Is Our WR Corps Good?

[BillsShredder83]

8 hours ago, ganesh said:

those behind the LoS passes are looking silly.  At one point the announcer showed that 41% of our passes (at that time) were behind the LoS.    Coleman, Palmer, Kincaid and Shakir should be able to win their matches consistently.

Where are those $10M expired Pesos.  I will take it any day 🙂

I also felt the other 2-pt to Coleman also should have got the flags thrown.  The guy was literally pulling Coleman's pads from his shoulder and definitely inhibited from holding on to the catch. 

 

 

He they didnt do much against an elite aggressive defense, but i loved the new wrinkles they put in on those. Ravens are good at those, hopefully we pick up some of those tendencies.

 

While these plays weren't world beaters, its awesome to get on tape and keep D honest. Also, really like the attempt to sling it out quick to beast a** YAC Keon, who's a handful to bring down.

 

Mark my words Keon is gunna take a few of those quick screens to the house this year. Hes great after contact, elusive in open after breaking first tackle, and the long speed to s*** all over other teams. 

 

For as "slow" as he is, once hes had 10 yards to build up, he plays so damn fast! Excited to continue to see him evolve

[BullBuchanan]

Coleman played better last night than he did cumulatively in 2024. It might be the biggest YoY jump I've seen from a  WR. He's playing with confidence. His hands looks far better, his body control looks far better. Last night's Coleman looked like the player they hoped to get when they drafted him. If that's who he is moving forward, he's a massive weapon for us. Maybe not a prototypical WR1, but definitely a  guy who will get WR1 opportunities.

Josh Palmer was consistently open, was running smooth routes and made catches look like they were in shorts. He was a massive upgrade to our overall group because of how much it raises our floor by keeping lesser players off the field.

Shakir was Shakir and that's great.

The TEs impressed, catching 100% of their combined targets.

The only bad drop the whole night was Ty Johnson, and I expect that was a fluke. It was awesome to see the whole depth chart contribute like catching the ball is just automatic for them. That certainly wasn't the case last year.

[GunnerBill]

10 hours ago, hondo in seattle said:

Our starting wide receivers combined for over 200 yards receiving against the Ravens - a total that last year's wideouts didn't often achieve.  Is this a better receiving corps?

 

Coleman  8/112

Shakir  6/64

Palmer  5/61

 

How do we explain their productivity?  Weak Raven secondary?  Good scheme and play-calling by Brady?  Josh makes any receiver look good?  Or do these guys have some legit talent?   

 

Your thoughts?

 

 

The Ravens getting too conservative too early in the 4th. Before that the receivers outside had nothing.

[K-9]

1 minute ago, GunnerBill said:

 

The Ravens getting too conservative too early in the 4th. Before that the receivers outside had nothing.

The fact that Josh threw for 250 yards in the 4th quarter alone is all we need to know how true that is.

[ColoradoBills]

2 hours ago, Fan in Chicago said:

If is fashionable and hip on this board to keep harping that our WRs are "not good". That is only true if you are comparing individual WRs to the likes of Chase, Higgins , Nacua etc. 

This has now become a lazy take despite the WRs making some really good catches last night. 

My argument is not that our top 2 receivers are better than any others in the league. It should be totally evident by now that it is NOT the Bills' MO. 

Frustrating for some posters in here to point to a few drops last night to support their preconceived notion that the Bills' WRs suck.

 

10 different receivers caught balls last night.  Edit:  9 players.  TJ dropped that target.

Josh and the starters didn't play in preseason and some of these guys were banged up during camp.

 

It seems to me a wise person will wait for a couple more games to see what will happen with the WRs.

I'm very hopeful that things are going to get much better as the season progresses.

 

I also want Brady to mix things up and take some more down the field/seam shots earlier in the games.

Edited September 8 by ColoradoBills

[skibum]

I think they're overall pretty good. No superstars, but they have three quality starters who showed they can make key plays in the clutch.  

 

Let's also not forget about Kincaid, who made the big plays to keep the Bills alive in the first half, when nothing much else was working. 

[oldmanfan]

Not as good as they could be, but not nearly as bad as many believe.

Edited September 8 by oldmanfan

[Generic_Bills_Fan]

1 hour ago, BillsShredder83 said:

He they didnt do much against an elite aggressive defense, but i loved the new wrinkles they put in on those. Ravens are good at those, hopefully we pick up some of those tendencies.

 

While these plays weren't world beaters, its awesome to get on tape and keep D honest. Also, really like the attempt to sling it out quick to beast a** YAC Keon, who's a handful to bring down.

 

Mark my words Keon is gunna take a few of those quick screens to the house this year. Hes great after contact, elusive in open after breaking first tackle, and the long speed to s*** all over other teams. 

 

For as "slow" as he is, once hes had 10 yards to build up, he plays so damn fast! Excited to continue to see him evolve

A lot of times the short passes early were called/checked into against the right looks we just didn’t execute well…something that has stood out so far on a rewatch.  Ravens were shedding blocks and stuffing guys in the open field most of the night though…a few times receivers dropped balls/lost their footing when catching the ball on top of pretty dreadful blocking on that behind the LOS stuff 

 

there were more successful quick throws/screens than I remembered in this one now that I’m rewatching.  The big problem was the short yardage runs 

Edited September 8 by Generic_Bills_Fan

[PayDaBill$]

It was good but I still wish we had a bonafide field stretcher who could get separation and be an occasional threat. 

[hondo in seattle]

22 minutes ago, GunnerBill said:

 

The Ravens getting too conservative too early in the 4th. Before that the receivers outside had nothing.

 

GB, you're right.  And yet...

 

Harbaugh chose to rush 3 for at least part of the 4th because he believed that gave him the best chance of winning.  Rushing 3 meant he had 8 guys in coverage versus our 4 or 5 out on routes.  Maybe only 7 guys in coverage if Harbaugh left a spy on Josh.  Still, considering the Ravens have good coverage guys and our receivers are, reportedly, poor at separation, that would seem to give them the advantage.  Yet Josh threw for 269 yards in the 4th quarter alone, mostly to subpar wideouts.  

 

Maybe the wideouts aren't as bad as some folks think.  It's interesting that Samuel and Moore have both started about half their NFL games yet aren't good enough to start for us.  I don't think our starters are elite by any means - Josh deserves better.  But they're not entirely woeful either.

 

Still, Josh is the engine that makes this passing game work.  I started this thread to see if anybody has a different take and, of couse, some do and I respect that.  But IMHO the scheme, play-calling, and 10-man talent are average-ish.  Josh elevates everything.  

 

 

[Starr Almighty]

2 hours ago, finn said:

Was it the Ravens playing soft or adjustments by the Bills? Could it be as simple as Brady not calling run plays and short passes, or the receivers deciding to get open, or Allen hitting the small windows he wasn't trying earlier? Looking forward to the analysis. 

I said that the Bills are a good team so they took advantage of it. That would imply that they also adjusted. But the Ravens went into a soft Cover 2 and put Alexander out there more than earlier in the game. I hope you didn't take this as me saying something negative about the Bills. 

[HappyDays]

1 hour ago, NewEra said:

They are 💯 good enough as long as our D doesn’t suck it up and lose it for them.

 

they aren’t great, but I don’t think WR will be what brings us down

 

So that's kind of the problem, right? Our offense as constructed could work if it had a strong defense backing it. KC had a middling offense last year scoring just 24.1 PPG, in part because of below average weapons. But they went 15-1 because they had a clutch defense. Our problem is we have a middling group of pass catchers paired with a defense that looks like it is going to give up 35+ to any top tier offense. It's the definition of non-complementary football.

 

Edited September 8 by HappyDays

[FireChans]

Just now, HappyDays said:

 

So that's kind of the problem, right? Our offense as constructed could work if it had a strong defense backing it. KC had a middling offense last year scoring 24.1 PPG, on part because of below average weapons. But they went 15-1 because they had a clutch defense. Our problem is we have a middling group of pass catchers paired with a defense that looks like it is going to give up 35+ to any top tier offense. It's the definition of non-complementary football.

The ultimate “so what do you do here” type team building.

It’s a reality in the salary cap era that it’s basically impossible to keep together both a great offensive and defensive supporting cast. Usually, you have to pick one in spite of the other.

 

But we have picked… neither.

[RyanC883]

Keon looked like he did pre-injury, and was in the right place at the right time numerous times.  Great routes, great hands and ball concentration.  Palmar looked great for his first Bills game.  Still wish we had a downfield burner, perhaps Moore becomes that.  Would like to see more targets downfield early in the game to open everything up.  

[FireChans]

33 minutes ago, hondo in seattle said:

Harbaugh chose to rush 3 for at least part of the 4th because he believed that gave him the best chance of winning.

He was wrong, wasn’t he?

 

They basically held the Bills offense in check for 3Q’s, and changed what they were doing and our offense exploded.

[sven233]

They're not a good group overall.  They didn't create any separation all night within the structure of the offense and it really took until the 4th quarter for them to make any plays of significance and even then, it was a lot of backyard football.

 

That said, if Brady realizes that these WRs that are not fast, are not uber-athletic, and not equipped to run a dink and dunk offense with a bunch of east/west smoke screens, etc. and figures out where they can get open is in the intermediate parts of the field, then maybe they have a chance to do something.  This needs to be a vertical offense.  Not a horizontal offense.  And at one point late in the first half, almost half of Allen's passes were listed is at or behind the LOS.  That isn't acceptable when you have the best player on the planet at QB.  LET JOSH BE JOSH and maybe these WRs will prove to be good enough.  But, I fully expect a return back to the dink and dunk next week.  It's just what Brady loves to do.

[finn]

1 hour ago, Starr Almighty said:

I said that the Bills are a good team so they took advantage of it. That would imply that they also adjusted. But the Ravens went into a soft Cover 2 and put Alexander out there more than earlier in the game. I hope you didn't take this as me saying something negative about the Bills. 

Not at all. I was being totally earnest and asking questions I was interested in, no snark at all. (And I'm not one of those posters who view any criticism of the Bills as disloyalty or worse.)

[NewEra]

1 hour ago, HappyDays said:

 

So that's kind of the problem, right? Our offense as constructed could work if it had a strong defense backing it. KC had a middling offense last year scoring just 24.1 PPG, in part because of below average weapons. But they went 15-1 because they had a clutch defense. Our problem is we have a middling group of pass catchers paired with a defense that looks like it is going to give up 35+ to any top tier offense. It's the definition of non-complementary football.

 

🤷🏻‍♂️ it’s always come down to one thing imo.  We just need guys to make clutch plays when the opportunity arises.  Ed made epic plays.  Kincaid made clutch plays.  Keon made clutch plays.  Palmer made clutch plays.  All but one of these season ending losses came down to just that.  Just make clutch plays.  

[Rocky Landing]

I'm feeling pretty good about my "Superstar" vote in the Coleman poll rn.

[NewEra]

2 hours ago, PayDaBill$ said:

It was good but I still wish we had a bonafide field stretcher who could get separation and be an occasional threat. 

Josh Palmer has that ability imo