dave mcbride

Apologies for the overly complicated sentence - I meant to imply that I'm not going to argue that an elite receiver is less valuable than an elite RB.

You'll get no argument from me that an elite receiver is less valuable than an elite RB! Just adding a little nuance.

My gut tells me that the Bengals win the North. I just feel like they were on the wrong end of too many close losses last year (I mean, just look at their losses: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/cin/2024.htm)and will flip the script this year. Their offense is going to be tough for any opponent to handle, and Burrow with that receiver combo is just too good.

Yards per target is a better gage because incompleted passes are effectively the same as run stuffs. Shakir averaged 8.2 yards per target: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/S/ShakKh00.htm. Cook averaged 6.8 yards per target on 38 targets. Anyway, it's not as simple as that. There are more turnovers in the passing game (INTs plus strip sacks) than in the running game, so the latter is safer, and if you can't run the ball effectively (4.4 ypc or so) the passing game will absolutely suffer.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6582299/2025/09/02/buffalo-bills-week-1-joey-bosa-cornerback-keon-coleman/ All eyes on cornerback There isn’t a bigger uncertainty than what’s going on with the Bills’ boundary cornerbacks. The headliner is Tre’Davious White, the team’s No. 2 cornerback, as he rehabs from an injury that the Bills are being primarily tight-lipped about. White’s place in the starting lineup to begin the year was secured when rookie first-round pick Maxwell Hairston suffered an LCL sprain that landed him on Injured Reserve to begin the year. Making it even more complicated than just White’s and Hairston’s injuries, top cornerback Christian Benford hasn’t practiced since Aug. 21. That includes the team’s only session last week. However, unlike White, Benford was seen doing some work on the side with the strength and conditioning staff. In the playoffs, the Bills saw what not having Benford could do to their defense. Considering he leveled up his game during the summer, potentially not having him to start the season — on top of the injuries to White and Hairston — could be a massive blow. While it looks a bit bleak at the moment, the fact that Benford did something on the sidelines during practice last week should be seen as a positive. Having been burned by injuries in the past, the Bills have been extremely cautious when it comes to having their players ready to play when they’re needed the most. Especially when they have ample time ahead of a game that counts toward their standings, most 50-50 calls for practice with key players will result in keeping them off the field. Benford may have been good enough to practice on Wednesday. There’s a chance the Bills may have just wanted to put him in bubble wrap ahead of the far more important three days of practice leading up to the Ravens game than risk one practice. When you add in the opponent, all the mystery around White for Week 1, on top of the questions at safety, Benford instantly becomes their most important player on defense. The outlook without Benford and White means two of Ja’Marcus Ingram, sixth-round rookie Dorian Strong or practice squad veteran Dane Jackson would be the starters against Lamar Jackson and company. If Benford can play, it cuts the field in half due to his exceptional talent, and the Bills can then strategize to provide ample support to whoever is on the other side through their usual zone strategies. If White isn’t ready to play, who might get the start at the other boundary spot? The decision likely comes down to either Ingram or Strong. On one hand, Ingram has some game experience and made a pair of big plays last season in Miami. Though he’s been in a battle for a roster spot all summer, and until recently, it looked like his spot was instead going to go to Jackson. It wouldn’t be surprising if the Bills went with Strong in the starting lineup, as it seemed he had separated from Ingram and Jackson in the bubble conversation over the last couple of weeks. Strong hasn’t been perfect, but he does at least provide some ceiling plays that Ingram didn’t show enough of during camp. On top of that, one of Strong’s strengths in college was his ability as a run defender from the boundary, which, as even casual observers know, will be needed in droves against the run-centric Ravens. Regardless of who plays, the Bills know they have their hands full in a game projected to yield the highest point total of all the Week 1 games.

https://www.nfl.com/news/top-100-players-of-2025-nos-10-1 the link.

“They lost because they scored less” is tautological. You are not isolating a cause.

He played with an injury all year last year, but that appears to be in the past now. He is only 29, and big DTs often play well into their 30s: https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/kenny-clark-plans-to-prove-what-kind-of-player-he-is-after-playing-through-injury-in-2024

They did lose because of the drop, but making the catch wouldn’t have guaranteed a Ravens victory. I get that. However, the drop did guarantee a loss.

How many more do they have to cut at this point?

For a UDFA, he has had a good career: 7 years and with starts in every one of them. He just turned 30, so while he’s no spring chicken in NFL terms, he’s not THAT old. He played in 13 games and started two for a very good Denver defense last season.

My guess is that it’s nowhere close to $32 million per in reality.

Agreed, but I do think it’s a bad matchup for the Bills. The Ravens kinda dominated them in the playoff game and lost due to turnovers and an unbelievable drop, and they slaughtered them in the regular season. I certainly think the Bills can win, but if I had to pick a winner straight up, I feel like I’d be foolish not to lean toward Baltimore. Home field will help.

Now that it’s so easy to transfer, I expect most of the excellent players to move to bigger schools midway through.

The Bills sat Spikes there to remind him that he’ll always be a Bengal.

He was wildly productive with the Raiders too. It wasn't just Rodgers. I'm also not being critical of Beane; I understand why he'd say he really wanted Cooper after he obtained Cooper. What's he supposed to say? I would have done precisely the same. But in no world was Cooper a better solution than Adams, a multi-time first team all pro. I get why it didn't happen, of course.

I should be clearer: this is more a meta discussion about what it means to go all in. To do that, you have to be willing to pay a high price. For example, the Ravens traded second and fifth round picks plus AJ Klein to the Bears for Roquan Smith. To be sure, they haven’t won a SB with him, but they became a better team immediately and have not regretted the trade for a moment. He’s truly elite -- first team all-pro in all three of his seasons with the Ravens. Adams was simply the best WR available for a WR-starved offense last season, and I suspect that if the price were right, Adams would have been fine playing with arguably the best QB in the NFL on a dominant team. And at the risk of sounding like a broken record, Adams was and is SIGNIFICANTLY better than Cooper. I am NOT saying that this was the likely outcome or that the Bills were on even terms relative to the Jets. It’s more food for thought. But at least in terms of draft ammo and willingness on the part of the receiver, I believe they could have done it. The tricky part is the cap, and that’s where the Bills were kinda screwed. So maybe it wasn’t viable from that perspective.

The Bills could have offered more: a second and a 4th, for instance. Or maybe their first (unlikely) or even their 2026 first. So it’s not as if they couldn’t outbid what the Jets offered. They just chose not to, which I get. Again, I keep coming back to the fact that Adams was the most productive receiver in the league over the last five games of the season, and for a bad team.

I get all of that and I don’t think I’m oversimplifying. The issue I keep coming back to is that the Bills settled for a significantly worse player in a SB-window season where the glaring hole was WR. But maybe it was never doable given the Bills’ cap situation.

No one cared because it was the Jets, but Adams was GREAT late last season. In the final five games of the season, he had 36 receptions, 510 yards, and 6 TDs. Extrapolated over 17 games, that's 122 receptions, 1,734 yards, and 20 TDs. Agreed, and he was more than productive -- he was really good still.

We don't know yet, so let's wait and see.

The D and C had a story about it. Also, OF COURSE Beane is going to say that afterward. But he's no dummy - and there's no way he could believe that Cooper was a better solution to the Bills' WR problems than Adams. To reiterate, Adams is clearly the better player. It's not debatable. Yeah, I realize that. I was just wondering whether their was a financial path to obtaining Adams. Maybe not, and I'm not one of those people who believe the cap is a fiction (it isn't). Ultimately, I was just thinking about what the eventual outcome would have been with Adams playing the X rather than Cooper. I think they would have beaten KC.

Prior to the Tampa SB, KC lost both their starting tackles late in the AFC championship game vs the Bills when it was already out of hand. The line was playing well before that.

The Bills were in on the trade and discussed it with the Raiders, so it was a possibility, at least in theory. And Adams did not have a good relationship with the Raiders. There were reports that they thought he was using his injury to get out and he complained about the offense too. Most importantly, he was NOT happy about them dumping Derek Carr - the reason why he chose to go to Vegas in the first place: https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/las-vegas-davante-adams-los-angeles-rams-sean-mcvay.

Sure, but Adams didn't have total control over his destination and moreover he presumably wanted to win a championship. The issue is that he's a better player, and the Bills settled for the lesser player. Should they have gone all out given that they were clearly in a SB window? I realize that it may have been too difficult from a financial standpoint.