Cash

To the bolded: FWIW, Brandon Beane specifically called out CB as a positional need after drafting Igbinosun. And for the record, I think he had a point in the sense of need from a bottom-up view rather than top-down. By which I mean, in Beane's view our pre-draft depth chart had the biggest risk of 1 injury losing us the game outright - a la Benford->Elam two years ago. I think the more common view of need is "which starter needs to become a backup?" But I think Beane, rightly or wrongly, was thinking more along the lines of "which rookie will guarantee that I boot an unplayable guy off the gameday roster?" In general: I think you both have some really good points and this is a great discussion thus far. My two cents: First, on a macro level getting low impact from 3 straight years of rounds 1-2 is a bad look. But I think it's way too small a sample size to draw any meaningful conclusions. Especially since out of the 3 classes, right now we've only got Year 2 data on one of them, and by both anecdotal accounts and statistical analysis the biggest jump is from Year 1 to 2. And I would argue that at least 2 of the 4 guys we have any data on were severely impacted by injury. IMO, Hairston was good when healthy last year; and Coleman was contributing positively as a rookie pre-injury, then came back a much less effective player. I also think there's a case that Bishop would've developed much sooner if he hadn't missed all of TC with injury - but ultimately as things actually played out, Bishop was simply too bad to put on the field for most of his rookie season. I don't think it's actually productive at any level for a guy to play at that stage. Rather than taking his lumps and learning from his mistakes, he's just losing all confidence because he's getting beat so badly. So Bishop has to count as a zero for this discussion, regardless of the cause. And Sanders has to count as a zero as well. I get that he spent a lot of last year playing out of position due to other people's injuries, but... whether at DT or DE, I don't think I ever once saw him make a play. I'm not giving up on him, but he was an absolute zero to my untrained eyes last year. I also think talent issue vs development issue is too black-and-white. The two can easily go hand in hand. If guys have NFL talent but aren't NFL ready, some of that is on the learner, and some of that is on the teacher - which in this case is the whole organization, not just their positional coach. A better teacher, or a better fit between teacher and learner, can absolutely accelerate or decelerate a rookie's learning process. I'm fairly confident that in some cases, it can also make or break a guy, but that's impossible to prove so I don't bother to argue it. With all that said, I can easily envision a world where 3/4 of Coleman/Bishop/Hairston/Sanders look good this year and continue on that trajectory in 2027. Let's go a step further and suppose that we get very little production out of both Parker and Igbinosun this year, but at least one of them is a quality starter-level player in 2027. In that scenario, I wouldn't really care that we got nothing out them as rookies, because hitting 4 out of 6 picks between 30-62 would be totally worth it. Especially since all but one are at premium positions. Even if both guys this year were total busts, getting 3 quality starters, with 2 at premium positions, would be pretty decent. (Bishop, to me, has proved himself as at least a quality starter after last year, so I'm assuming he's one of the 3 no matter what.)

Not ideal.

“How do you feel about the depth behind McGovern?"

By all accounts, Joe is firmly 3rd string at this point. Seems like he’s a special teams only player in this defense. New Matakevich as a best case I guess.

Agreed except for Hancock. As far as I’ve read, he’s only been playing NCB in camp. With Alford starting at NCB, you need at least one more outside corner on the bench.

Strong agree. I think the concept of the helmet is pretty good for an alternate. Trying to be Rams, Vikings, or Eagles style where the helmet is part of the logo rather than just having a picture of the logo on the helmet. But having the lines meet in the back looks really bad.

3%, not 10%. But still - adds up to a lot!

Same. Before he started beating us in the playoffs, I was very in on Mahomes. And I still don’t really hate him. Our guy excluded, Mahomes is by far the coolest/funnest QB to watch… probably ever. Lamar is pretty cool to watch too, but mostly as a runner. His passing is quite good but also kind of perfunctory at times. Mahomes is out there side-arming, throwing no look passes, throwing lefty passes, etc. When we’re not playing him, Mahomes is a joy to watch.

Great clip, thanks for posting! Barr came off great - funny, engaging, really enjoyed his take.

i agree with all of this, except the first bit. I’ve heard a lot of people both here and IRL give McD tons of credit for that culture building. Both from folks who wanted him gone and from folks who hated the firing.

Yeah, regarding the Cooks catch/INT, IMO 2 things are true: That was a tough catch That was a catch I expect an NFL WR to make on a routine basis Fairly similar to Kincaid's non-catch to end our 2024 season. A difficult catch, but one I would expect a professional pass-catcher to make. Note that I am not describing either play as a drop, because I don't think that's true of either case. I'm a little more bullish on the prospect of bringing back Cooks, but I'm closer to Shaw's position than I am to the "we should definitely bring him back" cadre. For sure if anyone gets hurt, or if Palmer and/or Coleman totally suck. I wouldn't mind a scenario where the Bills keep 7 WRs on the 53 with Cooks as the 7th guy. Not sure if the Bills will consider that in play or not - it can be done roster-wise, but not super easily. BTW, the recent Athletic article about it really read to me like Cooks' agent trying to drum up something more than a vet min contract.

I mean no offense, but this seems like a complaint in search of a reason. When you pick a guy who hasn’t won a Super Bowl over guys who have, of course you’re going to make some qualifications to justify that pick. It’s a serious compliment that our guy got listed at #1 without having even made a Super Bowl.

Couldn’t agree more. Don’t like it? Take care of the ball near the goal line. Reaching for a score is high-risk, high-reward.

I agree, and that’s coming from a major RJ hater back in the day. I was an active participator in the RJ vs Flutie flame wars at the time, and I was one of the many a-holes on the Flutie side. (Not interested in reopening the debate, RJ backers - and you know who you are.) I still broadly stand by my takes from back then (but not the vitriol they were delivered with), which is to say that I still maintain that RJ sucked. But he did legitimately make plays sometimes, and did legitimately win games sometimes. He would’ve been a good backup if he wasn’t such a walking injury. It’s fair to put him in a conversation for worst ROI or even most damaging, but not worst overall. Not even CLOSE. As for worst overall, I voted Peterman and agree with Kirby’s Krusade that Peterman is the correct answer. I do think the BJH counterargument is intriguing, but honestly? If he was named the starter like Peterman was, he would’ve studied the playbook and paid attention in meetings and whatnot. And - more importantly - he was still better in-game than Peterman, despite neither studying the playbook nor getting first-team reps in practice. That’s really damning for Peterman. I think it’s fair to say that BJH should be more embarrassed by his Bills’ performance and career, and also fair to say that BJH should be ashamed and Peterman should not be. But I think the poll question boils down to. “Whose performance in real NFL games was the worst?” And if that’s the question, the answer is Peterman.

Hard disagree, even though I expect Clayton to be out of the league once his international eligibility runs out. Jordan Mailota has proved that it’s *possible* for these freakish athletes with no experience to succeed in the NFL. Still very unlikely, but absolutely worth a long shot in the late 7th or as UDFA. In Clayton’s case, my worthless armchair analysis is that 1) I don’t think last year’s coaching staff did him many favors - again, why did it take so long to try him at various positions? He has no muscle memories to unlearn; you might as well see how he looks on either side of the ball. And more importantly 2) While Clayton has freakish NFL-level athleticism, he probably doesn’t also have freakish NFL-level motivation, and without that the athleticism just isn’t enough.