Beck Water

Yeah, that was pretty textbook DPI with Fitzpatrick hooking Gabe's L arm but I don't think a ref was positioned to see it. They could probably see it on the replay though. I believe you are correct. The ball is not dead in the endzone if it's a live ball and possessed by a defender. He can fumble it, and the O can recover. Fitzpatrick was not "down" in any way.

You could well be right. But I'm yearly astounded by what gets offered in FA.

If you're Carolina, do you accept a 4th rounder to trade off one of (if not your) best players, and swallow $27M dead cap? People need to look at this from the trade partner "what exactly do I get out of this?" POV

I think you have to incentivize Carolina somehow to eat $27M of dead cap.

I don't follow the logic behind Greg Tompsett's statement that McCaffrey would have "every incentive" to negotiate a "team friendly" deal. I would think he'd be more like "OK, cut me and we'll try my market as a FA" especially if he just demonstrated his worth as a key addition to push a team over the top to winning the Superbowl.

OK, but my point is - it isn't a 1 year rental for $600k. It's a 1 year rental for $600k plus whatever draft and player resources we send away to obtain him. One POV is "it's worth it - whatever it takes - sell off what you need to sell to get that final piece". I'm not sure that's Beane's POV (for better or worse).

Yeah, I think Taiwan has been pitching himself as the kickoff returner "lemme do it Coach, I'm fast I'm shifty" That'll be a "No". I'm 100% sure it's a joke after the fact, but it's probably true one of them said it. AFTER the fact.

Erik Turner of Cover1 shares the latter view: "I don't think it's a coincidence that Davis cut this route a couple times for big plays leading into the big matchup against the Chiefs."

https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/carolina-panthers/christian-mccaffery-21749/

😅 Alaina Getzenberg is our Marcel LJ replacement and usually reliable

Yeah, but then $11.8-$12M next 3 seasons.

Carolina wouldn't retain his salary, but your twitter sources seem to be correct that he has a low salary this season and no guarantees. Most of his money is in signing and restructure bonuses, which Carolina would have to eat to the tune of $27M or something like that. https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/carolina-panthers/christian-mccaffery-21749/ So there are two issues: 1) Carolina isn't gonna want to eat that without getting a significant resource in return, like a couple high draft picks 2) if you take the viewpoint that he's a cheap 1 year rental and then we cut him and move on, does it make sense to give up a couple high draft picks for a 2/3 season rental? There are a couple of viewpoints on that, but I don't think that's the way Beane operates.

You're kind of prickly and inclined to take stuff personal, ain't ya? I'm laughing at the Panthers and the idea that they were savvy enough to include language that prevented him from double-dipping, but he can keep them on the hook by hitting the Barcalounger for a year-long nap. Oh, NOES, must be about YOU 😆 What's $834,000/month for 14 or 15 months, between friends? I mean, it's a point that relative to $40M, $10M or so ain't much, but for most of us 25% is a significant percentage, and $10M is a lot. I'd love to see CMC wearing a Bills uni, but he's owed $11.8-12M for the next 3 years. I don't see how we fit that in under the stated "draft-develop-resign" philosophy Beane has repeatedly stated.

https://nextgenstats.nfl.com/charts/player/season/josh-allen/ALL529264/2022/5/pass We saw a lot of this sort of chart in the first half of 2020. Chris Simms quipped it was the "Josh Allen Laser Light Show". Then it largely disappeared last season - whether because Emmanual Sanders really couldn't fill the "John Brown Speedster" role, or because teams decided to transition to a rush 4/2 high safety/flood the middle look. Compare and contrast to the last 2 weeks https://nextgenstats.nfl.com/charts/player/josh-allen/ALL529264 In addition to winning the game, I think Dorsey wanted to make it clear to KC that they'd best worry about the deep pass.

So keep in mind that once past "enough" passing yards (surprisingly low, somewhere around 220 ypg), higher passing yards are actually a negative correlation with winning. This is because teams who fall way behind, pretty much have to become one dimensional and sling it all over the place. Pickett finished with 23 first downs and 327 yds passing. But he had only 8 1st downs and 121 yards passing (plus 18 yds rushing) in the first half, which ended with a score of 33-3. The Bills smacked it down that they were not going to allow a run game, and Pickett was gonna have to beat them with his arm. So the LBs seemed to be playing the run first. So >200 of the passing yards were the result of a "prevent" sort of defense, where the safeties were playing deep and the goal was to just keep everything short and in front of them, prevent YAC and prevent deep completions. When you look at the completion chart, it's "in the eye of the beholder" but there are only 2 completions inside the hash marks and to me it looks as though a lot of the completions are shaded towards the sidelines. https://nextgenstats.nfl.com/charts/player/season/kenny-pickett/PIC777233/2022/5/pass I don't think Edmunds absence was a major cause of this "success". As you say, there were a lot of "empty calories". There's also this from Kaiir Elam: PS full gamebook if interested https://nflcdns.nfl.com/liveupdate/gamecenter/58904/BUF_Gamebook.pdf

LOL so if your source is correct that Rhule wants to take a year off, they're still paying him.

I don't think either of them put Beasley out of the job. McKenzie had an amazeball game the 2nd NWE game last year - 11 receptions on 12 targets, 125 yds, he high-pointed balls, he laid out for balls, he caught them in traffic, he ran himself open, he looked fantastic. He did look like "Beasley with no ribs better than healthy i-Mac? You SURE about that?" But, that was in part the Hoodie's fault. They stayed in man on McKenzie and he smoked them. The gouge on them this season was that Crowder and McKenzie were supposed to be hard to cover as a duo, swapping in and out. Crowder is the crafty zone-beater and McKenzie the man killer. Shakir has the potential to be both, as well as to be able to line up outside. But he has to prove it. Keep in mind Pitts was playing with a depleted and injured secondary.

You saw him on P/KR yesterday. Taiwan Jones was removed after his initial muff cost us a start on the 2 yd line. Shakir had 1 KR for 34 yds. On punt returns, he had 3 wave-offs and 1 fair catch, no returns. The wave offs resulted in another start from our own 2 yd line (yuck), a "Buffalo Bounce" to the Buff 47, and a short punt downed at the Buff 46. The wind conditions were challenging, and it's better he should wave-off than try to field it and muff, but I can't say he locked down the PR position.

Welllllllll...... I wonder if this is one of those "correlation is not causation" things. The Steelers lost a close game to Chicago Watt's rookie year. Da Bears had a pretty good D that year, so you could argue the loss had less to do with being Watt-less on D and more to do with being shut down on O. Watt played every game that mattered the next 3 years - Steelers held him out of the final game in 2020. So most of the meaningful games the Steelers have played without Watt have come in 2021 and 2022. In 2021, the Steelers lost 2 games without Watt and 5 games with him. The Steelers lost to the Bengals by an even bigger margin the 2nd game when TJ Watt played! LOL. The Chargers game was 1 score and sure, Watt woulda made a difference. Then 4 "L"s this season with Mitch "won't throw downfield" Trubisky at the helm and yesterday. Is Watt a game changer for the Steelers, Sure, sometimes - but IMHO the bigger issue for the Steelers has been their QB play last season and this.

What a Surprise. I'm kinda torn between pity for Baker Mayfield - 5 years in the league, and the only year he got to spend a second season with the same coach and OC he was injured - and the feeling he's been "hoist by his own petard" in lobbying for Kitchens as both OC and head coach his 2nd season. So what is this plan to finish the season? One would hope a team wouldn't fire a guy in early October without it. By the way, Rhule is apparently far from "off the books". They'll be paying him for 3+ years, apparently. Shades of Wrecks Ryan.

Absolutely Milano was a "tweener". He fell to the 5th round in part because he was a converted safety at BC and teams doubted he could hold down a full time LB role in the NFL - not fast enough to be a safety and not enough beef to shed blocks as a LB. So Milano is a tweener who worked fiercely and sculpted his body to succeed as an LB. Bernard can do likewise, but he's gonna have to work hard at it, which is kind of where you want to be with a 5th round guy, not a 3rd rounder? 🤷‍♂️ At least, one of my beefs with the Bills drafting pre-Beane was that they were always acting like "the smartest guy in the room" and using the 2-3 rounds to take shots on the guys who could be great if only they re-worked themselves like Torrell Troup over Rob Gronkowski or Linval Joseph (yes I'm still salty why do you ask?) Anyway I think the Bills still do that to some extent, Beane's philosophy is to use early rounds to draft guys with a high ceiling due to physical traits you can't coach - like Edmunds - and develop them. But when you can't pay everyone, if guys need too long to develop then you get to watch them walk, just when they've started to reach their potential. I dunno about Bernard yet. Contrary to some here I haven't seen enough snaps from him in a game to have a judgement about how his instincts and decision making transfer to the NFL. As far as Dodson, I was pleasantly surprised by the game he played yesterday and the amount of territory he covered. But frankly, a rookie QB is not much of a decision-making challenge. We'll see what we see next week if Edmunds can't go or starts and goes down. Yeah I didn't mean it that way of course, but since Dodson is the MLB backup who started yesterday and Edmunds is the starting MLB I suppose it is inevitable.

Hodgins is likely to be the inactive guy once Kumerow is healthy because of Kumerow's blocking skill and ST role. But, if McKenzie takes further steps towards McDermott's doghouse and Shakir continues to look good, that could change.

Crowder is on IR. They waited until Saturday to make the move.

How I see it. I don't think McDermott was a fan of his first punt reception either. He called it off and let it bounce, which was better than going for it and having a turnover, but the result of being pinned on the goal line was not pretty. But he's earned the opportunity to be active on gameday and to get his snaps. What he does with them will determine his share of the playing time.

Actually, one of the changes this season is that Diggs DOES come off the field, regularly, and before the starters come out. Part of it is that (I think) Dorsey is running more (2,1) (1,2) and even (2,2) personnel packages. More of it is that they seem to be systematically giving Diggs some breathers to keep himself fresh. The Ravens game was an outlier so far. Davis has had a higher snap count than Diggs because he blocks.