Beck Water

Hopkins has been "the main man" in terms of Y/G and R/G, basically, every season since 2015 except 2021 when he was hampered by rib and hammie issues and went "even steven" with Christian Kirk. And most of those years it hasn't been close. Does Hopkins and his Ego know that we don't have to feed him "like the main man"?

OK - but is DHop really the missing piece between the Bills and a SuperBowl Chance? Keep in mind, again, he's missed 19 out of the last 2 years 34 games, and that it's hard to throw completions if the QB is running his way out of trouble or getting hurried. Von Miller wasn't the missing piece between the Bills and a Superbowl last season because he had a season-ending injury, an ACL. DHop missed the last 5 games of 2021 with a season ending injury, an MCL tear, and had a 'flare up' costing 2 games at the end of 2022. I mean, if the Bills win the Superbowl next year or in 2025, the way I am now, I'm personally all about living through a tear-down. But that's not what Beane claims they want to do. So signing DHop might be incompatible with his claimed goals. And also - if fan talk about cap considerations bothers you, why not just move on by and find something that does interest you instead of railing at people who do like to think about these things?

This is actually a great question and probably deserves its own topic as discussion. McDermott has always built his defensive system on a heavy rotation of keeping guys fresh. But, that inevitably means we're paying more players on DL - and paying more players, it follows that we can't follow a "Stars and Jags" model where we pay the Stars well and the Jags only fill in if injuries strike. It seems to me that the other top teams pay and play their top guys more, and consequently have Monsters up the middle - Philly, KC, SF. But, I really haven't looked "under the hood" to scrutinize the details of snap counts etc. I do know at the end of the season, say from week 9 on, Ed Oliver was getting ~70% of the snaps at 3TDT and DaQuan Jones ~70% from week 13 on until he DNP vs the Bengals. I think that would be because Phillips missed Week 13, 14 and the Mia playoff, and was playing hampered Week 15 and 16 and the Division round, and because Tim Settle wasn't "getting it done" to their satisfaction after an early season calf injury.

This is bunkum. It's true that Cook only got 2 snaps in that game and sat down once he fumbled, but we were also beating the Rams 31-10 so there was no "need" to trust Cook more. However, the next game Cook got 18 snaps and 11 carries. Some Banishment. There were hints that Cook wasn't practicing and preparing the way the Bills expected (McDermott said after one of the mid-season games "he's starting to see that the way you play reflects how you practice"), which taken at face value, would imply there were issues that had nothing to do with a fumble. Then Cook steadily got more snaps until after week 12, he was getting 31-56% of the snaps consistently at the end of the season. That's all consistent with a rookie who at first, maybe didn't give game prep and practice the attention it needed, but who settled in and was trusted more and more by the team as he EARNED IT in practice - not with a team that abstractly needs to "trust its rookies more", that doesn't trust its rookies even though they're ready and have earned trust, or that "banished" Cook for 1 fumble.

If only discussions that could change things took place between fans, fan discussion boards would be limited to 145 pages of "Go Bills!"

What did Basham tweet that's deemed to be relevant?

Truly excellent summation. I would add in only that Arizona will already take on $22.5M in dead cap this season, from Hopkins various signing, option, and restructure bonuses. One might point out that Hopkins at this point is not gonna sign on to be paid less in a trade. So in order to pay a guy $34.5M but lower his cap hit, the fundamental strategy is to extend a guy, giving him a small salary and a significant signing bonus amortized over the life of the contract. That works best with a 4 or 5 year contract since splitting a big bonus over 2 or 3 years doesn't afford much cap relief - but it comes at a risk, since if the player "ages out" and retires or is cut, the team is on the hook for big amortized bonuses accelerating onto the cap. The Bills have one aging superstar, in 34 year old Von Miller, where they've employed this strategy. If Miller is cut or retires in 2025 when he's 36, the Bills take on $15M dead cap. 30 year old Stefon Diggs is another example, where if the Bills cut him, trade him, or he retires in 2025 when he's 32, they take on $22M in dead cap. The other strategy is to tack on void years, and "pay him Tuesday for a Hamburger today". The Bills have done this with a number of players, including Dion Dawkins (void years in 2025 and 2026, when he'll be 31 and 32, totaling $2.8M), Micah Hyde (void years in 2024, 2025, and 2026, when he'll be 34, 35, 36, totaling $3.4M), DaQuan Jones (void year in 2024, $1.8M), and Matt Milano (void year in 2027 when he'll be 32, $4.9M) There's a balance between "staying competitive every year" as Beane insists in interviews, the Bills want to do, and swinging for the fences with a big FA signing or trade acquisition that the team believes will take them over the top. Last year, after 13 seconds, the Bills basically decided they were almost there and their missing pieces were a guy who could "affect the QB" and an upgrade at CB, despite spending a first round pick and 2 2nd round picks at DE the two previous years. So they "swung for the fence" with Von Miller as their big add to take them over the top, plus 1st round DB adding Kaiir Elam. They felt that their OL was "good enough" with Allen's elusiveness, and counted on Davis and McKenzie to take big steps. Well, the OL wasn't, Davis and McKenzie took steps but not enough, and Miller got hurt on Thanksgiving. The Bills can "swing for the fences" and renegotiate a 31 yr old WR who has played 19 of 34 games the last 2 seasons to an extended contract to manage the cap. That would then free them to try to add more talent at LB and DT high in the draft - their MO for the last couple of years. They can do that if they truly believe that Hopkins is that game-changing piece that will take them to the championship and everyplace else is good enough. I don't know if that would be right. I don't know if they've added enough on OL at FA and WR depth, or if they're right to bet on Davis, Shakir, and Spencer Brown all taking steps. I had no objection to trading for Diggs. I felt they needed a top WR who could show Josh Allen what it's like to play with a top WR and show the other WR how they need to practice and prepare and release and run routes in order to elevate their game. I felt we wouldn't get that from a rookie. And for the last 3 years I felt like we got what we paid for with Diggs. With Von Miller, I made a similar argument. It's hard to draft a top pass rusher at the bottom of the 1st round, and maybe the guys we drafted needed a top talent to "show them how it's done" and help them develop. But now we have 2 of these guys, so adding a 3rd in Hopkins seems pretty clear that it will position us for needing to do a salary cap dump and rebuild. I am pretty sure that is NOT the way to stay competitive every year. The way to do that, is to bring in strong cheap talent through the draft - Justin Jefferson now at $2.8M vs. Diggs this year at $14.8M and $27.8 next season. Now maybe it's worth it, if he's really the "missing piece" and we can win a title this year and next then tear it all down. But that all depends upon our aging superstars staying healthy.

Would you be? So the NFL average for rushing yards last season was 2059. The Bills were #9 with 2232, and many of us regard that as a number in need of improvement or at least, as holding constant with fewer yards coming from Allen. So if Harris rushes for 700 yds and Cook for 800, where are the other 732 gonna come from? Allen rushed for 762 yds last season and 763 in 2021. I'd personally like to see him go back towards 2020 and 2019, when he rushed for 421 and 520, respectively, and ~1 attempt less per game.

This is great. I wish someone would do this with all the media draft pundits, so that they have some kind of accountability/metric of their success in prediction

I dunno if Shakir was struggling with the playbook per se, but he was sure as hell struggling to apply it on the field at times. And, I do think Beane traded for Hines in part to free Shakir from the PR/KR role so that he could focus his attention on mastering his WR role - Beane alluded to "a big step up in competition for (Shakir)" and allowing him to focus on WR, when making the move But I believe that people over-interpret signing Cole Beasley and John Brown. The fact is, by mid-November we simply overall had insufficient bodies to play WR. We started the season with 6 WR on the roster - Diggs, Davis, Crowder, McKenzie, Shakir, and Kumerow (primarily a ST). By mid-October, Crowder was out for the season with a broken leg, and we'd elevated Hodgins. Then Beane got caught in a squeeze at CB with the need to activate a player who couldn't or wouldn't play yet (Tre White) while another was injured, and decided to sacrifice a WR to waivers in order to keep an extra CB. Hodgins got sniped by the Giants. That meant that by November, we were giving meaningful in-game snaps to Jake Kumerow just to field 5 bodies at WR, and once Kumerow went on IR 11-20, we were giving meaningful in-game snaps to Tanner Gentry. We literally only had 4 WR on the whole roster, for a team which keeps 5 active every game. Signing Brown and Beasley was a desperation play to bring in bodies at WR, bodies who knew the playbook and were trusted to come with the right attitude - it did not reflect lack of trust in McKenzie or lack of trust in Shakir (although, obviously if they trusted him more comprehensively, he would have gotten more snaps instead of fielding Kumerow or Gentry, I offer as evidence Shakir's snap counts, which actually did not decline, but increased, after John Brown was signed to the PS 11/26 and Beasley 12/13. 39% of the snaps in Chicago on Christmas Eve, 41% in the Miami Playoff. Oh, and 44% on Thanksgiving in Detroit. In hindsight, Beane mis-managed the whole matter of opening Tre White's window and of chosing to waive Hodgins vs. someone else, when Kumerow was apparently struggling with a back issue all season in addition to a high ankle sprain. But, I assume Beane went with the input of trainers and doctors and White himself, so it's hard to fault him too much.

And don't forget a guy like Levi Wallace who walked on as an UDFA, started his rookie season, and kept the job for 4 seasons. THANK YOU! If we look at the two teams who played in the SB, we have 2 teams in the top 10 (TB, CIN) Two teams in the bottom 10 (LAR, twice) 6 teams presumably somewhere in the middle (KC x 3, Eagles, Pats, 49ers) I think the moral of the story is that there's more than 1 way to skin a muskrat build a winning roster This is what we used to refer to as a "garbage can stat" - a statistic which looks important, but doesn't apparently have predictive value.

DingDingDingDing this guy gets it. Starting back in 2017, we picked up some FA that have nailed down their starting jobs - 2017 Poyer, Hyde (already had Hughes), Taiwan Jones (5 seasons, not continuous) 2018 Lotulelei, Phillips (3 seasons, not continuous) 2019 Morse, Feliciano (3 seasons), Addison (2 seasons), Brown (2 seasons), Beasley (3 seasons) 2020 Diggs, Matakevich (ST), Roberts (ST, 2 seasons) And one important factor I can't discern, is how is he counting UDFA? For example, Levi Wallace went undrafted, but played 2805 snaps for us from his rookie year thru 2021. So is he counting as a player we drafted, or no? It's really a factor of where did the guys come from who locked down their roles. It doesn't show that we drafted badly (since in most cases, even the guys we drafted late and moved on from are still playing in the league - see post above). It doesn't show that McDermott won't play rookies, since it seems to be talking about every snap over the last 5 years.

Oh, really? How so? I don't think that's what this data is about. But, Alert the Media; ANY team that doesn't hit on its QB is gonna suck and suck bad unless they have an offense that's predicated on the run game and crafted so that almost any QB can run it effectively (SF)

This isn't just about rookies - he's talking about how many of the guys who saw snaps over a 5 year period were drafted by the team in question, pretty sure. But a similar principle to the "when you have a good team....." applies When you have a team that has a top offense and top defense and is winning a lot of games, the new player is going to struggle to beat out the entrenched player, wherever that player came from. And, with 53 slots on the roster and 7 draft picks per year (max), over 5 years at least 1/3 of the roster (18 out of 53) has to come from elsewhere EVEN IF EVERY DRAFT PICK IN EVERY ROUND IS A HIT, which is of course statistically unlikely. And entrenched starters are least likely to be beat out by late round draftees. No, that can't be correct given the numbers, though I cant find the original article on his website or linked on twitter to see his methodology

I went on twitter, and I went to sharp's site https://www.sharpfootballanalysis.com/content/ I want to look at methodology - does "drafted themselves" count UDFA, for example? I don't read this as applying at all to how much the players played, as rookies. I think what it means is that when McDermott arrived, he basically purged the building of players drafted and developed by previous regimes, and brought in FA he trusted as well as rookies. And a lot of those FA have held on to jobs for a long time - eg DB Hyde, Poyer vs. Hamlin, Jaquan Johnson; DL Star Lotulelei, Jerry Hughes, Mario Addison over Harrison Phillips, AJ Epenesa, Boogie Basham and Greg Rousseau It does mean that a number of players the Bills have drafted have NOT worked out for the Bills or have been traded elsewhere (I'm not including guys who reached FA and we didn't re-sign like Harrison Phillips and Tremaine Edmunds.) 2017 Zay Jones (2), Nathan Peterman (5), Tanner Vallejo (6) 2018 Wyatt Teller (5), Ray-Ray McCloud (6), Austin Proel (7) 2019 Cody Ford (2) , Vosean Joseph (5), Darryl Johnson (7), Tommy Sweeney (7) 2020 Zach Moss (3), Jake Fromm (5), Isaiah Hodgins (6) 2021 Marquez Stevenson (6), Rachad Wildgoose (6) 2022 Matt Araiza (6), Luke Tenuta (6) What's striking to me looking back at 6 years of McDermott drafts and 5 years of Beane, is how many of the top draft choices have worked out, and worked out well, as well as how many of the players we moved on from are starting for other teams (Teller, McCloud, Hodgins). Most of those players we moved on from are late-round players where the overall hit rate for every team is poor, and many of them stayed around for several years, but didn't beat out the guys ahead of them (McCloud, Sweeney, Hodgins) But equally striking to me is how many of the times we did use a 2nd or 3rd round pick on offense, it hasn't worked out - Zay Jones, Cody Ford, and Zach Moss all big whiffs. It's almost as though we have much better ability to identify and sign defensive talent.

I don't think people forget that. The bottom line is that the R side of our OL was a fiasco, and the best that can be said of Brown is that he has yet to prove he can pass protect as a RT. Why do you trust Beane and McD when they say positive things about him? At this time of year, That's Their Job. They said positive things about Cody Ford, too.

I would take that from what Beane said, that he’s a vertical threat who can track the ball From the Athletic article describing him as a “speed merchant” who can exploit coverage that fears letting him past to cut underneath, I think he’ll play in the slot but maybe less than one would think against zone

I would think that against man coverage, Waddle and Hill would laugh and say “Feed Me!”

No, just weird. I’ll give you full-deflection readings on the wierdometer Again, judging by what I read here, I don’t think that’s an unpopular opinion I don’t mean I personally agree with that opinion, I’m saying that I read stuff that amounts to that opinion on a regular basis.

Am I the only one here who doesn’t look at trading draft picks, then finding $19.45M to pay a 31 1/2 yr old WR who has played 19 out of 34 games in the last 2 years as an unmitigated Great Idea? In the 2020 offseason, when Nuk was traded, I was bereft that he wasn’t traded to us. I viewed Diggs as a talented player and Hopkins as All World But That was Then, This is Now

I don’t think they’ll be counting on Doyle to go into the season due to his ACL. So they’ll add one more. But it might be Bobby Hart 🤪 (I think that will qualify as an unpopular opinion)

That’s a really good question. If I were guessing, I would guess “no”, but that the team knew Frazier was working some things out. Some relevant factors: 1) As the coaches and FO evaluated the team, I think it became clear that they were more likely than not to lose Edmunds. They also knew they could lose Poyer. 2) Frazier has indicated a desire to get a HC gig and frustration at not getting looks this year 3) Based on the “last game highlights where you most need to improve” seems pretty clear OL, WR, and run game have to be top priorities and maybe the defense needs to take a back seat I expect this was all being worked out up to the week before the combine. If the defense takes a step back without Edmunds, Frazier might feel that will hurt his case for a HC gig Being fired wouldn’t help his case, but “I need to take a step away for a year” is nicely vague and can have many causes. it could protect him from responsibility for any drop in defensive performance with Edmunds moving on and maybe lower talent on DL if Miller isn’t ready early in the season or if he and Tre White aren’t back up to par. So in this scenario, the team would know that Frazier wasn’t a happy camper for the reasons above, but wouldn’t know what he was gonna do about it.

I don't think the Cardinals are gonna eat anything on his salary. If I'm doing the math correctly, they're going to eat $22.6M of amortized bonuses of various sorts accelerating onto this year's cap with a trade. They do have $21.4M cap space, but that would gobble down almost all of it.

D Hop last 2 years - 10 games and 9 games. Last year he averaged 79.7 ypg, which is just a bit better than his career average of 77.9 or his Zona average of 77 (but down a bit from 78.2 in HOU) The question comes down to the injury history etc. In 2021, he was bothered by a series of nagging injuries - ribs, hamstring, and then finally an MCL tear. Last season, he missed the first 6 games because he was suspended for PED use, then was injured again and did not play in the last 2 games due to a "grade 1 knee sprain" (grade 1 means no tearing) - whether he could have gone if the games meant something, we won't know. But, he'll also be 32, an age when the length of the football season takes its toll and injuries start to mount. If anyone is interested, Draft Sharks gives his injury history, and calculates his chance of an injury at 58% for next season, with the projection he'll miss 3 games. https://www.draftsharks.com/fantasy/injury-history/deandre-hopkins/6679 The new guy a lot of folks are enthusiastic about has recurring hammy problems, btw

He's not recalculating. He's just using a base system other than 10