Cash

You seem a bit confused. Are you aware that all of your sternly-worded letters on here do not, in fact, go straight to the Buffalo Bills organization? Reading the last couple pages of this thread, I gotta tell ya: You come across as a really angry dude who is taking out his frustration on other posters. My impression is that you’re mad that other people are happy. Just FYI. Go Bills!

Too gritty, or not gritty enough?

When was the last time we cut a 5th-rounder in his rookie year? I can't think of one off the top of my head. Hardy was a 6th rounder last year and did clear waivers, which was a mild surprise to me. The year before, 7th rounders Alex Austin and Nick Broecker both got claimed when we cut them and are still rostered by those teams. In 2022, 6th rounder Luke Tenuta got claimed. In 2021, 6th rounder Rachad Wildgoose and 7th rounder Jack Anderson both cleared waivers, but then both were poached off our practice squad during the 2021 season. In 2020 & 2019, I don't think we waived any drafted rookies. The closest is 2020 5th rounder Jake Fromm, who made the team in 2020 but was cut the following year and signed to the PS. Of note, he was poached by the Giants later that season. So, going back through 6 years of drafts, we've cut 3 6th rounders and 3 7th rounders, and 5/6 were snapped up by other teams before end of the regular season. I think it's a pretty safe bet that Hancock either makes the team out of camp, gets put on IR, or is not a Buffalo Bill in 2026.

Thanks, Paul. Yeah, Moore clearly isn't "that good", and if he was, we wouldn't be able to afford him. And that's fine. What he is, is insurance against another Texans game from last year, where Allen completed 9 passes and it looked like our WRs were a freshman team playing against varsity DBs. Put another way: Before the Moore signing, we were guaranteed to have at least 1 WR make the team who was such a question mark that he might be totally worthless. Basically Shavers, Prather, or Shenault. But now, if one of those guys winds up making the team, I'll feel a lot better about it. Because it will mean he beat out a real NFL WR in training camp, and thus is hopefully a real NFL WR himself.

Only problem there is that 5th round picks usually don't clear waivers. If it does come down to Hancock vs Lewis and Lewis wins, that probably means bye-bye to Hancock.

Off the dome, didn't Spencer Brown move into the starting lineup around the middle of his rookie year? Maybe at the bye week or something? Matt Milano is another one, mid/late in his rookie year. In general, I think the team philosophy across the board is that guys compete for jobs, and once someone wins, it's "his" job... until it isn't. For example, Beane post-draft talking about what Hairston might do if he wins the starting job across from Benford. He wasn't pretending that Benford will have to win a starting job in camp the way I've seen some NFL coaches or GMs do. Honestly, I think the Bills' take is a good middle ground. I hate the performative nonsense of coaches pretending their guys with 8-figure contracts are on the same level as rookie UDFAs, even if I get the idea behind it. On the other end, I still remember Doug Whaley declaring Sammy Watkins and Cyrus Kouandjio "starters off the bus" in his post-draft presser. Too much overconfidence and entitlement there.

If you buy the idea that Jimmy Haslam mandated the Shedeur pick, it might actually wind up rigged in Sanders' favor.

Regular season, Ravens. Playoffs, Chiefs.

Wasn’t part of the issue how little practice time they were able to get that week? It looked like he hadn’t had a chance to practice at QB at all. I don’t think he was ever asked to take a snap under center, for example. I was watching with a Saints fan, and we enjoyed the easy win, but man that was ugly to watch. It was also during the “Taysom Hill as full-time QB” experiment. Hill was AWFUL in that game, but he was able to complete a few passes. That gave the Saints an insurmountable advantage at QB.

It was Gary Trent Jr on the Bucks. I saw it live as well. Absolutely brutal. I was half expecting something like that, because the Bucks’ current coach (Doc Rivers) is known for choke jobs in the playoffs. Usually in the form of blowing 3-1 leads in 7 game series. Like many here, I’m very interested in Forrest. I can’t say I’ve ever seen him play, so it’s mostly vibes-based. But I’d never seen Poyer or Hyde play when we signed them, and Poyer in particular was very unheralded at the time, and his first Bills contract reflected that. I’m also very high on Hancock, and again, it’s mostly vibes-based. A 3-year starter on a loaded national championship team, who moved around a ton and did whatever needed to be done? Sign me up. I don’t expect a lot this year, but I love him as a candidate to start at safety down the road. Or maybe nickel corner when Taron Johnson ages out of the role.

I think you meant Coleman at Z (and I agree). X = split end Y = slot Z = flanker It's odd how much better I feel about the WR room after the Moore signing, because Moore isn't anyone special. But he is a real NFL player, who has earned playing time and targets in all 4 years of being in the league, and he seems to be a good complementary fit to what we already have. I'll be surprised if Moore has a breakout year, but it's good to know we're not 1 injury away from big Tyrell Shavers snaps. No disrespect to Shavers, btw - I like him a lot. But guys like him are basically lotto tickets. It's good to have some lotto tickets in camp and on the practice squad, but having only 4 non-lotto-ticket WRs was really worrying to me. I'm more optimistic on the Moore signing than either MVS or Claypool last year. Claypool was already on his way to playing himself out of the league after a promising rookie year. When the 2023 Bears don't think you can play WR, it's gonna be really tough to turn that ship around. MVS was a different story, but not much better. We'd all seen him drop a ton of passes from Mahomes the year before - except in the playoffs. We all knew who MVS was, and that's a subpar player who can sometimes make a big play if given enough opportunities. That didn't work out at all for us, I think partially because he was only ever going to get a handful of opportunities in the regular season. Looking at our WR room compared to last year, I like it: Shakir vs Shakir - should be about a wash Coleman vs Coleman - no guarantees, but I'm expecting improvement Samuel vs Samuel - hope springs eternal, but I think Samuel will be no better than last year I expect Palmer to play a hybrid of Hollins & Cooper's roles from last year. Outside deep threat and plays blocking WR in run sets. Palmer isn't as good a blocker as Hollins, but hopefully is a better receiver. Palmer isn't as good a receiver as prime Cooper, but can he be an upgrade over what we actually got last year? Moore doesn't have an obvious comp to last year - maybe MVS pre-Cooper trade. I suspect he'll get limited snaps when everyone's healthy, and could even be a healthy scratch some weeks if he doesn't play any special teams. But I expect him to get some WR snaps in every game he's active, and play a mix of the Curtis Samuel role and the Amari Cooper role.

I wonder how much of his game is due to his dad basically trying to game the system in terms of QB rating, stats, etc. Sacks don't scare people off nearly the way INTs do, and completion % has been the #1 metric in draft projection for a while. I watched as little of Colorado as I could, but from all accounts the offense was geared around maximizing Shedeur's completion percentage. I imagine the coaching he's been getting from his HD (Head Dad) has been heavily slanted towards completing every pass he throws. Coaching a guy to avoid INTs and also not throw the ball away leaves him taking a lot of sacks when he's in trouble. Or running heavily, but Shedeur isn't the athlete to make that work.

This is pretty much my take as well. Beane definitely came in hot, and that's not a good look for an NFL GM. And it was very out of character for him, which is notable. I'm sure he regrets getting angry on the air, but ultimately if he'd stayed calm the core message wouldn't have changed. (Just the tone and phrasing.) On the DJ side, they were obviously very surpised that Beane came in hot - which makes sense because again, that's very out of character for Beane. I initially gave them somewhat of a pass on the "he chose violence" talk afterwards, because while it came across as whiny and thin-skinned, it was in the moment. But apparently they kept milking that angle for a couple days after? If so, that's bush league. I will say that all parties did a good job of defusing the situation and eventually getting to a place of productive conversation.

Interesting take. In this scenario, what do you see as the usual d-line rotation? Especially at 1-tech DT.

Sorry, I was in this thread early, then dropped off for a while. Can anyone catch me up on why there's a whole "trade for DJ Moore" sidebar? Is it just because they have the same last name? If so, I'd like to start an additional sidebar about the great Herman Moore, star WR for those 90s Barry Sanders Lions teams. His best season came in 1995, when he caught a league-leading 123 passes for 1686 yards and 14 touchdowns. Dude was like an early Megatron prototype - 6'4", 210 lbs, great hands and jumping ability. As for Elijah, thanks to @Normaliswear for the May 1st info. Hopefully that's accurate and we sign him May 2nd. I'm a little skeptical though, just because we're currently at a net -2 in the comp pick formula, so it's pretty unlikely we'd care about whether Moore counts or not. I'm still fully on board to sign Moore after looking at Spotrac's list of free agent WRs. He's young, potentially still getting better, would add speed to our offense, and can play inside and out. This thread has included some evidence that he's better on the outside than in the slot, so I hope the Bills would give him a chance at both and not just pigeonhole him as slot-only.

Yeah, I think this is a fair criticism. Both the depth and pipeline at WR are pretty shaky right now. I'm fine with the stated approach of, "we don't need a true #1 WR, and especially not at market price for a #1 WR". But we can't put scrubs out there, either. There's plenty of question marks with our top 4 WRs, but they are all legitimate NFL players, and depending on how well Palmer works out, they might be a really effective group in this offense. But what happens if any of them get hurt? Our current WR depth chart gets scary real quick. A lot of us would like Beane to get into the habit of taking a WR somewhere in the round 3-5 range, maybe not every year, but often. Most of those guys can play at least a little bit, and some of them develop into solid starters or even stars. Knowing that we won't be able to commit a ton of cap $ to the WR position makes it extra important to have a cost-controlled pipeline at the position. And again, we don't necessarily need major stars at WR, but we do need competent NFL players across the board. (And if one of those picks happens to turn into a star, well that's just fine.)

My two cents: I think it'll be very similar to last year - within the sever contstraints of available cap space and who's available, they'll do what they can to improve the team. Maybe it's only 1 stab at a bargain-bin vet instead of 2 this year. I'm guessing the list of guys they'll look at is something like Moore, Cooper, Claypool, Agholor, Chark, and MAYBE Deonte Harty if there's no bad blood from him being such a dud last time around. Both years WR has kind of been the runt of the offseason litter. I've seen that thought a few places. It makes some sense, but I think it's important to note that it's like a goal line running play in the sense that there's basically 1 row of defenders then no one behind them. So for my preference, I want someone at least fast enough to not get caught if he breaks through the line. So I think I'd stil favor speedy guys who are good in the open field over convential halfbacks.

Wait, we didn't win the Super Bowl???? This is the first I'm hearing of this.

Or did he just fully hit the wall last season and is just cooked now? No matter what, it's puzzling.

Agree with the first 3 paragraphs. C'est la vie. As to Palmer, I don't really buy it but there is some groundwork laid for me to be wrong. Palmer apparently has great analytics, from what I've seen played almost always at X, and averaged over 15 yards/catch the last two seasons. Him being just good enough to keep teams away from the Ravens/Texans game plan last year would be a huge help to the offense. I'd be really suprised by a Jeudy-like breakout season, but I don't think we need that for Palmer to be a really impactful signing.

My hot take is that Ogunjobi could be on the chopping block. Presumably as a trade rather than cut candidate, and maybe dead cap stuff makes both of those impossible - I haven't checked. But something about how the Bills didn't find out about his suspension until after they'd agreed to terms... just seems like they'd be willing to cut bait quicker than usual.

Appreciate your thoughts as always, @Shaw66. And I agree with most of the above. But to some extent, you're arguing against a strawman. Most of the criticism I've seen on this board isn't "we need Jamarr Chase", it's "we were dead last in WR separation last year and looked like garbage against the Ravens and Texans", with a little of "Josh Allen had the ball with the game on the line and our offense turned the ball over on downs". As good as our offense was last year, it had a deficiency - it was limited in its ability to attack down the field. Most teams didn't have the personnel and/or scheme to take advantage of that deficiency, but the ones that did are also the ones we face in the playoffs every year. @HappyDays says it well here: Similar to the Bills' defensive philosophy of having starter-level players rotating in and out on the d-line, the Bills need to have guys across the skill positions who can take advantage when the ball comes their way. On key 3rd downs, we don't have a go-to guy that we're going to force the ball to. That means that to some extent, the defense gets to dictate where the ball is going, and smart defenses will ensure that goes to the weakest link on offense. I feel like there's two things here: Our current group has good players, but no one who has shown they can win deep at the NFL level. (Maybe 1 guy, depending on how you feel about Palmer. I haven't watched enough Chargers games to have a real opinion, and I'm taking the stance that I'll believe it when I see it. "Show me the baby" and whatnot.) Our current group has some good players, but the WR depth chart gets ugly really quick. #1 is a problem because good defenses don't have to worry about the whole field. By the way, "win deep" doesn't have to be a fast guy - see George Pickens for example. But it does have to be a guy who produces actual success for the offense when the defense dares us to try it. If defenses adjust and take away the deep ball, then we have room for the WR screens and over the middle stuff to work better. Right now, we have 0 or 1 guys who can do that, and it's fair for fans to worry about that. #2 is a problem because... well, look at the Texans game last year. We don't need any elite WRs, but we need everyone who takes the field to be a legit NFL player, because there's a good chance the ball comes his way on 3rd down. Right now, we have 4 WRs who fit that bill, and who knows, maybe Shavers is a 5th. But we typically have 5 active on game day and injuries happen. If Josh Palmer gets hurt, do we have anyone on the roster who can get open against man coverage? If Shakir and Samuel get hurt, how do we feel about a top three of Palmer/Coleman/Shavers? Final note: I think or maybe just hope that in private, Beane and McDermott mostly agree with me on this. That's why they signed MVS and Claypool last year, and that's why they brought in Elijah Moore for a visit the other day. In their ideal world, they'd get a guy who is both fast and can win deep, and failing that, they'd get a guy who provides 1 of the 2.

Regarding Coleman specifically, I think it's more than just the wrist injury. Looking at NFL players as a whole, there's pretty clear statistical evidence that the biggest jump in production is between years 1 and 2. It doesn't always play out that way at an individual level - Micah Parsons was a sensation as a rookie, Eric Moulds broke out in year 3, Michael Clayton had a great rookie year ages ago, then never did anything again. But it's not crazy or clutching at straws to think that Coleman will be a significantly better NFL player in year 2 than year 1. Especially, IMO, since he's a pretty young prospect - he's about to turn 22 in a couple weeks. He's at the point where most NFL players are still ascending athletically.

Fully agreed. On the offense side, the best thing going for us statistically is that last year was a new scheme and new philosophy under a new OC. That’s the kind of thing that can have a major shift on TO rate. But, even granting that the Everybody Eats offense is one that inherently takes care of the ball, there’s only so much they have control of. Last year, we did a great job taking care of the ball, and also got most of the 50/50 breaks.

I think maybe sometimes fans get stuck in the mode of everyone is either short or tall. Hairston is definitely not tall for a CB at 5’11; he’s average. IMO 5’9” is where you start getting into Short, and Tall starts at about 6’1”.