Division Status: Buffalo Bills

Edition #658

Good morning! ☕

Two finals in the last two Euro tournaments for England, two losses in the last two Euro finals for England. It’s a good job I prefer club football 😉 and boy am I ready for the NFL to start ramping up too.

Fortunately, we really don’t have very long to wait. Rookies will be reporting this Thursday the 18th of July, the veterans will follow next Tuesday the 23rd of July and the first practice will take place on the 24th July. The first public practice takes place on the 27th of July and then the first pre-season game will take place on the 10th August. Can you smell that? Smells like football season.

We’ve had a couple of weeks of one newsletter a week, but this week we’re going to start ramping back up and then next week we are aiming to be back to our regular daily sends. Later this week we’ll run down the rookies reporting (thanks for the idea Bobber, today we complete our look at our divisional foes with the Bills).

🟢 The official website of the Jets released a good video of the Jets Director of College Scouting Jon Carr discussing Jordan Travis. Talking about the value, the mentality, the leadership, the athleticism etc. They then talk to the scouts who were directly involved like Andy Davis and Jason Mandolesi. Well worth 5-minutes of your time, especially if you’re not sold on Travis as a developmental QB.

⚪ The staff of the official website have highlighted the #2 RB spot as a roster battle to watch during camp: “The No. 2 running back spot. It's clear the Jets have a handful of young, talented running backs, but it will be interesting to see if someone emerges from the pack in training camp. It's possible the Jets would turn to a committee approach behind Breece Hall. This time last year, the backup wasn't on the roster as Joe Douglas signed RB Dalvin Cook in training camp, but that could have been more of an insurance policy as Hall worked back from his injury.”

🟢 You’ll have noticed the Davante Adams rumours have picked up steam again with several key players coming out to support a possible trade. We’ll see where this one goes, but if the Raiders want a first round pick, the Jets shouldn’t be the one to give it to them. If they’re willing to deal for less then any franchise in “win-now” mode should have a conversation.

⚪ According to former Jets QB Boomer, it’s going to happen. Speaking on WFAN he said “I’m hearing — that this is going to happen, if it does happen — somewhere in late August, early September,” Esiason said. “I’m not sure about why it would take that long.” He continued “Davante is never going to come out publicly and say, ‘I want to leave the Raiders, But you do hear in this wide receiver program [“Receiver” on Netflix], where he does this, ‘I got to get out of here before I get killed.’ He says that. That leads the viewer to believe that he wants out of Vegas. But I don’t see him saying that publicly. I don’t see him going to the media and saying, ‘Get me out of here.’ I can see him saying to his agent, much like he did to Green Bay, the same type of thing.’”

🟢 Robert Griffin is another analyst who’s buying into the Jets ahead of the new season. On a recent episode of ESPN Get Up he said: “If Aaron Rodgers plays like a top ten quarterback like the Jets have him ranked and like we’ve known him to be… I think the Jets win the Super Bowl. On paper, this team is one of the best in the NFL.”

⚪ According to PFF, the Jets have the #1 ranked unit on all three levels of defence, they outline each here and I’m picking out their paragraph:

Quinnen Williams headlines this group, coming off a season in which he earned a 90.6 PFF grade that ranked third at the position — behind only Dexter Lawrence of the New York Giants and the now-retired Aaron Donald of the Los Angeles Rams. Williams has been a force both as a run defender and as a pass-rusher, earning a PFF pass-rush grade above 84.0 in each of the past two seasons and racking up 122 quarterback pressures on 885 pass-rushing snaps in the process.

The Jets' trade for Haason Reddick with the Philadelphia Eagles will give them a boost off the edge, as the 2017 first-round draft pick tallied 155 quarterback pressures, including 60 sacks and quarterback hits, from 1,099 pass-rushing snaps over the past two seasons.

Jermaine Johnson improved his PFF pass-rush grade from 64.6 as a rookie to 73.7 last season, and Will McDonald IV generated 12 pressures from 99 pass-rushing snaps in his debut 2023 season. The Jets will have high hopes for continued progress from those two former first-round picks in 2024.

✈️ The road to the divisional title passes through Buffalo. The Bills have now won the division for four years in a row having gone 24 years without an AFC East title prior to that. In a way that should offer a tremendous amount of hope to the Jets, who will be looking for their first AFC East title since 2022, 22 years ago.

For some analysts the Bills are still the team to beat, for others it’s a team in the middle of a transition.

This off-season has been an interesting one for Buffalo and Josh Allen with several key members departing. Stefon Diggs will now be catching passes from C.J Stroud in Houston and replacing him will be extremely difficult. In four years in Buffalo the former Viking caught 445 passes for 5,372 yards and 37 touchdowns. Josh Allen just lost his favourite target. Diggs isn’t the only veteran to switch colours this off-season as both Mitch Morse and Jordan Poyer found new homes. In fact, of the 10 team captains the Bills named last season, just two of them remain on the roster.

Let’s have a closer look at all those additions and subtractions for the defending AFC East Champions.

BUFFALO BILLS

KEY LOSSES

WR - Stefon Diggs
OC - Mitch Morse
S - Jordan Poyer
WR - Gabe Davis
EDGE - Leonard Floyd
LB - Tyrel Johnson
CB - Dane Jackson
DT - Tim Settle
DT - Poona Ford
S - Micah Hyde

KEY ADDITIONS

WR - Curtis Samuel
WR - Mack Hollins
S - Mike Edwards
LB - Nicholas Morrow
DL - Austin Johnson
EDGE - Dawuane Smoot
WR - Marquez Valding-Scantling
EDGE - A.J Epenesa
DT - DaQuan Jones
S - Taylor Rapp

DRAFTED PLAYERS

Round 2: WR Keon Coleman, Florida State
Round 2: S Cole Bishop, Utah
Round 3: DI DeWayne Carter, Duke
Round 4 RB Ray Davis, Kentucky
Round 5: C Sedrick Van Pran, Georgia
Round 5: LB Edefuan Ulofoshio, Washington
Round 5: ED Javon Solomon, Troy
Round 6: T Tylan Grable, UCF
Round 6: CB Daequan Hardy, Penn State
Round 7: G Travis Clayton, International Pathway Program

OVERVIEW

I don’t think even the most optimistic of Bills fans can honestly say that they believe the team improved over the off-season. Instead of extending their lead you get the feeling that they’ve fallen back into the pack and potentially behind it.

Unfortunately for them, the realities of a salary cap hit in a big way this off-season as star QB Josh Allen’s cap number increased significantly and it’s only going up, General manager Brandon Beane is aware of that and he acted accordingly this off-season to reduce the wage bill and reduce the age of the roster, but most observers believe that the talent reduction caused as a result is significant.

You get the impression that the philosophy this year was to replace quality with quantity and we know all too well that it’s usually a poor strategy.

How high you are on the Bills is probably directly related to how you feel about Coleman. He was one of the receivers in this draft I just couldn’t buy into. According to PFF he was in the 42nd percentile in terms of receiving grade in 2023, and for once when it comes to those grades, the eyes matched the data. I saw some concerning effort at the backend of the season and that paired with his inability to separate on a consistent basis should be reason for concern.

There’s nothing wrong with MVS or Samuel, but neither are a patch on Diggs and Gave Davis is better than most people think, they’re trying to replace a lot of talent there and a lot of production and I just don’t think they’ve done that. If you look at the 2024 Bills receiving core vs the 2023 Bills receiving core, it’s clear to me which one is better.

Josh Allen is a good QB, but even with a + receiving core he still turned the ball over at a career high rate, 18 interceptions and I believe 6 fumbles lost. 24 turnovers puts your team in a hole, lose your #1 target and one of the more consistent pass-blocking centres in football in Mitch Morse and I can’t see your offence being as explosive or as consistent as the Bills have been over the last few years.

Buffalo had one of the best defences in football last year, allowing just 18.7 points per game and I think you have to expect a step back for a lot of reasons, starting with the offence not being as good, teams won’t be forced to play so one-dimensional if they don’t find themselves in a big hole. They’ve also lost a lot of experience with Hyde and Poyer moving on, and both of those guys still performed well last year, I don’t mind Edwards but he’s a bang average safety and that forced them to reach for Cole Bishop in the second round, Bishop is reliable but has a low ceiling.

But, I don’t think it’ll be a big drop for Buffalo on defence. Losing the likes of Jackson, Ford and Settle won’t impact the team that much and they brought in DeWayne Carter in the third round, and that man knows how to get after the QB despite lacking in elite athleticism, re-signing the likes of Rapp, Jones and A.J Epenesa will offer some consistency on that side of the ball.

The Bills will be there or thereabouts in the division race, but if they finished 3rd in the AFC East I don’t think it should or would surprise anyone.

So now that we’ve completed our look at the division, it’s time for me to get the crystal ball out and predict some records. So here goes:

AFC East 2024 Predictions

1. New York Jets 12-5

2. Miami Dolphins 10-7

3. Buffalo Bills 10-7

4. New England Patriots 3-14