Cash

Slightly off-topic, but I think Allen has a pretty strong chance to win MVP this year. Obviously a lot has to go right for that to happen, but the national perception/narrative is set up in Allen’s favor. With us losing Diggs/Davis/et al, the team is expected to take a step back on both offense and defense. IF the Bills keep winning at the same pace as the last few years, it’s probably because Allen is putting up big numbers - totals, efficiency, or both. In that scenario, the MVP voters will tend to give Allen 100% of the credit for the team still being good, and likely will be writing about how Allen is making a bunch of nobodies look good.

He was always on defense, as a DT. This is the gold medalist wrestler, right? Not the converted rugby player (who is injured).

What weapons do I have in this scenario? Assuming he has none. If even footing, the answer is no.

Seriously. If - heaven forbid - Allen got a season-ending injury in September or October, at that point we might as well roll out the Nooch and Anthony Brown. Would be ugly to watch but we’d be picking in the top 10 most likely. (Even with McD and all the players trying their best to win every game.) I’m overall pretty optimistic about this year’s team, or at least will be if we ever get a stretch of good health. But let’s be real: minus Allen, this is not a realistic contender even with a good backup QB. If - heaven forbid - Allen got a season-ending injury in November or December, AND we were in a good place record-wise, then I’d be inclined to sign Talleywacker if he’s still out there, or trade for this year's version of Josh Dobbs or something. The chances of the team getting hot and/or lucky are worth it at at that point.

I disagree. Looking at the first angle, it looks to me like as part of Coleman's catching motion, he starts turning his head from the QB towards the S. Once his helmet is facing the S, it looks like Coleman takes his eye off the ball. Which makes sense, because the S was coming in for a massive hit, and it would've been fully legal if Coleman had the ball in his hands when they met. Luckily for us, he only took a minor shot - both because Coleman was protecting his body, and because the S wisely let up once the ball was dropped. In other words, whether intentional or not, it was a Business Decision by Coleman. Even for a rookie, I have zero problem with a business decision in preseason. With that said, I'm also glad Coleman is calling it a drop himself and saying he needs to get that ball. That's the right (winning) attitude, and absolutely what you should be saying publicly, even if you don't mean it. It was a bad but catchable throw, and even under the circumstances I think Coleman could've potentially caught it and still had a split second to protect himself from the incoming killshot. Thanks for posting the clip!

Based on those definitions and McD’s history, it’s Grade 2. Grade 1 would fall under McD’s “day to day”. “Week to week” almost always means out 2+ weeks, but not much more than a month.

IMO, we are technically a Super Bowl contender now. By which I mean, I think we're likely to win our division, which puts us in the playoffs. From there, we have a realistic chance to beat every other team in the playoffs, especially if someone else beat the Chiefs for us. Every NFL team has a realistic chance to beat every other NFL team on any given Sunday, and Josh Allen would be the best player on the field in any matchup except the Chiefs. Not saying our chances are the best (they're not), but worse teams have definitely gotten hot at the right time and made/won the Super Bowl. For me personally, here's the best case scenario for this year. IMO, if all of these happened, we'd be one of the 2-3 teams most likely to win it all. (We're maybe in the 5-7 range now?) I don't really think all of them will happen this year, but I'm going to hope for it until proven otherwise: Team gets healthy and stays healthy all year Most of the young guys take steps forward Milano comes back in late November and looks like his old self Von Miller returns to something like he looked pre-injury By year's end, we wind up with acceptable or better safety play - maybe Bishop is ready to be a + starter by then James Cook cures his dropsies Brady turns out to be a + as a coordinator - scheming guys open, having a few "unstoppable" plays for those key 3rd/4th downs, countering opponent adjustments, etc Josh Allen looks like he did in 2020 (Note: I think this one is happening, regardless of the rest)

I’m with you on KJ. It’s hard to imagine him getting a roster spot over Solomon (if healthy), who’s younger and just started a cheap 4-year contract. The Bills kept KJ on the 53 all of last year, mostly inactive, because they were worried about losing him. No way they expose Solomon to waivers. I expect that Beane will try to deal KJ around cutdown time, because it’s hard to see the numbers working out to keep 6 DEs unless someone goes on IR.

Who are some of these quality GMs you have in mind?

Last week, "about a quarter" meant 1.5 drives for Allen and 2 full drives for the rest of the offensive starters. This week, I'm expecting either 3 or 4 full drives if conditions are good. (Probably only 4 if at least one of them is a 3-and-out.) As always in preseason, things could happen to get starters pulled earlier, but never later.

I don't disagree, but it doesn't particularly affect my point. I believe Shakir led the NFL or was very close to it in a couple efficiency stats. Even for a young/improving player, it's really rare to lead the league in anything 2 years in a row. Similar example from the NBA: As a rookie, Jason Tatum shot the highest % of all-time for corner threes. Did he improve as an overall player in the next couple years? Absolutely yes. Did he ever hit that same % for corner threes again? No, he did not. And betting on his corner three % to drop from year 1 to year 2 was pretty much a slam dunk. FWIW, I'm expecting Shakir's counting stats to go way up this year, with some dropoff in his efficiency stats. But I still expect his efficiency stats to look pretty good overall.

Agreed. It's very likely that both: 1.) Shakir will take a step forward as an NFL player this year, and 2.) Shakir's efficiency numbers drop off compared to last year This is regression to the mean - when someone's numbers are that ridiculously high (or low), usually they wind up moving more towards the middle the following year.

FWIW, I think you do. “Every dark cloud has a silver lining.” Meaning things are bad: I wanted a bright sunny day but instead I’m looking at a dark cloud. But even under this dark circumstance, not everything is bad - that silver lining is fairly pretty to look at, even if it’s not as good as a beautiful blue sky.

I get your point, but never is a strong word. You want to go for it on 4th and 10 from the 30 instead of kicking a 47-48 yard FG? The vast majority of models would say to kick in that situation.

I forget what game it was, but mine is probably the TD pass to Emmanuel Sanders where the ball hit Sanders exactly in the hands while running full stride in the endzone. I remember Sanders talking about it after the game, and he was blown away - basically saying he put his hands up and the ball went directly into them with no adjustment whatsoever.

I agree with this. Upthread @GunnerBill posted the drive lengths from the JAX game last year. I think about half the drives were 4 plays or less, and maybe 1 drive more than 6 plays. That’s not going to get it done UNLESS you’re scoring TDs on those 3-4 play drives. (Spoiler: we weren’t.) I don’t know if Brady will be good as our OC. I hope so, but the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. I also don’t know if the doomsdayers are right and McDermott is the problem. I hope not and I don’t think so, but I can’t prove them wrong at this time. I also don’t know if Dorsey will succeed in his future NFL career. (I think it depends on how much he learns from his first go-round.) But I DO know that, despite having a transcendent talent at QB, things were seriously off with the offense last year, and some (but not all) of that wrongness went away when the OC was fired. I think it’s wrong to pin 100% of the problems on Dorsey. But Dorsey was absolutely part of the problem, and if you disagree, I really don’t know what to tell you. Again, the first time the CB covering the flat peels off and intercepts a ball intended for Davis on a deep out, maybe that’s a good play by the D or a bad route by one of our players. The third or fourth time, it is a fundamental problem with the offense and the blame lies squarely with the OC.

Agree with that, and would add two complaints of mine: 1. In 2023, way too many receivers were bunched up at the end of their routes - more so than I’ve ever noticed before. Maybe that’s down to execution, but it is in the coach’s job description to get the players to execute. What he was telling them wasn’t working. How many picks did Allen throw on that out/flat route combo with Gabe and an underneath option? I think about 3 or 4, and the culprit was that the routes were too close together and the short defender had time to peel off and get between Gabe and the ball. And yet, we kept calling that route combo, and kept running it to the same depths. 2. Adaptability seemed to be lacking. We had a bunch of great offensive games under Dorsey, so he obviously was doing some things right, gameplan-wise. But it seemed like if Plan A didn’t work, or the opponent adjusted to handle Plan A, there was no Plan B. And that applied at a bigger scale as well: It really felt like opposing teams started figuring out our offense last year, and Dorsey had very few answers to the problems that presented.

2x Super Bowl champ, and made big plays in both of those playoff runs. For someone with the extreme self-confidence needed to make the NFL in the first place, that’s plenty of pedigree.

Interesting. Thanks for posting! I was pretty skeptical about this rule change, but now that it's a done deal I'm approaching it with an open mind. I definitely WANT kick returns to be a relevant part of the game, and if this works, I can live with the weirdness around it. Will be very interesting to see how this plays out. If this ultra-small sample is representative (unlikely), then we may be going back to the stats of my youth, where 20 yards/return was basically the minimum standard of "not-bad". There were KRs who averaged <20 yards/return, but they were all bad kick returners and their teams usually tried to upgrade the spot the next offseason. 20 was like minimum acceptable, and anything 25 or over was nutso.

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/A/AlleJo02.htm 2020 is still Allen's best statistical season by a good bit. Returning to those numbers would, IMO, count as a "better" Josh Allen. Year Comp. % TD/INT ratio TD% INT% Yards/Att Adj. Yards/Att 2020 69.2% 3.7 6.5% 1.7% 7.9 8.5 2021 63.3% 2.4 5.6% 2.3% 6.8 6.9 2022 63.3% 2.5 6.2% 2.5% 7.6 7.7 2023 66.5% 1.6 5.0% 3.1% 7.4 7.0 Regardless of where the counting stats wind up, if Allen is getting close to the 2020 numbers above, you're going to see the offense look REAL good.

That's clearly McD responding to a question along the lines of, "What are your thoughts on how Tyrell Shavers is looking in camp?" And it's effusive praise, which is great. And also, McD gives praise to every single player that he's asked a specific question about. I'm very pro-Shavers, but the only "unprompted" praise I've seen from the Bills thus far has been Beane listing Shavers first when talking about the WRs "already in the room". IIRC, that was around draft time, in response to a question about the Bills' needs at WR. No one is asking about Justin Shorter, because he hasn't looked good in camp. But if beat reporters were asking about Shorter every time McDermott or Brady gives a press conference, you'd still see a bunch of really positive quotes about him, because that's how the Bills coaching staff rolls. (And for the record, I think they have the right approach - give the corrective feedback in person, but the positive feedback is fair game for public consumption.)

Reporters are hyping him up for sure. I don't think the team is particularly hyping him up at this stage. Brady was asked a question about Shavers and responded with praise. Same as every individual player he's asked about.

Totally agree with that logic (pardon the pun), but I still don't see why it's one or the other. Who do you see the 6 WRs being if MVS is cut?

I can't claim I called Shavers making the roster, but back in April I ID'd him as most likely dark horse candidate of our non-rookie WR room:

Not sure if I'm off-base here, but why is Shavers vs MVS being talked about as an either/or? Coleman, Shakir, and Samuel are looking like locks for the top 3, and Mack Hollins is looking like a roster lock and probably active every week he's healthy. That leaves probably 2 roster spots for WRs - there's a very slim chance they keep 7, and I'd be really suprised if they only kept 5. MVS is probably getting one of those spots as a veteran and proven deep-playoff contributor, unless there are 2 guys who impress so much that the Bills have to cut MVS. Maybe Shavers is one of the two, but if so, who's the other one?