Warren Sharp’s Preview On The Bills 2025 Season!

Warren Sharp’s Preview On The Bills 2025 Season!

Move forward people. Looking ahead to 2025 is the excellent Warren Sharp. His football preview is coming out and he joins me now in the West Her hotline to promote and discuss it. Warren, how are you? I’m doing great. Super happy that uh training camp is here for some teams. Obviously, the Chargers are there and very soon on the horizon for others. And I’ve got that 2025 football preview book completed. So, don’t have to worry about researching uh you know, the season from last year anymore. we can turn the page completely to the 2025 season which for the most part when it comes to the Bills both are good you know looking last year was good you know to to a point as has often happened and uh then this year looks promising too is there just in general about them Warren something surprising from your research something that I mean they’re favored in literally every game in Vegas uh is there something about the Bills you think maybe to put it another way people tend to get wrong. Well, I I just don’t know. I am such a believer in Josh Allen and this offense and such a just so much frustration about Shawn McDerman and this defense. Um I I don’t know that people realize if you read the book, you turn to Bill’s chapter. I don’t know if people realize that Josh Allen out of 24 playoff quarterbacks with at least 50 playoff pass attempts since 2020, Josh Allen is the best out of all 24 quarterbacks. number one in EPA, number one in success rate, number one in touchdown to interception ratio, 25 touchdowns to only four interceptions in all of his playoff games. Yet, you guys don’t have a single AFC championship. You know why that is? Is because opponents score an average of 33.2 points against you guys when they beat you. And you allow the Kansas City Chiefs to score way more points against you guys. They average 34.8 points against you guys. Kansas City does in the playoffs when they beat you and only 24.8 points against everybody else. That’s a 10 full point increase when they play you guys in the playoffs than when they play anybody else. They’ve scored at least 27 points against you guys in 100% of the games that they’ve played you guys and scored 27 points against the other 12 teams that they’ve played just three times. This is Shawn McDerman. This is Shawn McDerman’s defense. This is why you guys went out there and four of your top five defensive signings were top four of your top five most expensive free agency players that you signed were on the defensive side of the ball. This is why for the first time in the Shawn Mcderman era, you use your first five draft picks on defense. It’s the first time in 20 years since 2006 the Bills used their first five picks on the defensive side of the football. Right now, they are trying to give Shawn McDermott every little bit of edge that he can get on his side of the football because his side of the football is what has been failing Josh Allen, the Buffalo Bills, and the city of Buffalo in the postseason here. and it’s got to improve. Or what is the point of Shawn McDerman as the coach if his side of the ball continues to cause so many problems and you’ve got literally and statistically the number one best playoff performing quarterback since 2020 operating your offense and you can’t get wins because your defense is allowing too many points. Bang. Reading right from your preview, Warren, five playoff losses, the Bills have averaged 24.6 six points per game, which is not only above average, but it’s a touchdown above average for teams that lose in the playoffs. It’s probably been, generally speaking, kind of lazy on my part to think about defense and draft capital and everything you’re talking about, the investment on defense to say, well, I mean, still it’s Patrick Mahomes. What are you going to do? Or Burrow or Lamar Jackson. I mean, those guys are so good. because I’ve been critical of the Bills investing so much draft capital on defense. Uh less so this year, I would say, but is is there a a simple theory or an answer to that? I mean, good is good, bad is bad. It’s not like Mahomes was putting up huge numbers against everybody like you pointed out. I mean, a lot of it has to do with the scheme. One thing I’m going to credit Shawn McDermott for is adjusting against the Baltimore Ravens, even though Baltimore almost won to utilizing a lot more man blitzes against Lamar Jackson, which is clearly the way to get after him. And it really rattled him. They they racked up they jacked up their rate of man blitzing in the playoff game and were able to beat Lamar Jackson only through that. If if they didn’t have those uh man blitzes that they increased, you know, obviously the Baltimore Raiders dropping the two-point conversion, etc., But um it’s a different story there. So it’s got to be on a week- toeek basis. This is one of the things if you look around the NFL at some of these teams. Look at who played in the Super Bowl last year. Look at the uh Kansas City Chiefs with Steve Spagnolo. Look at the Philadelphia Eagles with Vic Fangio. Each of those defensive-minded coordinators. They aren’t head coaches. They’re coordinators. come up with new schemes and new systems every single week to tweak things, to adjust things, to attack the opponent and and to try to go after that opposing quarterback and minimize what that team can do on the scoreboard. And they do a great job. They’re excellent single game coordinators, Vic Fanio and Steve Spagnolo. I don’t know that I could say the same about Shawn McDermott whatsoever. And and so like this is it’s coaching. You can get players in there and hopefully they do. Hopefully, they’ve thrown enough against the wall that some of these players end up sticking and they’re healthy enough that it ends up paying dividends for them and it can at least support the offense. But, I mean, some of these stats like that are further deep down in the chapter, you asked before, what’s something that will surprise the Bills. If I didn’t already shock you, this one’s going to, you know, going to blow your mind. The last year Buffalo Bills defensively had massive regression on that side of the ball. The only thing that saved them was the takeaways that they had. 18% of opponent drives ended in turnovers. Yet, they forced punts on a 31st highest rate of any team in the NFL. They weren’t good at getting stops. They weren’t good at allowing drives to reach the red zone. They ranked 30th in rate of drives that were allowed to reach the red zone. The only thing that saved them was the takeaways. And in fact, the Bills in 2024 were the first defense since 2000 to allow at least 35% of opponent drives to reach the red zone while simultaneously generating turnovers on at least 16% of opponent drives. Getting those takeaways was the only thing that made the defense look reasonably respectable in the regular season. And that’s not bankable year-over-year. Getting all those takeaways is not something that typically happens. And I did the analysis in the book, which by the way, if you guys if you guys are listening and you’re finding some of these stats interesting, you can get the book over at Sharp. Football for just $1 if you use the code bills. If you go to sharp football is a 586 page book we’ve written, previewing the teams and their expectations this year, 32 different chapters give it to you for just $1 if you enter the code bills, reduce the price from $30. But this book is going to really open your mind to a few things and this is one of them. Um I think that defense is going to regress from a takeaway perspective. So they better figure out a better way on a downtodown basis of slowing opposing offenses to prevent drives from continually converting on third down, moving the ball into the red zone and putting up points. With Warren Sharp, I’m Mike Schop. Bulldog is off today. the skill position guys here, Warren, that’s been hotly debated, too. Uh, we had Brandon Bean come on the station earlier this off seasonason right after the draft and sort of really aggressively pushing back against the idea that not enough has been done at wide receiver. I I saw I think it was Bill Barnwell, ESPN rated the Bills skill position guys 28th out of 32 teams. Is Is that how you see it? Is it enough to just be like Allen is way up here and he can cover all this other stuff that’s happening or is there maybe some more talent or things to like about their skill position players for you? Well, I I don’t know that I I um agree with your GM. We’re not as low on the team as Bill Barnwwell and ESPN. We have ranked their receiving room as the 25th. So, a little bit higher, but still not great. running back room as 12th, offensive line as ninth. Um, it’s just that your quarterback is so elite. And what happens in certain situations like this is you you you’re as a GM, you’re looking at why is my team losing games? And I think that’s where uh I think you can directly point the finger at the defensive side of the football and your head coach who is largely responsible for that side of the football. When you see the moves that the GM is making, drafting all these defensive players, going out in free agency and paying all these defensive players, he knows that like Josh Allen can kind of, he’s not a coach, but he’s coaching up that offensive side of the ball, right? He’s improving the ceiling of the entire offense just by him being the quarterback and everything he can do with his legs and his arm, his mobility. And so, you don’t need necessarily a number one wide receiver to still have the best offense in the NFL with Josh Allen at quarterback. But the defense doesn’t have somebody who’s coaching them up, who’s putting them in the right systems and schemes to get a a better sum of the parts than the individual pieces. And as a result, you have to improve all the individual pieces and spend all the money on those individual pieces to try to get it right. So, um, I agree that it would make Josh Allen’s life a lot easier. And I’m sure Josh Allen, like look at Joe Burrow. Joe Burrow’s lobbying hardcore for what? For his receivers to get paid, right? The Cincinnati Bengals defense is terrible, but at least they have top flight receivers. Your defense, like I said, statistically was really lacking in a number of key categories, but for the takeaways, if you don’t get those takeaways, you’re struggling on that side of the ball as well. Uh, and Josh Allen doesn’t have those receivers on the offensive side of the ball. So, life is going to be much more difficult for Josh Allen as a result of this. But I mean, it’s hard to say that he’s not being paid commensurately, like he’s being paid a ton of money to go out there and produce hard for the team, but they’re not making his life easier. But hopefully at the end of the day, it helps raise the floor of this team and and ultimately the ceiling in the playoffs to finally get to a Super Bowl, which is what I think he deserves. I mean, all this talk about criticizing Josh Allen over this nitpicking thing and that nitpicking thing is just so tiresome to me and lazy in my opinion. It’s not accurate whatsoever. uh just look at the stats, look at the data behind him. The team obviously he’s going to point his finger first at him anytime the team loses in the playoffs, but rightfully it needs to go to a lot of other players and coaches on that roster more so than Josh Allen. And uh the team is only there and doing what it’s doing because of Josh Allen. Yeah, I agree. I feel like last year at this time a lot of the discourse was about his reputation for mistakes and guys like yourself and we would do this would point to his playoff stats and be like that’s really not true. I mean really in the playoffs has not been why they’ve lost. It’s really what you’ve laid out here and what they’ve given up in those games and that continued last year. This year I’m not hearing it so much. In fact, like it seems like today everybody’s ranking quarterbacks. foreign. We’ve got all kinds of other rankings are out there and you know where where the tier break is. Uh do you have a take on that? Like you’ve got a considered big four, maybe it’s five and I I don’t really find it that worthwhile to try to rank the guys at the top. I mean, I think you can make an argument for a few different guys at one. I agree. I I I agree with you completely, Mike. Look, to me, I find I don’t want to like insult your profession obviously, but like there are people in the media who like build careers or bite a lot of time on ranking like, well, this guy’s number one, but this guy’s number two. Oh, well, I’ll give you 20 arguments why the number two guy is better than number one guy. At the end of the day, none of that actually matters. What what irks me the most, like Joe Burrow is one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL and deserves to be very high on any sort of top 10 list. Joe Burrow deals with one of the worst offensive lines in the NFL, one of the worst uh supporting run games in the NFL and one of the worst defenses in the NFL. And if you look at Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson, all three of those guys have a far better run game than what Joe Burrow deals with. They have a far better offensive line than what Joe Burrow deals with. And they have a far better defense overall. Even though I’ve got throwing some stones at your guys defense, that Bengals defense is terrible. And so, yes, Joe Burrow, in my opinion, is one of the absolute best quarterbacks in the NFL. Throwing stones at like a Joe Burrow or Lamar Jackson or Josh Allen because these guys can’t get past what the Kansas City Chiefs. Kansas City Chiefs are one of the best teams that we have seen. They’re they are a dynasty team. They’ve got one of the best head coaches ever, one of the best quarterbacks ever, one of the best defensive coordinators ever in my opinion for a single game calling plays. He is up there. and the fact that more teams aren’t looking at him for a head coaching job just helps propel this dynasty engine along for the Kansas City Chiefs. And so, you know, nobody would have the same slights to throw at Josh Allen or Lamar Jackson or Joe Burrow, for example, if those guys actually won one Super Bowl. But because you’ve got Patrick Mahomes and that engine that’s the Kansas City Chiefs standing in their way, it’s be it’s just simply very difficult to do it. And I don’t think it’s worthwhile to argue as to why the top quarterbacks in the NFL, the top three to five quarterbacks in the NFL aren’t actually the top three to five quarterbacks when clearly for most people they are. And I can tell you statistically they are. It is also fun for me to see a guy like a Jaden Daniels, you know, get viewed as a great quarterback, but he’s got a lot of work to do and a lot of years to put in, in my opinion, to be ranked as a top five quarterback, even though I felt what he did last year was extremely special. But I’m not going to sit here and waste too much time like throwing stones at him. He’s just one year into the NFL, so many other quarterbacks after one year in the NFL are not anywhere close to him. So, you know, at the end of the day, I don’t have too much uh to say about that top five ranking, and I thought certainly, you know, the top four quarterbacks in some order were probably accurate and and I don’t think it’s worth really debating that uh ranking as to where they were in the top four to too much detail. Right. Warren Sharp here on WGR. I’m Mike Schop. A few minutes more with Warren. So, I mean, fairly critical. I think you’d agree on sort of the McDermott and the Bills defense here in these playoff losses. They have kind of breezed to the playoffs for the most part here. Five years in a row in the AFC East, all rarely even much challenged. You you might sound to somebody listening like you’re kind of ready to see someone else move in. Is anybody ready to move in? Is this year where the Bills get pushed in the division or no? Well, that’s the best part for being a Bills fan is that like these other teams in your division all have issues that they’re dealing with. Um, the Patriots seem to be the one team that may that obviously started furthest behind that actually has a clear direction that you feel good about a little bit more long term with a new head coach and Mike Frabel and quarter young quarterback in Drake May who could, you know, they’re they’re expected. I don’t know if you know this. You know, you knew the stat on the number of wins games that the Bills are favored in, which is all 17. Did you know that LA this year the New England Patriots are favored in 11 out of 17 games? There aren’t that many teams that are favored in more games than that this year. They’re favored in 11 games, which is ridiculous to me after how few games that they won last year, but it just goes to show that they are viewed as one of these teams that’s going to have a massive bounceback season compared to what we saw from them last year. I’m not big on Justin Fields. So, I am relatively I think quarterbacks are the single driving engine to teams and their offensive play caller. So, they’ve got an offensive play caller who is a relatively unknown commodity and then they’ve got Justin Fields at quarterback. I think the Jets still are struggling to find out what they are. I also think their ownership is probably one of the worst in the NFL. So, that doesn’t hurt your guys’ case at all for being the Buffalo Bills and having them in your division. Um, and then you look at the Miami Dolphins. The problem for Miami is just that offensive line is just a huge problem that they’re going to have to plan around non-stop and you have a quarterback who has an injury history and playing around an offensive line that’s that bad that so bad that it encumbered and prevented the run game from even having some success last year is going to limit them. So, I believe that you guys are in the best position once again heading into this season. And when you look at, you know, the opportunity that lies for you guys, you have one of the easiest schedules in the NFL. You have the fifth easiest schedule of opponents. This part of the book as well that I wrote up. Um, you have uh net rest edge that you’re going to have to be working through because you got the fourth net rest edge. And from uh week 10 through 18, you will play four games at a net rest disadvantage and just one game with a rest edge. So, you’re going to have to work through the rest aspect of things late in the year. But if you look at your overall strength of schedule, fifth easiest, you look at your four toughest opponents this year, the Baltimore Ravens, Kansas City Chiefs, Philadelphia Eagles, Cincinnati Bengals, all of those are at home. So, you’ve got a big edge in terms of who you play, when you play them, how you play them. The only thing that is is you’re going to have to work over is like some net rest disadvantage. Other than that, there’s a great opportunity for you guys to once again have a lot of edge over the other teams in the AFC East. And you know, there’s a lot of pros that have been betting the Buffalo Bills to win the AFC East and laying, you know, having to lay twice as much as they’re going to take back because they just feel so confident that the Buffalo Bills are going to move into the postseason and win the AFC East. And I can’t argue with that one bit. I don’t think that there’s anybody in your division who is ready to overtake that crown from you. And you know, we’ll see. I think all the other teams are a couple of years away. See, this is why we do things, Warren, in sports radio like ranked quarterbacks obsessively because there’s a pretty good chance again this year we’re going to be sitting here for 6 months and still not have the answer on this thing. I mean, we we’ll enjoy the games. It’s a long off season and then ah I mean it’s all going to be about what happens against Kansas City again or whoever it is in in January. And this is not actually even to win a Super Bowl. I mean, if the if the Bills had had the Chief season last year, 15 and two, one seed, Super Bowl, and then blown out, I I I wonder what that would feel like here. You know, it’s it’s progress, but it’s still like the Bills and their history, it still means the one thing that they’ve failed to accomplish would again have been failed to accomplish. Yeah. And that’s the beauty of sport in general. And especially with the way that the NFL plays out, you know, it’s different than baseball or hockey or basketball where there are seven game series. It’s like that one Super Bowl. You got the AFC Championship, you got a Super Bowl, and you can’t afford to have any down trend in any one of those games. Or it might cost you that game, and then it cost you your whole season. Then you look back and you say, “It was good, but really, what did we accomplish?” And so, I do believe that like you guys would probably feel good if you made it to the Super Bowl because it absolutely is progress. And I’d feel great if you guys were able to get past the Kansas City Chiefs in the playoffs and make it to a Super Bowl. uh and your defense actually balled out and played well. Um but at the end of the day, you’re right. You you you you you need to win a Super Bowl and the biggest thing to me is with that fifth to easiest schedule and the five four or five toughest opponents that you have all being at home, what you really need is to secure the number one overall seed in the AFC this year. You host the Kansas City Chiefs. You host the Baltimore Ravens. Two of the three teams that are going to be vying for the AFC. You need to win those home games. You have an early buy in week seven. You need you you’re at a rest disadvantage for a lot of games down the stretch. Week 14, week 15, week 17, you’re at rest disadvantage in all those games. Win enough games to ensure that you can take a week off in week 19. Let everybody else duke it out. Host playoff games in Buffalo through that AFC Championship, only have to win two games instead of three. You know, I I mean, it’s it’s it’s laid out right there for you with the schedule. You guys just need to execute and and the defense need to step up. You can’t control health. You were one of the healthiest teams in the NFL last year. Your offensive line was healthy. Like you did a great job from a health perspective. You need to try to manage that. You have no idea what’s going to happen here. Uh from a health your turnovers are probably going to regress. Uh you just need Josh Allen to continue to ball out. That’s something that’s pretty bankable. uh given what we’ve seen historically, you need the defense to step up and I think you guys are in a really good position once again uh play very very meaningful games in January. Hopefully they’re at home. Yes. Yeah, they have been fortunate. You mentioned the turnovers often and offensive line. I think everybody they had the same five guys on the field for the vast majority of their snaps last year. So they were fortunate in that respect. Sharp. football for the preview $1 with the promo code Bills. Do I have that right? That’s right. Very cool. Thanks, Warren. I look to you for a lot of stats stuff. We talk about your work all the time. Rich Reebar is one of my guys, too. There’s a lot of fantasy friendly, actionable data in the in the preview as well. Thanks for your time today. We’ll have to get Rich on your show at some point here, Mike. Yes, he was on once. He he said something controversial and we took that as an opportunity but um okay he he he’s a star. Very good. Thanks Warren. Absolutely. Thank you. All right. Warren Sharp on the Wester hotline. Yeah. Rich, what did he say? He says things. He’s really good. Rich Reebar. H R I B A R. He contributes to Warren’s uh football preview and

Mike Schopp talked to Warren Sharp on the Bills upcoming season and Warren gives his preview on the Bills and what he expects from them this season. #bills #billsmafia

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