dave mcbride

You’re forgetting the first round pick, who turned out to be a multi-time all pro.

The Tyler Bass struggles continue The Bills might have a brewing problem with kicker Tyler Bass. Against the Steelers, Bass nailed all three of his attempts, which was a much-needed confidence boost, even if the attempts were only from 27, 26 and 31. The internal hope had to be that it was the start of Bass turning it around as they near the regular season. Things have not gone according to plan. Over the last two practices, Bass has made 8 of his 14 attempts in team drills, which is not ideal but doesn’t sound as bad as when you dig deeper into those numbers. Bass went a perfect 3-for-3 from under 35 yards, with hits from 33, 28 and 33 yards out. But when Bass tried from 40 yards or longer, he was only 5-of-11. He went 3-of-6 on those kicks on Tuesday and 2-of-5 on Wednesday. The makes were from 43, 47, 44, 40 and 48 yards. The misses were from 47, 47, 44, 42, 42 and 40 yards. Bass did not attempt a single field goal that was at least 50 yards long. On both days, general manager Brandon Beane went on the field around 30-40 yards directly behind Bass to get a good view of each kick. The struggles have not been new, having persisted most of training camp. And now only two weeks out of the regular season, the Bills have the dilemma of what to do with a struggling kicker who has a dead cap hit of $4.32 million this year if they cut him, with an extra $3 plus million in dead cap added to 2025 if that’s the route they take. The Bills will likely have to keep Bass because of his contract. But with all these struggles, unless things change, don’t be surprised if they prioritize signing a kicker to the practice squad in a week. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5715301/2024/08/21/buffalo-bills-practice-cole-bishop-mike-edwards-tyler-bass/

Meh ... Allen had a first-quarter rating of 78.0 last season and a third-quarter rating of 75.8 in 2022. Everyone has some variation across quarters. Seems like a weak basis to criticize him. I go back to the terrible defenses and head coaching he's had to suffer through. Brandon Staley is an idiot as a head coach. https://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2023/12/14/24000764/brandon-staley-chargers-blown-leads-retrospective

I think it’s the team he has been on more than anything else. Bad head coaching and bad defense has been the biggest determinant in people’s takes on him.

no, none of the ones just announced are.

None of these new injuries are muscle injuries.

Yes, agreed. A lot of people don't realize it, but turf toe is actually a torn ligament in the toe. It's a bad injury because you use your toes for basically everything involving forward/lateral/backward movement and jumping.

This is what is lurking in my mind: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/pit/2012.htm https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/nor/2014.htm https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/gnb/2006.htm Point is, fallow years happen to teams who succeed over long stretches. The Brady-era Pats are definitely the exception.

I hope you're right, but I think the Fins finally put it together and win 11 or 12 games. They are not without weaknesses, but by and large they have too much talent, sadly. I don't know what to think of the Jets, but if Rogers is healthy and at least pretty good, I think the Bills wind up in 3rd place. As I said above, the Bills' defensive talent level now is pretty sobering. I can't see NE winning more than 4-5 games max.

I honestly think the Seahawks are a potential candidate for first overall pick. I can't help but think that Geno is going to turn back into a pumpkin at some point, and they have sack magnet/turnover machine Sam Howell as his backup. Not a good situation, and Carroll, who was a great coach, covered up a lot of deficiencies. Their defense was a disaster last season.

I don't buy that. They were 2nd and 4th in points allowed in 2022 and 2023, and 6th and 9th in yards allowed. They were fourth in turnovers forced in 2022 and third in 2023. Those are elite numbers. But the personnel now is very average and the alarmingly bad safety situation is going to really expose the CBs. The Bills under McDermott have excelled at stopping big plays. I predict that ends this season because of the problems on the back end combined with pretty average pass rush talent.

I hope they go 14-3, of course, but I can't help but think we're in for a fallow rebuilding year and grind it out to 9-8, akin to some of those Brees and Roethlisberger years for the Saints/Steelers. I think the defense is going to disappoint and cost the team a number of games. The talent on the D now is very, very average.

Non Bills 1. Giants win 10 or 11 games and make the playoffs, helped by an absolutely ferocious pass rush, a decent year from Daniel Jones, and Malik Nabors winning the rookie of the year award. 2. Cincinnati is the AFC champ. 3. Dolphins win the AFC East. 4. Green Bay is the NFC champ. 5. New England, Seattle, and the Raiders battle it out for the top overall pick. 6. Sam Darnold, finally in a good offense, puts up strong numbers and the Vikings battle legitimately for a wild card slot. Bills 1. Go 9-8 and fans come to realize that this really is a rebuilding year and not a reset year -- made evident recently by the fact that they didn't try to sign Simmons despite a pretty dire safety situation. Whether they make the playoffs depends entirely on forces outside their control, but 9-8 is usually on the outside looking in. 2. Dalton Kincaid puts up 1,000+ yards and lives up to the hype. 3. Von Miller has a max of five sacks. 4. The defense, whose overall talent is now very average, sinks to the middle of the pack/slightly below (16-21 range for ranking) after regularly being in the top ten. It costs them multiple games. 5. Curtis Samuel proves that he's a good player who just needed a good QB and puts up Percy Harvin year three-type numbers. 6. Special teams continue to be a problem.

I see your point, but I was referring to the term "best receiver." Shakhir without question is a better player than Gabe Davis right now not factoring in specific WR sub-position. Davis was useless down the stretch in 2023.

You seem to have it in for him for whatever reason (given how much you post about him), which is ... interesting to me. But whatever. I stand by what I said. He's fine. He's better than Dorsey was for the Bills, and we'll see about Brady (who also was "bad" -- by your standards -- when he had a bad QB playing for him in Carolina). It's all about Josh Allen anyway.

I honestly don't have a dog in this fight, but I think Daboll is fine. Genius? Certainly not. But he's had to deal with an astoundingly outsized share of games helmed by terrible QBs. For instance, with a middle-of-the-road mediocre qb who played all season along with a mediocre offense overall in 2022, the Giants finished smack dab in the middle of the pack offensively. Bottom line: he's a decent-enough offensive coach (honestly, probably smarter than most, although smarts only get you so far) who, if given a good qb, can deliver good results. And with a bad QB/offensive roster, bad results. Like almost every other offensive coach in the league.

By the latter part of 2023, Shakhir was a significantly better receiver than Davis, so they didn’t lose their top two receivers.

“Perceived” context? C’mon. Actually look at the qbs he had to work with and come back to me. And also look at at the unit he had to work with in the first half of the 2018 season. In the first ten games, he had an incredibly raw Josh Allen for 4.5 of them and Peterman et al for the rest.

You keep bringing up the fact that Daboll was fired three times as a coordinator without mentioning once who his quarterbacks were in those years. I’ll keep it simple—over a three-job stretch, I suspect that there is no OC in NFL history who was cursed with such a terrible crew of quarterbacks. OCs too often get fired for results, not for their skills, and if the players are terrible, they take the fall.

Pegula is clueless.

Reading Graham’s sad explainer tweets and factoring in that he (as a reporter) is DEEP in the hip pocket (because of access reasons) of a mostly clueless owner who just happens to have lucked into a generational talent at QB tells you all you need to know. Just crappy stuff.

Oh jeez. Terry P, stay the F away from Josh Allen. And save us your “executive” pablum. My god.

You are absolutely right about that game. And over the years in the Rivers era it felt like they lost a dozen or so games they should have won because of kicking failures. In the Philly game this year - the one where Elliott kicked the 58 yarder in the wind and rain to tie the game — pat mcafee said before the game that all of bass’s practice kicks from 55 yards out in pre-game were falling 5-10 short of the goal post and that bills fans should not expect to see any long kicks. He is a PROBLEM.

When he was healthy in his first couple of seasons, he looked every bit as good as early years-OBJ and Mike Evans. In this game -- https://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/201601030buf.htm -- he essentially handed Revis Island precise directions to the proverbial glue factory. He was uncoverable in that game and was the best player on the field by a LOT. He cost the Jets the playoffs (along with a classic Fitzpick to Leodis in the EZ late in the 4th).

He actually had 11 TDs in his rookie season (two rushing TDs). He also had 956 yards from scrimmage in his second season because he had 14 carries for 96 yards (6.9 yards per rushing attempt). He was legit good in his first years, and in both of those seasons he had to share the ball with a lot of other high-volume targets: Diontae Johnson (both seasons), Ju Ju (2020), Najee Harris (2021), Ebron (2020), and Freiermuth (2021).