colin

i agree with the implication (which i read as we would not have a chip if all that changed was we got mahomes instead of allen). i think mahomes is great, and an all timer. i think allen is better. the one game mahomes had on the big stage with poor protection (vs tb when his tackles got hurt) we saw him not make plays even though he had an all star roster of targets when he was running around. we expect allen to run around every couple snaps and make the big play. we are obviously not as good as the chiefs because we lost to them in the playoffs, but it's pretty simple: our D was like wet toilet paper. SF has a much better d than we do (at least in the super bowl vs our last game this season) but the folded too eventually because they were predictable and gassed and kc just called simple plays to beat them over and over again. to get over the hump we obv need a playmaker on O to emerge (davis is meh, but no davis is worse than having davis), and just find a way for the d to be like average in the playoffs.

trading the mahomes pick was obv a horrible move, but im convinced allen is better. in the TB super bowl, mahomes didn't have good protection and couldn't buy a play even with hill and kelce. once the OL faltered, so did he. allen makes plays with unblocked guys every sunday, and allen is the only guy bring the heat in the playoffs on this team. kc has had brilliant roster management and lots of luck and great coaching. our biggest issue is staying old and expensive on D, not to mention that aged and costly d folding so hard every playoffs.

kc won last night because san fran choked and made mistakes and kc didnt, it's is just that simple. the poor kick in the extra point, and the fool up field blocking while the punt returner was yelling peter, which was a gift wrapped 7 points was the game. obv kc has better coaching and a better qb and etc etc etc yadda yadda yadda. kc gets suffocated for the entire second half if idiot san fran adjusted their play calling, or more importantly didnt' make awful amateur errors. kc beat us because we had the ghost of aj klien starting (with a fresh rookie riding the pine, smart!), and they beat baltimore because playoff lamer choked and handed them 7 w a foolish fumble (and that fool wr got a 15 yarder and made up for it with a silly reach fumble short of the end zone). this is all exactly like new england. kc is winning tight games because they are better prepared and make fewer errors.

in the nfl, especially now, the qb is most important guy on the team. you can argue that great coaching and a decent back up will mean the qb1 is less valuable (like how the back up scored a near 100 yard drive for kc vs jax in the playoffs last season!) but for any non qb to get that award, the impact on winning of that non qb going down vs the qb doing down has to be stand out. so like, if hill drops is his team worse off than if tua drops? maybe, but hill clearly isn't as important to his team winning as lamar is for the ravens, or allen for us. my thing w lamar is that he is so not clutch. his back up nearly beat cinci 2 times last year, and lamar lays the same egg at the end of every playoffs. he's just too limited of a player.

i don't think it could possibly happen, but given where we are at lb and dl, it would be interesting to see the bills go to a 3-3 nickle base. we'd need a couple massive plugs at nose, and another big strong DE or two, but the upside would be we'd not have to platoon as many old over priced DLs all the time, and we'd have more room to be creative in the pass rush. im thinking it's all cyclical, and edge guys and off ball LBs have become super sought after at high prices in the nfl, so big strong lbs (say in the dorian williams mold, rather than some 1995 style DT that lines up 3 yards back) and massive space eating monsters in the guy are cheaper now. also, guys like groot and oliver are near ideal 3-4 ends.

he has a couple of well mentioned bad habits, but unless they persist over time we have to assume they can be corrected. he was super productive for us, and we had really good drives where we featured him. he might not be as "good" as a lot of guys (say 12? i dunno) but at the end of the day we need production. he's very productive. that's why knox kinda blows and kinkaid is great, dawson doesn't produce and Kinkaid does. that's also why diggs' contract is so bloody concerning (von miller too obv). in the case of stef, he is still really good over the last season, but his production late and particularly in the playoffs is cheeks. this is also why we'd like to keep floyd and or aj, they are productive albeit not consistently and clearly not game changing players. i think KC copied the rams model, when we kinda have to copy, where you focus on a few total super stars and rely on them, and then everyone else can get filled in by whoever performs, including rookies and cheaper FA players. KC even let a true super star (hill) go because they realized the cost of keeping him (30 a year!, like 25% more than we pay diggs but for a player is much more than 25% better IMO) vs what they get getting rid of him (a pick from miami, and all that juicy juicy cap space). our signing of miller and so on obv ended up hurting us, but i really think our biggest mistakes were in contracts we paid to extend guys we already had (diggs, knox, keeping poy and hyde a season too long, etc).

it's all quite cyclical, and defenses always catch up, so you really have to be able to do a few things to be a killer O. this is why i think we are going to draft (hopefully later) a real bruising power back. we are going to face nickle d's who want to crowd and body up on the wrs (frankly, that's the way you play to stop the bills), and having to tackle a big powerful ball carrier a bunch of times hits differently late in the 4th quarter.

brady was passing game coord at LSU, right? if he's worked well in that kind of a structure, then it's likely a good thing to replicate what he is comfortable with on our team. im not really sure why, but i feel like allen working closely with different people will make him better. he's the goat in terms of talent, but he's not had the highest level of guys to learn from and work with, so exposure to more should be fruitful.

wrestling has a very high number of participants in the USA, even on a per capita basis compared to most countries. it's analogues to weightlifting (the stuff the do in the olympics) in that it's super hard, has weight classes, requires insane work and requires/develops very very high level athletic skills/traits. they both also have weight classes, drug/doping history, and big asian and eastern euro dominance. They are both also close to but not quite much much more popular sports/activities. hundreds of millions around the world lift weights, do strength training, and most people see doing that as a good thing, but almost no one weightlifts. lots of people enjoy watching MMA, but no one really cares about wrestling (it's constantly at risk of being taken out of the olympics and such). mma is way more popular and relies on wrestling in a big way, BJJ has a much broader base of participants outside of organized school activity and is essentially a different version of wrestling/grappling. cross fit has people actually competing in weightlifting lifts, and has orders of magnitude more competitors and way way more growth. the down side of wrestling (similar to weightlifting) is that it is hard and brutal, unforgiving, involves weight cuts for young people, just destroys people's bodies, no one really cares about it unless they are involved in it somehow themselves, and in large part the culture turns off lots of kids. for a lot of kids involved in it, it's learning to swim through drowning, and it's really not fun if you can't win or are just getting trucked constantly. in eastern europe, they systematize it a lot more and teach young people skills so you don't end up having the slightly faster matured kids just over powering the slower to mature kids all the time and forcing them to quit. Judo has way more participants than wrestling, its another brutal sport, but lots of people are involved in programs and it seems like every man woman and child practices it in Japan. It's also a lonely individual sport that very few people care about if they don't do it, and most people don't even know who looks like a good wrestler unless they are suplexing and tossing someone making it obvious. it's also kinda diluted w folkstyle, free style, greco, and things like mma, sambo, bjj, and judo sort of divide the grappling world up too. i've always wondered if a sort of grappling decathlon type thing where people all compete in the different sports/rule sets wouldn't make it more interesting, but everyone who does one of the above tends to really want to specialize, so maybe not.

so do we get a comp pick for this?

i dunno if it is related or not, but statistically what stands out on the bills over the past few years (aside from josh, obv) is that the D is a dependable monster and diggs is a production machine. the thing is, both of those fall to total crap in the playoffs. kinda hard to say exactly why in all cases, but it's happened way too many times in a row for it to just be a random event. that kind/level of drop off is too much. based on that, if i had a no cost out o diggs, i'd take it, which is wild because i'd totall swap his contract to sign tee higgins, who just has never performed as well as diggs over the course of a given season. im just hoping he sorts it out and we add some talent at wr so our playoff offense doesn't come down to a sumping diggs catching a perfect bomb from 17, or number 16 butter fingering balls in the corner (or davis the prior year).

i think we will sign a vet Safety and a vet DL or two (likely more heavy on tackle) because there is no way mcclappy will roll with rooks in 2 DL positions and 2 S positions. i expect our first rounder, or our second rounder perhaps w a trade up, to be on a WR. i also expect another WR later on. i really think it's been proven that you can fill out a roster in a draft given the players we are losing are much closer to replacement level than studs, if we can get a bit of juice out of the DL and not completely flop at safety, our D should be about what it was last year, but some wr talent and kinkaid and cook and shakir growing will make our O pretty much the best.

miller had his best game vs kc, and we have only like 4 dl on contract next season. as much as i think we might want to move on, i think there is a chance he comes back to form next season and the front office won't give up on him.

to me the question is: would you sign diggs today for what he would cost and what you know about him, or would you not? im really not sure how much his antics play into his value in the team, but i'd suspect at this point it's a slight negative, if it registers at all. he's been basically cheeks in the second half of every season, and just about every playoff. he isn't getting double teamed and he really doesn't make players round him better. we will know who we drafted, and have some idea of who will be signed come june 1st, so i suppose there is a decent shot we move on from him, but i think we trade up for a real star wr, and draft a wr later, and keep diggs for one last shot. diggs cook kinkaid, shakir, allen and some top flight rookie wr along w the line we have is easily the best offensive roster in buffalo since the kelly years, and light fools up.

im under the impression that diggs and knox have unworkable contracts, and von has a nearly unworkable one (at least for the upcoming season). i'd expect to get rid of tre, hope von improves, ride diggs and knox due to contract (knox is likely gonezo as soon as a window opens tho). i think it is 50/50 on morse, he's a good player but old and expensive and if bates is nearly as good it's not a stretch to just ride w "the master" lol. poyer im thinking the keep on a small contract just because mcd is allergic to a young D (pause, lol, funny post this is!). reflecting on the first post in this thread -- we have a really old team and the O isn't that old at all (morse, dawkins, 28 who's leaving, diggs is like just 30), so as we all know, the d is geriatric. imo this is a big part of why our d breaks down horribly at the end of every flipping year in the playoffs. re staffing the d w some cheaper younger guys should leave us absolutely no worse off come the divisional round, and maybe better.

i keep thinking we make a fairly big trade up for the wr we want. i expect OTs and QBs to get run on, with a few cbs in for good measure, and maybe someone the FO has ranked as like 5-10 at wr drops to like 15-20, so they throw some picks out to get him.

i think this is a result of our talent and our scheme/coaching. we have stone handed clowns in knox an davis getting lots of passes, and we have late in the year changes w the new oc and a complicated system, so guys have to think and react a bit more than in say a shanny system where the guy goes to the one spot and gets a ball at one exact time. i suppose the coaches could also like train these guys to catch better, but at some point it's set in stone and doesn't have much room. davis and knox are both just not natural pass catchers. cook just has a terrible habit of not looking the ball in.

id take ridley at 10 for next year over a long term 22+ a year deal for higgins.

does hill really get 30 a year? these numbers are bananas, B A N A N A S

not me, im going to detract and with them defeat!

imo if mcd misses the playoffs next year, someone like johnson could come in ala dungy going to indy w manning and just be gift wrapped a race car ready to run. we should be past our biggest cap hurdle next season, and will have a bunch of new young talent and less heavy contracts. i don't think it's that likely tho, because mcd has shown he should be able to get decent performance on d from lack luster talent through the reg season, so any improvement on O and we are basically a better team next season than this season.

rogers better hope wilson doesn't find his mom's number somewhere. the tables can turn quick when young zach is in the cut. i will say, i thought saleh was a blow hard fake media guy (reminded me of how ditka turned out to really be), so im not shocked what was reported in the story. worrying about the giants getting better coverage, bad reports, it's all pretty pathetic.

lol, my bad!

i dunno if im missing something here, but brady was OC in the nfl before, and babbich has been dc on two different teams before coming here. neither of these guys are rookies at their new job. i'd contrast this to the start of 2023, where dorsey really was a rookie OC, and our hc was also our DC.

andy has a philosophy of killer qb and oline above all, and he's done that. he poured picks and signed to big fat contracts o linemen. he simply won't field a team without premier talent on the oline. mc d, as close as i can tell, wants qb (got that) and DL and dbs above all. we have had mostly hits on the DB side, but our safety super value is over and the guys aged out. white getting hurt at corner doesn't help there, and us getting elam while kc got mcduffie really stinks, we've had pretty great db play throughout. the DL has been another story. so many picks and fa contracts to replacement clowns, or slightly above who get platooned and replaced w junk far too often. von getting hurt took out the player who mighta gotten us over in 2021 (before we signed him) and maybe even in 2022 (when cinci trucked us). it's really close, but kc has hit on more draft picks than we have, misses on basham, kinda misses on aj and groot, and elam, means we had to go sign floyd and von, and trade for douglas.