The Bills have highest % of cap on IR (Spoiler - Dolphins, Chiefs and Bengals are MUCH lower)

[stinky finger]

15 hours ago, Chaos said:

I would rather be lucky than good.  Every season its a strange and unusual bad luck excuse with this regime.  Maybe they just are unlucky.

well, you actually need to be both to achieve goal.

[MPL]

Having a lot of cap dollars tied up in older players is going to open the door a little wider for bad luck. I don't think this is necessarily Beane's fault. The Bills have consistently been picking at the end of Round 1, lowering the chance of hitting on immediate impact players at a lower cost, meaning you have to invest top dollar into veterans. Perhaps he could have been more savvy in trading away assets to acquire draft picks, allowing more mobility in the draft, but that has only become apparent this year. 

The Bengals and Dolphins aren't that far removed from some really terrible seasons where they were able to acquire young, top-flight round 1 talent. 

[C.Biscuit97]

Sweet more excuses 

[Low Positive]

Just now, C.Biscuit97 said:

Sweet more excuses 

Does talent matter in the NFL?

[Ed_Formerly_of_Roch]

3 or 4 weeks ago, I read the same thing, but specific to defense players on IR. They were #1 then already.

 

Many posters here like to say injuries aren't an excuse, but when 3 of your arguably top 5 defensive players are out, then add Oliver was out one game and still not 100% (nor is Groot) who would have made top 4 out of 5 and Miller is still a shell of a player he was a year ago at this time, it's no wonder the defense has struggled.  The first 4 weeks everyone was praising the job McD did with the defense.  Then the injuries happened which gave the haters a chance to be heard when the defense fell apart.

[C.Biscuit97]

13 minutes ago, FrenchConnection said:

Does talent matter in the NFL?

Fun fact, other teams have injuries. Depth matters too. 

[RiotAct]

16 hours ago, BigDingus said:

Is this worse than last year when we had Von, Hyde, Poyer, Tre, etc. all injured at various points? 

 

Yes.  A lot worse.

[HappyDays]

Injuries have obviously been an issue on defense, but so has coaching. That is undeniable. We didn't give up 29 points to the worst starting offense in football because Matt Milano is on IR, it was because of awful game planning and play calling.

 

Other defenses are able to be better than a bottom 5 defense without a roster full of superstars. The Chiefs lost Nick Bolton at LB, they have no edge rushers to write home about, and they managed to hold the Dolphins to 14 points and score a TD, which is even better than what we did against the Dolphins when our defense was fully healthy. And the Chiefs offense didn't exactly put them in good positions throughout that game.

 

So yeah the Chiefs and Bengals injury luck on defense has been better, but the coaching discrepancy between us and them is even larger.

[BillsM@fia]

Just Win, Baby! ~Al Davis

[Niagara Dude]

18 hours ago, BillsFan619 said:

I know we need to play better and the coaches need to get the best out of the players they have, but this is pretty telling to our struggles.
 

Look at the difference between us, the Dolphins, the Chiefs and the Bengals.

 

Hopefully we can stick around and get a couple/few players back and have a good shot come playoff time.

 

Go Bills!

 

-Current players on IR- 10

-Current cap dollars on IR- over $45m

-Current percentage of cap money on IR- over 20%
 

Conpared to Dolphins (12th lowest):

-Current players on IR- 7

-Current cap dollars on IR- over $8.7m

-Current percentage of cap money on IR- 3.97%
 

Compared to Chiefs (9th lowest):

-Current players on IR- 7

-Current cap dollars on IR- over $6.2m

-Current percentage of cap money on IR- 2.9%

Compared to Bengals (3rd lowest):

-Current players on IR- 5

-Current cap dollars on IR- over $3m

-Current percentage of cap money on IR- 1.42%

 

https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/injured-reserve/

Already setting the table for Beanne to make excuses for McDermott should the Bills not make the playoffs.  End of the day the Bills were not ready to play in games against the Jets/Jags and Pats all teams they had more then enough to win.  

 

 

[The Jokeman]

38 minutes ago, HappyDays said:

Injuries have obviously been an issue on defense, but so has coaching. That is undeniable. We didn't give up 29 points to the worst starting offense in football because Matt Milano is on IR, it was because of awful game planning and play calling.

 

Other defenses are able to be better than a bottom 5 defense without a roster full of superstars. The Chiefs lost Nick Bolton at LB, they have no edge rushers to write home about, and they managed to hold the Dolphins to 14 points and score a TD, which is even better than what we did against the Dolphins when our defense was fully healthy. And the Chiefs offense didn't exactly put them in good positions throughout that game.

 

So yeah the Chiefs and Bengals injury luck on defense has been better, but the coaching discrepancy between us and them is even larger.

The Chiefs still have Chris Jones in the middle of their defense and he does kick outside from time to time. As we didn't lose just Milano we lost arguably our best outside rusher (Von isn't what he was), best interior defender, best LB and best CB. So essentially best player on every level of our defense and all our losses been by one score.

Edited November 12, 2023 by The Jokeman

[That's No Moon]

13 hours ago, 1ManRaid said:

 

Blowing teams out by 3+ TDs every week after week 1 = broken?  Did you even watch the games?  Do you know what team's fan forum you are on?

Even then the offense was disjointed and relying on Allen to be ridiculous. They played well against Miami.

[That's No Moon]

4 hours ago, ProcessTruster said:

Philly made the SB last season with the least injured roster in the league.  No coincidence there. 

2 hours ago, <bills4life> said:

Exactly what injuries occurred on the offensive side of the ball that have contributed to the lack of production? Even with all of the injuries, the defense has performed admirably and has done enough for us to win games. The defense is not the problem right now. I don’t want to hear excuses.  If the defense was giving up 30 points a game, then I would say yes there is credence to your argument. 

 

And there it is. The offense is relatively healthy. McDermott likes to talk about complementary football. Well, when your defense is banged up your offense has to pick up some slack, potentially score more and it's been the exact opposite.

[Cray51]

4 hours ago, <bills4life> said:

Exactly what injuries occurred on the offensive side of the ball that have contributed to the lack of production? Even with all of the injuries, the defense has performed admirably and has done enough for us to win games. The defense is not the problem right now. I don’t want to hear excuses.  If the defense was giving up 30 points a game, then I would say yes there is credence to your argument. 

Take a look at the field position of the Bills offense before and after these injuries, and then we can discuss the further nuances of the transitional impacts between an offense and defense.

 

 

long story short, the Bills have been hemmed in their own territory, with worse time of possession, and as a result we cannot put teams on their heels in any way

[Paup 1995MVP]

19 hours ago, Success said:

 

Here's hoping that all of the last 4 are back.

 

That, to me, is key to the potential for winning a title this season.  If we can win enough to get in the playoffs, and hopefully win the division - then we get Milano or Jones, or both, back.  Could be just the boost we need to finally make a real run.

 

What does this have to do w the offense? Every team has injuries.  We almost lost to Tampa and the Giants.  The defense played well in those games. 
 

The offense has been stuck in neutral the past 5 games.  If we can put up 35 plus pts every week, injuries on Defense are not going to matter.  

[Chaos]

Should have let him score

[<bills4life>]

59 minutes ago, Cray51 said:

Take a look at the field position of the Bills offense before and after these injuries, and then we can discuss the further nuances of the transitional impacts between an offense and defense.

 

 

long story short, the Bills have been hemmed in their own territory, with worse time of possession, and as a result we cannot put teams on their heels in any way

Yes 3 and outs will do that.  Especially since we like to play “complimentary football”.  Opening drives we do well, 4th quarter we start moving ball after trailing. Rest of 1st quarter up to beginning of 4th the offense struggles because we change up schemes and packages.  Don’t even get me started about shotgun formations at 1 yard line to be stuffed on draw twice this year, only to end up with zero points. This offense should be averaging 31 points a game. Hit that threshold and we win more games than not.  Here again.  This is not a defensive problem.  Good offenses can move the ball regardless of field position. 

[AlCowlingsTaxiService]

9 hours ago, BuffaloRebound said:

2 years in a row of this.  Is it just being unlucky?  Or is it a product of an aging undersized defensive unit?  

I’d have to see stats that support the undersized/injury argument, but it seems plausible. 

[DCofNC]

22 hours ago, WideNine said:

 

I have figured that was one of the issues with how this team is currently built.

High cap players that spend too much time on IR, and often too much runway needed to develop drafted and UFA players on rookie deals to be solid starters. I know the narrative was that it was a testament to the team's patience getting Epenesa to a place where he was more of an impact player on the defensive line, but the team also does not get better end of that deal with a learning curve consuming much of their rookie contract.

We have plugged those roles where we lack impact players with older players that are solid when healthy, but more prone to injury and have had to burn a good amount of cap to do so. Some hard decisions are going to have to be made at some point on how to best retool. And that means letting players OBD has become attached to walk if they are not exceptional players that can serve as cornerstone pieces of the puzzle.


 

Thankfully, they at least showed they could part with Edmunds, too bad they locked in on Oliver, that was stupid.  They need to effectively retool half the D this off-season.  It should have been done 2 years ago, but now they have no choice and they wasted another first round pick on a guy they are getting nothing out of on D already.  It’s going to add up to another year of nothing to help JA and a ton of resources going to fix a mediocre D.  Vicious cycle.

[Cray51]

1 hour ago, &lt;bills4life&gt; said:

Yes 3 and outs will do that.  Especially since we like to play “complimentary football”.  Opening drives we do well, 4th quarter we start moving ball after trailing. Rest of 1st quarter up to beginning of 4th the offense struggles because we change up schemes and packages.  Don’t even get me started about shotgun formations at 1 yard line to be stuffed on draw twice this year, only to end up with zero points. This offense should be averaging 31 points a game. Hit that threshold and we win more games than not.  Here again.  This is not a defensive problem.  Good offenses can move the ball regardless of field position. 

3 and outs are a component of failure, but the Bills were actually best in the NFL in 3and out rate through September.  I couldn’t find stats through today.

 

schemes and packages are reliant on a combination of factors, one of which is field position.  When you are backed inside of your own 10, you don’t open the playbook like you would starting at your own 40.  I’ve commented on goal line plays in other threads, but that comes down to execution, and the last one we complained about was a fault of Allen’s.  However, that’s a small component of a much larger issue, which is this defense not creating turnovers, pressure, or 3 and outs.  And that can directly be contributed to the losses of White, Milano, Jones.  Those three being out puts this team in a terrible position moving forward.

 

good offenses don’t move the ball regardless of field position.  The BEST offenses have the BEST chance of moving the ball regardless of field position.  And the Bills are a good offense, but not the best.  Of Knox is healthy and Allen isn’t nursing a shoulder issue?  Maybe we are top 3.  But right now we are above average offensively in talent and average in results.

 

 

3 minutes ago, DCofNC said:

Thankfully, they at least showed they could part with Edmunds, too bad they locked in on Oliver, that was stupid.  They need to effectively retool half the D this off-season.  It should have been done 2 years ago, but now they have no choice and they wasted another first round pick on a guy they are getting nothing out of on D already.  It’s going to add up to another year of nothing to help JA and a ton of resources going to fix a mediocre D.  Vicious cycle.

When Oliver is paired with a solid DT partner, he is a force on the line