jahnyc

The Bills are playing like a well coached and prepared team, which is an important change. Unfortunately, the team lacks overall talent.

I know that Jones is a rookie, but he looks awful. I hope he can/will improve, but he should not be on the field.

The defense has looked strong, but the Jets are poor offensively and Newton looked bad last week (plus McDermott knows the Panthers strengths and weaknesses on offense). I want to see how the defense performs as the season progresses, particularly when we play teams like the Pats and the Dolphins. I do think the defense will continue to perform better than last year, but I will be a bit surprised if it is a top 10 defense at season end. I agree with all of the posts about how boring this team is to watch.

I have never seen a team purge so many young players in one off season after a new regime is put into place. Just really weird and concerning.

If we are not drafting high enough next year and we want one of the top QBs, we likely will be trading away some of these draft picks that we have accumulated to move up in the draft, which would not be a good thing considering the number of holes in our roster that have been created. Interesting that our four top CBs from last season are all gone (including the two starting CBs). I really hope that we are not going to use some of our early draft picks on corners. That would be depressing. I get the Watkins trade. The others, not so sure. Seemed like they liked Seymour from the comments McD made early in training camp. Surprised to see him traded given the lack of depth and talent at the position for the Bills.

I thought I understood that Dennison was changing our blocking scheme to a zone running scheme from a power running scheme. Maybe our o-line is not "built" for this kind of a scheme? If this is the case, and we can't run the ball effectively, then our offense is probably going to take a big step backward.

A couple of quick thoughts: 1. Not unusual to have player turnover with a new GM, head coach and coaching staff, but it does seem unusual that the Bills have parted ways with a number of younger players. Gilmore, Gillislee, Darby, Woods, Goodwin (yes, I know he has been injured a lot) and Watkins (same) are all in their prime or approaching their prime. If you add Hogan to this list, this would not seem to be a bad core to start building with. Still surprised that the Bills did not re-sign Gillislee, even with Williams as a back-up running back. I think next year we will see some veteran players released because their bad contracts made it prohibitively expensive to cut them this year (Clay and potentially Dareus). 2. Seems that the defense will potentially improve this year, but the offense will take a step back. I know that many posters did not like the Roman offensive system, but it was at least effective at times. Way too early to be making these kind of judgments (it is only preseason), but I am concerned that the new scheme under Dennison will either take time to fully implement or will prove to be ill-suited to our offensive personnel. 3. I am worried about the o-line. Was Kromer a great coach? Was it the scheme that hid the weaknesses of this group? We will find out when the regular season begins, but the right side of the o-line is scaring me. 4. With a new regime comes a new coaching staff, and it always seems there are improvements and disappointments with our positional coaches. I think we will miss some of our old coaches (i.e., Kromer) and it never seems that we can make improvements in the staff across the board from the prior staff. We would have a good staff if we could take the best coaches from the prior regimes and assemble them in to one staff. 5. I don't think we will have the worst record in the NFL this season, but we may take a step back from the mediocre records of the last number of years. The Jets are clearly worse than the Bills, and probably Cleveland and other teams. I assume we will be drafting a QB in the first round next year, so I hope we will be able to use the draft picks that we have accumulated on additional players other than trading them all to move up and pick a QB. We will need these draft picks with all of the current roster turnover and likely future roster turnover.

If we trade McCoy (which I doubt), not matching the offer for Gillislee will look incredibly foolish in hind sight.

It is a fresh start and we need to give them a chance. We will not agree with every decision, and I do find it a bit odd to jettison young talent in a rebuild, but they are different people with different views/backgrounds as compared to Levy/Jauron.

Change was clearly needed, but I am not sure I have seen a team jettison (or allow to leave) primarily young, talented players in an effort to rebuild a team (Darby, Sammy, Gilmore, Gillislee and CK). Other than CK, these are all good to very good young players. Not sure how I feel about stripping a team of current talent in this manner. I understand that it is a new regime and that we were hamstrung in terms of cap space from the prior regime, but I worry that this rebuilding effort will take longer now than maybe was necessary. The Sabres got rid of all of their assets with very little talent in the pipeline, and they are continuing to struggle even with a number of top draft picks. This is what worries me, even with a bunch of high draft picks in 2018.

I think the Bills have backed themselves in a bit of a corner here because they did not pick up his option. This means if Sammy has a great season, we will need to franchise him since his contract will be up, which will be very expensive generally and in terms of cap space. Add the uncertainty of how Sammy feels about not having his option exercised (or playing in Buffalo) and you may have situation where he will not want to sign a long-term deal with the Bills. There are a lot of unknowns with Sammy, including his health for this season and after. I do not know if it is the right move, but you certainly can make the argument that getting a first round pick for Sammy would be appropriate value for Sammy under the current circumstances.

Not liking some of the local press suggesting that Eichel is immature and a problem. I hope that this is not true, but if it is, it could be that Murray knew this would be the case when the Sabres lost out on the opportunity to draft McDavid (and explains why he was so upset at the time).

The article is not balanced. Sullivan only notes the negatives, but they are significant and clearly stated. While I agree that Whaley's time is close to being up as GM of the Bills, I am not sure I understand why that decision was not made at the end of last season. Hiring a new GM that would be beholden to McDermott does not seem like the answer, and conducting a search for a new GM with no history with McDermott likely means problems in the future. I certainly am not comfortable giving McDermott, a first time head coach, broad powers (i.e., GM type responsibilities) in terms of roster, draft and free agents. I would think he needs to focus on coaching the team to a better record.

We had a lot of free agents and needed to spend our available funds to replace to them. Not sure there are any upgrades here other than potentially at safety. One can argue that Woods and Gilmore were overpaid in their new deals, but it also is the case that they represent a loss of quality players that will likely not be replaced adequately for the start of this season.

I think we have lost significant talent since the end of the last season, which will hurt us this season. I am hopeful about McDermott, but without upgrading the talent and filling holes, I don't see an improvement in our prospects to have a winning record and make the playoffs. Are we really going to have Mills starting at RT again this year? What do we have at WR after Watkins, who has had injury problems? We have been hurt by poor cap management, and we had a lot of free agents this offseason that could not be re-signed or adequately replaced. It is unrealistic to think with six picks in the draft that we will be significantly improved from last season in terms of talent after the losses this offseason. The Bills expected and needed major contributions from the draft class last year and it did not happen for a number of reasons, including injuries. If this season we feel that the coaching is a major improvement, that will be a real positive and give us confidence that the team will be better in the future. This is one of the things that I will be hoping for this season.

Maybe they think Gillislee is getting an offer sheet?

Is there anything wrong with getting clear upgrades to players that leave via free agency or that are marginal in terms of talent/ability? Filling holes is fine, but substituting guys on one or two year deals to play significant roles is not how you build a strong foundation, particularly if they are weaker players than the players they are replacing. Do we really have such a strong core group of players in terms of talent such that all we need are guys like Brown, Ducasse and Tolbert to be temporary plug players? Does not seem that way to me, and I am not sure I understand the overall plan for the team.

I also am fine with coaching change (and culture change), but not too happy with the start of free agency. We only have six picks in the draft as of now, and some huge holes to fill and other positions that need to be upgraded.

That is not a particularly attractive list of free agent candidates for the Bills.

You can't expect a rookie or rookies to come in and start and be effective, particularly if they are not top talents (i.e., not drafted in the first round). It is ridiculous that right now we do not have any real WRs after Sammy, who has had significant injury issues to this point. I get it that it is early in the free agency period, but the top WR free agents are gone and even some of the lesser quality WRs already have been signed, such as Ginn and Wright.

Does not make sense to me. Too much money tied up with Clay and too many other needs. Whaley supposedly was going to take Ebron is he did not trade up to get Watkins. That would have been a mistake.

This is not good news. I assume this means no Andre Smith. It will be depressing if Mills is the starter at RT again this season.

We should go for a rebuild. We are whipped puppies after 17 years of no playoffs and nothing this offseason which is inspiring any confidence that this season will be any different.

The Pats win the Super Bowl and now they have made significant improvements in the offseason while we lose more talent. What is our plan to be competitive with them and the other teams in our division?

Well, I guess Corey Graham is gone as well. I believe he has been released by the Bills.