Beck Water

I actually think the fact that they brought a cut player out of retirement speaks to the fact that we want 5 WR active on game day and we have -2 WR on IR who apparently aren't coming off soon -2 WR who we apparently consider ready to elevate on the practice squad -one has used up all 3 "free" elevations, the other has used 2 of 3 elevations -there are 4 games left in the regular season -we lost our "next man up" WR, Hodgins, to the waiver wire when we cut him -Shakir has not developed as I think the Bills hoped I could be wrong, I was wrong about "Beasley in town" being a kerfluffle. I will say this: if the Bills brought two 32/33 yr old WR out of retirement with the idea they'd be major players instead of hoping they can contribute a few good plays off practice squad and fill in for an injury, it's a pretty valid point that we don't have a championship-caliber offense. There's a lot of stuff in there that says McKenzie contributes a lot more than people think, and maybe last year Beasley was a bit less clutch than people think. But I believe folks have all made up their minds/don't care about data so I'm not gonna bother pulling it out.

Except that it isnt It sheds a pretty sad light on your personal life, though, what you said and what you believe That's on you though

I actually wondered the exact same thing - the Bills in the past have had gains by bringing in a veteran who can elevate the other players' games. Think Diggs (elevated the entire WR room including Brown Beasley Davis and McKenzie); Von Miller (appears to have elevated Rousseau, Epenesa, Basham, and Lawson). It's possible they're hoping Beasley can jump-start Shakir's slot game but also perhaps bridge a gap between how McKenzie is seeing the field/the defense and how Josh is seeing McKenzie's routes, in addition to being available as the #5 WR on gameday. By George I think he's got it. Even if both Kumerow and Crowder do manage to return for the playoffs, the Bills have 4 tough games to play in order to GET to the playoffs. They want to have 5 (reasonably) healthy wide receivers on the active roster for those games.

In the post you're quoting, I provided links to McKenzie's splits for this year (catch % by down and distance) and Beasley's splits for 2021, same. Scroll down to the "advanced splits" part, and knock yourself out!

Indeed. It's one of those things like "roughing the passer". Dion has the capability to finish his blocks by driving the player to the ground. This used to be something that was expected - the Ravens OL coach a few years back was said to grade his players on how often they did that. Now it seems to be being penalized, even when there isn't a hold involved in it - just as roughing the passer seems to be being called when the defender appears to be making a strong effort to hold himself off of the passer and not land on him with his body weight.

Where's DC Tom? The yelling you're hearing is "I love you Josh Allen". It's a Bills tradition started during the 2020 Covid season by Cole Beasley and Jon Feliciano. When they weren't gonna come back, they had a couple other guys promise to keep it up. At the start of the season, they were on twitter chaffing those guys (I think one was Gabe Davis) for not doing it well enough. It has nothing to do with a generalized player "judgement of female fans" as being "unable to understand critical journalism" or "just wanting to be cheerleaders" or generalized player mocking of female fans. Sheesh. I vomit upon your generalizations and summon my neighbor's cats to do likewise. Speak for your own daughter and keep your dumb generalizations off of mine. And while you're at it, don't use your personal experience to disregard all the guys who stick with a gal who's exploiting them because they're emotionally attached and won't face painful reality. Believe me, we've heard some doozy stories from some of the gents here over the years. "Bad romance" and "bad judgement in romantic partners" is not by any means limited to one gender.

And yeah, McKenzie should be having this convo privately with Chad Hall or with Dorsey or with Josh. "Look, I feel I'm open and I could help the team move the chains, what do I need to change to be given a chance?". For whatever reason, he doesn't seem to feel that's something he can do, which may not be "on him" - he may get the vibe that he's too far down the totum pole and little regarded for that avenue to be open to him (or, it may be open to him and it's "on him" he doesn't take it, I don't know) There is this little point that 69.1% of the time (to date this season) when McKenzie has the ball thrown at him, he catches it. Even for those who want to argue that he ought to be credited with a higher number of drops or whatever, that still remains. That's second among the Bills WR. Davis has almost 2x as many targets, but has caught just over half of them, 53.5% - which I really don't feel is Davis fault, I feel Josh is throwing the ball away in his direction or throwing to him when he's very well covered quite a bit. Maybe instead of forcing the ball to a well covered Davis, Josh should, in fact, look at McKenzie more and earlier? TIL: On pro-football-reference, there's a tab that breaks down a WR seasonal splits. If you scroll down to the bottom, it gives splits for down and yards to go etc. https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/M/McKeIs00/splits/2022/ I was kind of surprised when I compared 2nd and 10 and 3rd down and whatever splits to Cole Beasley last year: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/B/BeasCo00/splits/2021/ I now return you to your regularly scheduled dis-off. I can't disagree that we need an upgrade at WR and need to invest on offense.

https://buffalonews.com/entertainment/television/jerry-sullivan-fired-by-wivb-and-two-newspapers-for-sexist-podcast-comments/article_44de68be-7b32-11ed-a042-7bff12def66d.html?utm_campaign=snd-autopilot&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter_TheBuffaloNews

Yes. He has been on IR since 11/17, so 4 games counting the Jets. But, he originally injured his ankle (high ankle) in the Miami game. Missed 3 games, came back and played 2 games, then re-injured in the 3rd. I think it's a good bet he's not going to come off IR and that's in large part what's behind the Brown and Beasley PS signings. Josh's buddy Tanner Gentry got a look-see in the Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Detroit games, after which the Bills, knowing they want 5 receivers active on game day but only had 4 on the roster, signed Brown. They appear to find Gentry useful enough to keep him on the practice squad, but not enough to use a 53-man roster slot on him.

I'll bump my own take to say I was wrong. I can eat my slice o' crow pie.

We do need people who ask the tough questions sometimes, but I do believe it can be done to better effect in a less adversarial manner.

Imagine a teammate breaking the news to Josh, Poyer, and Micah Hyde that Jerry Sullivan was let go from 2 media outlets and lost his press credentials. I picture a slow smile breaking across all 3 faces followed by something like "Huh. That's a Shame"

That's a very fair point. But I think most people would agree that "(name a group) are the worst, they don't understand (concept), they just want to be (activity)" is likely to fall into that "bigoted" umbrella. A very astute summation.

Yes, Dunne definitely “stirs the *****” and eggs McKenzie on As I said, not sure the show with Dunne helps McKenzie, either mentally or with the team You disagree with him? You think he’ll get more targets? What part of that can’t you believe?

So..."quickly" means "after his 4th year in the league to you? (Teller was drafted in 2018. Pro bowl season was 2021) Not saying this is you, but there's a lot of "20-20 hindsight" involved in the Teller situation. Overall, teams hit on something like 30% of their 1st-3rd round picks ("hit on" meaning guy becomes a serviceable player, not necessarily an all pro). Teams hit on more like 1 in 5 to 1 in 10 of their later round picks. But not hitting, means you have to keep taking shots. I have nothing against the idea of taking shots on OL in the later rounds, but I'd really like to see Beane make some investment in WR and OL earlier in the draft as well. I loved Beasley's contributions to the team, but bringing back two WR who are >32 years old, one of whom retired and one of whom hasn't been on a team all season, seems rather like a "desperation play".

I actually forgot I had posted that about "the move (Barkley's number change) leaves #11 available". I didn't want to claim forshadowing without proof, so Thank you for "bumping" that. We'll see if anyone picks up Stevenson. I'm not sure he's "through" in the league, or even with the Bills, but you own the bottle for now! Clearly Stevenson #4 out of 4 WR on the practice squad, including a 2019 6th round pick we signed in mid-October who ran a 4.6s 40. That ain't a promising look. I'm going to guess that the Bears or Bengals pick him up. If not the Patriots.

Since we're in this thread: McKenzie pointed out "you have a $250M QB who likes to throw the ball" and "have you seen us play in a dome? we're unstoppable". Didn't say. No. and in reply to:

He's pretty much right IMHO, but yeah, so are you.

Seems that way to me, too. I feel as though I read a lot of stuff here about "drops". By what's scored, a drop is a ball a WR should catch with ordinary effort. We have had some of those, but not as many as people think (exception of last game, when we had 5 scored - and no, it was 1 to Isaiah McKenzie) But, I do feel that our WR don't seem able to come up with that "ooohs" and "aaaahs" contested, challenging catch.

I wonder if this is a little bit of rust because in the past, Smoke has managed to draw a DPI on those underthrown balls by how he "sells" going back for them?

I don't see how this follows at all. The Eagles and Cincinnati are different teams with different strengths. Both good defenses. Eagles good against run and pass. Cincinnati overall weaker against the pass, though they turned it on and had a good plan for KC. Eagles more dependent upon being opportunistic, getting turnovers. Cincinnati overall just solid. Eagles, best point-scoring offense in the league, but a bit more dependent upon their running game. More rushing attempts, more rushing TDs, darn close rushing yards to their passing yards. Cincinnati, almost equal number of run and pass attempts, but much more of a passing-oriented offense. 2:1 ratio of passing to rushing TDs, passing to rushing 1st downs. 26 (tied for 28) in "rush yards per attempt: Then, there's the "any given Sunday" factor. Just because a team is beaten in the regular season, doesn't follow the same team will beat them in the playoffs *cough*. I imagine they'll see, but yeah, I think if Beasley is in playing shape they'll elevate him instead of Brown. But they'll only elevate 1 of the 2 of them. OK, how about some links to this everything you read?

Question: Why do you think we will make roster moves to sign them to the 53 man roster? I think that's probably a bad assumption. Brown has 1 PS elevation left. Beasley will have 3. There are 4 games left. The counter re-sets for the playoffs, with no limit on elevations. The roster move I see possibly coming, is Ike Boettger being activated from PUP. He had a 21 day window opened on Nov. 30, meaning the Bills either need to elevate him or put him on season-ending IR by (I think) Dec. 20th.

You know, with all that....McKenzie has a decent catch %, 69.1%. Would he like to have more, would the Bills like him to have more? Sure. Has he had drops? Sure. But to read what's read about him here, one might think he had a catch % of 46% or 47%....like........ Shakir and Crowder, the guys fans here keep crying for. McKenzie says he's open on film, and a couple weeks back Dorsey launched into a rather impassioned defense of McKenzie as "doing everything we've asked him to do, running every route full speed, clearing routes, blocking". So maybe he's making less "basic mental mistakes" than fans believe? All our receivers have been having trouble hauling stuff in this season. Davis has almost 700 yds and caught 3 out of 4 targets last Sunday, but he was scored with a drop, his 7th of the season, 10% drop rate - that gives him...a higher drop % than Isaiah McKenzie? His overall catch % is 53.5%. A goodly bunch of those were uncatchable throw-aways in his direction, but a number of those were makeable catches not "easy" enough to be scored as drops. On Sunday, the catching statistics from most of the WR were not great, especially in the first half. Diggs finished 3 of 5, but was 1 of 3 in the first half. Shakir, Brown and Davis all missed a catch. Knox was a bright light - he finished 4 of 7 which ain't great, but he was 4 for 4 in the first half I think. IMHO the one who should get more targets is Knox.

There were 3 targets McKenzie didn't haul in. One, he was trying to secure the ball as the defender pushed him out of bounds, it was ruled an incompletion and it was something like 3rd and 16, after several penalties had us 2nd and 20. I don't think we get the 1st down. Two, he drew a holding penalty, so it's "no play", but folks here are counting it as a drop. We took the 5 yards and went on to score a TD. Three, was a drop on 3rd and 3 where we scored a FG and apparently there was a lot of animated discussion on the sideline because other WR were open as well. Pretty sure that's the only one that was scored as a drop, but the tar-and-pitchforks crowd are up in arms about the 3 drops McKenzie had that single-handedly killed 3 different drives and forced us to punt.

Just me, but I feel what changed is that teams decided they don't need to worry about covering McKenzie and Knox and Cook or Motor, and when McKenzie or Shakir are running deeper routes they are basically clearing/decoy routes - so they can focus coverage on Davis. Davis has had maybe a few concentration issues where he's failed to bring in a contested catch or a catchable ball where he's going to be hit right away, but I think the main issue is the focus of coverage, without viable alternatives in the passing game.