Beck Water

thanks, brain fart on my part although re: size similar to Kyle Williams and Harrison Phillips. I think it’s less a size than a mindset thing, just like Jordan Phillips is huge but plays 3T

Barkley on his 2nd contract and having been injured so much in his first, is well aware that an RB's career is short in the NFL He's going to go for as many $$, as big guarantees, and as long years as he can get - and why shouldn't he?

Thanks for pointing at this.

Again - 5th year option fully guaranteed

Kudos to you for having someone in mind and suggesting him - a guy who is a FA, moreover. I think he's 1TDT? whereas Oliver is a 1TDT, but it still puts you on most folks here to have a FA target playing the correct position in mind Do you know what the injury was which placed him on IR?

Eli Apple may have a nasty streak, but he's essentially a "weak link" on the Cincinnati DB. He leads the Bengals DBs in yards completed against him, etc. Cam Taylor Britt has a higher passer rating against him but he's a rookie. He got mercilessly mocked (and for good reason) after last year's Superbowl, where he sucked - see article I linked Don't confuse a guy being a ***** the field with superior play on it.

Where do you have in mind?

It's his 5th year option. They are now fully guaranteed when signed. I think Oliver would probably be one of the guys McDermott has in mind when he says he thought the play of the DL was "inconsistent" especially after Von Miller went down

I Hear That I had similar thoughts when I heard Hyde talking about how it was hard to get up and go to work when it's cold and snowing out. Like "dude, cash a reality check, you are talking to an audience of people who do that day in and day out for years, just to pay rent and put food on the table, get paid a fraction of what you get paid for it." Some of the jobs I had, I didn't have a choice to be "out of gas", people's health or even lives were at stake. I'm sure playing football all season is draining in a way I can't even imagine, but if they can't find some inner fuel when it's "win or go home" maybe they need to seek a different profession. Or just take their pile of money and go sit on the beach.

Oh hell to the No's, I would have, but Eli Apple Jumped the Shark for me with that tweet.

It was a fair source of trying to stir up motivation. Didn't Zac Taylor say you have to gather up every scrap of motivation to stir up energy this time of year? Maybe McDermott should have been riling the team up about how the Bengals were selling AFCCG tickets for Cincinnatti.

I'd love to see them get their asses whupped by a one-legged Patty Mahomes, actually. And that's something I did not see myself saying on Sunday at noon.

It's Eli Apple. It'd be a repeat award for him. https://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2022/2/17/22939174/eli-apple-jokes-nfl-ravens-chiefs-super-bowl-cooper-kupp Basically, Apple can talk his talk now, but his fingers may be writing a check his coverage skills can't cash. He's done it before. PS read the link, it's pretty funny - like Mecole Hardman tweeting a picture of his own Superbowl ring at Apple after the loss.

If nothing else, maybe that will be a lesson to Diggs to STFU on the Twitters

I agree on Crowder. I don't entirely agree that McKenzie is a "neat gadget player"; he ran some good routes and made some good plays for us. The thing is, he's a man-beater and I think you are right that he never learned to read the D and find the open spots in the zone. So Crowder was supposed to be the zone beater slot, and McKenzie the man beater slot (and continue to learn from Crowder). So we lost that when Crowder went out. I'm not entirely sure Shakir failing to "get the chance" is on McD and Dorsey more than on a receiver from a lower level of college competition needing time to learn his craft in the NFL. He was getting a steady number of snaps and not doing a lot with them. I kind of wonder if with Beasley, our offense evolved around his ability to read the D and find the hole, AND be on the same page with Josh about it - and we kept trying to replicate it with guys who just didn't have his ability and needed to have routes better defined for them. Sort of like Rex Ryan's defense depending upon Jim Leonhard to decode it and get everyone into position, even when he was gimping around himself. There was just some kind of weird disconnect a lot of the season where we would see guys open underneath, including Cook, Singletary, Knox, and McKenzie, and Josh simply wouldn't throw to them. It was like he didn't trust our offense to be able to sustain long drives and mentally, to him, it was quick strikes or nothing. That was his mindset in college, but I thought he'd evolved. We have learned how to change it up to handle, for example, the Chiefs. How to cover and limit their personnel. Part of what happened vs the Bengals seemed to be that we ran out of healthy horses. No Von Miller, then no DaQuan Jones, Oliver and Phillips dinged, playing Jaquan Johnson almost half the game and Johnson and Lewis at safety almost 1/5 of the game. But, what you say rings true to me. Frazier's D for sure depends on the secondary holding up long enough to get home with 4, and if the passes come out quick and hit gaps in the zone, that doesn't work. Is part of the issue just that Frazier doesn't make in-game adjustments? I heard an interview with him once where he made it sound almost like a matter of principle to him, said something to the effect of "you don't like to throw out what you've practiced all week and have the players think that the coaches don't have faith in it", which seemed strange to me - if it's not working, wouldn't the players have more faith in the coaching if the coaches adjust?

Agreed That would just be a bridge-burning dickish kind of question IMHO. What would you expect a HC to say to that? It would be like Sullivan stating (not asking) to Josh Allen "this offense isn't playing at a Superbowl winning level right now" instead of asking "What changes do you feel need to be made to raise the level of offensive play and make sure you're playing at a Championship level?" or something like that. You get a chance to ask a question, why not ask something where you might get an interesting answer. ??

Who is this guy? He's different than the Florio guy who does Pro Football Talk, right? Son? Or just a lot of Florios in the world? Anyway, he's not wrong overall. I'm not so excited about the presence or absence of "pro bowl players", I think it's a popularity contest and especially on Ds that are built to be greater than the sum of their parts, it's harder for one player to stand out. But it's a point that both Ed Oliver and Harrison Phillips (3rd round) are undersized, and that the Bills moved on from Phillilps and brought in the larger-size DaQuan Jones and Tim Settle because when everything else equals out, "mass" is a part of that F=ma equation. He's exactly correct that we have 2 WR who can win outside (and maybe that should be 1.5 since one of them had a low catch rate) and we built an offense around the deep ball. I think we were trying to buffer the 1st year play caller with a lot of experience - his former boss on the Panthers, Joe Brady, etc - but I think that may have just led to "too many cooks" syndrome. And I think there was no one who could rein Josh in and say "cut it out, take the checkdown, move the chains". As far as the "take Allen off" point, I think there are very few teams that are >500 with their backup QB. What are the Dolphins, 1-3? The Ravens, 2-3? The Rams, 1-7? The Eagles, 0-2? I think the Cowboys at 4-1 and the SF49ers are more exceptions than typical. But, to his point, the Cowboys and 49ers both rely on a strong run game and a very well crafted short passing game, so there's a point that the Bills lack the offensive ingredients needed to take the pressure off the QB in the offense.

"It's not an excuse because I don't even know how you run out of gas. It's the playoffs. It's win or go home," WR Isaiah McKenzie said. "I felt like yesterday, it could have been the weather, it could have been all type of stuff … But I don't think we ran out of emotion, fuel, or whatever you call it. I just feel like we just lost, that's what it was. We played a very good team."

I thought he actually gave up a number of significant bites. He said that he thought Tremaine Edmunds had the best season of his career, and was the sort of player who will continue to work to get better. I thought that was very telling. He said that the game starts and ends at the line of scrimmage on both sides, and so we've got to look at that. He said that the DL was inconsistent, especially after Von Miller went out (this is big to me, considering the number of high draft picks invested in it). With Oliver coming up towards a contract, and with several FA, I thought that was telling. Biggest thing to me was saying he wasn't going to discuss staff, when asked if the same coordinators would return. He tried to follow up and soften it saying it was less than 24 hrs and they'd spent the day doing player interviews, but it was far from a vote of confidence.

In McDermott's presser, he was asked about converting Christian Benford to safety and he said it was a consideration. We'll see on Hamlin. I think it's more about how his lungs recover, and what he personally wants to do, than his heart. Marlowe would not be a bad re-signing for cheap. You may see Jaquan Johnson brought back, but that would be for a ST role, not as a safety. If Saffold was exhausted and out of gas, maybe he needs to play on a team that ends its season after week 18. That's hoping against hope, IMHO.

So you think he's the Real Deal? What do you think the 49ers do with Lance then?

I do gather that leadership falls from the top, hence my acknowledgement of @GunnerBill's point about the follow-on from Dorsey's early season tantrum. I'm actually not aware of Diggs "repeatedly saying" (in pressers I assume you mean) that he's not worried about targets, he just wants to help us win. Josh Allen has said that about him. Diggs has been caught on tape yelling "I want the ball! I want the ball!" Another WR has been quoted saying he was trying to calm Diggs down one game when he was yelling that he needed another TD (this was a game when he already had 3, and 12 receptions), and another time that Diggs was upset that he wasn't getting his targets. He was recorded on the Dawson Knox "mic'd up" segment saying "Tight Ends, I need y'all to chill, I need my Bag" and afterwards Beasley (who had 1 reception on 1 target) saying "I'm lucky I got my hands on that *****". Maybe he's joking and he really is delighted to see the TE getting receptions and TD, IDK. Josh will say one presser that the offense works best when we spread the ball around, and next presser that we need to find more ways to get Diggs the ball. So at the very least, there seem to be some "mixed messages" out there. I don't think Diggs is being held to a much higher standard than anyone else. I'm pretty sure that everyone in the locker room is sick to their stomach at the loss, and I don't think it's true (unsure if you said this, but others have) that Diggs is the only one who played hard. Knox for example, 5 receptions for 65 yds. But Diggs is the only one who had a visible tantrum on the sideline and then dipped on the post-game lockerroom and media This is something Josh had learned to do last year and earlier this season, and somehow seems to have edited out of his vision again. I'm not sure if it's him or Dorsey either, but the team needs someone in-house and preferably on the sideline who can reach Josh and get through to him. Because he can do all the off-season stuff he wants with Palmer, but that doesn't mean it will last through the season on Sunday

That IS a fair point that sometimes, even though undesireable, it's better to leave than it is to stay and do/say things you might regret or that might prove more problematical.

yes, Dawkins and Morse. This might be controversial, but I think Dawkins played better last season next to Bates, so one might consider going Dawkins-Bates-Morse and looking for help at RG/RT I was disappointed in Aaron Kromer. I thought Beach Chairs helped us put together a pretty decent OL when he was here before. Bates was the #2, but several times when Morse went down, Bates was already out of the game (or went down) and Van Roten replaced him. I was NOT a fan of Van Roten at C, but I'm not sure how life looks with the #3 guy at C across the league - probably not good.

I don't know that I agree 100%. It might be, but it also might indicate that the Love-and-Togetherness vibes are only skin deep and underneath the hood is some pretty strong infighting about who gets the targets and how the plays are designed. That won't help.