Beck Water

I would like to know what the story was with that guy. He looked so slow in our offense, was that just me? Course we only gave him like, 10 snaps per game. Anyway, I wish him and Nyheim Hines the best (except when they're playing the Bills of course) I have to take the "L" for both of them, I didn't think they'd be major finds but I thought they would both contribute more than they did.

Could we try for Puka Nacua? LOL that's a TBD special. "This player's no good, therefore let's trade him for a high pick!" because you know, if a player is genuinely limited surely some other GM will give you a sack 'o draft valuata...... We traded Cordy Glenn, who was a very good LT when not injured as follows: "On March 12, 2018, the Bills agreed to trade Glenn, the 21st overall pick in the 2018 NFL draft, and a 2018 fifth round pick to the Cincinnati Bengals in exchange for the 2018 12th overall pick and a 2018 sixth round pick" So basically, Glenn plus a 5th/6th pick swap moved us up 9 spots. IF we value Brown, a RT, the same (that's an 'if'), he'd get us from 28 to 19....no where near 10.

I don't disagree with the overall point of your post, but it's worth noting that when the Bills broke the drought and only had one (1) 1st or 2nd rounder from prior drafts on the field (in fact, many players from any round prior drafts), it was in large part because Beane and McDermott cleaned house, arguably trading away guys who could play but who weren't "their kind of guys". Guys they swept out the door included Marcell Dareus (who was on the field for JAX), Reggie Ragland (played 3 years for KC, won a Superbowl with them), Ronald Darby (still playing, last season for BAL), Sammy Watkins (6 more seasons), Cyrus Kouandijo (2 seasons for DEN), Bobby Trees (still playing, won a SB with LAR), Stephon Gilmore (still playing) So if your point is, the Bills drafting was so horrid that none of their guys could play - while there was a long stretch of horrid picks like Aaron Maybin and Torrell Troup, there was also a fair bit of talent. The problem is, we either moved on from it for nothing (Gilmore, Bobby Trees, Andy Levitre), or just failed to develop it properly in what seems to have been a 'dysfunction junction' environment. (it's a bit of a nit, but Eric Wood, our 2009 1st round pick, was on the field for the JAX playoff 100% of the snaps. Shaq Lawson our 2016 1st round pick, and Cordy Glenn, our 2012 2nd round pick, were both on the team, but IR'd)

One would think, but when you're wealthy and can afford the best attorneys, you get all kinds of stuff like the Kansas City prosecuting attorney accepting a plea deal from Britt Reid for 4 years (commuted by the Governor after 16 months) because they were afraid they wouldn't win in court and get the 7 years he could have faced..... I'm just thinking that a bunch of the charges will get dropped on some technicalities unearthed by a crack legal team or due to quiet offers to settle with the injured parties who will then stop cooperating with police and ask that the charges be dropped. Then he'll be offered a plea deal. KC isn't the team to give up on a rookie who had 938 yds and 79 receptions, just 'cuz of a felony charge, or two, or eight.

The team that won the 2022 Superbowl did so with a top-10 vet receiver who happens to play TE, a 26 year old (former 1400 yd) #2 WR who was drafted in the 2nd, their own 2022 and 2019 2nd round picks, and your daughter's gym coach who used to play for the Packers. 2023 Superbowl, make it a vet receiver who happens to play TE and is starting to slow down, their own 2023 2nd round pick who looks like the best WR of the 1st 2 rounds, their own 2022 and 2019 2nd round picks, your daughter's gym coach who used to play for the Packers, and the hindrance supplied by the Giants. The Cinncinnati Bengals WR corps, they ain't. But KC made a significant draft and FA investment in WR, some of which didn't work out as they planned. But, they took their shots, 3 out of the last 5 years 2nd round picks. That seems to be a lot more investment than the Bills have tried on, until Kincaid last season (since I'm counting him as a TE)

I would like to see the Bills take at least a couple flyers on FA through training camp. I'm making my way through the list of FA WR still available. I'd like to see us try out a younger guy (27-29) who has had at least 1 - 1000+ yd season in his past, and who has quite possibly been hampered by living through poor QB play. Anyone stand out to you? I'm kind of interested in DJ Chark, though I don't have the whole scoop on his injury history and why he fell off https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/free-agents/all/wide-receiver/available/

Wow! I legitimately Did Not See That Coming. I wonder how many "stick" after Rice's best lawyers get on it?

I used slightly different methodology (top-20 WR and looking at whether they were top-20 for 3, 2, or 1 year) and a slightly different time window (the last 3 years) Just a little note that a top-32 WR would get a lot of posters here saying "not good enough" Conclusion: So, of 28 WR who have been top-20 for at least 1 of the past 3 years: 39% from Rd 1 (5 top-10, 1 top half, 5 bottom half) 25% from Rd 2 21% from Rd 3 4% from Rd 4 11% from Rd 5 Then, I used a different methodology using pro-football-reference wAV statistic, and looking at drafts from 2017-2023. I wasn't looking at hit rate here though, but at success vs. draft pick order.

Except that's not what Josh said at all, unless by "official practices" you mean "voluntary OTAs in April" (which are, you know, voluntary and not practices)

I said it up thread: Credulous Same with people who think Pat Mahomes, with his 7.7 golf handicap and his part-ownership of a soccer club, spends every waking minute of every day trying to be a better football player - simply because we're not seeing social media clips of him golfing, but we are seeing social media pics of him in a weight room with WR. It's the peril of our times.

Same

Catch rate matters, but the issue is getting a release against a DB with longer arms and then handfighting all the way down the sideline, arm length matters in order to hold the defender off and achieve that catch rate. It can be compensated to some extent with technique and strength, but in the NFL on the best teams, the best DBs have great technique and work out, too. The point some are making is that Shakir found success filling a specific role in the Bills offense. Now people are projecting he could change roles to playing more on the boundary, which may require a body type he just doesn't have, and increase his catches/yards by like, 50%. IIRC, Beasley wanted a chance to play more outside when he came to the Bills, and they tried that some in 2019 and it really just didn't work. It's a common thing here, we have a player who finds success in one role on the team (LT say), and fans immediately want to put him in a different role and argue he'll surely be just as good or even better, there. Agree on Shakir being a bigger, better athlete. Question on Renfrow: did he fall off a cliff, or did Josh McDaniel taking over as Raiders HC and the arrival of Davante Adams push him off? His best year was under Gruden/Olsen as OC when he got 128 targets and led the team in receiving yards. Once Davante Adams showed up and commanded 180 targets, everyone else got scraps. Then we saw Derek Carr shipped out in favor of Jimmy "Italian word for Made of Glass" Garappolo and Aiden O'Connell, which surely didn't help. Anyway, we had a front row seat to McDaniel's 'enshitification' of an offense, QB and WR who had looked competent the previous season, so I wonder about that - but I don't watch or follow the Raiders, so I don't know. If Renfrow played mostly from the slot and made his living as an RAC guy, then he's not likely part of the answer for the Bills, anyway. I just thought he seemed like a good player in the glimpses I saw, so I hope he finds a good home. Curtis Samuel, FWIW, has 31 1/4" arms.

I ain't gonna go near Beasley's twitter, so maybe you could translate a bit more for me - Are the fans saying Allen did it all himself, is Beasley saying that? Clarify, please. As far as why Beasley cares, I think his retirement/unretirement/retirement/unretirement says that Beasley really wasn't mentally done with football at a point where his 33 or 34 year old body could no longer do the things that made him a great slot. My sense is that he's a guy who is struggling with life after football, despite having a wife and kids he loves, a big property in Texas, and a large extended family.

The improvement in his 2nd year really impressed me - outstanding. He trains with Eric Moulds in the off-season and maybe the Bills ought to encourage some other guys to go there. Here's a clip of him training and an OBD interview with Moulds.

So McKenzie was a gadget/man slot WR - could not play outside. 5'8 180. Berrios 5'8 185 - I think pretty much a slot? But didn't Hunter Renfrow play outside a fair bit? I don't watch the Raiders much so honestly asking - but he averaged >10 Y/R his first 3 years and had a >1000 yd season his 3rd year, which is a little unusual for a guy who is strictly a slot. A lot of his yards in his good years were YAC (same is true for Shakir tho) He's a little bit larger, 5'10", which was John Brown's height (if we're speaking of guys who made a career despite not being a physical prototype for their role). Shakir is taller than either, almost 6', with a higher recorded vertical (38"). So he's a bit of a different beast as a WR than McKenzie or Berrios. I'm not saying it totally makes up for the lack of arm length, but the point is he's not the same physical prototype of player as those other two. I agree with your point that we now need not 1, but 2, WR with the potential to play outside more than half the time. It would be very un-Beane-like to go into the draft with such a large and obvious double hole. So Renfrow is actually a guy who interests me out of the relatively slim pickin's on the FA market currently. I'm not sure if Renfrow is that guy, but I don't think playing last year for a LV team in disarray, with 3 QB throwing to him and 2 OCs, did him any favors. What do you think about DJ Chark? He managed to put up numbers in Jax with Gardner Minshew and Nick Foles throwing to him.

LOL On "Speak", one of the hosts - Emmanuel Acho maybe? - was talking about what he called "freakazoids". He said almost every team in the league has about 3 "freakazoids", players who have an uncanny amount of physical talent. And that without enough "freakazoids", doesn't matter how well coached the team is, doesn't matter how hard you practice or how hard you play, going to lose because you don't have enough talent. So yeah, I tend to agree with you. On offense right now, we have Josh. Maybe Cook might become a "freakazoid", he shows freakazoid flashes, but only flashes and then some significant lapses (the drops!). Maybe Dalton Kincaid might become a "freakazoid", he's so silky smooth and seems to have beautiful hands. But we sure could use another. On defense right now, we have Milano and maybe, in flashes, Ed Oliver, maybe Rasul Douglas or he might just be a very solid high quality player? Von Miller was a hoped-for freakazoid, but got injured and hasn't been the same. Tre' White was a freakazoid before the ACL and looked to be coming back to form this season before the Achilles. But yes, I've probably made that argument about the defense. I think McDermott's defensive plan is to build an intricate defensive machine where all the parts work together in a way that is far greater than the sum of its parts. The problem is if enough of the starting parts are taken out, there isn't enough freakish talent to overcome that. I can not reasonably pretend to know enough about college football and the WR prospects to tell where the balance of risk and prudence lies. I'm just concerned, given the Rousseau/Basham debacle.

Love the screen name change BTW. So one of the reasons I did the thing I posted in the "WR scenario" thread was to answer questions like this for myself - "has there been a recent draft where 7 WR were drafted in the 1st round?" And for the last 7 years drafts, the answer to that is "no" - but there were 2 drafts with 6 WR in the 1st, 2020 and 2022. In 2020, 2 additional WR then went in the top of the 2nd round, picks 33 and 34. The best WR was arguably the 3rd or the 5th WR chosen, with the 6th - 8th being better than the 1,2,or 4th. In 2022, there was an additional 7th WR selected at the top of the 2nd round as well.

So one thing that was interesting to me listening to the Shout podcast with Parrino and Buscaglia, was the impression I got from Buscaglia that he really thought Diggs was a good dude, "misunderstood", an "intelligent, thoughtful, and self-aware" player who professionally tried to "get the best" out of everyone in the lockerroom. This in the face of Diggs publicly exhibiting behavior that seems far more likely to be toxic or detrimental than positive - so if he's so self aware and understands what he's doing while he's doing it as Buscaglia believes, Why Do It, then? As well as comments by Wawrow (who I think has at least as much access as Buscaglia and Parrino) that Diggs was a real problem, and references a couple of people here with real contacts have made to "stunts" Diggs pulled that were "detrimental to the team". Is Diggs intelligent and able to be thoughtful and self-aware when it suits him? I do believe that, but something does not compute. If we believe Buscaglia, the Texans made the Bills such an attractive offer that they decided to move him, even though they went into the off-season believing he was part of their 2024 plans. Preach. And this past season's playoff game vs. KC was far from the only game in which he had the chance to be a difference maker and didn't come through in the clinch. FIFY

I understand that POV, I just want to point out that going into the draft with either mindset, may not lead to the best outcome. I think it's possible that to get a guy they regard as a first round talent, the Bills may not be able to "stand pat" at Pick 28. So they're probably going to have to move up in the 1st round. In the last 7 years, there's only been 1 - 1st round pick later than pick #27 and that was in a "poor" WR year. Factor in that Beane has pretty well telegraphed his intentions as to which way the Bills will jump, teams drafting near us who want a guy, may well jump us. So we may need to trade up in the 1st, but not necessarily to top 15. Maybe just 3-8 picks. I also think that Beane went into the 2021 draft with the absolute mindset that Job #1 was to "affect the QB". As a result, we wound up with Boogie Basham in the 2nd round, a "high floor low ceiling" player whose floor turned out to be lower than we thought. With the benefit of hindsight, there were DLmen drafted later who might have been a better use of the pick, and other positions that would have helped the Bills more in the 2nd round. Creed Humphrey or Osa Odighizuwa anyone? I would like the Bills to draft two WR, I think when we look at situations like Kaiir Elam and Christian Benford, or the fact that Shakir seems to be shaping as a better WR than a whole bunch who were drafted earlier - I'm not stuck on draft WR in the 1st and 2nd as the best notion.

So I think there are a couple of layers to this. The first is the layer I already covered elsewhere - drafting a player high in the 1st, or even in the 1st at all, does not guarantee an elite talent. It gives teams the highest probability, but it's far from a certainty. Nor does drafting later exclude an elite talent. So to a certain extent, those who feel we can "let the draft come to us", point to the intrinsic uncertainty of player evaluations, and the fact that draft picks are an alignment between the team's internal talent evaluation and their sense of "how the frog will jump" for the other 31 teams. The second layer is that there's a difference between what's needed to win in the regular season, vs what's needed to win in the playoffs. The Bills managed 10 wins and a trip to the playoffs with no #1 WR, sort of "#1 by committee" between John Brown, Cole Beasley, creative play design, and a handful of "guys". But they couldn't close the deal. Next year we went to the AFCCG with the addition of Diggs as a true #1 (by the way, I hate that term "alpha". It gets used all the time by a bunch of chest-thumpers who feel the need to tell the world they're the top wolf in a theory of pack hierarchy that's been debunked for several decades - in fact, the same scientist who developed it, later debunked it. But I digress). It wasn't quite good enough to get us into the Superbowl, but arguably we were close on offense. But then we saw Brown decline, and obviously not quite enough done to replace them with Davis 2nd year, and 34 year old Sanders/32 year old Beasley. We were still good to stack W in the regular season, but just having a #1 in Diggs wasn't enough in the playoffs. So the third layer is, if asked whether it's more important to have a #1 WR or to have a number of capable receivers to spread the ball around, my vote is "Both are needed". In the playoffs, with the best defenses, if you don't have a #1, they'll stifle all your receivers. If you do have a #1 but not enough depth, they'll stifle your #1 and the rest of the guys won't be able to do enough. Anyway TL;DR I'm not sure the mindset you think you're seeing, is exactly the mindset people have. But maybe I'm wrong.

He needs both - a WR who is elite at faking out defenders and getting open, AND who will hang on to the damned ball. But, as I hope is obvious from a post I did in another thread, that doesn't translate to "move up in the draft at all costs" or even "draft WR in the 1st". The trick is always to figure out which of the prospects is actually gold.

So since I'm digging into past drafts: Year 1st rd WR - pick order wAV of 1st Rd WR Pick # Best WR Pick # 2nd WR # WR drafted 2017 2 - #7, #9 #7, #9 #69 #89 13 2018 2 - #24, #26 #24, #26 #24 #47 34 2019 2 - #25, #32 #25, #32 #51 #64 28 2020 6 - #12,15,17,21,22,25 #17, 22, 25, 15, 21, 12 #17 #22 35 2021 5 - #5, 6, 10, 20, 27 #5, 10, 6, 27, 20 #112 #5 35 2022 6 - #8,10,11, 12, 16,18 #11, 8, 10, 16, 18, 12 #11 #52 28 2023 4 - #20, 21, 22, 23 #22, 23, 20, 21 #177 #22 33 So what does all this mean? First off, 2023 and 2022 should be taken with a large grain of salt because a lot of guys are still clumped together for wAV, and PFR's weighting may not align with yours and mine. There were 4 years in which the first WR picked turned out to be the first round WR with the best wAV, and 3 years in which they did not. There are no years in which the first WR picked, turned out to be the best WR in the draft! In 4 out of 7 years, the best WR was not drafted in the 1st round One last bit, even in years where 6 WR were drafted in the 1st round - the consensus BPA for all 32 teams ran out of WR before pick #28. I toss this out for whatever comfort it may pose, if the Bills don't draft a WR in the 1st or don't move up for one of the top 3 WR in the draft. The board will predictably go nuts, but 4 times in the last 7 years, the best WR in the draft wasn't even drafted in the 1st (3 times, he was) Every year, various draft pundits authoritatively speak as to which player at a position, or which 2 or 3 players at a position, are absolutely the best in the draft. And far more often than not, they are mistaken. Obviously, teams are making judgements on these points as well, and they're often mistaken Once again, drafting is not an exact science, and then we get into coaching and player development and the intangibles like the player's drive and will to succeed.

He does do promos and so forth, but they're pretty clearly paid promotions. He pretty clearly leaves Instagram and Twitter (X, whatever) to his media team to post said paid promotions and 'like' posts about Bills players and Bills team moves just enough to make it look like an active account.

Epic. Perfect. This deserves to be preserved on TBD.

So for anyone curious, the receivers who have been in the top 20 the past 3 seasons are: Tyreek Hill (Rd 5 pick 165); Justin Jefferson (Rd 1 pick 22); CeeDee Lamb (Rd 1 Pick 17); Keenan Allen (Rd 3 Pick 76); AJ Brown (Rd 2 Pick 51); Ja'Maar Chase (Rd 1 Pick 5); Stefan Diggs (Rd 5 Pick 146); DaVante Adams (Rd 2 Pick 53) That's in order for Yards per Game 2023. In the past, when a draft has been regarded as "deep" at a position, Beane has sometimes drafted that position in later rounds with the idea that "we can get a guy later on who can help us". There were 16 WR drafted before Gabe Davis in 2020. Using pro.football.reference wAV as a metric (it's not perfect but it seems to be decent), 5 of them have contributed more than Davis: CeeDee Lamb, Justin Jefferson, Brandon Aiyuk, Michael Pittman Jr, and Tee Higgins. There were 18 WR drafted after Davis, one (Darnell Mooney) has been close to Davis in production. So basically he's contributed more than 11 WR taken before him in the 1st through 3rd rounds, and we didn't leave any obvious "gems" behind us. There were 20 WR drafted before Khalil Shakir in 2022. Again using AAV, 7 have contributed more and 1 equally to Shakir: Drake London, Garrett Wilson, and Chris Olave in the first; Christian Watkins, George Pickens, and Alec Wilson (close to KS) in the 2nd, and Romeo Doubs in the 4th. Jahan Dodson is "same". So basically Shakir has contributed more than 2 WR and equal to another WR drafted in the 1st; more than 4 WR drafted in the 2nd; more than 6 WR drafted before him in the 3rd and 4th rounds. There were 7 WR drafted after him, none have contributed as much, so no obvious gems behind us. I'm not pointing this out to argue for waiting to draft a WR, but to point out that there is that element of a "crap shoot" in the draft, where you know the probability is higher to draft a player who is really good and can contribute right away in the 1st round, but it's far from certainty. And maybe you need a little luck.