Billy Claude

The Bills won't be able to avoid it. Pretty much all teams since 2013 on Hard Knocks are forced to participate by the NFL. The only exception were the Rams and Chargers who volunteered the year they moved into Sofi. The reason the Bills weren't on during the drought was HBO never chose them since there was no national interest in the Bills Afterwards, teams are allowed to decline if they were in the playoffs either of the two previous seasons. The playoff exemption does not hold for the new in-season and out-of season versions of Hard Knocks since the Dolphins were on the in-season version in 2023 after making the playoffs in 2022 and the Steelers will be on in the in-season Hard Knocks this coming season after making the playoffs last season. So expect the Bills to be on pretty soon.

I'm not disagreeing with you on either point, simply responding to badobilz argument that the Chiefs having two receivers in the top 32 in receiving yards are a big deal even if they were #29 and #32.

I changed the number because if someone said that last season team A had no receiver in the top 28 in receiving, the conclusion would be team A's receivers were not very good and it would be much more convincing that the receivers were good because they finished #29 and #32. Having two receivers in the top 32 in receiving yards is a totally arbitrary cutoff of no particular significance. During the 2022 season, the Bills had Diggs at #5 and Davis at #33 in receiving yards. Are you telling me that being at #29 and #32 is a indication that a team has good receivers but #5 and #33 means that they don't? Let's face it, the Chiefs receivers were statistically bad last year. For example, they led the league in drops. The Chiefs clearly thought so also based on the investments they made at wide receiver this off-season. However, if one needed to, I think one can come up with a much more reasonable argument that the Chiefs receiving statistics did not tell the whole story: Travis Kelce is a HOFer who has clearly lost a step or three, however, he can still bring it in big games in crucial situations. Rasheed Rice was #32 in receiving yards which is very bad for a WR1 on a team, however but he was a rookie and was much better than at the end of the season than at the beginning so that data point is underestimating his contribution in the playoffs.

You highlighted my statement that you can also say they had no receivers in the top 28 in receiving yards. It's a simple fact. Kelce was 29th in receiving yards and Rice was 32nd. You are the one making a big deal of the Chiefs having two receivers in the top 32 in receiving yards not me.

Pretty selective and intentionally deceptive use of cutoffs here. You can also say the Chiefs had zero receivers in the top 28 in receiving yards. The Chiefs receiving Corp was bad last year. The fact that two receivers barely made the top 32 at 29th and 32nd is a not going to convince folks that they weren't.

So these quotes pretty much confirm that there were locker room issues with Diggs though whether it was with the coaching staff or other players one cannot tell. My guess is that there were issues with both. Douglas' quote also doesn't seem particularly supportive of Diggs. He was very careful with his words and he didn't just gush about what a great guy Diggs is like Dawkins did.

As with any internet argument once it gets pass a few back and forths, it's just the same thing repeated over and over in a ever more strident manner. It's still interesting to observe in the same manner as a car wreck.

I think you are referring to the "Wisdom of the Crowd" idea. However, it only works when guesses are independent, for example, people don't know the guesses of many other participants nor are swayed by other forms of groupthink. If the Wisdom of the Crowd always worked we would never have had the dot-com nor the housing market bubbles. I am not sure the theory applies to a message board. It seems to me message boards tend to result in pushing opinions to extremes. In any case, I think the board's opinion on Bills players tend to be generally correct once you allow it to settle (definitely not at the beginning of the season) and if you tone the opinion down a bit, that is players are not as good nor as bad as the board thinks they are. With the exception of a few posters, I don't trust the board's opinion of players on other teams, for example. the board was still talking how much Tua sucked long after it was pretty clear that he is a decent, though not elite QB when not injured.

NFLmemes don't say where the numbers come from so they could have just made them up. However, the rankings are fairly consistent with this USA Today article: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2023/09/06/nfl-ticket-prices-2023-cheapest-most-expensive-prices/70722888007/ The reporter interviews the CEO of TicketSmarter so I assume the numbers come from them The article starts by giving the highest and lowest average ticket prices and then the highest and lowest cheapest ticket prices (the rankings are close but don't quite match the tweet). They talk about how the price depends greatly on match up etc. implying that this is the secondary market. The price for the Bills was the 5th highest at $168 which is close to the NFLmemes tweet which had them at 4th highest. The date of the article is just before the season started accounting for the very low cheapest price for the Texans ($49!) since they were expected to be bad. A.I. (Statistia) gives the average ticket price for the Bills as $101.63 in 2023, second lowest in the NFL: https://www.statista.com/statistics/193595/average-ticket-price-in-the-nfl-by-team/ Again they don't say explicitly say this is the per game season ticket price and you have to pay to find out their source. However, the number is reasonably consistent with this SI article giving the average 10 game general admission package for 2024 as $1146 which they say is about 10% higher than in 2023. https://www.si.com/nfl/bills/news/buffalo-bills-season-ticket-prices-climb-2024-high-demand

As always, the devil is in the details. Both charts are true but are misleading by not giving details of what data was used. The first chart appears to be based on the average cheapest ticket price on the secondary market (it doesn't give complete details). This is high for the Bills due to the high demand for games. There are a lot of people traveling from out of town who already are paying for the flight and room so don't care too much about the ticket price. The second chart is based on average season ticket prices per game. The Bills had the second lowest price at $101.80 based on this metric.

Ravens rookies report today.

My argument against Yeldon being washed is that Beane brought him back for a second season. If Beane thought he was washed he would have just cut him and taken the small cap hit. Also, Yeldon was reasonably productive in his first season when he got a chance; 150 snaps, 13 receptions on 15 targets at 9.5 yards per catch and 17 carries for 63 yards for 3.7 ypc. Obviously the ypc was not great but he was there as a pass receiving back and 3.7 was still better than Frank Gore. I do seem to remember a fumble early in that first season that led him to being inactive for three or four games.

I'm sure you can always find someone on the internet to say pretty much anything. However, yeah, its a classic straw man argument.

A bit of context here. Jordan was cut from his HS varsity team as a 5'10 sophomore. He grew 5 inches from his sophomore to junior year. So he had to play JV another year. Going to the NBA directly from HS was not an option at Jordan's time. The NBA did not draft anyone directly from high school from 1976 to 1995.

Daboll has approached mythical status on this board (though not quite to the level of Andy Reid) even though there were plenty of complaints when he was with the Bills. The Jaguars game that season was probably as bad as the offense looked since Josh Allen's rookie year.

It's not a minimum, its a default. There has been four game suspensions but they are mostly six games with a few more than that. So eight games is more than normal, certainly not less.

I believe there is a 6 game baseline for first time offenders. However, Goodell can take into account both mitigating and aggravating factors so there appears to be a lot of leeway.

You are most probably right about Matt Breida and Duke Johnson -- they were definitely way past their prime and they were all meant to be third down backs (including Hines). However, TJ Yeldon was only 25 when he signed with the Bills and had 55 receptions for the Jaguars the previous season. Once he joined the Bills, he disappeared. He was only active for 6 games and had 13 receptions his first year with the Bills. Instead they chose to run Frank Gore into the line at a blistering 3.6 yards per carry. I never understood why Yeldon wasn't given more of an opportunity. Beane also tried to sign JD McKissic for a decent amount of money. The Bills were lucky the deal fell through. I doubt he would have been used anymore than Hines was.

This is just a long line of disconnect between Beane and the coaches regarding pass catching running backs. Pretty much from when he started in Buffalo, Beane has been signing guys who are supposed to be receiving options out of the backfield (TJ Yeldon, Matt Breida, Duke Johnson, Nyheim Hines) who the OC then refuses to use.

They really need to revive the "Da Bears" SNL sketch with Josh Allen and the Bills Mafia. Who would win the Super Bowl if Josh Allen was forced to play with only 10 on offense but had Andy Reid calling the plays? Josh Allen of course. He would win with nine if one of them was Travis Kelce. Would Josh Allen win the Super Bowl if every other person (players, coaches, front office, M&O folks, ticket sellers, etc.) in the Bills organization were not totally incompetent? Of course, Josh Allen would win, just replace Sean McDermott by a random fan. Is every turnover Josh Allen ever had the fault of his receivers? Yes, of course, even the fumbles, and it turns out that turnovers, at least for Josh Allen, are actually good things.

It was hardly "by far", the Bills benefited from one less accepted DPI than the 49ers and the Saints. If you include DPIs that were not accepted then the Bills had one more DPI in favor than the 49ers and the Saints. I agree that the WR room plays a role in the numbers but clearly a lot of other factors go into play and I doubt that the lack of speed is that large a factor. No one would say the 49ers had a bad WR room or lack speed. The "by far" numbers is for the Jaguars. They benefited from 19 DPIs (3 more than the next team) and also had only one DPI against (3 less than the next team). https://www.nflpenalties.com/penalty/defensive-pass-interference?year=2023

Right, its not the yards that matter, its the automatic first downs from defensive holding that matters. I have to think Kelce is a large reason for this -- and no, its not a Taylor Swift effect -- KC has been leading the league in benefitting from defensive holding every season since 2021.

It was low but they came up with a really strange cutoff to make it look as bad as possible. I would wonder what the ranking would be historically if they chose the cutoff to be 3000 routes run instead of 3200. The Bills weren't even the lowest number of accepted DH + DPI beneficiaries last season (from NFLpenalties.com): New England 8 (6 DPI + 2 DH) New Orleans 9 (4 DPI + 5 DH) Chicago 9 (5 DPI + 4 DH) Las Vegas 10 (9 DPI + 1 DH) Buffalo 10 (3 DPI + 7 DH) Miami 11 (6 DPI + 5 DH) Of course this is partly because New England and Chicago barely passed, However, even on a per pass basis the Bills would only be 2nd lowest behind New Orleans.

The time is in the link given in the 2nd post in this thread. It has a picture of the police report which has the time on it.

OK, you're correct about his XP rate being good. I was basing my statement on missing one or two XP to be at league average based on the 96% conversion rate last season but it was only 94.2% over the four seasons that Bass has been around. Bass XP conversion rate hasn't been extraordinary in any particular season (#10 in 2020, #9 in 2021, #15 in 2022, #10 in 2023) but he has been very consistent. He has the third highest XP conversion rate among active kickers behind Justin Tucker and Chase McLaughlin.