Fantasy Football Daily - 2021 Franchise Focus: Buffalo Bills

Episode Date: July 8, 2021

Joe Dolan (@FG_Dolan), Tom Brolley (@TomBrolley), and Graham Barfield (@GrahamBarfield) preview the Buffalo Bills 2021 season in the companion podcast to the 2021 Franchise Focus piece on FantasyPoints.com. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's time for the Fantasy Points podcast, brought to you by FantasyPoint.com. Top-level fantasy football and NFL betting analysis from every perspective and angle, from numbers to the film room, with a single goal to help you score more fantasy points. Hello, everyone. Franchise Focus, FantasyPoint.com and the Fantasy Points Podcast. My name is Joe Dolan. This is the fourth edition of our franchise focus. I can't wait until I lose count on those.

but I know this is the fourth team we're doing. We are doing the Buffalo Bills here, previewing Buffalo for the 2021 NFL season, picking out a couple of things to talk about. I'm very excited to do that. My name is Joe Dolan. His name is Tom Brawley. His name is Graham Barfield. They've joined us for the first three podcasts, and they are joining us here.

So I'm very excited to be with Tom and Graham as we discussed the Buffalo Bills, probably the surprise team, the breakout team of the 2020, 2020 NFL season. season. However, with Josh Allen moving into essentially the MVP conversation, he finished second in the MVP voting. I don't think anybody expected him to explode in that way. But here is kind of the funny secret for fantasy boys. I was talking to you guys off air, Tom, and Buffalo actually, they don't suck for fantasy. But beyond Diggs and Allen, there is nobody you feel good about here. And that just goes to show you how much those two guys, Tom, dominated last year for Buffalo because they didn't have a run game beyond Allen. They didn't have really a consistent producer on the perimeter.

John Brown, you know, was in and out of the lineup. They didn't really have a tight end contribute. I mean, it's kind of a two-man show here. And I'm wondering if that's going to change it all this year. Yeah, I really don't think it will. I mean, Josh Allen, we've seen it the first couple of years of his career. He's, you know, eight plus rushing touchdowns in all three seasons. He doesn't give up much, much, you know, rushing touchdown production or anything to his backs.

And then you have Stefan Diggs leading the league in receiving yards last year at plus 4,000 odds to do it. So he's probably going to have a very hefty target share sitting again at 25 to 30 percent range again. And, you know, there's a couple, you know, they have nice receivers behind him and Cole Beasley. And we'll see if Gabriel Davis makes the leap. Manuel Sanders was a nice pick up this year, but this offense is really top-heavy for fantasy. But there are two really great options, obviously, you know, Alan leading the league and leading all quarterbacks and fantasy points. And Stefan Diggs right there as well. I mean, let's look at this team.

It's still a Super Bowl favorite. Season win total, Tom, is 11 with equal juice to the over and the under. Minus 150, pretty heavy favorites to win the AFC East, plus 600 to win the AFC. championship plus 1,200 to win Super Bowl, I believe it's 56 this year, minus 370 to make the playoffs. I mean, Graham, is there any reason to believe this team is going to have a significant drop off from what it did last year? I don't think so. I mean, this division is still, you know, the dolphins are up and coming, the Patriots, they're getting their guys back on defense and the Jets are still a couple years away. There's still the class of the AFC East.

And, you know, Tom mentioned it. They are going to be able to go four, five deep at receiver and just kind of rotate their guys out. But the bills, and I talk about this in the article version of the franchise focus, but like the bills in every single game script are extremely pass heavy. And they're just going to go in and do what they do almost every single week. They're going to throw a ton on early downs. They're going to throw a ton when they're ahead. They're going to throw a ton when they're going to throw a ton when the game's close. Like, that's just what they do.

And, you know, I think consistency-wise, we know Josh Allen and Diggs are going to be there. But, you know, they're between Moss and Singletary and then they're four or five guys that receive her in their rotation. You know, I think they're going to be pretty hard to kind of get through for fantasy outside of, you know, the top two guys. But yeah, consistency-wise, I think they're, you know, bringing Brian Dable back or even Brian Dable not getting a head coaching opportunity, I should say. Bringing Dable back is huge, too. I think they're going to be able to run it back. man. Yeah, the continuity is the, the, what stands out the most about the bills team. You know, that's 21 to 22 starters back. The one guy they lost is John Brown and arguably they brought in a

better player to take a spot. Emmanuel Sanders, he can play inside, outside, you know, outside of his Achilles injury, he stays on the field more than John Brown. So, and their one major weakness probably was, you know, their defensive line last year. Getting to the quarterback, that kind of showed up in the AFC championship and their run defense as well. So, and they spent first two picks in the draft on Greg Rousseau and Carlos Basham. So, you know, and offensive line might be, you know, probably their second weakness. And they spent a pick on Spencer Brown as well. So in the third, with their third pick.

So they really attacked their weaknesses in the trenches, kept everybody around, kept Brian Dable around. Yeah, continuity is the word of the day for the Buffalo Bills in this team going into 2021. I mean, Josh Allen, we have him at QB2. His ADP is QB2. I think that's totally fair. I just drafted him as QB3 in the Scott Fishbowl. I love that pick. I don't think anybody anticipated last year, Josh Allen, who had been a good fantasy quarterback, by the way, but I don't think anybody anticipated him becoming the elite passer that he became last year. We know he's got the ability. And that kind of ran counter to what everybody was going to think. You know,

Colin's got the big arm, but he's inaccurate. He can run. This is going to be a run-heavy team in much the same vein that Baltimore is. That was not the case at all. Neither Zach Moss nor Devin Singletary did much of anything for fantasy, and the markets are bearing that out right now. Neither guy is going in the top 36 at running back. Excuse me, Zach Moss is RB 36 in 80P from the NFFC. Devin Singletary's RB 45. Guys, I mean, I kind of like both guys at cost just because if one of them goes down, maybe somebody takes the lion's share of the touches here, but both running backs Graham were afterthoughts last year. How are you drafting this back field, if at all? I think Moss is probably my favorite. Last year, Alan had 11 carries inside

the five. Moss had 11. So if there's anybody that's going to kind of get the extra touchdowns, you know, the extra rushing touchdowns inside the five, it's probably going to be Moss. But, man, I mean, even then, like, these two guys, like, Singletary and Moss just did not really coexed last year. I mean, they were both, you know, basically RB4 is for fantasy. But when both were healthy, Singletary averaged 8.2 fantasy points per game where Moss was at 7.8. It's just, I don't know. I just don't really see a whole ton of upside here. And, you know, just like we went through talking about with the receivers, like, neither Singletary or Moss is going to be used super heavily in the passing. And, like, you know, they've got,

four or five guys to, you know, Alan's got four or five guys to throw to in the passing game, too. So I just, I've kind of been shying away from both of them. I like either one if they slip, but that's not great advice. I mean, that's just totally dependent on your draft board. And the other problem is they brought in Matt Brita this off season. You know, he's, you know, say what you well about him. He gets hurt a lot. But whenever he's on the field and gets touches, he's usually pretty efficient with those touches. And our guy, Greg Kosell, thinks he might even be the back that they prefer when they go into 10 personnel. They have four wide receivers on the field because of his ability to hit creases

and get up to get up field. So, you know, it wasn't great to begin with. And then you throw in a guy that might be able to get, you know, 15 to 20 percent of the snaps and, you know, take away some of that production that's available. It's tough to feel great about this back. The one thing I would maybe hope that, you know, Zach Moss, You know, Adam Kaplan said that, you know, his toe injury from the beginning of early, you know, the beginning part of last season in September was really more of a hindrance than, you know, people probably thought.

And, you know, he ends up, you know, busting his ankle in the wildcard game and needs surgery. So, you know, maybe he's a little healthier. Maybe he can get more of the passing snaps and maybe a few more of the goal line carries. But at the end of the day, this has not been a backfield that I've been targeting very much. And even where Singletary is going, you know, I prefer like higher upside like in Cuff types and Darrell Henderson and Latavius Murray and Alexander Madison. Madison. Because I just don't even see, you know, even if one of these backs goes down, the other guy being like, no doubt like RB1 in that scenario. Well, Moss met in the nest, what, like four games last year?

And Devon Tim LaTere was basically like a super low-end RB2. I remember playing him in DFS a couple of those weeks. and lost some money. I lost some money on there. So I'm with you on that. I mean, Alan's just the goal line back. And, you know, here's the problem with Alan, though. And we discussed this on the Baltimore podcast. It is very easy to stack Lamar Jackson because none of his receivers, including Mark Andrews, who is coming off the board first, are getting drafted before Lamar Jackson is coming off the board in general. The problem with Alan is Stefan Diggs is overwhelmingly the number one here, Graham and Tom. But he's going before Allen. So you almost have to do kind of a reverse stack if you want to stack him with his top receiver.

Does drafting Stefan Diggs dictate how you're going to draft later in drafts? And then on the flip side, you know, you've got these guys going in the later rounds. I think Emmanuel Sanders, Gabriel Davis, those guys are kind of, appealing, they're pretty cheap. I'm not immune to stacking anybody, but Cole Beasley at wide receiver 56 is the second receiver off the board for this team. It just seems like if you're drafting Alan, you might want to do it without any real plans for like a super stack here. Yeah, that's the thing. And I think we were talking about this last night, Joe. It's like, you know, I'm kind of into Mani Sanders because he's like the guy that, you know, should be on the field. After Diggs, I think Sanders will probably

be second snap rate because Beasley will probably be slot only. I know Kaplan said they want to play Davis a little bit more in the slot too. And they can do that when they go to four wide and have Sanders outside. But I think Tom mentioned it too. Sanders is the guy that they can kind of play at all spots. One thing I wanted to mention is like, you know, Josh Allen took a huge step forward last year. There's no doubt about that. You know, we were never doubting his arm talent, never doubting the strength of his arm. But Stefan takes was such like a massive, massive, you know, addition to this offense. I mean, he was the best receiver last year against man coverage. Like, this, this duo led the NFL in basically all production categories against man.

They led in completions, letting yards. Diggs was Matt Harmon's number one receiver in reception against man coverage. And it wasn't even close. Like, you know, Devonthe Adams and Adrian Brown are a couple of notches below him. So, I mean, just being able to, you know, add Sanders and, you know, Gabe Davis takes another step forward. It's just going to, It's just going to give Diggs even more single coverage against man, and it's going to help out this offense even more. Are you going to, like, maybe take a shot on double stacking there and just like say, all right, I'm going to draft Beasley N. Davis or Beasley N. Sanders and just try to get whichever guy is going to because, I mean, you're looking at somebody. Nobody's really drafting Dawson Knox. I think if you have Allen, you can draft him as a number three tight end.

Yeah, I've done that too. I think Zach Ertz could end up going there. So there's really not a whole lot of upside there. I just think Tom, like the best, if you draft Alan, don't go out of your way here. But you could take a shot on maybe even both Davis and Sanders late in your draft and try to get the guy who's going to win the number two outside job among those two guys. Yeah, I have no problem with doing that. Sanders has probably been one of my favorite picks, you know, after.

He's very cheap. After the, like, the 15th round. I mean, he's routinely there around 280 to 200 picks. you know, 180 to 200 picks in. And for a guy that's still playing at a fairly high level, and he was kind of the go-to receiver for stretches of time for the Saints last year when Michael Thomas was out of the lineup. So, you know, heaven forbid that, you know,

Stefan Diggs would miss a stretch of time. You know, he could step up into that type of role. He has that potential to be kind of that number one receiver if something would happen. And, you know, it's all the more reason that I have Patrick Mahomes as my number one quarterback this year. But, you know, there's a case that could be easily made for Alan to be the number one guy again. You know, Stefan Diggs, it was just the first season with him last year. You think that with a full offseason, full summer workouts, Gabe Davis and Dawson Knox are two young receivers that certainly had their struggles last year, but you think those guys

might see some improvement this year. I think Emmanuel Sanders is an upgrade over John Brown. So, there's going to be probably some regression for Josh Allen. He's not going to keep setting, you know, franchise records for the bills every year. But there's at least a little bit of an argument to be made that there could be some room for growth with a little bit better receiver play from the entire cast here. So that's going to wrap it up with our discussion on the Buffalo Bills.

I want to remind everybody that this is not all we think about the Buffalo Bills. If you go to FantasyPoint.com, you can get the, entire franchise focus article, which includes so much more information. Offseason moves, betting lines. We're going to have West Huber breaking down the scheme. Scott Barrett looking at strength and schedule. John Hansen looking at how he's drafting the team. And on top of that, if you're a premium subscriber to FantasyPoint.com,

you can get Tom Brawley's betting preview. How is he looking at this team from a props and a season long win total, Super Bowl odds standpoint? All of that is included with Tom's betting preview. I have a play on this team as well. You have a best bet on the bills. A little teaser. I have a little teaser there, so a little best set there.

Yeah, we're not giving it away on the podcast, folks. That's, you know. Hey, what did the Joker say, Tom in The Dark Night? If you're good at something, never do it for free. Tom Broly was 8 and 0 in win totals last year. Eight now on his bet. So you want to follow what Tom Broley does with win totals and props because I guarantee you it's going to be fun and he's going to make you some money.

Make sure you follow him on Twitter at Tom Brawley. Follow Graham Barfield on Twitter at Graham Barfield, quite fittingly. Follow me on Twitter at FG underscore Dolan and follow the site on Twitter at Fantasy PTS to get all the updates, including when the franchise focus articles are released. We're going to be back later this week to talk about the Carolina Panthers. I just hope you had a wonderful time discussing the Buffalo Bills with us. Thanks, everybody. Make sure you check out those articles.

And we will talk to you later. Thanks for tuning in to this edition of the Fantasy Points podcast. Remember to subscribe, rate, and review on your favorite platform. And come join the roster at FantasyPoint.com.