Beane elaborates on the process of picking Josh Allen

[Mr. WEO]

5 hours ago, Thurman#1 said:

 

 

Yeah, totally messed up Josh. 

 

Yeah, I mean, his completion percentage went down from 63.5% to 66.5%. Oh, hang on, that's up, not down. 

 

And his total yards went down from 4283 to 4306. Oh, wait, that's up also. Josh had a very good year that year, as he always has

 

Allen wasn't "totally messed up" or anything like it. That's a completely ridiculous take.

 

Is it maybe a legit contention that Diggs didn't help much that last year here? Yeah, totally. Hard to say why, no matter how you pretend to totally understand the situation. But he was very unproductive, for whatever reason. I know I was wildly pissed seeing the hand gesture he made to Josh on that last drop in the Chiefs playoff game, like "oh, we just didn't quite get together well enough there." But the first three years Josh leaned on him tremendously. Neither made the other. You have to be willing to contort yourself into absolute pretzels to pretend that. They helped each other. Tremendously.

 

And yes, players do get injured, Keon included. Some years. Not others. Again, you're contorting yourself like a circus act here. Extrapolation only looks "meaningless" if you don't happen to find the meaning it shows as convenient to your own pre-judgments.

 

"A decent first half of the season"? Again, nonsense. For a rookie he was having an excellent first year, second in yards among rookies, if I remember correctly, despite being the fifth WR taken, with two in the top 9 picks.

 

Did Keon do very well in that one game? Um, yeah, that's how it works. Good games and bad games. I mean, if you want to "take out that clear outlier," his best game, fine, but you have to throw out the worst also. And what you get is just about the same average. He was having a really good rookie year that first half, and getting better. He was a different player after that injury, suddenly losing about every contested catch when up till then he'd been winning a lot of them.

 

 

 

Regarding Diggs, the Bills ate a big cap sandwich to get rid of him.  Why is that?  

 

Regarding Coleman, take out his worst game and you still have 13 games of 51 or fewer yards. After that 125 yard game, he would average 28 yards per game over then next 9 games including the playoffs. 

 

 

[Ethan in Cleveland]

5 hours ago, Einstein's Dog said:

This is a made up myth that keeps being repeated.  How do you know how the Bills wouldn't have taken Lamar?  We do know the Bills weren't satisfied with what they had at QB even after making the playoffs.

 

If you put Lamar and D Henry on the current Bills they would still be favorites to win the AFCE.

Its pure speculation on my part.   Just like you are speculating they would have taken Lamar. I've defended Jackson on this board for years. Since virtually no one had Lamar in the top 4 QBs to be taken I think its a good guess when they traded up they would have taken one of the other three if Allen was gone. 

For me Allen was always the guy to go get. I didn't know a great deal about Baker but didn't like his size or the system/conference he came from. I knew Darnold was going to be a bust. Saw it in college and posted many times before the draft. Any pocket pressure and he panicked even against patsies like Washington State. I'm not ashamed to say for me it was always Allen, Rosen, Mayfield as 1, 2, 3. After that I can't recall. I liked Jackson out of college as I thought he was a better passer than people were stating. That said I also tended to prefer pocket passers so in the end I probably had Darnold 4th with a lot of trepidation. Hope I'm remembering it correctly. All that said I didn't anticipate the running ability that Allen has shown. I fell in love with the arm strength in the Buffalo wind and cold. You can't teach arm strength.  Most everything else you can improve.  

[BuffaL0L0k0]

On 5/11/2025 at 8:22 PM, folz said:

 

I agree that Ed has never quite reached his draft status. At pick 9, yes, you're hoping for an Aaron Donald or the like---which Ed is not. But, he is still an excellent player in my opinion. Not elite, but very good. And I have a feeling he may have a big year, with a better line around him. But yes, you can knock the pick a bit because we could have traded back and still had Christian Wilkins, Dexter Lawrence, or Jeffrey Simmons. So, it could have been a better pick, but it was by no means a bad pick.

 

And a challenge, huh? I already did K.C. (for 2021-2024) in the post I linked. But adding the Eagles and SF and going back to 2018 or 2017 (probably 2018 is the better choice, as 2017 wasn't a Beane draft), might take some time. The reason I included Tampa is because Buffalo, K.C., and Tampa are the only three teams to make the playoffs in each of the last 5 years, so they have relatively been drafting in the same range over that time. So, my purpose was to compare Buffalo's drafts to teams that were drafting in the same range as us to determine if Beane does better or worse on average with those teams. Again, I think it is an unfair comparison to compare Beane's drafts with teams that are drafting significantly higher than us.

What a finding about the ¨small club* by KCY, TBY and the Good Ol Maffia, being in the playoffs the L5 years! great knowledge nugget, thanks!

[Thurman#1]

On 5/12/2025 at 7:20 PM, RoscoeParrish said:

Not sure who this player is. Maybe Taron Johnson?

 

Not drafted by Beane.

 

Not drafted by Beane.

 

These guys are all drafted by Beane.

 

The conversation was about comparing Beane’s drafting to other teams. That’s why we started in 2018.

 

I think Beane is a very good GM, personally. I think, again, if you stack up his resume against the Niners, Chiefs or Eagles (basically all the teams to play in multiple Superbowls since he’s been here), he’s closer to the bottom of that grouping instead of the top.

 

Oh, sorry, autocorrect strikes again. Yes, I typed Taron Johnson, not Aaron. 

 

Not drafted by Beane, but drafted by this regime. I guess if you want to edge them out, I understand. I won't argue.

 

 

As summed up here, I don't totally agree with your opinion here, but I think it's certainly in the reasonable range. As a GM overall, you have to say that he's got something to prove and his term will look better with a Lombardi attached. As for his ability to draft, I don't put him at the top of that group you cited, but not at the bottom either. Drafting is tough and he's right up there with them.

[Thurman#1]

17 hours ago, Mr. WEO said:

 

Regarding Diggs, the Bills ate a big cap sandwich to get rid of him.  Why is that?  

 

Regarding Coleman, take out his worst game and you still have 13 games of 51 or fewer yards. After that 125 yard game, he would average 28 yards per game over then next 9 games including the playoffs. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They took all the dead cap to get rid of Diggs because Allen and Diggs did not work together well at all that fourth year. He was still a terrific pickup for the young Josh Allen, helping him out a ton. I already said that, but it's so obvious it shouldn't have needed to be said.

 

You're advancing your argument not one jot. Why is that?

 

As for your argument about Coleman ... Well, yeah, after that big game, things went downhill, AFTER THE INJURY. You're right, after the injury, he did indeed perform much less well. It prevented him from making the kind of contested catches he was making a lot of before his wrist damage, and of course his results did look a ton worse.

 

But again, in the five games before the injury his yards looked like this:  51, 49, 26, 125, 70. An average of 64.2 YPG.  He'd improved a lot from his first few weeks. Then came Nov. 3rd and the injury. He was never the same. But when healthy, he'd started to look really good. Again, at that point he was #2 among the rookie receivers, even though he was the 5th guy picked.

 

 

Edited Wednesday at 07:56 AM by Thurman#1

[Mr. WEO]

On 5/13/2025 at 11:45 PM, Thurman#1 said:

 

 

 

 

They took all the dead cap to get rid of Diggs because Allen and Diggs did not work together well at all that fourth year. He was still a terrific pickup for the young Josh Allen, helping him out a ton. I already said that, but it's so obvious it shouldn't have needed to be said.

 

You're advancing your argument not one jot. Why is that?

 

As for your argument about Coleman ... Well, yeah, after that big game, things went downhill, AFTER THE INJURY. You're right, after the injury, he did indeed perform much less well. It prevented him from making the kind of contested catches he was making a lot of before his wrist damage, and of course his results did look a ton worse.

 

But again, in the five games before the injury his yards looked like this:  51, 49, 26, 125, 70. An average of 64.2 YPG.  He'd improved a lot from his first few weeks. Then came Nov. 3rd and the injury. He was never the same. But when healthy, he'd started to look really good. Again, at that point he was #2 among the rookie receivers, even though he was the 5th guy picked.

 

 

 

he had at most 5 catches in a game all year. only 3 times over 4 catches.  whatever his injury was and required (no cast/splint/surgery), this is what he said before his 4th game out: "if you're out there, you're 100% [healthy], so I'm just getting the closest I can get to getting out there, so whenever I can do that, I'm gonna be out there to play,"

 

Diggs initially helped Allen, sure.  Then he was (predictably) toxic--enough that Beane got rid of him at a cost: huge cap hit, 1st round pick and only 4 years.  This isn't min dispute.

 

Imagine how Justin Jefferson would have "helped" Josh....

 

[folz]

On 5/13/2025 at 8:06 AM, Ethan in Cleveland said:

If Elway took Allen instead of a LB, Beane and McDermott would have been gone a long long time ago. The entire history of the NFL would have been rewritten with Mahomes and Allen in the same division. 

Beane can use whatever revisionist history he wants, but at the end of the day he needed Cleveland, Jets, and Broncos to make fatal errors.

Still wonder if it was Buffalo that leaked the text messages the day before the draft. Has anyone ever learned where that story came from? 

 

I know Einstein's Dog already replied to this, and you responded to him, but I couldn't help myself.

 

First off, Elway was never going to pick Josh. That's why he says now it was a mistake. If he didn't take Chubb, he was going to trade us the pick for us to get Allen (they actually had a deal in place). Obviously we couldn't control Cleveland (being the number 1 pick). It all depended on them and they obviously were not giving up that pick no matter how much Beane offered (same goes for the NYG and the Jets). And everyone knew pre-draft that the Jets were all in on Darnold and Cleveland was either picking Josh or Baker. It was a very poorly kept secret. So, it looked like it was Josh or Baker for the Bills depending on Cleveland. Josh was absolutely the top of the Bills board. Everything that has come out since that draft points to the fact that the Bills were all in on Allen and were totally out on Rosen. No idea how they felt about Baker and Jackson. But I think they had Baker #2 or #3 (with Darnold) and I agree that Jackson may not have been what they were looking for in a QB. You can say it took 3 teams to make a mistake, but then didn't 9 teams make a mistake not picking Mahomes? Does that make the Mahomes pick by KC not really count or something? It's a silly argument. I mean K.C. gets credit for trading up to 10 to get Mahomes, but the Bills don't get credit for trading up to 7 (because someone still could have picked in front of them)? Can't you say the same thing about every QB who didn't go #1 overall? So, do GMs only get credited for a QB if they picked them #1?

 

And do you really think that if McBeane didn't get Josh, they would have just thrown their hands up in the air and said, well I guess were just going to roll with Nathan Peterman for the next five years?

 

Let's say Cleveland took Josh #1 overall. Do the Bills move up then for Baker? Or maybe Baker falls to them at 12 and we keep some of our assets (two second rounders) and pick a couple of excellent players in the second round to go with Baker. Might Baker have done better in Buffalo than he did in Cleveland in a better organization that is very good at player development? Life would have been much different, not better, but I don't think it would have been a death knell for McBeane.

 

Now let's say Cleveland takes Josh, the Jets take Darnold, and then Denver takes Baker. Again, I don't think the Bills wanted Rosen at all. In that scenario, we would still have all of our picks. In 2018, prior to the draft day trades, the Bills had six picks in the first three rounds: 12, 22, 53, 56, 65, and 96. At that point, we could have traded back (for even more picks) and still got Lamar. Or picked another player at 12 and still been able to get Lamar at 22, then still have 4 more picks in rounds 2 and 3. Picking Josh and Tremaine, we ended up with only 3 picks in the first 3 rounds (7, 16, and 96). In this other scenario, we could have had Lamar and 5 other picks in the top 3 rounds (12, 53, 56, 65, and 96). Don't think that scenario would have got McBeane fired either.

 

Worst case scenario, we do not come away with a QB in the 2018 draft (Josh, Baker, and Darnold gone---Bills don't want Rosen or Jackson). So, Beane keeps piling picks to draft one in future drafts. With two first rounders, basically three second rounders, and two third rounders in 2018, Beane could have moved back a number of times, still got a lot of good players to fill the roster, and increased his draft capital significantly in future drafts. Now in 2019, there wasn't much in the way of QB help in the draft. Kyler Murray went #1 overall to ARZ. But, no one else. So, we may have had to wait for 2020. But think of the draft capital that Beane could have built up by then to make a run for Burrow, Herbert, or Hurts (Tua and Love also went in this draft) that year. We may have been a year or two behind where we are (or were at the time), but I don't think it would have cost them their jobs. We still wouldn't have Josh (the unicorn MVP that makes everything better)---but we probably wouldn't suck either with say Burrow, Herbert, or Hurts. Of course, it means (outside of a trade) that we would have had to run with guys like Case Keenum, Mitch Trubisky, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Nick Foles, or Teddy Bridgewater in 2018 and 2019 (or stick with Tyrod), which really wouldn't have affected 2018 much (6-10 record---other than not getting to see Josh develop and leap over Anthony Barr), but obviously 2019 wouldn't have been as exciting a season as it was (we would have still been in QB limbo). Not to say that a Ryan Fitzpatrick, Tyrod Taylor, or Nick Foles couldn't have got us to the playoffs (first round loss that year w/Josh). It probably just wouldn't have been as much fun. And, we obviously would have lost a year or two of QB development. 

 

I mean, you can suppose anything. And yes, the NFL would look much different if the Bills didn't draft Josh. But I think McBenae would have a very good chance of still being around in any of the above scenarios. All of the above scenarios, we wouldn't have Josh. But, the talent of the team around the QB we did have (Baker, Lamar, Burrow, Herbert, Hurts) would have been higher (with using our picks and accumulating more). The overall success probably wouldn't be as high without Josh, but we would not be a bad team. And you could say the same of any GM/Head Coach---if they never got a good QB, they'd probably eventually be fired. Uh, yeah. That's why they all try so hard to get one and why Beane wouldn't have given up trying to get one even if we missed on Josh. 

 

And finally, not sure what you think is "revisionist history." I personally think Beane is a pretty straight shooter.