BillsFanForever19

Again, it comes down to money and role. A 31 year old journeyman WR who overachieved the year before is going to want to cash in. We paid him 2.6m last year. Having someone sign you for multiple years for up to 8.4m is a big jump. Good team or bad team, no 31 year old WR is going to pass up more money and a bigger role for less money and a smaller role. This could be Mack's last contract.

Elijah Moore isn't his replacement. They're different kind of players. Josh Palmer was brought in to be a more talented version of what Mack was and with a bigger role than Mack had. He moves Keon to the Z, with Shakir in the Slot and Samuel (who I'd expect they plan on having a bigger role this year) moved all around. Ultimately, between Shakir, Palmer, Coleman, Samuel, and Kincaid (also out of the Slot) - I don't think whomever is WR5 is going to have much of a role. And honestly, I don't think they expected to use Hollins as much as they did. Between Samuel's Turf Toe to start the year, Coleman not being gangbusters out of the gate (and then being injured), and then Cooper getting injured almost immediately - he was pushed into having a bigger role than they anticipated. Bc of that, New England offered him a 2 year, 8.4m deal and a bigger role than he'd have here. I don't think they wanted to pay that for the small role of WR5, I don't think he wanted the smaller role he'd have here after we signed Palmer, and I think they wanted a speed element in the WR game (which Mack doesn't provide). He was a great locker room guy and a fun presence on the team. But they wanted an upgrade in talent on the Outside, as well as some speed as well. It really didn't make sense for either side for him to return. He'll have a bigger role and be paid better in New England.

This is pretty spot on. It comes down to desperation, which you can practically feel reading a lot of members posts on here. In the drought years, we consistently weren't competing. But the team always did just enough to miss out on the best talent at the top of the Draft (combined with picking the wrong guys and/or the wrong positions when we did Draft). Now we're in an opposite position, but having a similar problem. We're always competing, but just missing out on a Championship. So we're always picking in the 25-30 range. And you're hard pressed to find 25-30 1st Round Talents in any Draft. Let alone 'Elite' talents. You have to get really lucky where we pick. Combined with the salary cap always being a problem for us (thanks to a lot of different factors) and Beane not willing to mortgage the future, it creates a scenario where we're often relying on our Draft Picks to be the difference makers to take us over the top. It's a big ask for guys to be great right out of the gate picking where we pick on a regular basis. And if they aren't great in Year 1 or Year 2, then they're garbage we're wasting our time on. Get them out of here and try again. There's no in between and no patience. You can see the lack of in between in this very thread. Where with some posters, if you haven't given up and are ready to move on from players like Keon Coleman or Dalton Kincaid and declare them busts, you're making excuses because you're a "homer". Ultimately, it all boils down to the hunger for a title. And the way Beane builds a team. It causes many posters to be, frankly, downright unfair to developmental players.

Average to slightly above average is underselling a lot of good to very good players that have been Drafted. There aren't many teams that have Drafted multiple truly "elite" players and if they have - they haven't been picking where we pick on a regular basis. If the team was filled with average to slightly average players across the board, we wouldn't get to where we go consistently even with Josh Allen as our Quarterback.

And some fans give up on young players and declare "sometimes they are what they are" too quickly... Keon Coleman just turned 22 years old and is entering Year 2. Like many Rookies, it was a mixed bag. Some good, some bad. He was showing improvement before that brutal hit from Jordan Poyer derailed things. Was he the guy I wanted from the Draft or the guy most of us wanted? No. But the league is filled with players, even here in Buffalo, that took 2-3 years of development before they showed who "they are". Am I sure he's going to be great? No. But i'm definitely not ready to say he's a bust after one season.

I seriously can't believe i'm still talking about McConkey. The whole way leading up to the Draft I was saying "he's not an Outside WR, he's not a fit for us". People fought tooth and nail with me to say "he's an Outside WR". Some even saying "wait until we Draft him, i'll have the receipts loaded". Draft comes and he's on the board. We don't pick him. We pick someone who is a full time Outside WR. As expected. Because we already had Slot WR's and guys who will split time in the Slot and literally nothing else (save for Mack Hollins). The Chargers pick him in the 2nd. Proceed to use him in the Slot for 65% of his snaps. While having almost nothing on the Outside. The Chargers lose Josh Palmer this offseason. Rather than say they're going to switch McConkey to the Outside, they spend a 2nd Round Pick on a WR for the second year in a row to fill the role, after bringing back Mike Williams as their Tre White like insurance with us. Yet still, here we are, with people saying "it's criminal they didn't take McConkey". It's utterly baffling to me. If you need a Boundary CB, you don't take a Nickel. If you need a 1T DT, you don't Draft a 3T DT. If you need a Tackle, you don't Draft a Guard. If you need a Middle Linebacker, you don't Draft an Outside Linebacker. And if you need an Outside WR.... you don't Draft a Slot. McConkey was a WR, but he wasn't the right type of WR. It's as simple as that.

... @Billl's a Chiefs fan lol

He's had 2 years in the league. A pretty solid Rookie campaign and a step back in his Sophomore year. Which isn't uncommon. That's why the term "Sophomore Slump" exists. You don't take a guy in Round 1 and then trade him away for peanuts after just 2 seasons. You give a 1st at least 3 years. Whatever we could have got for him after his year last season wouldn't be much different after this season if we decide to move on. Joe Marino put it best on his podcast: "As far as trading Kincaid, I am far more concerned with missing out on Dalton Kincaid's potential ceiling than gaining whatever minimal Draft capital you would get by trading him now". Not everyone develops quickly. There were posters who argued Khalil Shakir brought nothing to the table and should have been cut after his Rookie season for Andy Isabella. Posters who felt Spencer Brown should have been benched or traded. Dion Dawkins had people here saying he should have been traded during the 2023 offseason bc he was underwhelming and looked "fat". Terrel Bernard was a "wasted pick". James Cook was looked at as a liability after his Rookie year. You have to give guys more than a year or two before you determine what they definitively are or aren't. And the higher the investment, the longer the rope. Hell, Elam was given 3 years and he couldn't even get on the field.

They should have revised it more. At least at the guaranteed money level. 5.42m guaranteed on a 6.69 contract makes his deal almost fully guaranteed. I may have still signed him. But i'd have given myself more of an out in case the Draft board fell a certain way, or someone became available after the Draft that we could have all year, and/or another issue with him pops up. If he or his agent balked at it, i'd have said "go out there and see what you can get after your suspension was announced and give us a call back with those numbers". I wouldn't have guaranteed more than 3m.

Like Gunner said, Hoecht was signed to a 3 year deal. Is the suspension annoying? Yeah. But that's just 6 games out of 3 full seasons under contract. I would have still signed him. Ogunjobi though on a 1 year deal? That's a different story.

Dude - McConkey was right there and they chose someone else. If they felt McConkey was just as good of a fit, they'd have taken him. He had Coleman on pretty much every metric, except for size and fit for what we needed. It's funny that you're telling me I "can't make that assumption". Meanwhile, you're assuming that he can be a full time Outside WR - even though his Scouting Report said otherwise. Even though when he got to the league, he was used otherwise. Even when their Outside guys were less than desired. And even after losing one, rather than moving him there, they spent a 2nd Round Pick (a year after spending a 2nd on McConkey) for a True Outside WR and then also brought back Mike Williams as insurance. As for your other point, you haven't seen Shakir catch the ball downfield? I can think of a number of times just off the top of my head. Offensive Scheme plays a large part in that metric as well. We run a scheme in which most of our plays are short to intermediate passing. The long ball isn't Josh's bread and butter. You know who does like that though? Justin Herbert. There are a number of Slot WR's that have longer average depth of target. That doesn't make them an Outside WR. This idea that you can take a guy that isn't even 50/50 on the Outside and make him a full time WR is the true assumption. One in which Scouts and his Drafting team have thus far not agreed with. Posters don't want to do that because most of them had a hard on for McConkey pre-Draft. Even before he was used as a predominantly slot WR by LA, they were being told that's what he was and refused to believe it. It's baffling to me that after they've seen it at the NFL level, they still argue that they know more than NFL Scouts and Coaches. They also don't want to do that because if they compare Coleman to the WR's they should compare him to, they can't make the argument that it was a mistake to take him as well as they can by pointing to what McConkey did. Bc the stats of those guys are somewhere between marginally better than Coleman or worse than Coleman.

Even if I decided that 11 games plus the Playoffs was worth keeping him, I would have lowered his guarantees to a level in which I could easily move on depending on how the Draft fell and what may become available after the Draft. It's one thing to decide to go ahead with the deal. It's another to go ahead with a 1 yr/6.69m deal and guarantee 5.42m of it. That's the real head scratcher to me.

Short of hopping in a time machine and watching each supplement he took into his body and the circumstances surrounding it - how would they discover that? You think a "trainer" that is being paid by Hoecht wouldn't lie for them and say "oh yeah, that was my mistake. There was something in it that I didn't know was on the list"? Ultimately, it really doesn't matter if they knowingly or unknowingly took a banned substance. The perception is the same and the punishment is the same. I just think it's ridiculous to not question whether he or Ogunjobi are telling the truth when literally everyone who gets popped has the same song and dance explanation. And especially to imply as the poster who I initially replied to did that Rice's punishment should be based on Hoecht's suspension while assuming their innocence.

No, he's not. If he was someone that is that good and just as good on the Outside, he'd be on the Outside full time for the Chargers. Instead, he took 65% of his snaps from the Slot - while having guys like Quentin Johnston and Josh Palmer on the Outside. And when they lost Palmer on the Outside, did they announce they're moving McConkey over there? No. They spent their 2nd Round Pick on Tre Harris and brought back Mike Williams. Why? Bc McConkey plays his best Football out of the Slot. Ladd McConkey is a great WR. But there's a difference between a True Outside WR and a guy like McConkey. In certain situations, against certain DB's, McConkey can take reps on the Outside. But he's small and has difficulty with bigger, physical CB's. He's not a guy you can expect to take 75% or more on the Outside. We lost Stefon Diggs and Gabe Davis. Two true Outside WR's. And all we had was Slot targets or guys who are primarily slot that you can move around now and again (like McConkey) in Khalil Shakir, Dalton Kincaid, and Curtis Samuel - who was said would be used on the Outside and still worked out of the Slot on 42% of snaps (plus snaps out of the backfield). We couldn't Draft another Slot guy or even another Tweener. We had that covered and that's pretty much all we had. We needed replacements for Diggs and Davis on the Outside full time. McConkey, as good as he is, isn't that. It's fair to question whether Coleman will be good. But he shouldn't be compared to McConkey. The guys to be 20/20 hindsight over if he isn't would be Xavier Worthy, Xavier Legette, Ja'Lynn Polk, Adonai Mitchell, and Troy Franklin.

This is again assuming he's telling the truth. Again, *every* single person who gets busted for PED's has a similar story. Bc of that, no one really gets the benefit of the doubt. Even if he is telling the truth, he's just as much to blame. You know that there's a laundry list of things that will get you suspended. You shouldn't put any foreign substance in your body, supplement or not, without knowing every ingredient that's in it. Simply trusting someone else, an employee, a friend, whomever - and not looking into it yourself is DUMB! I can't roll my eyes harder at the "oh it wasn't my fault, it was my trainers fault". You're a grown ass adult. A Professional Football player. In a league where you're being regularly tested. And you're just blindly ingesting things?

Another example of why people who think big contracts at the top don't rise all ships underneath are wrong.

I mean, I don't know anyone that's going to pass up on a good Steak for a Burger. The thing with Steak is it's easier to F up and generally way more expensive. All things equal though, a good steak crushes a good burger and it's not even close.

You are aware that's what literally everyone who gets popped for PED's says, right? It wasn't Ogunjobi's fault either supposedly. If they took everyone at their word that it wasn't their fault, no one would be suspended for PED's and the league would be full of Schwarzenegger looking dudes. With how strict the NFL Testing of today is, if a player puts something in their body without knowing literally everything that's in it or blindly takes something at the suggestion of another person that isn't a team doctor - they're either a.) pretty dumb or b.) flat out trying to skirt the system.

I don't know. it would take us winning the division by not a lot and there to be a Division that has multiple teams in it with a better record than us. That seems to be a pretty unlikely scenario for this current team and what the records are for Wild Card teams generally.

Von got suspended so quickly bc it was announced there'd be no criminal or civil charges almost immediately. The league doesn't suspend until the legal process has completely played out. Save for incredibly heinous acts that will have a player put on the Commissioner's Exempt list until the legal process plays out.

Well, he had to have knee surgery in October last year and missed the rest of the season. So if he's skating suspensions, maybe nature is deciding to suspend him for the league.

Mentioned this in another post, but one plus in the Bye Week coming after Week 6 is that it gives Hoecht and Ogunjobi two full weeks in the building before they hit the field. It may allow both to hit the ground running in Week 8 with extra preparation.

He was used as essentially another Offensive Lineman on the field. I wouldn't want Josh to be looking his way on anything but his last read.

He's our Quarterback. When people speak of "weapons" on Offense, they're generally talking about the QB's weaponry - ie RB's, WR's, TE's. My apologies for not specifying that which I didn't think needed to be specified.

You'd think James Cook walked up to you and your family, stared you dead in the eyes, and then slapped your mother across the face. I just don't get the anger and multitude of demeaning posts about him. It's just business my dude. Like it or not, he was our best offensive weapon last season and likely will be this year too. I look forward to your posts when he wins us games this year, like he did last season.