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Can the Bills win 11+ games without a great OL?


Big Hurt

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They won 9 games with presumably a worse line (assuming Incognito is an upgrade from Pears), poor coaching and WAY less talent at the skill positions. They can certainly win 11 games as they are currently constructed. With that being said, they still need to upgrade the line. I'd prefer a veteran to another young guy. They have 3 to develop and I'd like to see another one drafted but I don't want to have to count on a rookie.

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Senator :worthy:

They won 9 games with presumably a worse line (assuming Incognito is an upgrade from Pears), poor coaching and WAY less talent at the skill positions. They can certainly win 11 games as they are currently constructed. With that being said, they still need to upgrade the line. If prefer a veteran to another young guy. They have 3 to develop and I'd like to see another one drafted but I don't want to have to count on a rookie.

Something horrific will happen.

like the Stadium will burn to the ground after the Stones concert after everyone has left because of Keith Richards crack pipes

Even the Concrete will melt from the extreme temperatures reached !

All aided by some unknown gas that has been seeping and lingering over the property undetected over all these many years.

 

we were SOO close to being relevant or better.

 

It cant happen. We fans cant have nice things.

doomed. just doomed

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No.

 

We will be lucky to win 9 if our O-Line is worse and we still don't have a qb

I just don't understand this argument? The team is way more talented and Incognito should be an upgrade. In addition the 3 rookies should improve. The line isn't good but should be better. The coaching and the rest of the team is better. I'm not sure how people think that will translate to the same result as last year?
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Thing is, with the additions we've made at the skill positions, defenses will be forced to cover the entire field. This makes the offense harder to defend as a whole. We have more experienced and intelligent offensive coaches as well. We can analyze the offensive line microcasm all we want but, hello, the offense as a unit is already better schematically, personnel wise and with the young ins getting a year under their belt. R-E-L-A-X. Can we just enjoy the good things that we are doing after all these years of treading water??? We are on our way!!! Imo

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Positive me thinks a few things make the o-line better: incognito, shady, clay, new ol coach and the danger percy harvin represents for a defense.

Scared bills fan me fears we open the season with a loss and shady ran for 60 yards while spiller gets 150+ in NO

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As others have said the line is already better because of:

 

Rex

Roman

Kromer

Incognito

Felton: He turns little holes into big holes.

McCoy

 

I'll add:

 

Percy, Sammy, Woods, Clay: Sammy healthy and a year under his belt, Robert going into 3rd year, and then Percy and Clay.

How does this help the line? Teams can't commit as many men at the line, either

stacking the box or blitzing, because we have players that can quickly take a screen

or short pass to the house. So, they have to commit players to defend that or they'll get burned.

Fewer 6-8-man fronts and blitzes will make the line seem a lot better. Are you going to leave Sammy

and Percy in one-on-one coverage? What about McCoy coming out of the backfield for a pass? Teams

won't be able to overload the line as they've been able to do in the past against us. And with Felton back there,

we should at worst be able to put a hat on a hat. That means better running lanes and more time for the QB.

 

And a lot of people were down on Wood and Glenn for having down years, but the offensive line, more than anything

has to work as a unit. When you play a 5th and a 7th round rookie and another guy out of position, you get a lot of

mistakes. It often happens that guys look bad when they're playing next to bad players, because they are covering.

To us it looks like he's getting blown up, but he may have been having to try to cover two guys cause the rook picked

up the wrong man or whatever.

 

So, I think Wood and Glenn are still good players and will play better with stronger players next to them. Richie is an upgrade at

one guard spot. Then we have Urbik and Henderson. It would be nice to upgrade them both and I think the FO will still try to. But at worst

they're a push.

 

So, this line is already better than last year, we won 9 games last year, so, yes we can win with this line. 11+ games? Well I'd feel more

comfortable saying that if we were able to upgrade at least one more position, if not both (either from in-house---someone stepping up,

the draft, or FA/cuts). But, yes, I think it can be done.

 

 

 

*And the idea that the players got mixed messages from the coaches last year (if true) can not be over-emphasized. Who could excel at any job

under those circumstances---3 different bosses telling you three different things is a perfect setup for failure.

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Henderson was rated 82 out of 84 OTs on PFF. He might do better with Urbik at RG but the right side concerns me the most.

Urbik should help immensely, as should Henderson having his rookie year behind him and working at RT all off- and pre-season. Not to mention coaching should be good/better, Clay will line up next to him, and Felton is there to help out as well.

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Can you build the world's tallest skyscraper on a foundation designed for a house?

 

I think 11 wins would be a shocker and if anyone here believes it's remotely possible, get to Vegas and put your money down. Defense will keep them in games as usual but the OL and QB are substandard in a league where those two components, when elite, can win you games with average skill players and defenses. The Bills are trying the reverse of the Patriots model, which has been to have a great QB and generally above average line with average (save Gronk) skill players (they shuffle WRs and RBs in like spare parts) and an average or slightly better D. I doubt it works to the 11-win threshold.

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I doubt any fan of any team would put money down on an 11-win season. And it's not even close to not being "remotely possible" but a lot of factors going into it, namely health of the players.

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Can you build the world's tallest skyscraper on a foundation designed for a house?

 

I think 11 wins would be a shocker and if anyone here believes it's remotely possible, get to Vegas and put your money down. Defense will keep them in games as usual but the OL and QB are substandard in a league where those two components, when elite, can win you games with average skill players and defenses. The Bills are trying the reverse of the Patriots model, which has been to have a great QB and generally above average line with average (save Gronk) skill players (they shuffle WRs and RBs in like spare parts) and an average or slightly better D. I doubt it works to the 11-win threshold.

 

The Bills are much closer though to the Seahawks model are they not? Great defense, good special teams, top 5 running back who makes up for the inadequacies of an, at best, average offensive line. They then have a good Quarterback and average pass catchers before adding Jimmy Graham (Baldwin and Kearse are 3s on any other team). We have good, potentially great, pass catchers, certainly better than Seattle, which begs the question what level of Quarterbacking do we need? The answer is in my view we need league average Quarterbacking but we need league average Quarterbacking over 16 games. The games when our Quarterbacks played average or above last year we pretty much won (probably excluding KC where Orton was average but two fumbles one by a running abck and the other on special teams undid us).

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We will need to be creative. But if they want to pound the ball, they should really get more help. They couldn't run the ball last year and so far they only just added one guy. Doesn't look good.

 

It's not the O-LIne that will be the problem, it's the lack of talent at the QB position.

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We will need to be creative. But if they want to pound the ball, they should really get more help. They couldn't run the ball last year and so far they only just added one guy. Doesn't look good.

 

It's hard to say right now. I think it will be better. They have a new OL coach and upgraded with Incognito. Henderson is in his second year and so is Kouandjio. They will have a better idea as to what they need to do in the offseason to be conditioned for a full 16 game season.

 

Plus there is the draft. I'm not going to lose sleep over the OL.

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Man, how disappointing would it be if we made all these moves, spent all this money to acquire talent and hire quality coaches, got an arguably easier schedule, and finished with the exact same record as last year. It seems to be what a lot of people in this thread expect though.

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While I agree that our offensive weapons are much better, I can't tell you our coaching is. All of our new coaches are coming from teams that finished worse than we did last year. The AFC East has gotten better. And the difference between 9 wins and 10 is huge. I know that sounds dumb, but that's usually the playoffs.

 

We still don't have an answer around how we are going to get these weapons the ball. We are relying on scheme to make our O-Line better. Incognito was out of the league for a year and that our only addition so far.

 

So yeah, I'm not trying to be a pessimist, but it's all a lot of assumptions so far. The Pats are still the Pats. The Dolphins can pry still split with us. And saying we sweep the Jets isn't. A guarantee again.

 

Then look at the rest of our schedule. We swept the NFC last year. Think that's gonna definitely happen this year? I'm not convinced we will absolutely beat the Cowboys, Eagles, and Giants.

 

So yeah, I can't say our additions have given us 10+ wins

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While I agree that our offensive weapons are much better, I can't tell you our coaching is. All of our new coaches are coming from teams that finished worse than we did last year. The AFC East has gotten better. And the difference between 9 wins and 10 is huge. I know that sounds dumb, but that's usually the playoffs.

 

We still don't have an answer around how we are going to get these weapons the ball. We are relying on scheme to make our O-Line better. Incognito was out of the league for a year and that our only addition so far.

 

So yeah, I'm not trying to be a pessimist, but it's all a lot of assumptions so far. The Pats are still the Pats. The Dolphins can pry still split with us. And saying we sweep the Jets isn't. A guarantee again.

 

Then look at the rest of our schedule. We swept the NFC last year. Think that's gonna definitely happen this year? I'm not convinced we will absolutely beat the Cowboys, Eagles, and Giants.

 

So yeah, I can't say our additions have given us 10+ wins

I can tell you the coaching is better. Marrone and his offensive coaches have proven nothing in the NFL. Roman and the new offensive coaches OTOH have had success in the NFL. What carried the team last year was defense and ST's and those still figure to be top units because most of the players are the same and the coaches are either the same or no worse, if not better.

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I can tell you the coaching is better. Marrone and his offensive coaches have proven nothing in the NFL. Roman and the new offensive coaches OTOH have had success in the NFL. What carried the team last year was defense and ST's and those still figure to be top units because most of the players are the same and the coaches are either the same or no worse, if not better.

In addition, factor in the success that Aaron Kromer had with the OL (particularly in NO) and you should be better there too.

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