mannc

I keep thinking of Dexter Lawrence…

I have no doubt that a lot of "experts" will pick the Jets or Dolphins to win the division in 2023, assuming they are able to stabilize their QB situations. I think it will be good for the Bills to be considered an underdog again.

Guys who are asked to lose or gain weight after they are drafted are by definition “tweeners”.

Parcels believes in drafting big bodies; Beane drafts tweeners like ‘lil Ed and Epenesa. I agree. The run schemes were awful. RBs were not the problem. Cook looked good in the second half of the season.

Which also means we can't expect anything from Von Miller until 2024, when he'll be 35.

I don't know if you've heard, but Von Miller is turning 34 in a month and tore his ACL for the second time. There's a pretty good chance he never plays again. Did you see how Tre White (who is 8 years younger) looked coming off his ACL surgery? It would be downright delusional to expect anything from Miller in 2023, just like all the OBJ hype this year.

Certainly possible

I think it’s both. Have to say, though, Beane looked very defensive in his presser. He’s definitely feeling some pressure, and rightfully so.

Agreed. Chiefs don't match up well with them either. I expect the Bengals to smash the Chiefs on Sunday.

How do you think this team gets past the Bengals and Chiefs next year (not to mention the Jets and Dolphins)? Do you thinks McDermott will get smarter? That Dorsey will figure out how to scheme up a running game and short passing plays? That Beane will suddenly draft a bunch of plug and play offensive linemen? Epenesa and Basham somehow leap from replacement level players to stars?

You can call it reaching; I just call it poor drafting.

That's an odd way to look at it. Given that the Bills have their own superstar QB, don't you want a coaching staff and GM who will figure out a way to beat the Chiefs and Bengals instead of coming up short every time? Sounds like you're good with an early playoff exit every year, since those other QBs are really good...

Sorry, but when your franchise has one of the three true franchise quarterbacks in football, standards are a little higher than in the Trent Edwards/JP Losman years...

And is there any question that the Monday Night Bengals game would have ended the same way (or even worse) if the game had been played to its conclusion?

Ok

Brady wasn’t traded; the Bucs got him for “free”, so that’s obviously not what I was talking about. And of course the Wilson and Watson trades have been nothing short of a catastrophe for their teams. And the Rams look like they might be the worst team in the league next year, and for years to come.

These sorts of trades haven’t worked out too well recently for the teams acquiring the big name QB…

I don't know if any of that is true; I never heard about it pre-draft, but of course Simmons had an ACL injury that hurt his draft status. What I do know is that both are now game-wreckers and the next game lil' Ed changes will be his first.

A dome team

I just don’t know how you take an undersized, small conference guy like Oliver over a monster like Dexter Lawrence, who was the centerpiece of a championship defense at Clemson. It points to a serious flaw in the Bills’ scouting process and evaluation…

The Bills have the rarest and most precious asset in today’s NFL: A certified franchise quarterback, a guy who can win you games when everything else is going wrong. Beane of course deserves credit for drafting Josh Allen (and he probably would have been fired by now if he had not) but from that day forward, he and McDermott should be judged by one standard: How well have they leveraged this most precious asset? Unfortunately, the answer is “poorly”. Instead of loading up the offense to take advantage of JA, they have used most of their premium picks (and FA $) on a defense that still can’t slow down good offenses. The real bottom line is this: With Mahomes, the Chiefs have won a Super Bowl and reached the AFCC every year. The Bengals with two years of prime Burrow have reached the Super Bowl and at least the AFCC game this year. With three years of prime JA, we’ve reached one AFCC in which we were blown out. That represents a huge failure by the FO and the HC. How are these same guys going to turn that around? I have no idea…

I couldn’t care less. Oliver is a prime example of Beane drafting a JAG when difference-makers were available. We’ll have no problem replacing his “production”.

This team is not progressing. Other teams in the AFCE and the conference are. Poor drafting is catching up with the Bills; they are drafting replacement level guys, while our competition is drafting studs. Without Josh Allen, this team is a bottom feeder, battling it out with Houston. Of course, without Josh, Beane and McDermott are unemployed…

Chase is an OJ Simpson-level athlete. No CB in the league is going to make that tackle, in that much space.

He had zero chance to make that tackle on Chase in the open field.