38 INTs. Mahomes has 114 and 24. He’s also won as many MVPs, Super Bowls, and conference championships as Brees and Marino had in his entire careers combined. If he wins on Sunday, he could retire and be a first ballot HOFer after only 3 seasons as a starter.

This is the answer, but TE is a weird position. If you look at the dominant ones, they weren’t high draft picks. Waller, Gronk, Kelce, and Kittle were almost all mid to late round picks. Gronk was mid second round, while the rest were almost afterthoughts. Kelce is 6’5 260.

Feliciano clearly punched him first.

He went for 16, 235, and 2 on 22 targets in 2 games against them. Not sure they’ve got the blueprint.

That’s probably your best bet, but most teams don’t have that guy. I knew the game was over when the Bills put White on him in the slot and Kelce got across his face so immediately and ran away from him. It was like watching prime Edelman getting open except Kelce did it against a guy 7 inches shorter and 85 pounds lighter than he is. I’m pretty sure White would have been trampled if he went for a jam at the line, so that didn’t leave Buffalo with many options. The key to slowing the Chiefs is to get consistent pressure with your front four while bracketing Hill and Kelce with safeties over the top and hoping your other Corners can stay with Hardman and Watkins long enough for the rush to get home.

Remember when #87 and #10 were on the team in 2017 and Alex Smith threw for a career high 26 TDs? Mahomes threw 50 the next season and 28 of them were to players other than those 2 guys. In fact only 3 were to players who didn’t play with Smith. Any guesses who caught those other 3, Mr. Rib?

Just saw a new write up on Sneed today. It supports everything I’ve said about him and the Kansas City secondary as a whole. Sneed isn’t a slot CB. He’s a CB playing slot because that’s where he’s needed. He played outside to start the season when Breeland was suspended for four games, and Sneed was clearly our best Corner the day he stepped on the field. He was moved to the slot after Breeland came back because Breeland is most suited to play outside, but Sneed will eventually take over that spot. In the meantime, the team plays nickel or dime 80% of the time, so he rarely comes off the field. I’ve literally never been more impressed by a Chiefs rookie. Dale Carter, Kareem Hunt, Marcus Peters, and Derrick Thomas all had great rookie seasons, and Sneed has been every bit as impressive as any of them to me. https://fansided.com/2021/02/01/ljarius-sneed-chiefs-rookie-season-star/

Also, the Chiefs were getting the second half kickoff. With the FG, worst case scenario is that Buffalo is down 16 points the next time they touch the ball. That’s not great, but it’s still within two scores. If the Bills get stuffed and the Chiefs get a TD to start the second half, it’s a 19 point game before you see the ball again. The game would effectively be over before the first Bills possession of the half. I don’t know that there’s a right or wrong answer in that situation, but if the conversion attempts are any indication the FG was probably the right call.

https://www.espn.com/nfl/boxscore?gameId=400951789

They’re out of their minds. There’s only one franchise dumb enough to make a deal like that, and unless the Texans figure out a way to trade with themselves, that’s not happening. If you give up that much for a guy with one year left on his contract, you have to work out an extension, and nobody is lining up to give away picks for the right to sign JJ to a mega deal.

Lotta good points here. If the Bills could have had Kansas City rest their starters in the AFCCG like they did in week 17 against the Chargers, that would have helped a lot. If they could have convinced Reid not to play Mahomes and Hill and Fisher like those games last year, that would have been a master stroke. How would you suggest McDermott go about that (speaking from an analytics standpoint, of course)?

Exactly. It was a 10 play, 42 yard drive that needed a dropped INT and a 4th down conversion in order to kick he longest FG in Arrowhead postseason history. Buffalo had to earn every yard on that drive. Converting a 4th and 3 was hardly a given, and even if they did, there’s no guarantee the drive would have ended in anything better than a FG attempt. Spagnuolo did a great job of tightening up in the red zone. Its easy to say that McDermott should have done things differently given that we know the outcome of the game, but it seems wholly unlikely that going for it there or at the end of the half would have changed the outcome of the game. Absolute best case scenario is that both drives end in TDs, and the Bills score 8 more points. That changes nothing. Worst case is Kansas City has a short field after the first drive, scores a TD rather than dropping that pass, and goes into halftime up 28-0 and receiving the second half kickoff. The Bills were able to capitalize on a couple of unforced errors to take a 9 point lead before the Chiefs hit their stride. Once that shifted, there wasn’t much that was going to change things. Hell, the Texans were up 24-0 last year after a similar start before Kansas City scored TDs on 7 straight possessions, and their fans spent all offseason playing the what if game regarding coaching decisions. Bill O’Brien is an idiot, but there was no button he was going to push that was going to stop that buzzsaw just like McDermott wasn’t going to use analytics to change the outcome of last week’s game. Andy Reid has been building his team for 8 seasons now. He’s got a QB playing as well as anyone in history, and that QB is surrounded by elite weapons. What’s more is he’s got the best defense he’s had since he arrived in Kansas City coached by a guy who has won multiple championships as DC. McDermott’s had 3 years. He’s added his version of Mahomes and Hill, but he’s still missing a Kelce and a Chris Jones. You don’t overcome that by coaching circles around your opponent, especially when the guy standing 55 1/2 yards away is Andy Reid. The Bills still have some roster improvements to make before it’s a fair fight.

He did it after an earlier sack as well.

Watson just signed a contract that expires in 2025 and averages $39,000,000. Zero chance Allen signs a contract that expires in 2029 averaging $28,000,000. Shaq Barrett is only 28 years old. He’s already on a team playing in the Super Bowl, so he’s not going to become a free agent and take a pay cut. I don’t think these guys are worth 20, but I think someone will pay them close to that. If your true value is what 50% of the teams would pay you, then that means 16 teams are willing to overpay. It’s why free agency is a terrible way to build a roster.

Allen completed 70% of his passes to pass catchers other than Knox. He completed 54.5% to Knox. That’s a huge problem. He only caught 24 passes all year, and he fumbled twice losing both. Beane has to fix the position in the off-season.