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The RInger Pre-season Power Rankings..... 31!!!!!

Billsfan1972

By Billsfan1972
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Billsfan1972 Veteran

Billsfan1972

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Okay start disparaging The Ringer and their forecast, but seems pretty bang on.

 

31. Buffalo Bills

2016 record: 7-9

2016 DVOA finish: 10th on offense; 27th on defense

Best-case scenario: A rough year might be in Buffalo’s best interest if it gives new general manager Brandon Beane a chance to find the quarterback he wants moving forward. Nearly every move the Bills have made this offseason has served to undercut what Tyrod Taylor brings to the table.

Wide receiver Sammy Watkins and his deep-ball prowess were a perfect complement to Taylor, who excels when pushing the ball downfield. With Watkins’s August tradeto the Rams, Taylor’s go-to receiver is gone, leaving him with a stable of pass catchers who act best as short and intermediate targets. Combine that with new coordinator Rick Dennison’s offense, which should keep Taylor under center for a majority of the time, and Buffalo has created a confluence of circumstances that set Taylor up to fail. This is all one year after former coordinator Anthony Lynn (now the Chargers head coach) built an offense that lined Taylor up in the shotgun, gashed opponents on the ground with LeSean McCoy, and finished the season 10th in DVOA.

The Bills can move on from Taylor before the start of the next league year with a limited dead money hit, and if their choices this summer are any indication, they intend to do so. If the franchise is going to search for a quarterback once again, it might as well do it from the top of the draft.

Worst-case scenario: Beane has made it clear that he has a plan. Buffalo has started stockpiling the draft capital to facilitate an on-the-fly rebuild, shipping Watkins to L.A. in a package for a 2018 second-round pick and moving cornerback Ronald Darby to the Eagles in a deal structured around a 2018 third-rounder. Like we’ve seen in Cleveland since the Sashi Brown-led brain trust took over in 2016, that approach requires conviction and patience. It also means that the Bills are in similar situation as the Jets; things can only go so badly in 2017.

Stat of note: 80. That’s the percentage of Buffalo’s offensive plays that started out of shotgun or pistol formations last season, the third-highest rate in the league, per Football Outsiders. The Dennison-coordinated Broncos finished last year at 43 percent for second lowest in the NFL.

Breakout player: Wide receiver Zay Jones. The NCAA’s all-time leader in receptions (399) is a dream for receiver nerds. The East Carolina product has excellent hands and superb body control and understands the nuances of the position. And with Watkins traded and Anquan Boldin now retired, the rookie is going to see a lot of work.

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thurst44 RFA

thurst44

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i don't think this team is great by any means, but 31st is a bit of a stretch.

This same weird thing has happened in past years where the national press just decides to keep topping themselves as to how bad the Bills will be, and there's no real logic to it. Maybe they will be 31st, but to say definitively that this team is going to be worse than all but one of the Jets, Rams, Bears, 49ers, and Jags (and i could also see the Bengals, Colts, Saints, and Chargers being pretty bad) is just ludicrous. I just don't see this as a historically bad team, but then again, this happened three years ago and that was about as close as they got to the playoffs.

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thurst44 RFA

thurst44

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And where for the better?

 

Sorry the Watkins trade still is a fresh wound.

 

When the best player is traded during training camp for future "hope" you've undermined the 2017 team.

I didn't love the trade either, but Matthews has been more productive in the league, and don't look now, but Gaines was the best CB in pre-season. They didn't just get picks.

 

Also, to imply (as the article does) that they are going to be 5 games or so worse b/c of loss of a player who had less than 500 yards last year, and with whom they were 2-6 when he played, seems a bit strange.

 

Where for the better? I'd say coaching is the main thing, but I would also argue the talent level didn't get particularly worse. Their safeties were terrible last year. Hyde and Poyer look great. The only change in the running game is back-up and it has seemed whoever you plug in once TT and McCoy have worn the D out will get their yards. The D-Line is still deep, the O-Line could be better then we think (especially if Glenn is back and Dawkins and Groy get significant playing time). Cornerback is hard to tell as Gilmore was feast-or-famine last year and Darby was a sophomore-slumping trainwreck. White looks like a find and there's a lot of solid role players. As for WRs, by week three last year we were picking people off the scrapheap anyway. Matthews has produced more than Watkins since coming in the league (even if it won't likely end that way when careers are through), Zay Jones looks good, and really, I suspect we will hardly be using more than one or two of them any game.

 

Heck, if we're able to stop the run this year (and the results looked good for that all pre-season, but then that's pre-season), that should be worth a few games this year.

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hondo in seattle All Pro

hondo in seattle

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This is just plain dumb. It seems as if they're expecting Dennison to run the exact same offense here that he ran in Denver.

 

In Mile High city, Rico was running Kubiak's offense. We don't know what a Dennison offense looks like because he's never actually developed his own scheme before. As an OC, he's always run a Kubiak scheme. Certainly Rico's been very influenced by Kubiak. But to say he doesn't have any other influences or ideas of his own is way premature. We just don't know - and have no way of knowing until we see what he unveils.

 

Plus in Denver Rico had a entirely different roster. Why would we assume that Rico is a functional idiot who won't make adjustments based on the skill sets of the players he has now?

 

Let's remember that Rico was the OC who made Brock Osweiler look good. There's no reason he can't make TT look good. Rico's had success putting points on the board in the past and it's reasonable to assume that trend will continue.

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Billsfan1972 Veteran

Billsfan1972

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Well the O looked great in the pre-season huh?

 

I didn't like the how the offense was handled the past two years specifically the passing game.

 

Please stop calling Matthews more productive then Watkins as there isn't a single GM who'd take him.

 

I disliked the defense too.

 

As for better coaching and GM, they haven't played a single game and wasn't the coach hired by the previous regime?

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dpberr Veteran

dpberr

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Eh............I have two questions regarding the offense in relation to the Bills power ranking summary above.

 

When Rick Dennison was hired, wasn't it lauded as being a positive for Tyrod Taylor's development? Why all of a sudden, based on some vanilla offense shown in preseason, that's no longer the case?

 

Why is the deep ball threat so important all of a sudden given Dennison's expertise in the WCO?

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MiltonWaddams Veteran

MiltonWaddams

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You else besides the Jets, do you place as clearly worse than the Bills. Of course, personally I don't see a big difference between being 13th and 32nd.

I thought about that and, despite wanting to state that Cleveland is worse, I couldn't definitively state that any other team is clearly worse. Let's see after at least one regular season game is played.
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Wayne Arnold Veteran

Wayne Arnold

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Okay start disparaging The Ringer and their forecast, but seems pretty bang on.

 

31. Buffalo Bills

2016 record: 7-9

2016 DVOA finish: 10th on offense; 27th on defense

Best-case scenario: A rough year might be in Buffalo’s best interest if it gives new general manager Brandon Beane a chance to find the quarterback he wants moving forward. Nearly every move the Bills have made this offseason has served to undercut what Tyrod Taylor brings to the table.

Wide receiver Sammy Watkins and his deep-ball prowess were a perfect complement to Taylor, who excels when pushing the ball downfield. With Watkins’s August tradeto the Rams, Taylor’s go-to receiver is gone, leaving him with a stable of pass catchers who act best as short and intermediate targets. Combine that with new coordinator Rick Dennison’s offense, which should keep Taylor under center for a majority of the time, and Buffalo has created a confluence of circumstances that set Taylor up to fail. This is all one year after former coordinator Anthony Lynn (now the Chargers head coach) built an offense that lined Taylor up in the shotgun, gashed opponents on the ground with LeSean McCoy, and finished the season 10th in DVOA.

The Bills can move on from Taylor before the start of the next league year with a limited dead money hit, and if their choices this summer are any indication, they intend to do so. If the franchise is going to search for a quarterback once again, it might as well do it from the top of the draft.

Worst-case scenario: Beane has made it clear that he has a plan. Buffalo has started stockpiling the draft capital to facilitate an on-the-fly rebuild, shipping Watkins to L.A. in a package for a 2018 second-round pick and moving cornerback Ronald Darby to the Eagles in a deal structured around a 2018 third-rounder. Like we’ve seen in Cleveland since the Sashi Brown-led brain trust took over in 2016, that approach requires conviction and patience. It also means that the Bills are in similar situation as the Jets; things can only go so badly in 2017.

Stat of note: 80. That’s the percentage of Buffalo’s offensive plays that started out of shotgun or pistol formations last season, the third-highest rate in the league, per Football Outsiders. The Dennison-coordinated Broncos finished last year at 43 percent for second lowest in the NFL.

Breakout player: Wide receiver Zay Jones. The NCAA’s all-time leader in receptions (399) is a dream for receiver nerds. The East Carolina product has excellent hands and superb body control and understands the nuances of the position. And with Watkins traded and Anquan Boldin now retired, the rookie is going to see a lot of work.

 

Everything stated here is very accurate. But I don't expect to pick #2 in next year's draft unless there are a number of injuries to our key players.

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cage Veteran

cage

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I'm confused how we could simultaneously resign Taylor and then be looking to undercut him? I get there was stuff in between like TC but still seems odd to just assume they won't resign him with out a snap being played.

 

Exactly! They could have gotten out of his contract this year. McDermott and Beane analyzed him thoroughly and then decide to keep TT. Why do that just to "set him up to fail". If he's a good QB, then I'd rather build around him than this "moonshot" scenario of trading up for a "top QB" in the draft.

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