FLFan

I am expecting we will see a fair bit of Elam when the Bills want to play man.

The Lions won 8 of their last 10 in 2022 and got better in the off season. The Chiefs are without their best defensive player without whom their pass rush has been anemic at best. They are also very likely missing their best offensive weapon. KC is ripe for an upset here. The Lions will score and I think their D can make enough plays to squeak this one out.

What’s lost in all the hype over Rogers is that while he is certainly an upgrade over what they had last year, their collapse after a hot start in my view falls squarely on Saleh. He mismanaged his team and the QB situation and was unable to rally that team, despite all their talent, losing 8 of their last 10 games. I think he is a poor leader, and what little of Hard Knocks I was able to stomach only reinforced my view. Rogers does not help in this regard and in fact is likely to make it worse based on his history. Adversity will come to the Jets and my bet would be they do not handle it well, and that is what will relegate them to third in the AFCE at best. It may start this Monday - I certainly hope so and believe it will - but it is coming at some point.

Please don’t feed the troll. Please don’t feed the troll. Please don’t feed the troll. Please don’t feed the troll.

You could not be more clueless. I can’t imagine who actually asked for this analysis.

You have not seen him play, but know he sucks. Got it.

I think he already is at Schobels level. Schobel had 8.5 sacks his second year in 16 games, Rousseau 8 in 13 games. Hansen was never more than average, even with Bruce Smith opposite him. He was a decent run defender, a Shaq Lawson level player. Let’s see what Greg can do this year. I think once Von gets back he is really going to eat.

The style of defense the Bills have played under McD and Frazier as you point out is designed to prevent points and big plays and has been very successful in doing so, dominant even in that regard. It depends upon the safeties and other DBs to make the plays that are there to be made and that is where the Bills had trouble last year, with Hyde out, Poyer out or hurt most of the year, Tre out and less than 100% on his return, etc etc. it looks bad when it does not work and it was never going to work at peak with all the injuries to the secondary and D line. This exposed Frazier to a degree, as if the debacle in KC did not. He was unable to adjust to the lack of personnel to play the scheme last year and do something about it. I am convinced this why Frazier is gone. I do not suspect McD is going to scrap this approach entirely but I do expect a more creative and aggressive approach at times and more focus on turning the ball over. It is also why I am not overly concerned with the change at MLB. I would hope that they do not sit back against Rogers. Be aggressive, mix it up, and expose him. He is not nearly as mobile as he used to be and he looked to me last year like him arm strength is also not what it was, but if you let him he can still pick you apart.

Amazing that we got 16 pages so far out of a total troll thread.

I am not sure what people saw in Basham that would make them believe he was about to break out. I certainly did not see it. He had plenty of chances. He will probably hang around in the league for a few more years, but the chance that he will make the Bills regret moving on are low indeed in my opinion.

I am tempted to nod to the supposedly tougher schedule and say 11 wins, but the reality is predicting strength of schedule based on last years results is a losing game. It rarely works out that way. 13-4, including 2 losses in the division TBD. The Bills and Chiefs are the class of the AFC and meet again in the Championship game.

I doubt that it is coming for whatever the duration of the deal with You Tube is. The current model is designed to enable the rights holder to drive new subscribers to their service and retain/upsell existing subscribers. That is the value You Tube is getting in return for their huge financial commitment. The owners are getting guaranteed revenue. It is identical to the DirecTV model except steaming vs satellite. I agree with you that the future will look different in all likelihood but they have clearly decided to stay with the safe known quantity for now. Baby steps. I am sure they will eventually figure out how have all their cake and eat all yours too.

Predictable as snow in the winter in Buffalo. Yawn.

I think equating Cody Ford making their roster to the Bengals being a well run team is hilarious.

Looks like Kirskey is his replacement.

To my understanding it is highly preferable to make the calls from the middle of the field. MLB or ILB is ideal, but I have also seen it with a safety, although this requires that that safety often has a good distance to move before the snap.

😂 OK. Fair enough, looks like a good pull for Beane, but I will point out that he has been an OLB not MLB, is coming off an injury, and he will remain on the practice squad in all likelihood for several weeks at least while he learns the system and the calls. I am optimistic he is an improvement but we will see. In the meantime it is still the Dodson/Bernard show.

Don’t forget Reid Ferguson. Barkley is on season ending IR.

Well said. And no, there has not been a single surprise to me, including dumping Basham for a bag of footballs.

I am not confident at all in our options for the position, just hoping for the best and not expecting the problem to be solved through waiver wire pick ups or a last minute trade.

Outstanding analysis as usual @GunnerBill. I think your summary of Gabe Davis and the WR situation is absolutely spot on. Gabe’s limitations in the short and intermediate game and the inability of anyone else to step up to that consistently, especially after Crowders injury, created major issues for the Bills offense last year. It is clear the Bills saw this and tried to fix it this off season. I think Harty and Sherfeld are significant upgrades over what we had and Kincaid adds an element and threat we simply did not have. Let’s hope the plan works, because Davis is what he is at this point.

I repeat, who cares?

He did not play long because he has been out with injury for the past three weeks and they were just giving him a bit of action without undue risk of injury. He was not benched. I thought he played fine in his limited snaps. Perhaps the best thing about him leaving is not having to be subjected to weekly fan analysis (and mis-analysis) of his play. He does not play here anymore so who cares.

Since there is an extremely low likelihood that a competent and experienced MLB is somehow going to be available after cutdown, and since even then it would take a minimum of three or four weeks to get that guy up to speed and ready to QB the defense, I am very confident the Bills’ starting MLB is currently on the team. We may not like it, but that is the away it is.

Conservative, yes. We certainly need a potentially serviceable younger back at least on the practice squad if Harris or (horror) Cook goes down. I would not want Murray getting the lions share if the load for an extended period.