THE ROCKPILE REVIEW - Receivers are a Dime a Dozen

[LabattBlue]

I think 0.0volts hijacked Shaw’s account. 

[Einstein's Dog]

The denigrating of C Kupp and Amon-Ra St Brown as just great producers seems odd.  Comparing them to Singletary doesn't hold up- at least not in the market place- they got paid whereas Singletary did not.  There are many facets to being a top tier WR and not all of them are physical.  Brings up the we can replace Beasley with McKenzie thoughts.

 

Not all teams should be following the same program.  A team with Brock Purdy is not the same as a team with The Josh Allen.  A team with one of the all time great arms should allocate resources to have 2 good outside WRs.

 

One reason the Bills don't pay big on RBs is so they can put the money into another area.  Right now the most expensive playmaker on offense is under $10M.

I agree you don't want a diva, but the top WR for the Bills should not be C Samuel.

 

Looks like you're just trying to rationalize what you think the Bills are about to do.  I think the Bills will trade for a good WR after June 1st.  They should.

[Chaos]

1 hour ago, Peace Frog said:

Fortunately, we have one of those two.

This is correct. 
 

The following is questiontable:
Fortunately, we have one of those too.

[SoonerBillsFan]

49 minutes ago, JerseyBills said:

Respect your opinion and make some great points but explain the NFL Draft then.. 

 

10 WRs were picked before the 1st RB came off the board

 

You could be on to something but there's still a long way to go. 

 

Its because you get them on very cheap Rookie contracts compared to the 2nd contract. when that comes up see if someone will trade for them, if not... draft another one. That is what has happened to RB's.

 

More and more teams have "their" guy at QB who is gonna get paid. When that happens across the league, ALL other salaries will go down

9 minutes ago, Einstein's Dog said:

The denigrating of C Kupp and Amon-Ra St Brown as just great producers seems odd.  Comparing them to Singletary doesn't hold up- at least not in the market place- they got paid whereas Singletary did not.  There are many facets to being a top tier WR and not all of them are physical.  Brings up the we can replace Beasley with McKenzie thoughts.

 

Not all teams should be following the same program.  A team with Brock Purdy is not the same as a team with The Josh Allen.  A team with one of the all time great arms should allocate resources to have 2 good outside WRs.

 

One reason the Bills don't pay big on RBs is so they can put the money into another area.  Right now the most expensive playmaker on offense is under $10M.

I agree you don't want a diva, but the top WR for the Bills should not be C Samuel.

 

Looks like you're just trying to rationalize what you think the Bills are about to do.  I think the Bills will trade for a good WR after June 1st.  They should.

I disagree. The high cover 2 shells take out most fast WR's and force underneath throws.  Look at Elway, made superbowls just slinging to his WR's but it was when he ran the WCO under Shanahan and ran the ball, threw to TE's did he finally win a superbowl. 

[In Summary]

2 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

In fact, teams have discovered that having a guy who is so good that he demands the ball is a negative, not a positive.. 

 

 

Trending that way for sure.

[Rampant Buffalo]

2 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

You shadow running backs, you double cover receivers, and then you develop nuanced variations off your defenses to slow down the opponent’s star player.

 

Excellent write-up and analysis. I'd like to focus on the above-quoted sentence. I regard football as being, at least in some ways, a numbers game. You could define an elite player as one of the following:

 

Category 1: One of your guys makes plays while using up two of the opponent's players. Bruce Smith getting sacks even though he's being double teamed. Jerry Rice catching passes even though two guys are covering him.

 

Category 2: A player who cancels out a category 1 player. Tony Boselli getting the better of Bruce Smith, while blocking him one-on-one. Deon Sanders covering Jerry Rice one-on-one, and keeping him under control.

 

Category 3: A player who is elite, without playing a position which lends itself to the previous two categories. An elite QB, for example.

 

If a WR is making plays even though he's double covered, that means he's elite (category 1). That's why 3 WRs were taken in the top 10 of this draft, and why top receivers make north of $25 million per year.

 

 

 

Edited May 15 by Rampant Buffalo

[billsfan89]

8 minutes ago, SoonerBillsFan said:

Its because you get them on very cheap Rookie contracts compared to the 2nd contract. when that comes up see if someone will trade for them, if not... draft another one. That is what has happened to RB's.

 

More and more teams have "their" guy at QB who is gonna get paid. When that happens across the league, ALL other salaries will go down

I disagree. The high cover 2 shells take out most fast WR's and force underneath throws.  Look at Elway, made superbowls just slinging to his WR's but it was when he ran the WCO under Shanahan and ran the ball, threw to TE's did he finally win a superbowl. 

 

Elway also had a strong defense and offensive line to go along with a stacked skill position core with McCaffery, Rod Smith, Shannon Sharpe and Terrell Davis. That's a HOF TE and HOF RB and a WR in Smith who should be in the HOF and another Pro-Bowl caliber WR in McCaffery. That Broncos offensive line in 1998 was insanely stacked as they had 3 players make the Pro-Bowl (back when the Pro-Bowl was a better indicator of performance), while Sharpe, Smith, McCaffery and Davis also made the Pro-Bowl with Davis also being the league MVP (on the defensive side of the ball they also had two Pro-Bowl players). 

 

It truly is a team game and if you don't have the talent around you and the coaching to put that talent with a good scheme then there is only so much you can do. 

[SoonerBillsFan]

1 minute ago, billsfan89 said:

 

Elway also had a strong defense and offensive line to go along with a stacked skill position core with McCaffery, Rod Smith, Shannon Sharpe and Terrell Davis. That's a HOF TE and HOF RB and a WR in Smith who should be in the HOF and another Pro-Bowl caliber WR in McCaffery. That Broncos offensive line in 1998 was insanely stacked as they had 3 players make the Pro-Bowl (back when the Pro-Bowl was a better indicator of performance), while Sharpe, Smith, McCaffery and Davis also made the Pro-Bowl with Davis also being the league MVP (on the defensive side of the ball they also had two Pro-Bowl players). 

 

It truly is a team game and if you don't have the talent around you and the coaching to put that talent with a good scheme then there is only so much you can do. 

Point being he relied on a WCO not just slinging deep balls like he used to.

 

Allen needs to do the same.

[amprov56]

3 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

Bills fans have spent the first five months of 2024 talking about receivers: Whom the Bills have and whom they should get.  The longer I’ve listened to that discussion, the more I’ve come to the conclusion that fans haven’t really internalized what’s happening in pro football.

 

In short, I think that receivers are following in the footsteps of their cousins, the running backs.  Fans, and the New York Giants, were late to realize that in terms of team performance, there isn’t much difference between having a great running back and having a really good one.  And you almost always can find a really good one.  There’s always a Singletary, a Cook, a Pacheco, or someone else.  In earlier eras, if you had a Jim Brown or an Earl Campbell or a Barry Sanders, you were a contender.   Not now.  Now, you can have a Derrick Henry and, well, you have some great highlights, but highlights don’t get it done any more. 

 

Why did that happen to running backs?  Two reasons:  First, young players keep closing the gap between what the great players can do and what the next level of really good players can do.  They learn the moves of the great players, and they condition themselves to be nearly as strong and as powerful.  Second, the defenses have matured – the players are bigger, stronger, faster, so that a guy with Jim-Brown talent now finds a defense full of big, strong, fast defenders, and the coaches have schemed their defenses in ways that allow their big, strong, fast defenders to close gaps and gang tackle in ways that just weren’t done in earlier generations.  Maybe some 250-pound guy who runs like LaDainian Tomlinson will come along, but that’s unlikely.

 

(As an aside, the same thing is happening in the NBA.   In less than ten years, the league has filled up with guys who shoot threes like Steph Curry, guys who are bigger, stronger, and quicker than Steph.  And the defenses have gotten smarter.  The Warriors of five years ago would be good today, but not dominant in the way they were.

 

(And, by the way, there’s a whole generation of pro golfers who have caught up to the greatness of the early Tiger Woods.  They don’t stand out like Tiger because, well, there are a lot of them.)

 

And now we see it happening to receivers.  Again, the difference between truly great and very good has gotten smaller, the number of very good receivers has increased.  It’s happened for the same reasons that it happened to running backs.  Receivers have gotten about as big and fast as they are going to get.  The difference in speed between a 4.3 guy and a 4.4 or even 4.5 guy just isn’t very important – 4.5 is plenty fast enough.  Kids in high school practice catching balls one-handed, practice tucking the ball away after the catch, etc.   By the time receivers have gotten out of college, a lot of them have speed, route-running technique, and catching skills that rival what some of the best NFL players had ten years ago.  In other words, it’s become almost impossible to get better physically in a way that makes any one receiver a dominant player. 

 

In addition to the younger receivers closing the talent gap, the defenders and the defenses they run have improved, too, for the express purpose of stopping the physically dominant receivers.  If you want to win in the NFL, you simply cannot let one player get 150+ yards against you, rushing or receiving, so you create defenses to stop them.  You shadow running backs, you double cover receivers, and then you develop nuanced variations off your defenses to slow down the opponent’s star player.  Quickly, other teams adopt your ideas.   The result is that even the very best running backs and receivers are not stringing 150-yard games, back to back to back, all season long.  Yes, every once in a while a Tyreek Hill comes along, a physical freak, and he does string great games for a while, but it’s just a matter of time before teams adjust. 

 

What about all the great young receivers out there?   Well, I think there’s an important distinction to be made between great receivers and great production.  A guy like Julian Edelman was not a great receiver, in the classic Hall of Fame sense.  He had great production because of the circumstances he was in, and because he was the right guy to take advantage of those circumstanes.  Cooper Kupp is another.  Amon-Ra St. Brown is another.  These guys are all over the league, guys with excellent speed, very good ball skills, and brains.  They have great production, but it isn’t so much that they create the production – they just fit the scheme and get production because they have the skill to take advantage of the opportunities that their offenses create. 

 

I’m not saying those guys aren’t good football players.   What I’m saying is that they are the Pachecos and Cooks and Singletarys of the receiving world.  What I’m saying is that teams are discovering that the physical difference between OBJ and St. Brown does not translate into an important difference in production on the field, just like the difference between Saquon Barkley and Pacheco. 

 

What about the true studs, the OBJs and the DHops of the world?  The guys who actually create their production?  Well, both of those guys came to greatness on their original teams, were true sensations and great weapons, and then were somewhat surprisingly dealt to other teams, where they never recovered their initial luster.  Now they’ve been reduced to hired guns that teams hope can somehow reclaim their greatness or at least be reliable 4th receivers.

 

The bottom line is, I think, that the game has moved on from the days when the ideal was to have a true stud skill player on offense (other than your QB).  If you had a true stud, you gave him the ball every time you could.  In fact, teams have discovered that having a guy who is so good that he demands the ball is a negative, not a positive.  When you have a Derrick Henry or an OBJ, they’re only useful if you give them the ball a lot, and that limits your offense.  Having a guy like Stefon Diggs, who is prone to sulking if he doesn’t get a catch in your first series, is a liability. 

 

The Bills certainly seem to have adopted this thinking. 

 

 

GO BILLS!!!

 

The Rockpile Review is written to share the passion we have for the Buffalo Bills. That passion was born in the Rockpile; its parents were everyday people of western New York who translated their dedication to a full day’s hard work and simple pleasures into love for a pro football team.

 

 

Great Post!

[Augie]

Just imagine what @HOUSE could do with a dozen dimes! It could be life changing! 

[oldmanfan]

As (almost) always I agree with Shaw.  The talent level across most teams is fairly equivalent.  Not totally or you wouldn’t have the Panthers.  But relatively so.  Winning games and championships comes down to having coaches put in schemes and such that maximize their talent,  and a QB that excels.  I started a thread saying it’s really all about Brady this year.  If he calls a good offense where he gives Josh targets and uses the run game well so Josh doesn’t have to be a hero all the time, the Bills should do well.

[Ayjent]

I think that the position will be different than running back but how teams pay the position on second contracts may be where we see a seismic shift.  I can see a premium still put on WR talent in draft bc of the cost of talent on second contract.  This may change as more teams are unwilling to shell out big $$ for these contracts.  Teams including the Bills with Diggs have been crippling themselves with massive WR contracts and the ROI is not worth it many times. The Bills bailed out for good reason and didnt reup gabe bc it wasnt going to be worth it and they really didnt have the money anyhow.

 

It doesnt go without consequence, though.  The Chiefs definitely struggled last year at times with a less than impressive WR group.  The Bills will likely focus on creating an offense that looks for a lot of production from backs and TEs.  A bit of a throwback style but given their top talent at skill positions and end of year philosophy it seems like that is the Bills identity. Honestly its a more fitting style for Josh. 

[billsfan89]

1 minute ago, SoonerBillsFan said:

Point being he relied on a WCO not just slinging deep balls like he used to.

 

Allen needs to do the same.

 

I am hoping that Kincaid can really be that number one dynamic weapon while the combo of Shakir/Samuel/Knox/Coleman/Cook are enough of a complement in the secondary receiving options while Cook/Davis/Ty have success running behind a strong offensive line. I hate seeing 2023 be derailed offensively due to a injury/decline from Diggs mid-season and a badly schemed offense. Because the Bills got a great offensive line season once Brown got straightened out after a bit of a rough start and Cook had a very good RB season, it is not most seasons that both things will hold up.

[Warcodered]

I wouldn't agree that it's to the extent that you're saying, great WRs can very effective if done right just like Derrick Henry could have been effective if their not so reliant on them, but there is definitely an increasing oversaturation of good WRs in the NFL.

[billsfan89]

24 minutes ago, oldmanfan said:

As (almost) always I agree with Shaw.  The talent level across most teams is fairly equivalent.  Not totally or you wouldn’t have the Panthers.  But relatively so.  Winning games and championships comes down to having coaches put in schemes and such that maximize their talent,  and a QB that excels.  I started a thread saying it’s really all about Brady this year.  If he calls a good offense where he gives Josh targets and uses the run game well so Josh doesn’t have to be a hero all the time, the Bills should do well.

 

Tim Duncan said it best, it takes a lot of luck to win a championship. Yes coaching and talent make a big difference. But often times the difference between Andy Reid's Eagles making a bunch of deep playoff runs but coming up short and The Giants winning two Super Bowls is just luck. 

[oldmanfan]

2 minutes ago, billsfan89 said:

 

Tim Duncan said it best, it takes a lot of luck to win a championship. Yes coaching and talent make a big difference. But often times the difference between Andy Reid's Eagles making a bunch of deep playoff runs but coming up short and The Giants winning two Super Bowls is just luck. 

Luck is always a factor to be sure

[Augie]

9 minutes ago, billsfan89 said:

 

Tim Duncan said it best, it takes a lot of luck to win a championship. Yes coaching and talent make a big difference. But often times the difference between Andy Reid's Eagles making a bunch of deep playoff runs but coming up short and The Giants winning two Super Bowls is just luck. 

 

Being healthy at the right time is part of “luck.”  We have not been lucky, but we are due. 

[NORWOODS FOOT]

Others have already said as much, but… maybe kinda but not yet.

 

1) you must have skill position players that move the ball down the field… somebody’s got to do it and one position will get the most attempts as a group because…

 

2) because the NFL is setting up an environment for wide open offenses, receivers are the best skill position to move the ball down the field because they average way more yards per touch than the running backs, and they are more plentiful than top flight TEs

 

You can win Super Bowls with lesser groups. I think of the Chiefs this year, but they have possibly the greatest TE of all time. So does that really count? Tom Brady did it with some lesser talent, but remember when the Patriots had Randy Moss and one year he had 23 TDs! Yes they stumbled in the Super Bowl to the Giants but they went 18-1 and slaughtered everyone until that point.

 

Yes you need a franchise QB and must protect him, but that done, receivers are still the shiz on offense and the great ones can be absolutely lethal with a good supporting cast.

 

 

 

Edited May 16 by NORWOODS FOOT

[NORWOODS FOOT]

24 minutes ago, billsfan89 said:

 

I am hoping that Kincaid can really be that number one dynamic weapon while the combo of Shakir/Samuel/Knox/Coleman/Cook are enough of a complement in the secondary receiving options while Cook/Davis/Ty have success running behind a strong offensive line. I hate seeing 2023 be derailed offensively due to an ‘’injury/decline from Diggs mid-season and a badly schemed offense. Because the Bills got a great offensive line season once Brown got straightened out after a bit of a rough start and Cook had a very good RB season, it is not most seasons that both things will hold up.

I’ve been pretty outspoken about wanting the Bills to go all out to find Josh the best receivers they can.

 

THAT SAID, if Kincaid takes a major leap into the stratosphere as one of the best big weapons in the NFL, then yes, that might just be enough to make this cast good enough. But I still wish we had at least one more sure fire guy on the outside. I think the benefit to our Offense would be exponential. 
 

 

Edited May 16 by NORWOODS FOOT

[HOUSE]

55 minutes ago, Augie said:

Just imagine what @HOUSE could do with a dozen dimes! It could be life changing! 

Maybe a down payment on a brand new ash tray