BillsFanForever19

Said it all off-season, I would not have extended Greg Rousseau and Terrel Bernard. At least not until I saw how their 2025 went. With Bernard, he regressed in 2024 and he's started to show a penchant for getting dinged up. So far this year, it's felt like more of the same. He makes a big play every once in a while, like the Baltimore game. But the only true consistency is that the pass game and run defense beyond the line of scrimmage is terrible. With Rousseau, if he's so valuable, why have we spent every off-season saying "we need a premier Edge Rusher"? If we want one of them, we have to pay Parsons/Garrett money and that's unlikely to happen while you're paying Rosseau 20m a year on the other side. I feel as though Beane follows the "Draft, Develop, Retain" mantra too much, to a detriment. We are consistently in a spot every off-season where we're begging for game changers but cannot afford to get them bc we're up against the Cap - retaining too many decent players at the cost of being able to get great players. People were advocating for going all out this off-season on additions, even if it meant we wouldn't re-sign any of them. I knew that wouldn't happen and that we needed to retain 2-3. But even I didn't think we'd sign *all 5*.

People are hyper focused on him bc he's our guy and saying Drafting him was a mistake. But when you compare him to all of the other top options we could have went with instead - his numbers are better than practically every single other option, especially when you consider Slots weren't what we were in the market for: Keon Coleman - 21 receptions, 226 yards, 2 TDs Xavier Worthy (injured for 2 games) - 11 receptions, 125 yards, 0 TD Ricky Pearsall (Slot) - 21 receptions, 327 yards, 0 TD Xavier Legette - 6 receptions, 39 yards, 1 TD Ladd McConkey (Slot) - 21 receptions, 213 yards, 1 TD Ja'Lynn Polk (Traded to the Saints with a 7th for a 6th) - Inactive all year Adonai Mitchell - 7 receptions, 137 yards, 0 TD Malachi Corley (Slot, Cut by Jets and signed to Browns Practice Squad) - Inactive all year Jermaine Burton - Inactive all year Roman Wilson (Slot) - 1 reception, 7 yards, 0 TD Luke McCaffrey (Slot) - 7 receptions, 146 yards, 2 TDs Javon Baker (Cut by Patriots, Signed to Eagles PA) - Inactive all year Troy Franklin - 21 receptions, 231 yards, 1 TD

Geesh - I thought we were finally done with him. He made Milano look reliable and available.

We didn't "get rid of" Tyrel Dodson. When his contract was up, he was signed by the Seahawks to be their starter, to fairly decent money. He wasn't going to give up the opportunity to start in Seattle to be a Backup here.

I think the hope was that Tre returning to the Defense he was familiar with would make him at least serviceable. The issue is, not only is he not remotely the same guy anymore, but the stellar Safety play behind him he was used to isn't there to bail him out. I don't think the plan was ever to start him and have him play 100% of the snaps as he is now. There was an outside chance Hairston would start out of the gate. But more likely he'd be splitting reps with Hairston initially, with Hairston gradually getting more as he got his sea legs under him - ultimately starting and taking over by this point or mid season. Hairston getting injured really messed those plans up. But we had an insurance policy in Dorian Strong, like we did when we took Elam and Benford. And he showed some promise. Last night, I'm positive he'd be being cycled in for White with how bad he was playing. As he had been throughout the season. But now Strong's on IR too. And we're just stuck with White. Relying on him 100% with no one cycling in for him, unless we want to go with Ingram. This is absolutely nowhere to be. The good news is i'd expect to have Hairston back after the bye or soon thereafter. The bad news is, that plan to bring him along slowly and not throw too much at him too soon will probably still happen. So I wouldn't expect them to just throw him into the fire.

Except for the fact that Ladd and Shakir play the same position. So you aren't going to have them on the field at the same time very often or at all. McConkey's a Slot. Which is why we didn't Draft him. On top of McConkey being a Slot, serving to just take Shakir off the field and do little to nothing to replace Diggs and Davis on the Outside - thus far this season, McConkey and Coleman's stats are near identical - with a slight edge to Coleman: Coleman - 21 receptions, 226 yards, and 2 TDs McConkey - 21 receptions, 213 yards, and 1 TD Through the first 5 games, this idea that we'd be much better off with McConkey is statistically false.

To focus on Coleman and only Coleman for the loss and obsess over a fumble that cost us 3 out of 23 points, and happened in the 1st Quarter of a 4 Quarter terrible game is absolutely, positively absurd. Coleman jumped up and caught a 50/50 ball to sustain a drive to keep us alive. Coleman caught a TD to make up for it. Would have likely had another 50/50 TD in the back of the end zone had Josh not overthrown the ball. There's so, so, so many players to blame for the loss. Feels like you want to blame Coleman for the loss bc you don't like him as a player and you don't want to call out other players you do like. Keon's not near the top of the list of people that should be blamed today.

Yeah, the plan was always for him to be at most a bridge to Hairston - if not a backup to Hairston straight out of Camp. The injury to Hairston forced us to rely on him, which is *nowhere* you want to be. They'd have been playing more of Dorian Strong tonight with how poorly White was playing. But now we don't even have him either. That's the toughest part about this. White is toast. But our only other options right now are to play Ja'Marcus Ingram or Dane Jackson. Which probably wouldn't be much worse, but wouldn't be any better either. Tonight was exactly why I was saying the idea from another poster that we IR'ed him to make room for players coming and that it was "nothing to see" was ridiculous. We really could have used him tonight and I can't believe they'd purposely put us in a situation where we would have no choice but to stick with White.

I'd rather trust Allen with one play to put them in a position to force the Patriots to have to score a Touchdown to beat us, with less time on the clock, than I would giving them the ball back with 2:20 and asking our walking wounded siv of a Defense to keep them out of Field Goal range where they all have to do is kick it and win. You can talk about analytics all you want, but look at the result. It happened just as I expected it would when we did the "analytical" thing.

Kicking the field goal to tie the game with 2:20 on the clock was a horrendous coaching decision. Best case scenario, you're tieing the game and putting it on the back of your defense to keep them out of Field Goal range, when they're going to be playing with all 4 downs to do it. When we're the walking wounded on Defense and they've proven all game they can't stop them. Anything less than a 3 and Out and it was over. That was a scenario where you go for it. If you don't make it, you lose. But kicking the field goal was always a recipe for losing too. I wouldn't even call it coward ball because it didn't even put us ahead. Just plain ole' stupid.

Cole Bishop, 10 yards deep, was the only player lined up on Diggs. What. Are. We. Doing.

When they showed Diggs on the sidelines for 2nd Down, I said "just keeping him fresh to pick up the 1st down on 3rd down against White". Like clockwork. He has no answer for him.

I'd say pull White off the field but we don't have anyone worth a damn underneath him either.

Gotta keep them out of the end zone here. Even holding them to a field goal and keeping it a one score game while we've had double digit penalties and are losing the turnover battle 3-1 would be impressive.

Tre is just bad this season.

That was incredibly bad pass defense by Tre White. There's not turning your head around and then there's... whatever that was.

I feel like Josh is waiting an instant too long to take off running tonight.

This game is drunk.

What kind of play was that? A handoff to a Tight End or a Fake handoff to a Tight End? Either way - wtf?

The 54th pick in the Draft is a Late 2nd Round Pick, closer to a 3rd. Google 2nd Round Pick Defensive End's currently in the NFL and a take a look at the list. I think you'll find AJ Epenesa is better than most. If you're a DE prospect that is considered to be even an average starter, you're going by the end of the 1st Round. Edge Rusher is a premium position. If you're a prospect that's considered someone who's going to get "Pro Bowl consideration", you're going Top 2 or 3 picks. A player that's "serviceable", "adequate", "makes some plays" is good return on investment for a late 2nd Round DE.

Good point. Codrington is another major possibility. Especially if they healthy scratch him again this week. Although I don't like the idea of Shakir returning Punts as we had last week. He's too important to our Offense to risk back there. But it just goes to show that as I said before the year, the odds that we were going to be 100% healthy on the 53 and we'd have to make really difficult decisions to fit those guys on was somewhere between slim and none. Unfortunately for us, it's going to be really easy to fit those 3 guys on.

Sam Franklin Jr. Special Teams player we signed to the roster to take DeWayne Carter's spot on the 53 when he was IR'ed.

It cracked me up watching people racking their brains before the season started on players to release or trade to make room for Hairston, Hoecht, and Ogunjobi. As if we were going to stay 100% healthy until Week 8. As it is, we've had to sign 2 Practice Squad players for players IR'ed from the 53 at the start of the season. Even if (God willing) we don't have any more IR'ed players over the next two weeks, it's already pretty simple to just move Franklin, Ciarlo, and Ingram off for Hairston, Hoecht, and Ogunjobi.

I have a sinking feeling this is the breakout game for RB TreyVeon Henderson that people have been expecting for some time now. With our difficulties in the run game to begin with and the possibility (if not likely possibility) that we're in rough shape along DT and LB - I'd expect a run heavy game plan from the Patsies. And Henderson's twitchiness and gaining speed could be a problem. I envision this being a game where we'll have to rely on Josh and the passing game more than we've had to in recent weeks.

Dorian Strong is at worst our 3rd Boundary CB. An argument can be made that he's performed better than White and White was even pulled for him last week for a while. If this was just a move to fit someone on to the roster, they'd have done it Week 8 when they actually have the players available to put on the roster. Short changing us at CB for Week 5 and Week 6 before we can elevate those players, especially with Strong instead of someone like Ingram, makes absolutely no sense. I firmly disagree with the idea of Strong being fully healthy on Wednesday to being IR'ed for a Neck injury is "nothing to see here" and was something done to make room for players we won't have for weeks.